P.L.B.

So two posts ago I asked Paige to inspire me, and being the Miss Paige I know I can count out, she has. I felt that I need to share this inspiration here. I know that posting this will probably make her cry (again), but its pay back for making me cry every time I read her response. In true Paige fashion, I'll address this in list form, and then end with a quote :)

1. Inspiration goes both ways. Paige told me that for all the times she inspires me, I've inspired her as well. We can't live this life alone, and as much as Paige says she couldn't do it without me, I know I couldn't do it without her. Thank you Paige, for everything, mostly the mile long facebook messages you read from me, and send back to me, equally as long. Please continue to be the one "lighting the fire" beneath my ass. Thank you for all the smiles, and all the tears <3

2. Baby Steps. Paige brought baby steps full circle for me, to all aspects of my life (something which I've come to appreciate, this concept of first circle). She wrote, "You are taking these steps to having a better college experience, to become a better runner, to become a better person! No one can run without taking baby steps first!" I couldn't have said it better, the importance of these baby steps in everything I do, not just running.

3. The struggles will be worth it. Paige wrote to me right before I left for SC, and now that I've returned, I can believe that. She applied these struggles of running, to my college experience thus far, and after being at Clemson for the last few days, the struggles of Clark have been worth it. I spent a lot of time thinking about how my senior year of high school could have been different, and if I should have approached the application process differently. I have no regrets about where I applied and what happened, I am happy that I went to Clark (Mom, did you see that? I'm happy I came to Clark!), but only because I never would have found Clemson without it. At any other school I went to, I probably would have stuck it out for four years, and been semi-happy. Because Clark has been so far from the experience I want, I've found Clemson, and I believe I can be truly happy there!

4. Self-Motivation. Sometimes its hard for me to recognize how much I have done, and have pride in that, especially when I'm not in an environment I thrive in, or when my current accomplishments seem petty in comparison to past accomplishments, but Paige was able to open my eyes to that again. She was right, I don't give myself enough credit for battling through a second ACL surgery in a year, and coming back with goals and aspirations as high as mine are. Paige claims that millions would have given up but she told me that "not you nicole schutte! You didn't give up....you took everything that was thrown at you, and said "suck it world, you don't know who you're messing with"

so yeah, suck it world, you don't know who you're messing with!

Like I said, I'll leave this in true Paige fashion, with a quote.
Life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it
-Maya Angelou

all over the place

Whenever I return to campus after a night (or multiple nights) away from Dobby, I without fail feel all over the place. I feel like I don't belong, I never see anyone I know walking to the dorm, and my things always end up all over the room. I'm never settled until all my belongings have been put away, I check my mail (email and snail), and make a to-do list.

Today when I got back from Clemson (see below), I threw my bag on my bed, grabbed a snack, made a cup of tea and grabbed my keys to head to WPI for KKs track meet! Dad was meeting me there so we could leave separately if need be. Sharpay clearly had different plans and refused to shift out of first gear (luckily reverse still worked!). I made it half a block before I realized that 10mph was my max speed, so I turned right back into the parking garage. Tomorrow I'll try driving her again (apparently these things can fix themselves?) and if no dice, I'll be adventuring to Auburn to have a Volkswagen dealer look at it. Auburn is about 7 miles away, sooo at 10 mph... it will be quite the drive :)

Since I was then stranded at Clark, with no means to get to KKs meet, and an extra feeling of all over the place due to Sharpay crapping out on me, I decided to go to the gym to kill time. I powered through thirty minutes on the elliptical and came back to Dobby to stretch! Going to the gym settled me, thank god, but halfway through stretching on the floor I determined that I desperately needed to vacuum. Regardless, now I have exercised, the floor is clean AND I've unpacked everything from the last few days....

The last few days have been a whirlwind, and a positive one at that. I just got back from visiting Clemson in South Carolina, and I have to say, the idea of being a tiger next year excites me very much. This means decking myself out in solid orange and purple and adopting a Southern accent, but I think I can handle it. I'm excited about going, the feeling of family I got, the feeling of safety, and that everyone there just seems happy. This feeling of excitement that I have, I imagine its what I was supposed to be feeling last year at this time, and I've decided that I like it.

mind games

Today at physical therapy, Dave says to me "Don't worry, we'll get through this, I can tell you're frustrated"

This is why Dave doesn't understand me, and he's just not a good therapist for me.

I actually wasn't frustrated until he said that. I've pretty much accepted the fact that recovery is a long process, longer than anyone expects. I wasn't complaining, I wasn't frustrated, I wasn't annoyed or discouraged, not until he put the idea in my head.

