I can almost pinpoint the day I said goodbye to my fitness... Part 1

Losing your fitness isn't like losing your wallet. I mean, it's is not like you are getting ready for work and as you grab the car keys you suddenly realize, "Crap, what did I do with my fitness? I thought I left it on the nightstand next to the cell phone." Losing your fitness doesn't happen all at once. Losing your fitness is more like falling out of love with your significant other after a few years of being together. In the beginning, you notice it but you tell yourself it's okay. You can make it better and ,at first, you try. 

I'm not new to running injuries. If you run long enough, you are bound to get at least one running injury in your running career. When I started running, I got shinsplints. I took off some of the mileage rested a few weeks and got back at it. When I started training for my first half-marathon, I got Achilles tendinitis. I took off two months, saw a doctor, went to physical therapy, and slowly built up my mileage and speed back to where it had been- and then some. 

After my short struggle with achilles tendinitis, I was good to go for almost two years. During those two years I completed two ten mile races, three half-marathons, two marathons, a few olympic distance triathlons, and tons of sprint distance triathlons and 5Km and 10Km races. I loved it. I was living in Sierra Vista, Arizona and took advantage of the high elevation, mild winters and ran early during the summer to avoid the blistering heat of the afternoon. Ask any serious triathlete and they'll tell you that Tucson, AZ is one of the best cities for triathlons in the nation; Sierra Vista is only an hour and a half away and has many of the same attributes as Tucson. On top of the location, I had many friends that were as interested in running and triathlons as I was. Some were even more serious. One was a member of the All-Army Triathlon team. Another was later selected as the Army's Athlete of the Year. 

2008 Ft. Huachuca Army Ten-Miler team. I'm giving the double thumbs up

Don't think that it was non-stop hardcore running and training all the time. We did lots of cycling and had fun by running trails with the huachuca hash house harriers. I even got my hash name! There was nothing like doing a 10 mile training run and then completing a 3-5 mile hash run through the washes, back alleys, and desert hills of Sierra Vista. If any of you have ever hashed, you know that the runs end with beer (lots of beer) and songs- really dirty songs. All in all it was a good time.

Then I got injured. This time is was Iliotibial band syndrome. I noticed it after completing the 2008 SOMA triathlon in Tempe, AZ. It's not like a broken leg where you are immediately injured. It started off slowly. I noticed my knee and then it gradually got worse. Soon, I wasn't even able to go down stairs. So I took a month off to let my IT band rest. Then I took another month. Eventually, I had to take about six months off. And when I came back I was different. I mean, physically I was more or less the same but that hunger that drove me for the previous two years was missing.