Happy Eat-the-Fourth-of-July!

In case you were concerned, I did make it home safe and sound on Monday evening. The bike ride was quite pleasant—short of a few extra-long waits on some traffic lights—and incredibly downhill as I had suspected. I’m keeping an eye on the weather forecast to see when the next ride-to-work bonanza can happen again.

I didn’t have anything to report on Tuesday because the only real training (other than some morning yoga, par usual) I did was for a great eating contest. And chances are Joey Chestnut would beat me anyway. Unless, of course, it was cupcake eating.

Life as I’ve known it pretty much resumed on Wednesday, I woke up early and did a couple hours of yoga, meditation and apartment cleaning. And by mid-afternoon, I was feeling pretty healthy on the sciatica front (about bleepin’ time!). So, I headed out for a run. A real run.

But trying to be smart, I started with a brisk walk again for 2.5 miles at 14-15:30/mile pace around my neighborhood. I was keeping my strides long, arms swinging and my left foot firmly planting with each step. The difference from Sunday’s outing was that I didn’t feel any pressure during the walk. And that was nice!

My goal was to cover four miles, and after walking the first two-and-a-half, the next one-and-a-half would be cake. They were. So I kept running.

It was only around the last half mile that I started feeling a little pressure in my lower back and thought it might be a good idea to slow down, cool down and head home. But that was only after I ran 4.05 miles, for a total of 6.55 miles (2.5 miles walking + 4.05 miles running).

The saddest part was plugging in my iPod and seeing that I had fallen to a distant fourth in one of my challenges. I’m 150 miles behind the leader and 50 behind the second-place runner whom I had totally beat three weeks ago. Such is the way of the injury.

But as Landon told me not long ago: the miles I sacrifice now during recovery will only be a fraction of the miles I would lose in the long run if I didn’t let myself heal.

Needless to say (which is, in itself, a funny thing to say), I didn’t run in the July 4 race in North Canton. And I’m still up in the air about Saturday’s 10K in Kent. Only Thursday and Friday will tell.