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Home Sweet Home! I've been home for just shy of two weeks now and despite all my pain and discomfort, it has been incredibly relaxing. I've been able to enjoy coffee, soda, tea, beer, and even some wine. I've eaten reese's puffs, powdered sugar donuts, twix bars, and reese's cups. I surprisingly came home weighing in at 172 pounds, as opposed to most of the other guys who left weighing in 10 pounds heavier. I'm assuming it was the lack of junk food and my upper body muscle weight leaving that has caused my weight loss. But I've gained a few of those pounds back from eating all these snacks and sweets.

I tried to use the exercise bike to get a small sweat going and get my leg working, but after two 10 minute sessions, I realized that my pain was too sharp when trying to both sit and pedal. I don't have my first appointment until August 7th and I have no idea how much longer after that all the other appointments will take, so I have no time table for my return to any kind of training. Instead, I've been reading all the articles on running websites, and watching videos on Flotrack, while doing more research into training methods and workouts.

I still have to link up with my National Guard RSP to finish my discharge process, they haven't made themselves available yet to report to. When I do head up in their direction, I will have to find an apartment in Greenville so I have a place to stay for when school starts. This is a time when being far away from your school, 2.5 hours in my case, really hurts you.

Good luck with your training, eating, and life :).

Planning is Key

Having a plan, and a back up plan, and a back up to that back up plan, is an important part of life. Without a plan, you'll probably end up wandering aimlessly and end up no where in particular. And without back up plans, you'll be confused and rushed when things don't go your way. Luckily, that isn't the case for me, but it may be the case for you.

Successfully completing my training to become a soldier has become another adventure in failure, due to injury which shouldn't surprise me or anyone close to me. While this is the most serious injury I have dealt with, I've dealt with injuries before that derailed my short term plans, mainly my training plans. I've been 3 months without running, biking, or being on an elliptical now, so my cardiovascular fitness is probably in the bottom of the barrel. And it may be a few weeks more before any of those things can become options to me again. But I have a plan.

First, with all this time to sit around and think, I was able to get my fall schedule situated and now will be taking 15 hours worth of coursework as I inch closer to graduating. I also accepted my financial aid and will have enough to cover tuition and an apartment and food. From there, I looked into get a job and a car, both things which I have decided to delay getting until later this year. With joining the Army no longer my primary plan after college, I've shifted my research into graduate school, and I hope to stay at ECU to get my masters in either History or Security Studies.

But my major concern is getting healthy, either through surgery or through physical therapy, and then getting back into shape. I know I've put on a few extra pounds since I left home, but I'm not too bad off. My plan is simple, burn off the fat with large amounts of aerobic base work, using the elliptical and bike at first until it's safe for me to start running. The cross training will help me shed the pounds and get a little bit of fitness back before I start running at a lighter weight to prevent any more injuries.

Outside of the elliptical, cycling, and eventually running, other things I plan to include in my training plan are: 2x a week upper/lower body lifting sessions, pullups/pushups/dips on non-lifting days, ancillary drills/strenghtening, and core strenth sessions. Possible additions to this plan include swimming, pool running, and ruck marching, those these would be less frequent.

I've been trying for years, but hopefully coming off this injury, I can maintain my health and get a lengthy period of base work in. I'm not sure how long the cross training phase could take, but once I start running regularly, I want to do about 3 months of basework before starting to do any speedwork. I also want to get my weight down under 180 for starters, with a further goal of pushing it closer to 170.

Now, I just need to get home to get started on all these things I've had time to plan out. While I would love to be home sooner, it looks like I get to leave here on the 17th, which gives me about a month before school starts to get some of these things done, primarily finding a place to live and getting my back fixed so my leg regains full function and flexibility.

What You've Missed

My L4-5 and L5-S1 discs are protuding to the right, pinching my nerve, causing pain that shoots down my legs. I can even feel it slightly in my back when I try to expand my spine. I'm currently in the process of getting discharged from the Army; hopefully I will be home 2 weeks from now. But here is how we got here:

I flew out on April 30th after packing up everything at my apartment hurriedly. I got to Fort Benning late on that Tuesday night and started process immediately. I pushed through the pain for a few days, but the following Wednesday I admitted to the Athletic Trainers of my gaining unit that I had a lot of pain and an inability to flex my leg/back completely. That Friday, I watched my company ship downrange while I got sent to RHU(Retain and Hold Unit) down the hill. After 25 days of sitting around as a holdover down here, I got brought back up the hill to ship. I had already had an x-ray and been given muscle relaxers and pain relievers but I had yet to get my MRI. My processing company, Bravo Company, took me to my x-ray on my 3rd day back with them, and after the weekend, I got my results back. I was both relieved to know that what I was feeling was real, but floored at the prospects of recovering from such a serious injury. I'm now on my 22nd day back at RHU, having already signed my packet and simply waiting for it to make it's stops at Battalion and Brigade before Trans gets it and I get a ship date. That should be the 17th of July. I've never wanted to be home so bad in my life, but if I can push through these final two weeks and get there, I will be eternally greatful for the supportive friends and family I have in my life.

This long period of inactivity has me quite out of shape but hopefully through PT or surgery I can heal quickly and ease back into training before too long.

This has been one of the most unexciting and painstaking adventures in failure I have ever had, and hopefully it will come to a close before I know it.

Success, Greatness, Satisfaction, and Happiness

I’m by no means the definition an elite runner. In the world of recreational running, also known as hobby jogging, I’m pretty average. My 1 Mile PR is 6:00, and my 5K PR is 20:37. My current running goal is to get healthy, that goal is followed by the goal to get back to roughly that level of fitness, and from there, I can work on running sub-6 and sub-20.

