Friday, April 27, 2012

Does it make me a bad person?


A person is usually considered bad if she is jealous.  And I am incredible jealous of most of you. Two years ago I was at the same level as many people I know. And now they are all way ahead of me. And I do not like it! 

Do not get me completely wrong, I am happy for those people, they deserve it because they have been working hard to get better and I do not wish anything bad to them. I just want to be right there with them! It is very demotivating seeing people who used to be similarly fast as me killing it and getting much faster than me.
Well, I am not really jealous of you people, it is more like that I am jealous that you can train properly and I cannot.

For example take Ana-Maria. She is quite awesome! He just run ca. 18min 5k. But she was not that fast 2 years ago. And now she is and I am not. She totally deserves it because she was working hard for it. But I also want to be able to work hard for it!

Or PPC. She is as fast 6 weeks post-partum as I was 2 years ago; and she is getting faster:) Grrr. I want to be getting faster.

SLG ran a 3:24 marathon a few months ago probably in the middle of some crazy 100+ miles week as a training run. Dang. Her PR used to me slower than mine. I want a new PR (and preferably faster than hers. Nothing better than a friendly competition, right?:))! 

There are countless people in blogosphere who used to be 3:30 marathon runners and now they are shooting for sub 3:20. I too want to shoot for sub 3:20!

People all around me are getting faster (than I am) and I do not like it! 

The worst thing about all this is that I cannot do anything about it! I want to become a faster runner and I know that I have it in me, but I cannot.
I cannot even imagine how “real” runners, professional folks making this for living, must feel when they get injured. It must be unbearable.

I told my mom today that I was going to see an orthopedist this afternoon but not because my knee hurts but more like a prevention. And she told me that my knee did not hurt because I do not run. And it hit me! I do around 2h of running each week now. Of course the knee does not hurt! It is so simple! And stupid me though that it did not hurt because it is healed. Now I think that as soon as I start running normally it will flare up again, and I feel bad because PPC is spending her scarce free time preparing a running plan for me right now. But I am not going to tell her to stop working on it, I am going to give it a try. Because evethough I am hugely pessimistic right now, I am of course going to give it a try.
So I am jealous of everyone and pissed at everything and for the past 2 months I have been starting every single run with only one thought on my mind – is this the day? Will my knee flare up again? Please, no, no, no.

6 comments:

  1. i suuccessfully resisted the urge to just comment "yes, you're a bad person" without even reading the post. jealous of others who are achieving goals similar to yours? i officially diagnose you as human. also managing to be genuinely happy for them? diagnosis: empathetic human!
    but your conversation with your mom gives me an idea for this training plan. now that i have injured you with 2 (3?) other training plans, i was thinking what can a completely different approach be? now my idea is a time-based approach. don't worry, i know you hate running time-based intervals... that's not what i am talking about. i am talking about ramping up to running a certain number of minutes each week (total including quality and mileage) and then keeping you at a fixed number of minutes which will be > 2 hours of course but still pretty conservative and then cycling the quality within that framework of set time. thinking is with mileage, the amount of time you are actually using that knee can vary but with fixed time we can be sure that you are only using the knee a certain amount. we can still do distance-based intervals bc we have a pretty good idea of how much time they take but everything else will be in minutes. these are my thoughts as of now.

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  2. wow. that comment was embarassingly long. and how embarassing is it that i can`t spell embarassing? really spellcheck double r? that looks so wrong. embarrassing. hmmmm.

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  3. So I asked that PT gal I saw yesterday about IT band (with you in mind)... her thought was that IT bands tend to jump in and dominate movement that should be initiated by your glutes. So theoretically you must strengthen your glutes and teach them to get involved when you are running... she also said that spending a couple minutes rolling out quads and IT prior to running helps them to shut up and not be so domineering. Maybe worth a try?

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  4. PPC: I also never know how to write embarrassment. Never. Two “r”s? Two “s”es? Is there an “e” before “ment”? I always need to use spellchecker or google it. But I am not a native speaker and you are, so….

    I do not really see a difference between running by distance and running by time if I keep my pace constant and we know what that pace it is. But one never know what might happen so let's try that.

    Michelle: So thoughtful of you! :) Yes, I have started incorporating glutes exercises on top of hip flexors exercises because those do not really work…. How do you call that “doctor”/occupation that is helping you know?

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  5. Mmmonyka. Ugh. This makes me sad. I really hope you get to the bottom of this. Does it make you feel better that I ran an entire 9 miles of a 31 mile race today before my ITB problem got so bad that I had to drop. I am with you sister, though I haven't been an ITB victim as long as you yet - but if I learn anything truly helpful, I will tell you. I doubt our ITB problems come from the same thing, but don't feel alone. We all need to go through periods where we can't train ideally and I am just sorry yours has lasted so long! By the way- what kind of answers can one get from an MRI? I'm not doubting you - I am actually quite curious.

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  6. SLG, It seems that one can treat ITB many different ways. It is unbelievable how many advice one can get and some of them are completely opposite.
    Be careful. When my ITB probme first started I ran the whole 20miles of the marathon before it got so bad that I had to stop. Then I had to walk the remaining distance because I had no idea where I was and then it took 5months before I could run painless! Make sure something similar does not happen to you.

    I want to get MRI just to make sure there is nothing else wrong in my knee. Maybe there is something else that is causing the ITB to flare up. Or maybe it is not even ITB problem.

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