­

My Favorite Books of 2017

by - Sunday, December 31, 2017
Happy New Year's Eve friends. Before we ring in 2018, I wanted to share some of my favorite books of 2017. This year I read 57 books, and according to my Goodreads rankings, I only had a handful of true favorites. Those favorites were all fiction books. Overall I read a ton more...

Continue Reading

Holiday Adventures in DC

by - Thursday, December 28, 2017
The holidays are some of my favorite times of the year. I love watching the neighborhoods near me transform with decorations and lights, and people just tend to be in better moods. Plus, it's basically the only time of year I can actually tolerate cold weather because it seems "seasonally appropriate." My friend's...

Continue Reading

Holidays in PA

by - Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Happy holiday season friends! I've spent the holidays back home in Pennsylvania, where it's been a balmy 24 degrees just about every day I've been here. I've been drinking lots of tea, reading lots of books and snuggling under piles of blankets. This is my apartment in DC, but things have basically been...

Continue Reading

Hip Things and Prednisone Side Effects

by - Wednesday, December 06, 2017
Last time we talked hip things, I was able to run a bit here and there and had slowly started reintroducing some strength training through barre classes. In good news, a lot hasn't changed on that front. I'm still able to run a bit, and I'm still trying to do some regular strength...

Continue Reading

Books I Read November 2017

by - Tuesday, December 05, 2017
I know I said in my last book round up that I was hoping to read more books in November than I did in October. And I guess I succeeded. I read three whole books in November compared to the two I read in October. Not exactly the numbers I was hoping for,...

Continue Reading

Re-introducing Strength Training with Barre3

by - Sunday, November 12, 2017
Lately the steroids seem like they are really helping things with my hip. I go back to the doctor tomorrow, but over the last couple of weeks, I've been able to do a decent amount of workouts. Other than running, one of the workouts I've really been loving is barre3.  I noticed on...

Continue Reading

Books I Read October 2017

by - Monday, November 06, 2017
Most of the books I read in the month of October were travel guides. During my free time last month, I was in hard core planning mode for my return trip to Japan. The last time I went, Meghan did much of the planning since I was kind of tied up with grad...

Continue Reading

Hip Update: Steroids and Surgery Thoughts

by - Thursday, November 02, 2017
So I had another follow-up appointment with my doctor on Monday. I basically filled him in on all the things I shared in my last hip post. Running is pretty Ok, though my hip gets tight and sore afterward, but certain yoga poses are still not very comfortable. A gorgeous fall run along...

Continue Reading

Hip Update: Post-Cortisone Workouts

by - Tuesday, October 24, 2017
If you recall from my last hip update, my orthopedic surgeon sent me home with a second cortisone shot for bursitis and instructions to try to get back to some of my favorite workouts to see how things were going. After the soreness of the second cortisone shot wore off, I took his...

Continue Reading

Books I Read August and September 2017

by - Sunday, October 22, 2017
Man I'm so far behind on my book updates. Every time I sat down to write this post, I got distracted by something else. So here we are at almost the end of October. Back in August, I didn't get a ton of reading done. A lot of my free time was spent...

Continue Reading

Hip Update: Cautiously Optimistic

by - Friday, October 06, 2017
The Chicago Marathon is this weekend, and if I didn't have this hip injury, I'd be hopping on a plane tomorrow morning ready to run my first post-grad school marathon. But as we all know, that's not the case. I'm a little bit bummed, but I'm trying not to let it bug me...

Continue Reading

Work Travels

by - Thursday, September 28, 2017
I'm still sitting tight waiting to get the results of my arthrogram. Normally this waiting would drive me bonkers, but I've been out of town for work since right after the test was done, so the time has weirdly flown by. Normally when I travel to new places for work, I try to...

Continue Reading

Hip Update: Arthrogram and Cortisone Injections

by - Monday, September 18, 2017
Hey friends. Long time, no blog. Well that's not totally true. I've actually started a couple of posts that I've never published because they were so downright depressing. This injury makes it really hard to write a blog called Jess Runs since I can't exactly run. Hell, some days I can't even walk....

Continue Reading

Hip Update: More Tests

by - Thursday, August 24, 2017
Man I've started and stopped writing so many blog posts in the last couple of weeks. It's really hard to write a blog about running and working out when I can't really do any of those things. But I had another appointment with my orthopedic surgeon so I thought I'd at least update...

Continue Reading

Deferred

by - Wednesday, August 16, 2017
All summer long I'd been hoping to avoid this. But here we are only a month and a half away from race day and I haven't run more than a mile since April. My hip still hurts. I'm no closer to an answer about what's wrong with it than I was back then....

Continue Reading

Books I Read July 2017

by - Wednesday, August 09, 2017
July is the month of the beach vacation, which means it's hands down the month I do the most reading. There's nothing quite like sitting on the beach with a book and the sound of the waves crashing in the background. This year, I not only had my family's week long trip, but...

Continue Reading

Back in the Pool

by - Monday, August 07, 2017
Note: I changed blog hosts a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still working out some things with the RSS feed. Sometimes it updates, sometimes it doesn't. If you normally get my blog updates via RSS, you may want to resubscribe. That's the only thing that's worked 100% of the time for me. ...

Continue Reading

Hip Update: Week One of Medication

by - Thursday, August 03, 2017
So I've officially been taking this super strong anti-inflammatory for my hip for about eight days now. The doctor told me that it could take about a week for me to notice if it was having any sort of impact. I'll be honest when I say I'm still not totally sure if it's...

Continue Reading

Hip Update: Orthopedic Surgeon Visit

by - Wednesday, July 26, 2017
A couple people have asked me for an update on my hip situation, and until Monday afternoon I didn't have much to say. My hip has been about the same. Some days it hurts a lot; some days it's OK. I've wrapped up physical therapy for the moment while I was waiting on...

Continue Reading

Books I Read May and June 2017

by - Monday, July 10, 2017
With all my hip stuff going on, I realized I never posted my book recaps from May or June, so I wanted to catch up and update you on what I've been reading the past two months. I did a decent amount of reading in May, but in June I only got through...

Continue Reading

A Hip Update: MRI Results

by - Thursday, July 06, 2017
I suppose it's time I actually write an update on my hip situation. I've been putting off writing this post for a while now as I've tried to jump through what feels like a million medical hoops and deal with my roller coaster of emotions about this injury.I believe we left off after...

Continue Reading

Dry Needling for my Hip

by - Monday, June 19, 2017
Last Monday, I had my first dry needling appointment to help my hip.Now if you have been reading for a while, you know needles make me pass out. So it's not really normal for me to voluntarily subject myself to them.But with my hip hurting so much every time I did anything, I...

Continue Reading

Hip Next Steps and Marathon Possibilities

by - Thursday, June 08, 2017
Ok so yesterday I really just needed to get out the feels about my hip. If you read that post you know I have a lot of them, and writing things down has always helped me process things and think more clearly.In this post, I'm going to talk more about what the plan...

Continue Reading

Marathon Training Was Supposed to Start Monday

by - Wednesday, June 07, 2017
As you can probably guess from the title of this post, things aren't going so well on the hip front. It just doesn't seem to be getting better (my PT might disagree with this assessment, but right now it's how I feel).This past weekend I feel like I had a pretty major set...

Continue Reading