black cloud be gone

i feel the need.... the need for speed to blog! what an interesting 3-4 weeks since the 140.6 race. i can honestly say that the ironman blues really exist and it sucks. i admit that i can be moody but these past few weeks have been downright depressing. i don't remember feeling like this after a marathon except for maybe very early on after my first and second one but it was short lived. how do you top an ironman or iron distance race? seriously? i did a little research on the subject and found this great article: post ironman blues. i think it pretty much sums up how i've been feeling. i do feel like i finally turned a corner this week though and things are feeling a little more back to normal.

i didn't think it would take me this long to recover physically. in fact, after the soreness wore off about 2 days after the race, i was back out on the bike. it took me about 4 days to finally be able to run comfortably. however, week 2 and 3 were not so nice. i started feeling my left hip hurting, my shins were killing me, i was having to stop 2 and 3 times within the first mile of my run to stretch out because of the burning shins and tight hip. thankfully, based on past history (usually after running a marathon around this same time each year), i remembered these aches and pains i was experiencing were "pre" injury signs, so i knew i had to back off a bit and that's exactly what i did. this week, i was finally able to run without having to stop and work out the kinks. i had planned on doing the palm beaches marathon on december 5th but decided that this just isn't a smart idea. even though i know i can do it and could probably very easily throw down a boston qualifying time, i don't think that i would come out of it without some consequence (ie. stress fractured hip and/or shins). at this point in time, i'm not willing to sacrifice not being able to run for 2 months just to run a marathon that wasn't even on my list of to do races. i would just be doing it for the hell of it and that's not a good enough reason right now.

during my little down time recently, i've been thinking about my goals for next year. i made a list of races i'd like to do and specific (and realistic) goals for each one and will share those on a later post. i signed up for IMFL too! i'm very excited about that, yet it seems a million years away...349 days away to be exact (i may have to do the daily blog countdown like Caratunk Girl).

i finally got the official race pictures this week from the great floridian 140.6. i posted them on facebook so some of you may have seen them already but i'll post some here for those who haven't seen them. click on the pictures to make them bigger. i did have them set at a larger size but when i originally posted this blog post, the pics were enormous and completely off the page so i had to decrease the size so they would fit.




done!

  much love and peace out!