I am back in the game after 4 weeks of no running.

Right before my stress test. So excited to run.

It has been way too long. Seriously I have been super busy and not running so I didn't have much to say. Things have been going ok in the health department. I had an echo cardiogram on my heart and everything came back normal. You see my EKG right after I reached my goal weight came back abnormal and so I had to have extra testing. So the echo was great, I didn't even have a mitral valve prolapse like my daughter does and so many in my family do. Great news. Then last friday I had my stress test. The idea is to get you on a treadmill and try to get your heart to it's max heart rate. For my age we were aiming for 189. (The Dr told me that the calculation is 220 - your age) So I go in and I have to tell you that I was worried. I hadn't run at all in 4 weeks. I have been doing my stationary bike a a spin class, that almost killed me, that stuff is intense, and some body weight exercises but no running because my knee was still hurting. So I get there and I get changed into my running skirt and a running room t-shirt. The Dr comes out sees my shirt and says this is going to take a long time. Laugh. I had warned them that I was a runner and that I run long distances. The test was pretty easy, you start off barely walking at a fairly steep incline and the speed and incline increase every 3 minutes. Really the speed wasn't the problem the max was only 5.5mph but the incline was crazy. For my final 3 minutes I was at 5.5mph but at an incline of 20%. It was hard work but it felt so good. I noticed that my knee wasn't hurting at all, especially as the incline increased my knee actually started to feel better. Hmm. I only reached 175 bpm because there is a max of 15 mins for the test. The Dr said that it would have taken a lot longer to get my heart rate to my max. I got the results that day and I am very happy to announce that I have a very healthy heart and that I am in great shape. So says my internal medicine/cardiologist Doctor. Woohoo! I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. Looking back it was just under a year ago that Kyle and I started running and a year and a half since we started our weight loss journey. I am sure that a year ago I would have maxed my heart rate just walking. I am so thankful that I have come so far, thankful everyday that God gave me a body that can bounce back, with a lot of work, from 6 pregnancies, nursing 6 children, and a decade of being obese. I am reminded often that this is a gift, yes I worked hard and still work hard to stay here, but it is a gift to have good health and I want to treasure it.

Anyways the stress test showed me that my knee wasn't broken. It is very strange it really only hurts when I am sitting, especially cross legged, or at night when I lay down in bed. Weird knee. I am going to see a sports med Dr about my knee to be sure it isn't a tear in my meniscus but for now I am trying a bit more running. What I have changed so far is that I have dropped my pace a lot. Where I used to run 9-9:30 min/mile I am back to running 10-10:45 min/mile. I have run twice now since my stress test both times without pain. Woot. I ran on Monday outside, just a 3.5 mile loop. It was all great except that I bailed off a curb and flew into the intersection. Thankfully it is a very quiet intersection and there were no cars. I was able to finish my run though and really I'm no worse for the wear except for a bruised elbow and hip. Last nights run was run number 1 of my first marathon training plan. More about that in a later post though. I did 5 miles of hills on the treadmill last night. It was a mile easy then .25 at 6% incline and .25 at 1% repeat until mile 4 then 1 mile easy. It was great. I found my knee really liked being at an incline and I enjoyed myself a lot even for a treadmill run. I am super excited to be back in the game. I am hoping to run 3 times a week and keep cross training in between. I am also looking into adding more strength training so that I can be ripped. LOL Not really I just want to keep running until I am old and grey and strength training should help with that.

So here I am back in the game and looking forward to more races and more fun coming soon.
Robbie-Lynn