Life is a Project

On 4 August 2014 my 5k training run on a paved trail in my neighborhood, ended badly.  I heard a noise behind me, startled, I looked behind me and landed wrong. I fell to the ground.  A couple with a toddler on a bike came up from behind and asked if I was all right. "I'm Fine," I told them, more embarrassed than anything else. When I got up and started to walk, my foot hurt and I limped home about 500 meters.  I immediately practiced RICE  (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and figured it would be fine by morning. The next morning I was in pain!  My foot had swollen to the size of grapefruit and I knew this was bad.  I was registered with my team for  RAGNAR  that Saturday and I was concerned.  I figured it was just a sprain and that the hospital could give me some good drugs and wrap it and I would be on my way to running again. The Giant Cast - Day 1 After my X-ray, the technician came in and said "Ma'am, could you please si...

Today I finished the Stuttgart Half Marathon within four minutes of my goal time.  I am very happy that I kept a solid pace and met a wonderful person along the way.  When I first saw the balloon, I thought it was a pace runner, but I learned that she was actually just a runner with a balloon.  She was on Team Sanwald and we ran almost 20 kilometers together.  It was a great experience and I enjoyed the views along the route. After the race, we enjoyed a post run beer , as advised by German researchers.  I felt really good after the race and even after a few hours, I'm not as fatigued as I have been after previous half marathons.  I really attribute my success for both my run time and my recovery to proper training.  All of the time that I put in prior to this day was really worth it. I am a big fan of  Hal Higdon  and his great training plans.  Whenever I have followed a plan, especially the long runs, I have better race times and ...

Recently we have been getting a lot of rain in Germany and I have been trying to schedule my runs around the rain storms.  For those familiar with risk management as defined by the Project Management Institute , there are a few different options to handle a risk once it is identified.  The four options are risk avoidance, acceptance, transfer and mitigation Risk transfer is when you can pass the risk on to someone else or another company.  This is great for IT projects, but not really an option as a runner.  It would be great to have someone else complete my run for me, but that doesn't actually help me with my training. Risk avoidance is a technique which I have been practicing the past few weeks.  I research the hourly weather charts and then try to calculate the best times to run with the lowest probability of ending up in a rain storm.  This reduces the chances that I will be in a rainstorm and getting struck by lightening.  Of course not runni...

I am back in Germany and life is so amazing that I really feel like it is surreal at times.  I am in the Toastmasters District 95 Division F contest next week and really excited to be presenting on my topic of "Dare to Dream."  I am signed up for the Disney Paris half-marathon in September and plan on doing a lot of training between now and then.   I don't have a lot of followers, probably because I don't post much and totally forgot I had a blog until Google sent me a reminder notice the other day.  Thanks Google!!! As I go through the next part of my journey it is my goal to post more, share more, and continue to live an amazing life.