But I still consider myself to be successful. Success is less of a singular event, and more of a way of life; and the way to live a successful life is to work hard consistently. In the world of running, success doesn't equate with winning, or setting records, or even being the best. Success is work. Success is a process. Success is improvement. Success is addicting. And it doesn't have to be improving on your times, or improving how hard the running feels. It’s the improvement of effort. You are successful as long as you make it your life and as long as you give maximum effort.

I also believe I can achieve greatness. I believe that I am great now, but I know that my future is yet brighter than today and today was brighter than yesterday. Why? Because as soon as you resign yourself to not achieving greatness, you fail. And greatness doesn't mean money, or power, or anything of those tangible things. Greatness can't be calculated. It can't be measured. It can only be admired. Be respected. Greatness awaits you.

Now while I believe that I’m successful, and I believe I’m great. I’m not even remotely satisfied. You should never be satisfied. To be satisfied is to admit that you are weak. That you are inferior. You should always want to go faster, go harder, and go farther. If you commit yourself to success and dream of greatness, then you will never be satisfied, as your continued improvement will push you continue to give maximal effort. I will only be satisfied when I’m done.

Don’t confuse satisfaction and happiness though. I’m very happy. Even injured, I’m happy. If I was healthy tomorrow morning, I imagine I’d have a difficult time breaking 7 minutes in the mile. After all, I was maybe in 6:45 shape 2 weeks ago and I haven’t run since. And if I ran a 5k, I imagine it would be 24:xx. But I’m still happy, because I know that I had been putting in solid consistent work, and that these injuries are just a temporary setback. You can be unsatisfied while being happy. The two aren't synonymous.

Good luck in all your training, and may you live success, discover greatness, and enjoy happiness!

Made of Glass

I'm realizing that I'm made of glass. I recovered from that high ankle sprain easy enough. I recovered from my groin sprain in just a day or two more. But now a major injury has popped up; sciatic nerve pain in my right leg, the same leg those soccer injuries happened in.

I don't think it's sciatica because I don't feel any pain in my back. My side and bottom of my glute are extremely tight and I get pain shooting down my right leg through my calf, with my outer hamstring area being extremely tight. I've found a few stretches that help loosen it, but it can be hard to walk at times, let alone run.

I normally wouldn't be too concerned by this, though it would be disappointing no doubt, but I ship to basic training in about 17 days, so I don't have time for this kind of setback. If it doesn't improve this week, I have to figure out what I'm going to do for drill first. If I had to base my decision off my current condition, I'd delay my ship further into the summer, but that's if I'm healed by then.

So that's it, I've decided I'm the Glass Man. In the future, I'm going to spend a lot more time working on injury prevention and running specific ancillary work to strengthen my body. While I'm a little disheartened now from all the injuries I've gone through over this past year, I'm confident that when I do get healthy, I'll quickly improve just by getting in some consistent training.

P.S. I hope everyone enjoyed watching an exciting Boston Marathon this morning; what a great race!

Progress and My Running Bucket List

Okay, so I've made some progress from the weekend. High ankle sprain is gone, pulled groin muscle seems to be relaxing, but now I've got a pinched nerve under my hamstring. Doesn't hurt when running, just when I sit and stand in certain positions. Hopefully that goes away.

Well I took Sunday off, icing my leg some more, but decided that I should get back to it on Monday. I began by doing some stretching inspired by Coach Jay Johnson, which seemed to loosen me up pretty good. Later in the afternoon, I was able to stationary bike for 35 minutes, do elliptical for 20 minutes, and did a 3.5 mile easy run. It felt awesome.

Tuesday I was too drained from classes, I should have ran in the morning, but coffee sounded better. Oops. Got up early Wednesday and got after it though with a broken tempo, doing 5 minutes on with 75 seconds off, for a total of 26 minutes. Pretty good workout with the rising heat outside. A couple of hours after dinner I went to the gym and did 25 minutes on the elliptical, increasing from about 65 to 85% of my maximum heart rate during the workout.

The plan is to wake up early tomorrow morning to get a long workout of running, biking, elliptical, and then ancillary work in, but we'll see how that goes.

I wanted to give you my running bucket list, as it's the hot topic to post about in the running world.

• Set new personal records in the Mile and the 5k, my current pr's are 6:00 and 20:37, I'm hoping for a sub 20 5k this Fall.
• Establish pr's in the 2 Mile and 10k, I'll get a 2 Mile from Basic Training, but I'm not sure when I'd move up and do a 10k
• Compete in another cross country race. I'm not worried about time, since all courses are different, but I'd like to run one this Fall, hopefully with some good training in my legs as opposed to the previous 2 times.
• Win another race. I won a 2.8 mile race when I was sick once, pretty cruddy time but no competition.  But I want to win a more competitive race. I think this is a long term goal.
• Become a coach, even a free one for one athlete. It would be awesome to apply the training techniques I've learned about and use them on an athlete and coach them to success.

What are some things on your bucket list, running or not?

Speaking of those Failures

I took Thursday and Friday off from running or any kind of working out. Partially to rest my IT band, partially because the weather was horrible here in Eastern NC. So today, with beautiful weather out, my friend suggested playing some soccer outside, and I thought that'd be a great start to my afternoon, followed by an easy run and some strides.

Then I rolled my ankle in a hole on the pitch. I was able to keep playing but when we got back, I wasn't able to run without feeling some pain. And as the afternoon progressed, it's gotten tighter. So icing and elevating has been the name of the game. Pretty frustrating, seeing as how my IT band is feeling great today.

I'll see how it feels in the morning, but I doubt I'll be able to run on it. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to cross train, but that doesn't sound as appealing. Just another adventure in failure.

Check back in a few days, hopefully I'll not only be able to talk about some positive running news, but also give you guys my running bucket list.