Toes

Runs

Saturday - 10 miles 1:27

I have been nursing this ankle sprain and for the most part it is getting better. I decided to give it a run on Saturday. I woke up and it was raining, so I though- OK I'll wait until tomorrow. Then the rain went away and it was beautiful outside. Sunny, 55 degrees, with the ever present, constantly-in-my-face wind. I thought, I couldn't pass this up. I ran in my Zensah base layer and an REI pullover and shorts. My anke held up very well. I was way ovrdressed, but I'll chalk it up to Badwater heat training. I generally don't drink on my runs of 10 miles or less. Not because I think it's a smart thing to do, but b/c I run through mostly residential areas without water fountains. Plus I no longer like to carry water with me. I'm going to need to figure something out. As the summer wears on, my perfromance will definitely suffer. I'm usually a few pounds lighter after one of these 10 milers.

While my ankle did well, I now have a pain under the base of my 3rd ad 4th toe, right where the toes meet the base of the foot. My guess is that it's either that cancer spreading, or I altered my gait and I sprained my toe.

I really feel that outiside of my toes/feet, I'm making really good progress, this early in the season. I need to get my ankle and toe feeling 100% before I start training again. There's no point in going 1 step forward and 2 steps back. We're going to NYC for a Wedding on Thursday. I'm giving my feet until next week to heal, or sooner if I'm pain free.


Culinary:
Friday- went to this place. It was listed as one of the top new restaurants of 2006 by Chicago magazine. It was really good. I LOVE Mexican food and Tex-Mex.

Toes

Runs

Saturday - 10 miles 1:27

I have been nursing this ankle sprain and for the most part it is getting better. I decided to give it a run on Saturday. I woke up and it was raining, so I though- OK I'll wait until tomorrow. Then the rain went away and it was beautiful outside. Sunny, 55 degrees, with the ever present, constantly-in-my-face wind. I thought, I couldn't pass this up. I ran in my Zensah base layer and an REI pullover and shorts. My anke held up very well. I was way ovrdressed, but I'll chalk it up to Badwater heat training. I generally don't drink on my runs of 10 miles or less. Not because I think it's a smart thing to do, but b/c I run through mostly residential areas without water fountains. Plus I no longer like to carry water with me. I'm going to need to figure something out. As the summer wears on, my perfromance will definitely suffer. I'm usually a few pounds lighter after one of these 10 milers.

While my ankle did well, I now have a pain under the base of my 3rd ad 4th toe, right where the toes meet the base of the foot. My guess is that it's either that cancer spreading, or I altered my gait and I sprained my toe.

I really feel that outiside of my toes/feet, I'm making really good progress, this early in the season. I need to get my ankle and toe feeling 100% before I start training again. There's no point in going 1 step forward and 2 steps back. We're going to NYC for a Wedding on Thursday. I'm giving my feet until next week to heal, or sooner if I'm pain free.


Culinary:
Friday- went to this place. It was listed as one of the top new restaurants of 2006 by Chicago magazine. It was really good. I LOVE Mexican food and Tex-Mex.

Acute ankle cancer

Runs

4/17- 6 miles
4/18 -0
4/19 - 0 (see below)

During this period of base building, I'm too lazy to wake up any earlier than I already do, to run. Thus I run in the evening. This happens to coincide with family time. One of N's pleasures is going to the park and going on slides, etc. When the weather warms up and the days are longer, we indulge him as often as we can. The side benefit is a tired kid., more apt to sleep through the night. To make this happen and cause the least ripples at home, I have proposed that we pick a park and I run one way, from home to the park and I meet A and N there. I usually start 20-30 minutes earlier. I meet them there, play with N and we drive home together. This has been working fabulously for my runs of 5-6 miles.

On Monday, we chose a park about 5 miles away, despite closer ones. I took a new rout to get there, knowing that I wanted to do 6 miles. As I pass the 3 mile mark, I need to cross a major intersection. I was watching traffic, as I stepped off the sidewalk onto the grass near the traffic light post that has the walk button. My left foot falls into a rut and turns violently. I hear a snap and I have a lot of pain. I try walking on it and I decide not to continue. I had my cell phone (which I don't often run with) and called A at home. She wasn't there. I thought she must have left home. I call her cell, no answer. She often keeps it on silent/vibrate mode. No answer. I'm half way home and half way to my destination. The only logical choice was to walk towards my destination, hoping that A would see me hobbling and pick me up. As I walked across the street, my pain lessened an I felt like I would at least jog. Somehow I ran the remaining 3 miles without a lot of pain and kept my pace. When I got to the park, N was on the slides. B/c of the previous day's rain, his jeans were soaked. It was 49 degrees with a stiff wind, so we decided to come home.

