I rub my eyes, and look over at my phone.
4am…Again.
Another running dream startled me awake out of a very deep sleep. I can easily recall every detail, because I’ve had this dream countless times…
Which is hardest to run through? Cast your vote!
Staying Distracted, Lifting Weights, and a Facebook Rant
Everyone keeps asking me if I’m depressed. Ha. Well….Nah, I wouldn’t say I’m depressed. I’m definitely not my chipper -bouncing off the walls- self. I think I’m just really DISTRACTED. I only get down during times when I feel like I should be running, or when I crave a run. Truth is, I haven’t had time to notice my injury other than the obvious, more in-your-face, times Take grocery shopping for instance, yeah…screw that! Ha! Daniel keeps telling me to use one of those riding carts, and I refuse….they look too weak! So I crutch around all over the stores, and try to carry stuff at the same time. It’s so pathetic.. maybe I should just swallow my pride? (Or NOT.)
I’ve been keeping myself really busy, and I feel just about as tired as I felt during peak training weeks this year. As a matter of fact, last night I forgot I can’t even walk. I was laying in bed, it was around midnight, and I told Daniel, “I’m gonna go hit a few miles really quick so I can sleep, I’ll be back.” He looked at me like I was crazy, and then I remembered I can hardly walk, and I dropped my head back to the bed in defeat. (Yes, running is THAT ingrained into my system… anyone else ever experienced this sort of thing?) Also, I had to leave the house last night, and I drove past my favorite training grounds, Fort Yargo, on the way to my destination. I almost swerved into the park! I got all teary eyed. What would I do there? Crutch to the trail head and turn around? I SWEAR, I really feel like a teenage girl who’s daddy made her “break up” with running. SUCKS! So..I took a pic and kept driving. sob. For real, that is so lame. Why I’m writing this for my small world of friends to know is beyond me…not like you guys don’t know this stuff about me anyway. Somewhere in this mess of a year, I apparently lost my ability to care about what anyone else thinks… (?)…
I’ve spent the past couple of days helping a close friend of mine revamp her blog, so that’s been keeping me distracted. Beth McCurdy is a fabulous cook, and has a lot of great recipes geared towards runners, check it out : betheats2run.blogspot.com . It turned out to be a nightmare of HTML code input for the header, which I haven’t dealt with in years. Also, when I committed, I forgot that my new laptop has no photoshop or editing software installed. I’m a wiz on photoshop, but I had to use a crappy generic photo editor to create the logo and it took foooorrr–eevvvv–urrrr. (No really. Forever!) Regardless, it turned out pretty good for my first attempt at designing a blog for someone & with minimal tools to do so. She really liked it, so that’s all that matters to me.
Dan’s kicking my butt…err, upper body, with whatever cross training I can handle. I’m looking forward to the body changes with it all. I’ve lost a lot of weight since Hinson, surprisingly. Probably because I’m not hungry. I can already see a lot of cuts and definition returning that I had lost during heavy distance training. I’m eating way less than 1000 cals a day. My body is so used to burning 3-4000, and consuming even more than that on a daily basis. I guess my body just doesn’t know how to react! It’s kinda weird.. I’m so fascinated by how our bodies respond to training
Another thing keeping me distracted are the looong and meaningful conversations I have had with so many of my friends. I’m the type of person who you DON’T want to get into a phone conversation with… no really.. most people just text me to avoid it! Ha. Everyone knows that I prefer deep conversation versus meaningless chatter, so I’m surprised at how many people are willing to actually CALL me! SOOO many friends, and other ultrarunners have taken the time to chat with me, and I’m loving it! Thanks guys, it’s keeping my mind off of NOT running. Huge help! Some conversations have been FUNNY. I found out that a girl at Hinson Lake thought I was trying to “show off” by sprinting a few loops after already running over 60 miles. Ha. Actually, I had no intentions of showing off, and every intention of trying anything in my arsenal to shake out the pain I was feeling in my hip. A true runner knows that sometimes a good solid block of natural form sprinting can fix your gait & stride and help tame some muscle pain. So no, I didn’t WANT to run a sub 7 pace for half an hour on crappy legs, I just felt like I needed to try it. (Shakin My Head)
(enter random facebook rant)
Things like that chick talking smack about me- that reminds me of how much I LOVE being off of facebook. All of the political correctness and fake friendships used to drive me up the wall. When I hear of silly things people say about me, I’m reminded of how people used to write that kind of stuff to me on my facebook wall… I can only imagine the crap I’d get if I was on there posting stuff about breaking my hip during Hinson! —Bet this would be verbatim :
Continue reading “Staying Distracted, Lifting Weights, and a Facebook Rant”
Find a freakin’ way!
