We both got the dreaded stomach virus during our training! Being sidelined to the couch for anyone can be tough. Just being sick in general is tough. For a nurse practitioner who is training for a marathon it can feel like your world is closing in on you! We rely on our runs for that mental break, our free therapy, our way to hear silence for an hour, and our way to meet up once a week and talk/laugh our way to the finish of whatever tough workout we have planned. Let’s first discuss how awful this virus was… FOOD & DRINK had no place in our bodies for 3 days!!! Day 4 sips of water and rice could slightly be tolerated. Remember our last post and how much fuel our bodies are requiring? Well, let’s just say neither of us needed to lose 5lbs and become completely dehydrated. Obviously no running was done that week. Our training plans did not have big check marks off of the workouts we crushed. They got a big line through them and a whole lot of anxiety that we have now missed a whole week of training. The week I (Anna) got the stomach bug I was supposed to run 20 miles. I pushed it back to the next week after a stomach bug I thought: “well of course I can crush this”. Kristin Armstrong has a good quote that pretty much summed up that run “Running is always a good exercise in humility”. I clearly couldn’t run 20 miles, only 4 days after recovering from the stomach virus from hell. Our bodies don’t bounce back that quick! Working in healthcare and being competitive individuals, it is always tough for us to realize when we need to take a step back. In our professional lives and our personal lives it’s so important to remember we are only human and we can only do so much.
Okay, so how did we bounce back?! We bounced back with the encouragement of our friends, our loved ones, and the most encouraging group of co-workers! Nursing and working in critical care is like being on a sports team. Every single day someone is asking us about our runs since we started this blog! Everyday we are told how we have inspired someone to start running or think about getting back into running. The encouragement and the positive energy we receive from our co-workers is what got us mentally back out on the pavement. These workouts are HARD!!! As we have mentioned in a previous post, training for a spring marathon is TOUGH! It’s cold, these workouts are hard and besides your other crazy bestie, not many other people want to run with you in single digit weather. It’s easy to get down on yourself and feel like you are stuck, especially after an illness.
Right after we signed up for the Brooklyn Marathon we both signed up for the PHILLY LOVE RUN with another Nurse Practitioner, Sam, who also works with us. This was the best decision we made! The energy that surrounds any race is contagious! Of course it was a cold, dark, windy Philadelphia morning BUT 11,000 people showed up to run and 1,500 amazing volunteers showed up to make the day happen. Jess PR’d and hit every mile exactly the way she planned! Brooklyn can’t come soon enough. Anna ran on tired work legs from a hard 14 hour shift the day before but hit every mile at what she had planned and helped Sam cross the finish line of her 1st half marathon. Crossing any finish line is amazing but having Jess waiting for me (Anna) and Sam at the finish was something special. We have all been putting in a lot of hard work whenever we can get the miles in. The post run embrace felt a little more special this time. When we looked at our phones they were filled with text messages from loved ones & co-workers words of encouragement! Our next shifts at the hospital were met with words of praise at how amazing we did and inquiries of when we can be joined on our runs!
So again you may ask what was the secret to the bounce back?! We don’t have one! We didn’t eat any crazy diets or do any crazy juicing. The community that surrounds us is what keeps us going when our own inner light is slightly dimmed. This post and the Philly Love Run reminded us why we love being Nurse Practitioners so much and how lucky we are to be a part of such a supportive community!
This week’s workouts: 0-3 easy miles, 4-6 easy miles, 6 miles with hill intervals:(1 mile easy, 2min uphill, easy run back downhill X10, finish with 1 mile easy), 0-3 easy miles, rest, 18-20 LSD.