The next morning, I was in a lot of pain. Not much swelling. I actually thought it was fractured. I went into first year med student mode, where I thought every new disease we studied, I had the symptoms of. Plague- yes. Polio- yup. Smallpox- eradicated from the earth- I think not.

Today the pain is almost gone. It hurts with lateral motion , but not with forward motion. I'm taking it easy until Friday or Saturday, when I'll test it again.

I was just getting into a groove.

I'm invigorated

Runs

4/11 - 6 miles 52:15
4/12 - 3 miles 25:12
4/13 - 3 miles 27 min
4/15 - 10.3 1:32:15

This marks the first real consistent week of training I have had in a long time. I am aligning my runs into the Pfitzinger plan, but running Tu/Wed/Thurs and Sat/Sun, with rest on Monday/Friday.

This will work reasonably well for work, since Monday and Friday are often early days, and running before work will be harder. Now that I have made the decision to stick with PF as close as possible, Speedwork after mid June is out.

No aches and pains despite a quick ramp up.. I'm going to gradually work towards 30 miles per week until mid June. I'll try to make my long run 12-13 miles and alter my tu-wed-Thur to come up with the balance. Sunday will be a short, slow recovery run of 3-5 miles. This schedule will also work better on the homefront as I do not want my training to come in the way of family time. If I ever become so obsessed with running that impacts my marriage or children, then its time to stop, or cut back. Running should be a fun, enhancer of life.

Culinary

Sorry to say, I haven't done any real cooking since my French Bread baking last weekend.

I went and saw Thank You for Smoking last night. It was amusing and reasonably well done. I wasn't;t expecting something great and it met my expectations. If anything, it made me more disgusted with lobbyists, primarily ones that lobby for tobacco, etc.

Blah

Runs

one 5 miler and a 6 mile run yesterday. Nothing spectacular except the weather.

I am bad at remembering things in the past. Here's a recount

Dell computer, still not fixed. Finally, they have allowed me to send it in for servicing.

Apple laptop came back fixed, but with an erased hard drive. A was PISSED. I have made the investment in an external hard drive and like most. learned the hard way to back up data.

N is recovering from a cold. A feels crappy with her allergies. She actually asked me if she could be pregnant. She said this is how she felt when she was pregnant with N. Okey Dokey. TMI.

Insanity is a 2:1 computer to adult ratio

Runs:

Saturday morning
10.15 miles, 1:37- If you recall, I ran 36 hours ago (8 miles in 1:09). As you can tell by my times, my legs weren't there. That's ok. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to have that tired feeling in my legs to get them to get used to being somewhat fatigued. My general aches (piriformis) and hamstrings are still there, but seem to be better or I have not noticed it as much. I hope to do a slow 4 or 5 miler tomorrow morning to make this week over 20(8+10.15+4 or 5)

Culinary
Last night, A, N and I went to Barnabys' Pizza. Self Serve Chaosville. Like Chuck-E-cheese, without large rodents. I had a Beck's Dark.

This afternoon, for lunch, I went to my favorite grocer and bought some fresh bread, veggies and cheeses. I made some veggie sub sammiches for my wife and her cousin. Mine had mustard, lettuce, cucumber,avocado, hard boiled egg, red onion, Roma tomatoes and a slice of cheddar, swiss and mozzarella. I toasted the bread adn cheese before adding in the fixings.

On my trip to Puerto Rico, my Apple Powerbook's DVD drive "broke". I took it in the Apple Store, where they will fix it under warranty. They said there is a "small" chance they would end up erasing my hard drive. A was PISSED. I had downloaded all of our Puerto Rico pics and erased them off the camera. Pray for me that the computer comes back with the data intact. There are some pics of N as the ring-bearer that she is very attached to.

My Dell laptop, still under warranty, is having screen issues, so it doesn't work as well. WE're down to 2 functioning computers. One is my wife's work computer, that shares a Keyboard, monitor and mouse via a KVM switch with my home desktop. You would be right to assume we are insane for having 4 computers for 2 adults.

B/c of all this turmoil, it is time for me to have a network hard drive to back up files in the event something like this occurs again. I purchased this today. will create a networked hard drive to store files and perform routine backup. This redundancy will help in the event we have a computer malfuction on our Mac, which houses all our pictures and music.