Coming Out of Blog Retirement

**wipes months of dust off of my Macbook's keyboard**

Whoa.

It's been awhile. I've written a million blog posts on my head, but never got around to actually typing any of them. Shortly after Kyle and I got married, we found out that both of my parents had cancer. Whoa. Life, you're being a bitch right now. To say that my life was turned upside down and thrown against a wall would be an understatement. In the last 9 1/2 months they've both gone from very, very sick, to okay, and back and forth a few more times. Exhausting. Especially when you're a fixer and you can't do anything to fix it.

I finally started running again back in March, shortly after my mom's last stay in the hospital when I realized I wasn't taking the best care of myself. Apparently working out and eating healthy is a lot better option for you than just eating your feelings, who would've thought? (It's not as delicious of an option, to be clear.)

Somewhere in that time frame I have fallen back in love with running a little bit, in large part thanks to the running groups that I belong to. When I first started running again sometimes it was only the Wednesday night group runs at 605 Running Co. There are several weeks where I had 2.5-3 miles for my weekly mileage and they were there.

And then this spring I started joining some Sioux Falls Area Running Club folks for a weekly Thursday night trail run. LOVE. It's so beautiful out there you don't realize that you're running 12 minute miles to avoid breaking your neck/ankle/leg and fast hiking UP the hills because you have nothing like that anywhere else in town.
























I've also met so many awesome runner friends through Sioux Falls Women Run. Including some that live in my new town! (oh did I mention? Kyle and I bought a house! We live in the 'burbs now.) There's always someone inviting people on their runs, and meetups all over town to help us get our miles in.



I'm so grateful to my new found running family because the therapy I get from running really helps me be a better member of my real family, and the struggles that we're working through.

I Got it From My Papa

The last five months have flown by in a blink of an eye.  I started a new job, which I love, and enjoy everyone I work with.  I had one of my toughest classes of my masters program (and subsequently got my first B.  Cataloging you are a 4.0 RUINER!)  And I just wrapped up 3 weeks of 3 classes/week for 5 hours/night.  So essentially on days that I had class, I was up at 5am to finish up homework, work til 5, class from 5:30-10:30pm, and repeat.  It... was tough, but so very worth it.

Also this semester my dad had a heart attack.  It was terrifying.  I was all gearing up for spring break, and a chance to breathe and get caught up on school work, and have time to run and relax, when I got a call from my mom.  He's fine, and got set up with a brand new ticker (pacemaker), but it was an extremely scary week, that's for sure.  Another thing I learned is that our family doesn't have the greatest hearts.  My dad's mom had an arhythmic heart beat, that eventually she needed to go on medicine to regulate.  My dad has the same thing, but was so severe that medicine wouldn't fix it, as the top half and bottom half of his heart no longer beat in tandem with each other.

And after listening to my dad explain what his heart has done for years and years, guess who else is a lucky one?  Me.  There have been times when my heart was beating so sporadically that I freaked out and went to the doctor, only to arrive, be hooked up to an EKG and have it be normal.  And there was a half marathon in 2008 that I was grossly unprepared for, in which my heart freaked out for over half of the race.

It only acts up when I'm stressed and when the heart itself is stressed--not running, except that one incident (from what I can tell).  I've never had any other instances where it has been weird while running, but I am being faithful to my HRM going forward just to be sure.  My dad, of course, freaked out, and said that I should quit running, and something to the effect of "well, the doctor said our hearts only have so many beats in them, and mine are all used up at 64, think of how much extra yours is beating from running!"  <--That may be an exaggeration, but that's what I took it as.  :)  I talked to a friend who is a nurse at the heart hospital, and told him my dad's fears.  He said running is one of the best things I can do to keep my heart strong, and that I should focus on eating healthy now so when the time comes, I will be a-ok with just medicine to control things as well.  Welp, ok.





























When I was home for Mother's Day, my dad was telling me a story from when he was in the forest service in Montana, before I was born.  They would have to run a certain distance 1/4 mile to 1 mile, I can't quite remember.  And they would have to do it while keeping their HR under a certain number.  He would fail every time unless he went and ran a mile or two before hand.  This makes total sense, as every time I do a race or hard workout, I do my best when I have a decent warm up, and then run a half mile hard-ish before actually attempting goal pace.  If I just go straight in to it, my HR goes skyhigh, and takes a couple of miles to come down.
This is probably a lot of babble, but I found this all pretty interesting.  Might as well learn something from a terrible thing, eh?