A Smidjin at a time

How did I end up here? What got me to this place where I am less than 2 months away, 6 weeks to be precise, from doing my 2nd half marathon? Especially considering I did not have fond memories of the first one and I swore I would never do another one again.  In order to best understand that, we have to go back to where this current journey all started. Mid-October 2015. I was right around my heaviest weight ever, heavier than 6 years ago when I had started my weight loss journey. I was mad at myself. I was mad body. I was even mad at God a little. And then my co-worker started mentioning that she needed more people to sign up on her Shamrock Race team. It was still 5 months away, I figure I had plenty of time to train and survive the 15k event. But the more I trained, the more I doubted, the more my legs objected to all the work, the more the idea of 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) seemed very scary and very, very undoable. So, the day of the race, I switched to the 8k. And it still...

It's been a trying couple of months since I last sat and wrote stuff down. But it's also been a couple months of incredible growth. Lets start where I left off. Day One of training for a half-marathon, also known as Day One of Back Pain. Steroids brought relief for a couple of weeks, but when it returned it was muscle relaxers and Physical Therapy time. And man, physical therapy has been the most amazing torture I have ever done. Twice a week I go in and get my butt kicked with what looks like should be simple workout moves (trust me they aren't) and then I usually get to just lay there for 15 minutes on some heavy duty heat while the e-stim is zapping my back. All the while I get to talk running and racing with my PTA Don. Thankfully the PT Nathan and Don are both runners, so when I first mentioned my race in December, they have been fully on board helping me get strong enough to achieve that goal. And while the first couple of weeks I felt like I was getting behind with...