2011: Not My Year

I haven't posted anything in months. 2011 has not been a good year for me. The Houston Marathon weather was a little too warm and humid for me and I ran a poor race. I was starting to put together some better training but then pulled my hamstring in April. I came back to run the Corpus Christi relay in May, but the heat and humidity of another record-breaking summer had already taken over any chance of decent running. Just as the first cooler mornings of September seemed within reach, I wrecked my car on the way home from work. I was traveling about 65 mph down Texas 36 and smashed into someone making a left turn onto the highway. My old car didn't have an air bag and I hit the steering wheel hard with my chest. It was pretty scary hearing the hospital emergency room announcing a trauma code after my triage. But the CT scans showed nothing was broken.
Nuke aside: The radiation dose from the CT scans was nearly half of my lifetime occupational radiation dose. I've been a radiation worker in nuclear power for over thirty years.
I expected the accident recovery to be similar to a marathon recovery. But after a week, I still couldn't take a deep breath and it hurt to just lie down in bed. After three to four weeks, I was finally able to start running seriously again. But a few weeks ago I tripped over an uneven concrete joint in the sidewalk near the bridge over the bayou. It was a stumbling fall, but I hit my left knee hard on the concrete. I ran a half mile home and found my left sock was soaked in blood and most of the skin was off my left kneecap. I didn't mind the wound much but the knee started hurting in the joint when I tried to run a couple days later. I don't know if I hurt the joint when my knee hit the concrete or if the stumble strained the knee. Regardless, I've had to take another couple weeks off.
I missed the 10-mile race because of the car accident, the half marathon because of the knee injury, and now the 25K...26.21875K...is next week. I'm overweight and out of shape. My longest run this fall has been 9 miles. And the nuke plant is in a refueling outage that has been eating up every weekend. I doubt I'll be able to run the 25K, er 26.21875K.
I neglected to register early for the 2012 Houston Marathon, assuming I would have plenty of time before the veterans deadline. But that deadline was November 1. So I guess I'm already out of Houston 2012. I would like to get in decent enough shape to race the 30K in December. But who knows.