Sunday, September 14, 2008

Kindgergarten, End of the Road, and Running Again!

Lots going on lately...

Avery started kindergarten last week. So far, so good. Her favorite parts are riding the bus to school, and recess. She's making lots of new friends, and learning all about the letter "A". So that's good. Of course, Mom made sure she was decked out in a brand new outfit for her first day. I think all the girls were dressed up for their first day. The boys mostly wore ratty t-shirts.

My little red Isuzu truck finally drove off to tha road in the sky this month. I'd had it since 1994, and it was my first car. It leaked oil pretty badly, and the last few times it started, thick white smoke poured out of the tailpipe, smelling of anti-freeze. I'm pretty sure the head gasket finally gave out. Given the cost of repairing it, and the blue-book value of it, we decided it was best to let her go, rather than fix it. It was a good car though. It'll be missed.

On the running front, I'm finally running again! For six weeks after my Tahoe run, my IT Band was giving me fits, and I couldn't run even a mile without some pretty sharp knee pain flaring up. I tried a few times, but after a month, I finally gave it two weeks of zero running. Finally by about the seventh week I could run a mile -about 10 minutes, very slowly, every other day, without pain. The next week I extended this to 20 minutes, 25 minutes, and 30 minutes for three runs, all pain free. Finally this week I decided to see what happened when I pushed it a bit. I ran 40 minutes on Tuesday, an hour on Wednesday, and 50 minutes on actual trails on Thursday. After taking it easy Friday, I ran 9 flat miles on Saturday, and 13 miles on trails today. The knee / IT Band felt great! Everything else sort've feels terrible though - I shouldn't be this sore after 13 miles! But I'm pretty happy to be doing some "real" running again, finally.

During the down-time from running, I did manage to do lots of mountain biking, which I used to do a lot of, but hadn't much this year with all the running. It's been fun, and we always seem to have a blast on our rides, despite the increase in bruises and scrapes that seem to appear after these rides. And of course, the big creepy eye...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

what is that thing??!!

Anonymous said...

Avery looks so cute! grandma N

William Swint said...

Matt,it's great that you are running again pain free.We need to get together for a run soon.

Mike Rosling said...

Glad to hear the running is going well again...any big plans for the Fall/Winter?

Unknown said...

Goodbye little red Isuzu!
I remember when you were brand new and Matt brought you to ski with us at Kirkwood in Tahoe. I remember Matt catching an edge and face planting so hard on the last day that his sunglasses left cuts on his face. I have a picture of that somewhere. I also remember that even though you were new you had a flat tire in the parking lot outside the condo and we had a hard time finding the handle for the tire jack--so stealthily stored behind the seats by those crafty Isuzu engineers.
After you had some miles under your (fan) belt we were reunited in Weed, CA to lay seige on Mt. Shasta. It would've been the first ever summit of Mt. Shasta except that A) other people had climbed it before and B) we didn't actually make it to the summit. Still, the ice axes came in handy for opening bottle tops.
Many years later we were reunited once more when you faithfully hauled us up up up so we could ride down down down the McKenzie River trail. Little did I know that would be my last ride in the truck. ImisU IsuzU. Scott T.

Matt said...

Scott, my friend, that was touching. I cried, just a little bit, reading that. Thanks man.