For the past few years I’ve been slightly obsessed with figuring out what I can get rid of, what I really need, and what makes my life better/ me happier in an attempt to balance living space, happiness, and stuff. While I had the house to myself last weekend I decided it was a brilliant time to sort through all of the book I was storing and make some tough decisions.

Due to a lack of a bookshelf (or the space to put one or the desire to have one) all of my books were shoved into a corner of my closet. Despite the fact that I usually read library books or an ebook, my love of reading has led me to amass way too many books over the years. When I was digging through them all I still had books from when I was in middle school.

The Big Purge

When I really thought about it I didn’t want to move these books, I never want a bookshelf that takes up space or collects dust, and most of these books I never (ever) want to read again (once was enough for the required summer reading). I made a box of books that had notes or highlighting to be donated (and hopefully make some high schooler very happy that they don’t have to bother writing down what Shakespeare was “really trying to say”), a box of books in good condition to be given to the library, and a box to potentially sell.

All in all I cut down my books by 90 percent. I saved 12 books I re-read almost yearly (and made a pact with myself that in a year or the next time I move I will get rid of the ones I hadn’t touched in a year). I also saved all of the books my mom gave me from when she was a child, including my namesake, Mandy.

I now have more room in my closet (that I have vowed not to fill with new things) and it feels great to know that instead of being hidden away, other people will get enjoyment out of all of them.

Injuries are every athlete’s worst nightmare. There is nothing like being told you can’t do something to make you miserable. I’ve been through all of the stages of grieving:

1. Denial: My feet are totally fine. Let’s increase my long run by a mile this week and then walk around for hours.
2. Anger: This includes general swearing and aggressively doing everything I’m not supposed to do because I’m mad I can’t do it. Screw it, I’m doing the box jumps. 
3. Bargaining: If I don’t jump at all at CrossFit, I can still run, right?
4. Depression: Lying on the floor instead of doing my rehab exercises… or anything else. I’m never going to run my half marathon fast enough if I never get to run. This is horrible.
5. Acceptance: My feet hurt and I have to wear ugly shoes. It won’t last forever… right?

I’ve been wearing my “moon shoes” (also known as my old, huge, white lunar glides from high school that seriously battle space boots for the largest, ugliest shoe title) almost exclusively. Every time the soles squeak against the hallway at work or someone gives me an odd look for dressing like Working Girl I am reminded of the stupid training mistakes I made to get myself here.

But my feet no longer keep me up at night or become my obsession while I’m driving. I took all of the last two weeks off from running and instead swam or did the elliptical. I finally went to my doctor and heard the words I was avoiding “no running,” at least until my feet are better. Hopefully after an appointment with a podiatrist this week I will have a solid rehab plan and a bit of a timeline as to when I get off the hamster wheel (and out of the pool) and start really running again.

Being injured is not my jam. There are days where I’m completely calm and rational about it and others where I feel like I am seriously loosing my mind and would do anything to get back to my regular training. For the days when I’m going crazy, I remind myself that every day I’m careful, every time I rest, the closer I am to being able to run again.

The stats:

Ran: 21.4 miles (most of them I probably shouldn’t have run… denial is a strong force)
Swam: 6-7 miles
CrossFit: 12 classes
Yoga: 4 fantastic power classes
+ an hour or more weekly of rehab exercises, foam rolling, and targeted stretching

What you can’t see:

Switching from running to swimming at the end of the month brought me back to my competitive swimming days, and it’s given me inspiration to consider doing a triathlon next year. It has also reminded me that there have been a lot of times in my life where an injury of some sort sets me back for a time, but I always come back and I always learn something while I’m away. So maybe I can’t run right now, but I can pay attention to my body and make it stronger and more prepared for when I do get to run again.

It takes a long time to burn 60 calories – about 4 minutes of hard rowing to (in theory) or over 1,000 m. It then takes even longer to drag your feet repeatedly from the ground to touch a pull-up bar over your head 50 times. My point is that I did not get as far in 14.4 as I thought I would, mostly because I vastly underestimated the amount of time it would take me to perform what seem like doable tasks. I knew I wouldn’t get past the muscle ups, but I honestly thought I would finish all of the cleans… that didn’t happen.

14.4 workout

14 minute AMRAP:
60-calorie row
50 toes-to-bars
40 wall-ball shots, 20 / 14 lb.
30 cleans, 135 / 95 lb.
20 muscle-ups

Score: 164

I made only made halfway through the cleans. But on the bright side, I did link together over half of my toes-to-bar and I didn’t throw up after the wall-balls like I wanted to, so that’s something.

Between it’s antioxidant properties and promise to decrease inflammation, green tea has been my go to morning heart warmer lately. While it’s not my favorite tea (it’s a tough choice, but for mornings I love a sweet, spicy chai loaded with soy milk), I reach for green tea whenever I’m particularly sore or just plain dragging in the morning. I’m particularly sensitive to the bitterness that green tea can get, so I steep for no more than three minutes and add a dash of lemon or honey to my cup.

Now that my feet are on the fritz and I can’t run, I’m channeling my focus and pent up frustrations into nearly chugging green tea. Anything to heal faster, right?

As soon as the workout was announced I started laughing. I mean honestly, increasing the weight by 40 lbs. in a single round has got to be a joke. Instead of shaking my head and announcing there was no way I was going to get very far in the workout, I just laughed.

