Next Steps

The dust has barely settled from an exciting, exhausting long weekend in Milwaukee but I'm excited to be heading back to the trails - running with the High Heel Running Group.

I started running as part of my ACL recovery. I had actually started running before in early morning Chris Kirchoff's Early Morning Boot Camp but it always hurt my back and heels.  I was misdiagnosed with plantar fasciitis and it wasn't until I was in physical therapy that my therapist said that my problem was that I was a heel pounder - which is why my back and heels hurt so much.  Fixing my running became yet another issue that PT fixed - that tearing my ACL taught me. (It really was a blessing in disguise.)

I enjoy trail running for many of the same reasons I love derby.  Great camaraderie with a group of gals who all have different running experiences.  Some of them have been running their wholes lives and some just picked it up.  Even when you run the races, the terrain is a great equalizer - much like the wheels on your roller skates.   It's not a team sport but still has a great, supportive atmosphere.  It's also still very DYI.  There aren't big bank race sponsors with VIP tents and swag bags touting the latest race, headband, gear, running shoes.  There aren't thousands of people pounding the trails. Often its a race director that has a vision or an idea of a great run - maybe a run he or she does often on their own and they want to share the challenge.  You make the sandwiches you're going to eat at rest station. You run one race and volunteer the next. 

You race up the hill like a bunny, in the woods on a snowy day where you're sure that unicorns or gnomes will appear around the corner.  It's pretty magical.  And it's time to get back on the trails.  I'm starting back at 3 miles... Oof. I have a long way to go.

The Oatmeal - if he had to put a running sticker on his car - it would be this one.  If I put a race sticker on my car, it would be this one as well.

Starting here.

Bombers won the WFTDA Division 2 Championship!  And we brought home a medal that somehow validated all the work we've done since 2007 - and in WFTDA since 2009.  Sometimes our setbacks were within our control and sometimes they not.  But all the hard work paid off.  All of it.  And we won by one point.  And we won all of it.

It snowed on us in Milwaukee.  It was like the Midwest's way of saying "Welcome home Michelle! We miss you."  It's like putting on a forgotten, comfortable jacket in the back of the closet.  It miraculously fits perfectly and there's even a five dollar bill in the pocket, a pin from a rollerderby team you saw play in 2009 and an old lipstick..  

Tonight's practice was fun league scrimmage, blue v. white.  I went to the penalty box like I owned the seat and didn't want anyone else to sit in it.  I was also the most relaxed I've been in probably three month and just enjoyed scrimmage.  However, since rupturing my bursa sac in my right knee about 4 weeks ago (lots of swelling, need for acupuncture, compression socks and the like) I have developed an odd relationship with my body.  I absolutely don't trust my right side.  My habit of falling on my right knee - Zombie knee - since coming back from my broken right ankle has been exhausting, frustrating and now, this third injury, distrustful. It's done some interesting things for my waterfalling (recycling to the front of the pack of skaters), it's been great for my jumping even.  It's made me fearful.  Not of falling down again.  But of my body failing to do what I asked of it.  We don't trust each other right now.   It's a weird spot to be in and it's even more strange to know you're there.