The half marathon is over. Now what?

So now that you fully know how my weekend in Nashville went and I recapped the race... what have I been up to this week and how have I been feeling?  Well, I have been spending a lot of the week taking it easy.  I was really really sore for Sunday and Monday.  And still have some lingering soreness today. I've been doing pretty much everything I've read everywhere to help in "recovery" so drinking a ton of water, stretching, foam rolling, yoga, massage, etc.

I ran for the first time on Thursday, participating in my work's semi-annual 5K race on campus.  I wish I could say I ran without pain but that wasn't the case.  The main thing that has been sore since the race is my butt/hip that bothered me throughout all of the training process.  The pain never lasted this long but I also never pushed myself as hard as I did at the race I guess!

My splits were consistent 10:30/miles which really surprised me because that was a lot better than I did in any of my training.  And I was consistent without really even trying!  I didn't look at my watch at all throughout the race because of the rain so I never paid attention to what my pace was.  I really was just in a zone I guess.

The other thing that amazed me after I loaded my Garmin information onto the computer was my heart rate.  I've never really paid attention to my heart rate while I run (should I? is that bad?) but when I looked at the data and saw the drastic change it really surprised me and had me saying "Huh?"

Check out that heart rate!  I honestly am not really convinced that my heart rate monitor didn't die or get water logged or something... because seriously?  Could that be right?  At 8.5 miles my heart rate just starts to drop!  When you compare it to elevation, I guess you can see that it correlates with when the course starts to go downhill a bit.

But really?  I feel like I either died and had an out of body experience for the 2nd half of the race or I really and truly -- mentally and physically -- hit that running "zone."  Isn't that weird?  The heart rate chart kind of freaked me out a bit.

Anyways, aside from rest and trying to get my butt/hip from stopping hurting, I spent a lot of time working and being outdoors.  Spring has finally arrived in Upstate New York!!  YAY!!!

In celebration I've been having a drink or two outside each night.  I've also been eating a lot of this really summery salad all week.  A mix of spring mix salad and bibb lettuce with strawberries, green grapes, blueberries, lemon chicken, and mesquite smoked almonds.  The almonds may sound like they don't mix with everything else but I swear, the savoriness of the seasoning goes really well with the sweetness of the fruit in the salad.  So yummy, and totally by accident on account of me throwing whatever I had in the fridge on top of lettuce.

I've been eating a lot of eggs and also trying to get back on track with eating real, non processed foods. Sometimes my logic makes sense to me and nobody else... like the fact that I can eat takeout pizza but I wouldn't eat a frozen pizza.  Or the fact that a massive piece of cake from a friend's surprise baby shower fits into my plan.  But, to each their own.  I'm trying to just maintain my weight and not lose right now and so far I seem to be doing okay with that.

I'm a little concerned about my butt/hip pains and have spent a lot of time this week Googling trying to identify what it is that hurts or diagnose myself.  Is it my IT band?  My femur?  My trochanter? Is is just stressed it?  Is it bursitis?  Is it my lateral rotators?  Or the gluteus minimus?  For some reason I feel like if I can identify it, it will help the situation.  But either way, I don't know exactly what it is and I don't know what to do about it.

Today I did some weights and jump rope and it hurt a bit but it has felt better than it did all week.  Because my butt/hip was hurting, it was somewhat bothersome to sit in my chair all week at work.  So I crafted myself a standing desk.  Pretty nifty, huh?

I think everyone that walked by asked what the heck I was doing. Apparently nobody has ever seen a homemade standing desk before.  Geez!

Well, I hope everyone has a great weekend.  I will sign off with three comments.

#1 -- Seeing this every day makes me happy:

#2- Happy birthday to one of my besties and former roomies.  Who apparently I pick up a lot :)

#3- Thank you all again so much.  Everyone's support, encouragement and excitement for me has been so amazing and so meaningful to me.  Thank you!