No Surgery? PTL!
Yup, no surgery! Surprised everyone, I think! All I will require is some physical therapy and rehabilitation to help me walk again, and eventually run again. I’m very thankful for this news, as I’ve always had this idea that surgery is the “kiss of death” for endurance athletes.
The doctor must know me better than I think, because she won’t set a date for my return to training. My guess is she doesn’t want me to get focused on a date, and get out there well before my hip is ready, which I totally would do. I know it won’t be until 2012 though:-/. She laughed when I asked if I could swim or bike..or pretty much do anything period. She looked at me with this piercing look, as if to say, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” but instead offered, “You don’t realize how serious this is. You can’t do anything but rest.”
Doc mentioned that I also damaged a few muscles. I don’t remember their names, except for one: gluteus minimus.. I remember that one, because I thought to myself, “There is NOTHING minimus about MY gluteus!” Ha!
But yeah, walking could be more likely to actually happen when those muscles and tendons start to heal in the next few weeks.
The doctor also told my mom something else, “Nobody in their right mind would ever run 140 weekly miles.”
…….
Guess doc never met an ultrarunner.
And guess what else.. The instant I’ve got the green light to run, I’ll be SLOWLY and CAREFULLY making my way right back to the same level of training I love to run at. I disagree that running SO much broke my hip. I think I injured it with the insane amount of speed training I did in the last month of training. I hit a sub 5 mile in august, for crying out loud! I know there must have been a tiny ounce of pain in that hip before the start, and I tuned it out. It got horrendous, yet I still tuned it out.. for almost 80 miles. That’s what I do. Thats what I TRAIN myself to do. Ignore pain. I took a gamble on it being muscle related, and held hope that it would fade out so I could finish my race. That’s what usually happens. This time it didn’t. I’m not a moron, and had I known it was my hip bone, I would have stopped way sooner than I did. Regardless of how it happened, I’m not going to be used as “an example”. Nope. I run….Hard. I get hurt. It’s ultrarunning, not safetyrunning. Sure, I crave longevity. But I also have no interest in settling for mediocrity (thanks Mccurdy for reminding me of that) and I have no plans to change my love for high mileage because a doctor thinks it’s ludicrous. Welcome to my world, doc, it’s twisted!
Don’t take it personally, doc. I have trouble listening to anyone’s advice..just ask my husband. Shoot, he even wrote a whole post inspired by my lack of trainability.daniel’s rant
No News is Good News?
Yesterday I had additional testing done to find out if surgery is in my near future. I still haven’t heard from the doc, so maybe that’s good? Maybe?!! [MAYBE!]
Arthrogram testing was quite interesting. I watched the radiologist put a needle in my hip, and was able to see how deep it went (straight through to the other side) on the X-ray cam. Nasty! Last time I saw a needle that big I was about to give birth to my first child. Geeez..
I ventured out of the house yesterday and joined the family to watch Brett’s game. I probably wasn’t ready for that. It was hard to have to replay the events again and again. These people already think I’m psycho for running so much. “Why did you do this to yourself again?” was the general question. And, “I don’t know,” was the general answer.
I came home and, once again, cried like a little girl on Daniel’s chest. I couldn’t explain myself to anyone and I didn’t FEEL like explaining myself either. It’s times like these when Dan would usually say, go run for awhile, we’ll talk when you get back. I guess I realized that, and cried some more about it.
