AAAHHHH!!!!

Ok, I am so sorry I've been so bad about posting on here. There has been so much craziness going on that I just couldn't sit down and write it all.

So let me bring you up to speed:
First of all, the race is in 5 days!!! Can you believe it?? I certainly can't. It feels like the last 3 months have flown by!!
The last 2-3 weeks have been full of drama and a little lacking in the actual running. Let me explain...

3 Saturdays ago (the 7th), we had decided that we were going to run Town Lake (which apparently, is now officially Lady Bird Lake, as I was reminded by one of my kids), which we were thinking is about 8 or 9 miles. We weren't really sure because we had never actually ran the whole thing, just the main part of it where everybody runs. But we had plenty of time, so we decided we would just wing it.

When I woke up Saturday, I had a bad feeling. You see, as a child, I was known for having extremely high fevers, like 104, 105ish kind of fevers. I don't get them quite that high anymore, but they still get pretty high. And because I have had this my whole life, I can tell when they are coming on. Which is the feeling I had when I woke up Saturday. I took my temperature and it was normal, just like I knew it would be. And there wasn't really anything wrong with me except that I just knew it was coming. But I was DETERMINED to do this run, since the last few weeks had been a little slow with all of our injuries/ailments. And what was I going to say anyway? "I feel fine and I have no fever, I just feel like I MIGHT get one later, so I'm just going to stay home..." Nope.

If this had been a normal day, I would have just gone ahead and taken some aspirin so I wouldn't get the fever when it decided to creep up on me. But it is a really bad idea to take a pain reliever before you run, because if you injure a muscle or something, you need to know it. So I didn't take anything, just hopped in the car with Sara and headed to Austin.

We got to Town Lake and started running. We actually made it a mile and a half or so without stopping, but then I started to feel it. My body just started acting crazy. I was so hot, I felt like my skin was burning. And I was so dehydrated, my hands were swelling and I was getting a little dizzy. At this point, we were at what we thought was pretty close to the halfway point. There is a water station, complete with little paper cone cups and water dispensers. I drank probably 15-20 of those little cups and also put some water on my head. That helped some and we ran for a little while before I started getting sick again. Anyway, this continued on the rest of the run (which eventually became a walk/crawl/just trying to get back to the car without dying). So, needless to say, this was not a very good run. And to top it all off, somewhere around mile 2, we nearly had heart attacks when this random Confederate army convention decided to set off a giant cannon like 100 yards from us. That was fun.

Long story short, we ended up mostly walking about 7 miles and I spent the next 5 days at home sick. Blah.

By the next weekend, I was feeling a lot better, and we REALLY needed to run, so Sunday, we headed back to Town Lake, and we actually had a a great run. 12 miles with little to no problems. Of course, we were super sore from head to toe, but nothing out of the ordinary as far as I could tell.

WRONG.

Monday, I could barely walk on my left foot. Again, I just thought maybe it was sore from the run and since Monday was our off day anyway, I just iced it and figured I would run on Tuesday. Well it never got better, so I finally went to the doctor on Thursday and he took x-rays. He didn't see anything on the x-ray, but he said sometimes with stress fractures, they don't show up right away. He also said that it could be tendonitis or maybe a sprain. Either way there was not much he could do. He said just to rest it and do some low impact cardio until it felt better.

Now we are sitting at 5 days until the race and my foot is still hurt. It does feel better, but I don't think I can run 13 miles on it. So, PLEASE pray for healing. It would be so disappointing to have worked so hard for so many months and not get to finish what we started. I am still confident that I can run on Saturday - I just need things to feel a little better.

Well, that was a long post. I promise we will keep you updated this week and of course after the race. Hope everyone is having a great day!!
Janell