2021 Life Updates

My most recent post is from May 29, 2020. I figured before I get back into regular posts, I’ll give you a little life update.

So much has happened in the past eight months, both within the world and in my personal life. If you follow me on Instagram, or are one of my loyal followers of this blog, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been much less active on social media and completely absent from blogging. It’s not that I don’t enjoy sharing my life with diabetes and running anymore, it’s that I’ve had to prioritize other things in my life. During the last few months, my Instagram and blog were two things that I struggled to keep up with.

My biggest life change came last August: a promotion! As of this post, I have been working with my company for four years. My first job there was my first ‘real’ job out of college, and I quickly made my way up the ranks. A year ago, I began thinking about where I’d like to see myself within five years and realized that I was interested in moving out of the laboratory environment and into a management position. Much sooner than I ever anticipated, the opportunity presented itself for me to make the jump into management. While I was hesitant at first, as the job was for a second shift supervisor, I’m glad I didn’t turn the job down as I had originally intended. While my job is rewarding and a great challenge, it’s been much more demanding than my previous positions. The schedule also took a bit longer than I thought to adjust to.

As I work second shift now, my sleep schedule is obviously a bit different than a typical person’s. For the first month of my new shift, it was difficult for me to wake up and get a run in. I was exhausted all the time. On top of that, it was still summer so my runs were usually scorching hot. I didn’t usually get more than a mile or two in before I had to call it quits. When the weather had finally cooled off, I was adjusted to my new schedule, and I was running fairly consistently. But then then holidays came around, and my running routine quickly turned sporadic again. Any progress I had made with running was lost.

In addition to a new schedule change in August, I had a septoplasty in September. (Which has also made breathing so much better!) The surgery itself kept me from running for two weeks, but I didn’t start running again until October. Just when I thought I had finally gotten my groove back in late December, I was met with an injury. Sometime in early December, I tweaked my lower back. I was experiencing mild pain, but didn’t think much of it. On December 29, I went to pick up my boyfriends Christmas gift from under the tree and I felt a shooting pain in my lower back. I took some Advil and by the afternoon I was feeling fine. Later that night, I could feel my lower back tightening up. When I went to get up off the couch, I crumpled to the floor like a piece of paper. I couldn’t get up on my own without being in excruciating pain. It was a group effort between my boyfriend, good friend, and her husband to get me standing and to the ER. As it would turn out, I had a bad lower back sprain. I slowly began running again by the second week of 2021. Now that my injury is behind me, I’m FINALLY running consistently again. I just ran my first three mile run for the first time since July 2020 earlier this month. While I’m running ‘slow,’ I’m feeling stronger every week. I’m hoping that by the end of February, I will be running four miles at a time.

I keep thinking about how this time two years ago I was training for my first marathon. Running three miles was considered an easy day; a break from my five to six mile training runs, and fourteen-plus mile long runs. While running three miles right now feels so hard, I just keep telling myself what my body is capable of. Reminding myself that I trained for a Spring marathon in the middle of a North Dakota winter. While I certainly don’t feel like a marathoner right now, I know I’ll be back to running those long distances soon.