Second Wind

Rest......well sort of......ended up having to install a new alternator in my car.  Could they make these tiny little engine compartments any smaller?

The usual six.  My left calf was acting up a little bit on Saturday's long run and it started acting up again during today's run.  Not sure what that is all about or where it came from.  Rolled it today and hopefully a little extra stretching will help it out.  Temps turned super warm this morning (55 degrees and no wind) and I was way over dressed.  I was too lazy to go back upstairs and change so I just suffered.  Push up challenge is on hold for me until my right hand feels better.  I jammed my thumb really bad playing ball several years ago and now to do push-ups on it is not feeling very good.  I'll do what I can but it probably won't be much.....wussy man out.

Time:  49:20  8:13/mile

Took it fairly easy today to see how the calf would react.  The calf seemed to be okay and I didn't have the same pain I have had on the last couple of runs so that is good.  I could tell it was a little sore and I was aware of the slight pain but I would say today was a nice improvement.  Did some extra stretching and rolling today after yoga and hopefully the extra stuff will help.  May end up backing out of the lake to lake realay next week because we just got news that my daughters both have a softball game that day and my older daughter has the end of season tournament in basketball, could be a really long, but fun, day.

Time:  51:36  8:36/mile

Picked up the pace a little bit again today but the calf is still bothering me some.  It feels like it is ready to cramp up at any moment during the run but never does.  I hope the infamous charlie horse doesn't come up and bite me one of these times.  For now I am day to day on the running, we'll see how it goes tomorrow.  Had one fast mile at about 7:40 pace.

Time:  48:45  8:07/mile

Run ended up going much better than expected today.  I was still a little worried about the calf giving me problems today and it did a little bit for the first mile or so but after that it warmed up and felt fine.  Temp was a cool 50 degrees today.  50 is usally really good but there was a pretty steady breeze out of the north that made it feel colder than 50.  Ran the over all run at a faster than normal pace and ran mile 6 as the fast mile at 6:58.  That last mile actaully felt really good, everything felt smooth.  Felt really nice to be running at a comfortable fast pace again.  I know I have been saying it for a couple of weeks now but I would really like to get healthy enough to turn that one fast mile into 3-4 faster paced tempo miles.  Luckily I have no pressing races coming up so I don't feel the pressure to push it before I am ready.  Today is Meg's birthday and me and the kids decorated the downstairs while Meg was getting ready.  I don't like birthdays in the middle of the week, today is probably the most busy day for her this whole week, not much time to celebrate.  We will probably celebrate hers and mine on Saturday since hers is today and mine is on Sunday.  Oh well, at least we got a little fun in this morning.

Time:  48:03  8:00/mile

Backed off the pace today and took it easy in preparation for tomorrows long run.  The calf continues to behave itself and appears to be on the mend, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it continues to improve.  I haven't decided on the distance for tomorrows long yet just because I want to leave it open to change if the calf starts acting up.  I would like to do somewhere between the usual 13 or maybe get up to 16-17 if possible.  I guess that is the beauty of not having a training plan in place, I don't have to stress about not hitting a particular workout or distance.  Then again, I don't have that extra motivation to push harder to try and meet a goal.  Kind of a double edge sword.

Time:  51:11  8:32/mile

What a day today turned out to be!

Meg and I went out for our usual Saturday morning long run and Meg was hurting from the start.  She was able to gut out 5 miles and I finally convinced her to go get her bike and go for a ride since it was getting light and it was beautiful morning.  She wasn't happy about it but she went anyway.  I continued on with my run and completed my 14 miles.  The calf wasn't an issue at all today, infact I didn't even think about it until mile 7 when I realized it wasn't bothering me.  Anyway, as I am coming up the street to my house I am greeted by all four of my kids screaming about mom crashing on her bike and breaking her arm....OH NO!!!!  I jumped in the car and obeyed all traffic signals and speed limits as I blasted down the road in search of Meg.  I didn't find her and as it turns out she was able to get a ride home with some people in a nearby house and we had passed each other somewhere in the middle.  Well, when we finally hooked up I got the full story. 

She was cruising along pretty good on her bike and two dogs came out to greet her from someones yard.  One was nipping at her heals and the other darted in front of her bike which hit her front wheel and caused her to go over the front of her bike.  She estimates she was going about 20-25 MPH at the time trying to get away from the dogs and she took the brunt of the fall with a knee, elbow and shoulder.  Luckily the neighbors of the "stupid dog" house were very kind to Meg, even after she woke them up by dragging herself to their front door and ringing the door bell.  They loaded up her and her bike and brought her home. 

We spent the next 3 hours in the so call "quick care" among a bunch of sniffling, coughing, upchucking whinny babies.  Yes a young girl upchucked in the middle of the lobby and then came and sat down right next to me......Nice!!  Nobody in the quick care came out to clean up the puke and since a couple people had almost stepped in it I had to go put a chair over it to warn people.  It was still there when we went in the back, HELLO?!?!?!? When we went up to check in they wouldn't check Meg in without her photo ID, ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!  I was not a happy camper at this point and was lucky they didn't toss me out of the building.  So I drove home to get Megs ID and finally got her all checked in.  The we sat and watched all the lesser injured people go first.....no I wasn't bitter at all.....  Too many details, I know.  Bottom line, she didn't break anything that they could see on the xray.  She has some nasty swelling in her elbow and is very sore from the elbow to the shoulder.  I think there is a lot of soft tissue damage but we don't really know from just the xray.  If it doesn't improve in the next couple of days we will probably be have to go in for an MRI.  The icing on the cake is when we were getting ready to leave, the nurse asked if we wanted her to clean up some of Meg's road rash that was now oozing with blood.  NO, NO, WE'VE BEEN HER FOR 3 HOURS, WE'LL JUST GO HOME AND TAKE CARE OF IT YOU INSENSITIVE........ARGHGHGH!!!  This was quite literally the quick care from hell.

So for now we are keeping her drugged up on Tylenol 3 and Ibuprofen.  It hasn't improved yet but I suppose it will be a couple of days before we will see some.  I will keep you all posted as to what happens.  If this injury doesn't heel up properly and turns out to be a lot worse, I wonder if we have and recourse against these dog owners?  Riverton Paul attorney man, what do you think?  I guess it really doesn't matter, I just hope she makes a full recovery.

We did go to dinner at the Olive Garden for a birthday celebration for Meg, Me and my oldest son Michael who will be 15 in a few days.  We spent two hours in there waiting for the slowest service in the world.  Then we waited in the longest pie line ever at Marie Callendars.  My daughter lost her last basketball game and the number one seed in the tournament.........my wife left me, my dog ran away, there's tear in my beer and all that other country song sob story stuff....

What a day today turned out to be!

Time:  1:56:41  8:20/mile