I told Daniel that it’s hard for me to explain to people why not being able to walk[read RUN or DO ANYTHING] for awhile would have such a huge impact on my life.
Running is not just fitness to me.
No.
Running is my best friend.
At the start of 2011, I needed a life check. I pulled away from almost everyone in my world and did one thing… I ran.
I ran far. I ran fast. I ran slow. I ran well before the sun came up, and far into the long hours after midnight. I ran when I needed to cry, I ran when I wanted to laugh. I ran to feel good, and I ran to hurt. I cried out to God during those lonely hours in the woods. I dealt with every sort of pain, problem, and joy imaginable – ON THE RUN.
So knowing there is a possibility I may not run for another year, or who knows when.. Its like mourning the loss of a loved one.
So I wallowed in all of that a little while longer, and then I started laughing. (I got sick of crying! Ha.) I realized, (yes once again), there is no point in crying about this!!! It’s like when you take a snack away from your kid that they tried to sneak before dinner. They scream and cry out in protest, but you know you’re not going to give it back, because it’s not good for them. In that case, I’m the little kid screaming, “why!!!!”
Or maybe [in the ultra world] it’s like when you’re stuck at mile 50, you’ve hit a rut, but you’ve got a whole other race ahead of you. You can sit there and cry about how sucky life is, or you can move your feet and get past it. It’s life!!!! Stuff happens, right?! Keep moving forward, Ashley!
So… Moving forward..
I talked with Brooks running, and got some good news. They are going to offer collateral for my races! Thanks, guys!! My client, Traci, also has suggested that the donations from my first race benefit a young son of a local runner in our area who is suffering from cancer. His name is also Brooks.. Cool.:) I’m anxious to get all of the details planned out with that.
I want to thank all of my friends, and everyone in the ultra community for pouring on the love. You guys always show how caring and selfless you are. I experienced after Fort Clinch, and here again with this madness! I love the surprise phone calls and emails. I crack up when you guys tell me to stop acting like an idiot. Nothing like a good laugh.:) I know my emo-ness is way annoying, but it’s just unfiltered me right now. PLUS I am not burning 1000’s of calories every day, so how else am I supposed to get this emotional crap out??!?! Being a female is rough, ha.
I’ll post again as soon as I have answers from my doc. Shouldn’t be too long. Thanks for caring!
Response to news of hip fracture and possible surgery–
Response to news of hip fracture and possible surgery– a video by Ashley Ringo Walsh on Flickr.
hahaha you kinda had to see the WORST movie ever to think that was funny.
So yeah, I fractured my hip a few miles into Hinson lake.. And idiot me ran roughly 80 miles that day before I quit in pain. It hurt so bad, but I thought it was muscle related so I kept moving hoping to run it out. Tomorrow I will find out if I will need surgery. Apparently there may be a tendon that is damaging (or already damaged) the hip bone by being pulled too tightly across the bone and as a result- tearing off the bone. The tendon may have snapped, or may be close to it.
Either way, I can’t walk, or do anything weight bearing for a long time….Like months. If surgery- way longer. I’m down, okay, I cried my eyes out.. but I’m okay with it. Promise. Yes, it’s true that running well over 100 mile weeks generally means someone is probably quite addicted to running. So NOT RUNNING basically means NOT BREATHING. Which basically sucks. Lol! But hey, what have I always said? Everything happens for a reason!!! I’m going to focus my energy on planning out races I mentioned in my last post. I’ve already contacted a couple of people about it. I think it will all work out very nicely!! Will feel REALLY good to solely focus on others’ happiness for awhile!