So much for reverse psychology.

Anyways, if anything, therapy makes me really excited to go back to the gym and teach. I have so many more exercises for the girls to do, and not just legs and hips, but arms and abs too from watching other people! I've gotten a bunch of new ab exercises from pilates too. I already know that the girls will NOT be thrilled that I have new exercises, but I'm planning on jazzing up our warm-up routine, so hopefully that will make up for the horrible strength workout I'm also introducing!

baby steps

This morning I dragged myself to the gym, mostly because I couldn't rationalize a third shower in 24 hours without an actual purpose to shower. I had told Kayla I would be back in half an hour, but about 15 minutes into my stint on the elliptical, I was ready to retreat back to Dobby. I'm not sure exactly why, but I had a Paige moment. Kind of like WWJD, but what would Paige say? Paige has a way of inspiring me like no one else can. She's able to call me out on my shit nicely, but it's always for the best. She would have told me to stop being a baby and get my ass in gear. Even though she would have forced me to continue, somehow, she would pull out a blessing in disguise. I also think she would bring it full circle, to my t-shirt that happened to be on the top of the pile this morning.



I was wearing my Baby Steps t-shirt, from our walk to support the March of Dimes during International Key Club Convention, in Denver, CO 2009. Denver was an unbelievable experience; from smelling heaven to feeling the power of being in a room filled with thousands of high school students, with a passion to change the world, I can't imagine ever forgetting my experience in the mile high city.

My trip to Denver really has no significance to today's adventure to the gym except the message on the tshirt. Baby steps. Simply put, Paige would tell me, its all about baby steps.

I've been sitting on this post forever, figuring out how to verbalize what Paige would actually tell me, and why it has to be baby steps. I've realized that I'm still not convinced, and that I'm not exactly sure how Paige would explain it.

So I guess this my invitation to you Paige, inspire me :)

zen garden

I’m currently in the zen garden typing this post. I feel like its a little bit less zen because I have WiFi access here. Regardless, its a beautiful day to be outside, and there are far less people here than on the green, therefore making this my spot of preference.

I had such a hard time deciding which order to sit outside, go to the gym, and do work. I decided on gym, work, outside, but that was changed to gym, outside, work. I rationalize this because I can work when its dark out. After lunch, I came back to the room and despite the beautiful weather, dragged my ass to the gym. I clearly went into it with the wrong mindset, but I have a hard time going to the gym when its the perfect day to exercise outside!

I lasted about ten minutes on the elliptical before total boredom set in, despite the Cosmo I brought with me. I decided that I would try running outside a little bit, even though I’ve been having pain recently. I for some reason decided to wear my brace, and maybe it was the placebo effect, the fact that I saw BOTH of my soccer boys while I was running, or that my knee is feeling better, but I experienced little pain on my small little jog.

I’ve become a fan of mapmyrun.com, so when I got back to dobby, I mapped it out to find that my little jog was the longest I’ve gone so far! Supposedly I can attach it below, so all you creepers can see it :)



Thats my mini run, and then I walked back to dobby, cooled myself down with cranberry-blueberry sorbet, and then established my spot in the zen garden with my Hannah Montana towel, iPod and First They Killed my Father, by Loung Ung. Not quite summer reading, but interesting nonetheless! Happy Friday!

experiment.

My knee started bothering me a few days ago, and oddly enough, a few days ago I started wearing my flip flops. I had a nagging thought that the knee pain was coming from the flip flops, seeing how my surgeon disapproves of me wearing them. Just for fun, I tried an experiment today, and wore my Keds. Magically enough, my knee pain vanished. That was slightly disappointing, but the pain was unbearable, enough to make me put the flip flops away. If this has served me anything, its motivation to do whatever possible to make my knee strong enough to wear flip flops!

Today was supposed to be an "off" day, but I went to Pilates regardless. I validate this form of being active because I'm not stressing my knee, its mostly core focused. I've decided I really like my pilates class. Its the first thing in a while where someone is demanding excellence from me; correct hand position, correct shoulder position, even correct foot position, if even one toe is slightly out of alignment, Rose is not afraid to let you know about it. For some reason, I thrive off her incessant need for perfection, something I don't find any where else at Clark.

