Balance

Gabi D.

Balance – one of things that we should be able to do as runners is actually balance on our two feet, right? Well this past week, not only have I had to rethink my personal life balance (more on that later), but I’ve been struggling with one of those absolutely moronic, stupid, dumb injuries.

I fell last week - well, not so much fell, but bellyflopped – on a driveway. You know how your mom always said, don’t run in flip flops? Well, I forgot that advice. I ran to the car as my husband was urging me to “hurry up, we need to get going”. I still can’t figure out what I did, but one second I was upright and the next second I was sliding across the driveway as though I was Derek Jeter sliding into home. I think I would have preferred the dirt to the driveway. Needless to say that I had road rash in a few places. I nailed my face, which looked nasty, but made a great teaching point and has healed nicely. My knee on the other hand, had the very pretty underlying bruise in purple and the big scrape across the bulk of the skin. Tender yes, but didn’t seem so bad.

Until I went to run on it. Did you realize that when you bend your knee, road rash has this tendency to rear its ugly head? Yep, that silly motion of bending your knee as you run seems to exert more pressure on one’s knee then simply walking on it. Never mind the bruise hurt too. One week later, I finally was able to run without the darn thing stretching open.

Which leads me to my other balancing act. I’ve been working part-time as the controller for a small structural engineering office (ok, so it’s my husband’s, but they still have books and accounts). Anyway, all good things must change and I’ve taken a job as the Finance Director of our local school district. It will put me on the front lines of our local budget (less then a Wall Street CEO used to make in the good old days), and it will cause me to add one more thing to the balance of a runner. Now I am mom, wife, runner, worker bee, Flyer, daughter….

So how is this going to affect marathon training? Good question. I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Do I run in the mornings, which we all know I hate and with our rural roads and lack of sidewalks and streetlights can be a tad dangerous as we head into the fall (plus the school buses and the 16 year olds who just got their licenses). Can I run at lunch? Or as public employee, will people think that I am slacking off, even though it would be clearing my head? What about after work? Hmm, that mom thing might interfere. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

Balance – there’s a lot of that in our lives – ranging from staying on our own two feet to how to squeeze our runs in when new jobs are in the offing. I’ll keep you posted on when my runs get in and how my knee holds up. Right now, it’s looking kind of ugly again. The job, well, that looks like it could have it’s moments too. It’s going to be a long two months to the marathon. - The Gabster