This is what 185 lbs. looks like

One of the biggest reasons I didn’t want to sign up for the open is that I didn’t want to take it too seriously. I’m competitive and a perfectionist, and those things don’t combine well unless my performance is 100 percent spot-on and I win. Anything less than that often makes competing an extremely negative experience for me. When I race I know I focus on improving my own performance instead of trying to beat every other runner. I wanted The Open to be a similar experience.

I didn’t sign up because 1. I didn’t want to spend the money (I know, it’s not even that much money, but really, I’m fresh out of college and you don’t even get a t-shirt for competing) and 2. I wanted to keep myself focused on having it be fun. (and 3. I didn’t want ANYONE to be able to find my scores… which is ironic given that I’ve been putting them here.) For me, sometimes it’s better to just not know where I stack up against the rest of the world. I much prefer to see how I look next to previous me.

14.3 workout

8 minute AMRAP:
10 deadlifts, 135 / 95 lb.
15 box jumps, 24 / 20 inch
15 deadlifts, 185 / 135 lb.
15 box jumps, 24 / 20 inch
20 deadlifts, 225 / 155 lb.
15 box jumps, 24 / 20 inch
25 deadlifts, 275 / 185 lb.
15 box jumps, 24 / 20 inch
30 deadlifts, 315 / 205 lb.
15 box jumps, 24 / 20 inch
35 deadlifts, 365 / 225 lb.
15 box jumps, 24 / 20 inch

Score: 92

One of the biggest reasons I laughed is because the 4th round of deadlifts is my one rep max. And that’s when I’m completely fresh and have been building up to my heaviest single rep, not after 45 other heavy deadlifts and 45 box jumps. Given that, I’m extremely proud of how I did. Not only did I get further than I thought I would, but also got a new 2 rep deadlift pr (even if they were two of the ugliest lifts of my life).

I made it into the fourth round and completed 2 (and a half really really ugly) deadlifts at my previous one rep max weight. I had a lot of time left when I hit the third and fourth rounds, and I think I could have gotten significantly further if I had more strength. With that said, I am really happy with how I did. I think this is the only workout so far that I walked out after feeling content with how I did.

For the first time in the two years I have been doing CrossFit I did two things: 1. I actually considered signing up for the open and 2. I watched the streamed announcement of the first open workout and the “throwdown.” Despite ultimately deciding to not sign up (a topic for another time, but the short version is that I do CrossFit for fun and I didn’t want to make it too serious and suck the joy out of it), I’m still doing all of the open workouts.

This week, I got lucky. The week before 14.1 was announced we happened to do the 11.1 workout (the same workout as 14.1) by pure chance. This meant that I had extremely recent memory of doing the workout and what I wanted to do differently. Since I know there is no way I could ever even remotely be a contender to make it to regionals (another reason I declined to sign up), my goal was based on my past performance.

The first time I did the workout I was 5 snatches short of completing 5 rounds in the time cap, so all I was aiming for during my unofficial attempt at 14.1 was to get to the 5th round.

14.1 WOD

10 min. AMRAP
30 double unders
15 snatches

When 10 minutes finally rolled around I could not be more thankful to be done. The time was painfully long when trying to sprint through as many double unders and snatches as possible, but also too fast to catch your breath and hammer out more reps.

When the time ran out I was thankful that 1. I never had to do that again, 2. I beat my previous score by a full round, and 3. I made it almost to the six round for a score of 222, you know, just half of what the top women and men got.

Plan on doing the workout? Here’s what I would have done differently: I would have slowed down in the beginning and kept my breath as much as possible. I would have stayed more relaxed on the double unders and paid more attention to how frequently I was breathing. I would have broken up the first few rounds of snatches into 2 sets (8 and 7 reps) with a 3-5 second in between the sets to prevent my grip from burning out too quickly. I think it  worked well that I broke down the later rounds into sets of 5 on the snatches. It also helped that for the most part my double unders went smoothly (except for the few times I whipped myself…).

I’ve heard it hundreds of times “don’t increase your weekly mileage by more than 10 percent at a time,” and yet I’ve made the mistake more than once. This time I even read Lauren Fleshman‘s article in Runner’s World about the training mistakes she often makes, and I still did quite a few of them myself:

1. My biggest mistake: Increasing by more than 10 percent in a week (and more than that when comparing January and February. I ran more miles in three weeks of February than I did all of January.)
2. “Stick to The Plan. ALWAYS.” Check. In order to make sure I got in all of my runs this week, I forced in a run on a day I usually do CrossFit to make room for a hike on my usual easy run day. Why not just hike and count that as my easy run? Because I’m an idiot.
3. “Rest days are for babies.” See above.
4. “Be a hammerhead – if it’s not hard, it’s not doing anything.” Just when I thought I was getting better about this, I added speedwork. I did make a conscious effort to slow down my other runs so there was an actual difference in my easy runs, but a little late it would seem.

What did all of this get me? A mild case of plantar fasciitis. Time to take a few days off from running and spend all of the time I would have been running on stretching, rolling out my arches, icing (have I mentioned I hate ice?), and doing just about everything else I can to heal faster and relax the overly tight and irritated plantar fascia.