the unthinkable.

Oh my. I can't seem to get my blogging shiz together. But I'm going to try. First off, my running has been going well enough besides a few issues. Mainly the fact that after the River Run, and thanks to THAT marathon, I found CHINA in my left calf about a week and a half ago. Yes, CHINA. The country. In my calf. And it was awesome. And painful. Ever since the River Run my calf/shin/knee were driving me crazy and making running mind numbingly painful. Random note: if you have read my blog for any amount of time, you know I have a psychotic and extreme aversion to my own calves. Which means despite taking the best care I could of my calves, and using the almighty "Stick" on them, I wasn't digging hard enough or far enough with The Stick to find China. Amazing I know.

Now that China has been located and it has been nearly eliminated, I am moving beyond the calf pain and back into running. With a little additional help from my friends. My recovery socks. Brace yourselves interwebs, because I've been doing the unthinkable lately. Something I don't feel like I am fast enough to justify. Something I never thought I would do. Am I nerdy enough to pull it off? Yes. Shameless enough to do it? Of course. So here goes. I've been running in my recovery socks. I can't believe I'm admitting this, and offering proof!

Proof.

I have to admit these suckers have been serving me well. I am running a few half marathons, one of which is a trail half marathon on Saturday (the same trail race i did and loved last year). Since my calves have been so grumpy, I got to the point where I thought, hmmmm those recovery socks look pretty. I want to run in them. And so I did, and it was bliss. Pain free bliss. So shamelessness, meh. I'll take cozy calves over my pride. This week anyway.

About those half marathons. Like I said I have one Saturday. Maybe. One I am not trained for, and one that will prove as pleasant as running through hell itself. But I can't resist doing it another year. It was hard and different and I loved it. So despite little training (something i also did last year, didn't train) I am going to give it a shot. See how it goes. I have no goal for it really. I just want to finish that sucker. Which brings me to my point, that last weekend I finally brought myself to run 10 miles. After running 5 miles at goal pace on Saturday. I have another confession to make, long distances have been scaring me runless since the marathon, I've been petrified to go further than six or seven miles. The thought of going through the pain I went through in the marathon again alone was enough leave me curled up in a ball in the corner of my living room. Ugly. Clearly I'm scarred from it, and clearly there was enough damage done that my calves aren't back to normal yet.

But I slapped on those recovery socks and hit a new to me running trail and ran 10 miles on Sunday. Success. So I'm going into this trail run Saturday with one long run behind me in the past six weeks. Oh this is a recipe for awesome. Pretty sure I'm going at it sans recovery socks though. Although I won't lie, I am torn 50/50 on just running the 5K trail race on Saturday instead. And I may decide last minute to do just that. Seriously. It will be a surprise!

So yes, I did the unthinkable. I started running in recovery socks. Thankfully all my running buddies are extremely good sports and find it quite entertaining and don't mind me wearing them a bit. I mean if I am running with girls who are perfectly fine busting out yoga moves to stretch out post 10 miler in the grass beside a major and busy street (and i happily join her), shame free? I know I'm in good company. I'll leave it at that.