This afternoon, in my usual afternoon boredom, I was stuck with nothing to do. KReeves suggested that I make a paper chain with recycle paper (so green) to countdown the last days at Clark. There are fiftyfour. Fiftyfour didn't seem like such an overwhelming number until I actually constructed the chain. It was sadly so overwhelming that the whole chain made its way into the paper recycling bin in the hall way. It did indeed serve its purpose though, I wasn't bored anymore.

On a more positive note, tomorrow is Friday, and after my Culture & The News midterm, I am free as a bird, and free to be active as well!

396 days

Today will be the second day of wonderful spring weather here in Worcester, with temperatures around sixty degrees continuing through the week. (That sounded very much like something you would hear on the weather report. My dad has always been jealous of meteorologists because they can be wrong 75% of the time, and still have a job the next day). Regardless, the weather is wonderful, and I'm lacking the motivation to do anything other than play outside in the sun. Unfortunately my parents won't buy it if I tell them I might fail my Communications midterm on Friday because I'm playing outside instead of studying. On a happier note, KReeves and I went for a lovely walk yesterday, that served a few wonderful purposes, adventuring for Iced Coffee (our first time since spring break!), enjoying the sunshine, exercise, and getting me out of the room after a less than encouraging conversation about my future with a friend. If there's one thing I'll miss about Kayla, it her ability to feed back to me the optimism I can provide to everyone else, but for some reason happen to lack for my own situations.

I just got back my from bi-weekly date with my physical therapist, Dave. I haven't completely made up my mind about him. He tends to give a lot of advice in the non-physical-therapist relm, and I can't decide if its half ass advice or not. I do a lot of smiling and nodding my head. He mostly attempts to tell me how I should be a nutritionist; I should read this article, I should eat this, I should watch this. He's not a nutritionist, but I'm sure he means well. I'm officially 91 days post surgery. I suppose I should be thrilled with my results so far, I'm walking (without limping!), skipping, jumping, and jogging (a little). I'm ready to move faster though. I'm done waiting to get better, and now, I'm really just waiting. My body is strong, not as strong as it should be, but strong enough to step up the intensity of my workouts. This is great, but my body tends to swell up like a balloon more so than anyone else, so with any activity, my knee becomes swollen. My physical therapist has reduced my "approved" days of physical activity to two in an attempt to keep the swelling down.

I hate the idea of having a "limit" on the amount of activity I can do. I suppose its hardest because I'm used to being so active. Up until 396 days day ago (my first tear, I'm all about the numbers today) I never stopped moving. Its been 396 day since I've been moving at my normal accelerated rate and I haven't been back to full athletic clearance since then. That, combined with this beautiful weather just has me itching to grab my tennis racket with the t7 loves, run through the XC trails with KaylaJ or shoot around at the field with MolSan and Gren.

But I suppose, if I have to settle, I'll happily settle for simply walking with KReeves. :)

explanation.

I've been struggling with the formatting of blogger. apparently i'm not aware of the difference between "about me" and "about this blog." Instead, here's my extended version of "about this blog" about two weeks too late.

I'm starting my first blog ever, to coincide with the training for my first half marathon. Pretty excited. I'm also recovering from my second ACL reconstructive surgery in a year, so I'm ready to move my legs. That's what Kayla Reeves calls it. Moving her legs.

In brief, Kayla validates my feelings, responds when i meow, and sings ingrid with me. Our obsessions with vera bradley, to-do lists and animal noises are just a few of the many ways we're highly compatible.

Next year, I'll be away from her, hard to believe that I'll make it without her, but its harder to believe that not too long ago, we were living our separate lives. She's really the only think I'll miss about good ole Clark University. Well, her and those Gloucester boys ; )

She doesn't have to train for a half marathon, she's capable of pulling them out of her ass.
Instead, shes training for a marathon. For now, I'll start with 13.1

This is my story.

push.

Why is it so much easier to push others than to push yourself? Last week I pushed and pushed my physical therapist to clear me for running, just so I could spend my time in Florida finding my running legs again. He gave in, allowed me to run, only making me promise to stop with any pain, numbness, soreness or swelling. I could push him, to his limits and maybe beyond. I can't push myself though.

I ran one tenth of a mile. Far from thirteen point one.

I can't push myself.

No pain, numbness, soreness or swelling, has become synonymous with no running.

Day One

Today, I started training for my first half marathon.

Thirteen point one miles. I've never run a half marathon. I haven't run a race since middle school track. Today I ran for the first time since my surgery in December. I haven't even hit three months yet, and I ran today.
I ran one tenth of a mile, but I ran today.
Thirteen miles to go.

Today, I started training for my first half marathon.