I’m determined not to lose my competitive edge and focus during the next few months. I’ve already got a high count pushup and pullup goal and plans to kayak during the day while my kids are at school. Will be fun! Dan had me out lifting as soon as I got home from the doc. Ha! I know he won’t take it easy on me and I’m glad. That crazy torture loving freak set 25’s down on the ground in front of me and said “go.” (I think really its not about his concern for me, but more that he just doesn’t want a frumpy wife! ;))
I refuse to let anything deter my motivation and discipline!!!!! This year has been (hades) for me- emotionally, physically, mentally. Let’s see– I had a health scare this spring with my spleen, then I almost died at fort clinch (ICU), I cut open my thumb a couple weeks ago(stitched) and then here’s this awesome hip drama and possible surgery. Haha I mean really I have like hundreds of thousand in med bills and no way to pay. It’s been rough. No, REALLY rough. Running all of that crazy mileage this year was my therapy. Not running will be so hard. But the key to going through so much crap in life is to KEEP THE FAITH. GOTTA KEEP PUSHING ONWARD TOWARDS THE PRIZE!! No matter what you’re going through, it could almost ALWAYS be worse!!!! Count your blessings, right? I am. Because there is SO MUCH in life to be thankful for, and not enough time to be sitting around miserable. (remind me I wrote this when I’m crying in a few weeks because im not outside playing and running in the beautiful autumn weather!) 😀 🙂 I
Growl.
I’ve been right,
I’ve been left,
I’ve been wrong,
I’ve been left
behind,
I’ve been up,
But mostly down.
-(middle class rut “new low”)
Sunshine. Trails. Rain. Trails. Trails. [TRAILS.] Earth between toes. Wind against face. No plan. No reason.
Someone PLEASE get me out of this box and drop me in the middle of the woods. I’ll have to bear crawl my way home, but that will suffice. As long as I’m not stuck in this bed!
I tried to walk without crutches today and I fell. It was not cool. My mind is getting warped and it’s only been a couple of days. Humans weren’t made to be caged. I feel caged.
I don’t wanna know what mr orthopedic has to say tmrw. I know it’s bad news. Grr. Sean says I can take up wheelchair ultras. Ha. Thx nag.
Everyone else says “chin up!” But everyone else doesn’t know the kind of pain a girl feels when she’s detached from her world- Her place. Her LAND.
“You always learn and grow.” I know…
You know. But does that mean anything really changes? Or do we learn, grow, and suppress? Maybe both.
Sad.
I want to run. Fast. Hard. Up and down the highest mountains and the toughest climbs. I want to hurt. I want to feel and move.
I just don’t want to be stuck!
Growl. Fun to talk to myself!!!!!! Ha
New Direction
So after a day of sulking in pain, being stuck in bed watching old movies, THINKING, and PRAYING, and finally just sitting still for a few hours.. My wheels started turning.
WHY would racing ultras not be in the works for me right now?
I know why. Because it’s self-serving.
WHY is something self-serving not in the works for me right now?
That’s easy. Just reread that sentence.
Too much focus on “me” is way toxic, and dangerous. Especially if I don’t realize it’s happening. When it starts to happen, even subconsciously, God smacks me down like a 4 year old in Kmart.
I learned a lot about life training to race Hinson and other races this fall. I definitely became a better runner and athlete, and (in my opinion though it doesn’t really count) a stronger person.
But that doesn’t mean a thing unless I put all of those life lessons I learned this year to good use.
Am I really making a positive and meaningful difference in the lives of others if I’m chasing my own dreams down? Nah.
So how can I remedy this? How can I bring my passion for running, racing, training, family, trails and LIFE all together in a way that pleases the God I live my life for?
Well.. I prayed about it while I sat here on my hurtin’ triple marathon+ injured and sore booty today, lol, and here’s what’s been flowing through my brain since:
It’s time for me to GIVE way more of myself instead of doing way more for myself.
I want to create some VERY low key, yet competitive, ultra races with 100% of proceeds going to various homeless shelters and food pantries in the Atlanta area. I have a few in mind.
I’m thinking maybe donations, and things like blankets, jackets, food, etc. as entry fees.
We have amazing trail systems here, like Yargo and Harbins, and all of us local runners have put together some crazy challenging routes to train on. I’d love to invite others to try their luck on some of our toughest training courses.
I have a huge amount of resources I can pull from to make it work. I also have some direct links to people in critical need, and ways to help them.
I’m going to keep moving in this direction and see where God takes it. Maybe it’s what He is wanting out of me. Maybe not. Only one way to find out. I’ll send out some emails today and go from there!
Epic Fail
(Insert TMI- men please navigate away from this page)
In short, it wasn’t my day.
Friday night hit me with a massive and painful urinary tract infection. Saturday, 2 hours into the race, I started my period. I stopped in the bathroom after every other loop. 4 hours into the race, I started to feel the most weakening pain I’ve ever felt. It was awful from the get-go. My right leg locked up into a terrible grip, and it didn’t release- ever- no matter what I tried. OH BELIEVE ME, I ran through it- hard and fast. Tried to ignore it, got 3 separate deep massages, kept fueling perfectly, but only pulled out a total of maybe 14-15 painful hours, and only hit maybe 78miles. To sum it up: It sucked.
I literally cannot move my legs today. Did I do something awful continuing to push to almost 80 when I noticed the pain? Yeah of course. But that’s what I do. I’m stupid like that! Piriformis? Broken or dislocated bone? Whatever it is – its totally destroyed. Daniel is having to pick me up and carry me everywhere. Physical therapy may be in order, as I’m literally screaming every time I attempt to move. I can’t bear weight on my right side. If you know me well, you know it takes a lot for me to quit. And for once, I actually decided to quit.
SO. What happened? Where did this bad race come from?
It was just not His plan for me. I did everything RIGHT. I fueled right, ran right, trained right, rested right, paced smart, raced hard. Didn’t skip a beat. And I knew it was up to God to take care of the rest if He wanted to. And in the end, He didn’t want to.
So what did I learn ?
It’s a big one…
That was my last ultra race.
I knew that the moment I crossed the line on my last lap. I felt it, and it felt right. Maybe not forever. But- for awhile.
I know, you probably think I’m swearing them off because I can’t walk right now.
Actually, no. That’s not it.
It’s just time to move on..
As a side note –
I DO enjoy the people. That’s the only thing that was fun about today. I ran with so many of my good friends:
I got to have a long heart to heart with Ray K, run a few laps catching up with Bruce, Joe (early on when I had speed on my side!), sweet Beth, super funny Ami, and of course my all time favorite person in the world -Daniel. I also got to catch up with Naresh, who I met at my first ultra, and Kena one of my favorite runners around. All of the volunteers were superb, as they always are at ultra events… Bending over backward to cater to the runners. It was great to see everyone and socialize for a change.
So why quit if there’s still some fun?
It’s kinda deep. (duh, it always is)
..Because God’s not in it for me.
I’m positive now.
It has nothing to do with quitting. It’s something spiritual, something I’ve been praying about for some time.
I didn’t feel Him with me at all during this race. I wanted to so bad, but it just didn’t happen. I prayed the whole time, but I didn’t feel His guidance and blessing and strength that I usually feel. And that’s not something I’m willing to live without. If I don’t feel His presence in something important in my life, I leave it alone.
I’m done wasting time on things that I know God wants me to get rid of. I’m not even sure why He even wants me to get rid of it right now- but He does. I feel it in my gut. And thankfully, I’m fine with that. I can let it go. So I will. My relationship with Jesus Christ is THAT real and THAT meaningful to me. I’ll never let anything hinder it. It’s not just some religious game for me. It’s just a perfect God, a messed up me and a lifelong learning process to make me a better person to please Him. When it’s time for God to work on me- I feel it.. & right now I more than feel it.. I know it. So I’m gonna surrender what I feel like I need to, for Him to carve me into that person I’m meant to be. Simple as that.
(PSALM 127:1a Unless the Lord builds a house, the builders labor in vain.)
I don’t think I’m a terrible athlete. Nope. & Maybe I’ll come back to the sport one day to compete. I’ll definitely continue to run my own ultras! I seem to enjoy those long lonely runs much more anyway.. They’re beneficial to my growth.
We’ll see what happens in the future.
Until then,
Bye for now! 🙂
ASHRUNS100s 