Free Beer and Hobbits

Not much writing lately... spring has finally *really* sprung, and I've been doing lots of gardening mountain biking, and just generally enjoying being outside. We're just now trying to figure out how to spend our upcoming 3 day weekend. It's supposed to be 70's and sunny all weekend long. Whoo hoo!

On the running front - well, no running for me these days. I'm being good about following doctor's advice. This time. I've been going to physical therepy once per week, and doing lots of strength building / balance / stretching stuff so that someday soon I'll be running again, better than ever. I evened signed up for a Yoga class, which starts in June. Last weekend was the Mac 50k race, our cool local ultramarathon, here in town. It was a bummer not to be running. Instead, I volunteered, working at an aid station, then later in the day handing out the souvenier beers that all the finishers received. I'm not sure how I ended up with that job! Due to OSU forest regulations, the beers couldn't be handed out on university property. So the race directors had us set up at a roadside pullout near the junction with the highway. We looked pretty shifty, I imagine, hanging out on the side of the road with a car full of beer.





In other news, we're booked a trip to New Zealand this fall! Jasmine's a Kiwi, according to her passport. :-) We haven't been back to see her home country in years, and Avery has never been there, so we're all pretty excited already. We're looking forward to visiting family, and having some fun adventures in a beautiful place.

And finally, in honor of New Zealand (where the Hobbits and all those Lord of the Rings types live):

Down and Out for 2009

My calf is still giving me fits, unfortunately. I took six weeks off of running, but my first mile after that was pretty much as bad as my last mile six weeks ago. And so have all the 2 and 3 mile runs since then.

It's been 6 months since I first had the "weird pain in my calf" (that's what I wrote in my training log). I haven't been quite right since, but I kept feeling like I was a week or two away from being healthy.

Today I saw an orthopedic/sports medicine doctor, finally. She was really cool - she's a runner (marathoner), biker, and mountaineer, and even had a Ukranian name, so I figured she'd be the right person. She told me that calf strains are notorious for taking longer to heal than one expects, and need to be carefully nursed back into health, and that what I'm going through is pretty normal for distance runners, and understandably frustrating.

My calf isn't terrible, but in the process of healing, I've developed a big, nasty, tight knot in my calf, and I've lost quite a bit of range of motion in my achilles/ calf, making me a poster child for recurrent calf injury. Rest alone hasn't really worked. So my new doc prescribed a rehab regimen guided by a local clinic, and I start that tomorrow. It should include some deep tissue massage, stretching, and strengthening, along with core work and other stuff. She also suggested improving my balance (she did a 10 second balance test, and said I wasn't that good... and as an ultramarathoner I had zero margin for error). Hopefully after all of this I'll be better than ever. That'd make a "lost year" of running worth it, I guess.

The bad news: no running or serious hiking for at least two months. On top of six months already of lousy running. And then a really slow return to running. So like I said, basically a lost year as far as serious running / racing goes. But I can bike, use the elliptical trainer, and water jog (good cross training but the most mind-numbingly dull activity on earth, according to my doc), in the meantime. She also suggested Yoga, which I may give a try. And sitting on the couch drinking beer. (my doc didn't specifically recommend that, but I inferred it).

I was pretty bummed about it, but my friend Linda (runner extrodonaire and mother of two) told me to think of it like a time out for a pregnancy. She got faster both times after giving birth, so hopefully I'll get faster, eventually, too. That's a good thought, though I don't think (but can't say for sure) that my calf strain had the same root cause as her pregnancies. :-)

Ugh!

The last four months have been incredibly frustrating, running-wise. I've been having persistent, but never too-serious, pain in my shin, calf, achilles tendon, IT band, etc. I kept thinking I'm just a couple weeks from feeling 100%.... but 100% just never seemed to come. Unless I took a hearty dose of advil or Alleve, but that never seemed right. Finally, I realized I hadn't run without some issue for four freakin' months! So I bit the bullet and actually went to the doctor. I hate going to the doctor!

Anyway, this morning I had an MRI, and this afternoon my doctor called and left a message, with lots of big words ("torn lateral and medial head of the gastrocnemius") describing muscles in my calf, telling me, in simpler terms, I had torn my calf muscle at some point, and as I hadn't stopped running long enough to let it heal, it hadn't healed.

Looking back, it's pretty clear I tore it the week before I tried to run the Javelina 100. I wrote in my training log "five miles... really tight calf!?!" I hurt it on an easy five miler during my taper.... what the??? I must've done something before that. I dunno. Anyway, I managed 30 miles at Javelina before dropping out. I guess that's OK on a torn calf, eh? Since then I've taken a week off here, a couple weeks there, then tried to run again, feeling OK for a week or two, before pushing it a bit, then having a setback.

I was told today I need to take a full 6 weeks off completely from running to let me calf heal. I guess it's OK. I sort've knew I needed to stop to heal, but I knew I was too stubborn to do it, unless a Doctor actually told me I needed to do it. It's been a week since I ran last, so I figure it's only a five week sentence, anyway.

The diagnosis sure explains a lot. My shin splints were due to tight calves... my tight achilles due to tight calves.... duh!

At least I'm still allowed to bike. Thank goodness for that... or I'd go crazy! Especially as springtime is in full swing here in Oregon.


Six weeks isnt' that long I guess. I'll still have four months to get ready for the Cascade Crest 100. I hope I can do that. Bummer I'll have to miss all the "spring classics" here in Oregon - Peterson Ridge (I loved that course last year.... I can't wait untill 2010 now to do the full course!), and of course the Mac 50k. Oh well....

2009 Running Plans

My running goal for the year: Finish another 100 mile race, at least 0:51:10 faster than last year, with ~5500 feet more elevation gain and loss than last year's run. Time to get busy.

Happy New Year

Long time, no blog...

I've been on vacation from work the last two weeks, and we've managed to squeeze in lots of fun and adventure over the holidays.

On the Friday before X-mas, Avery's school was closed due to snow, but by noon the roads were fine, so we headed out on our trip to Victoria, Canada. One thing about Canada I learned is that it's a cold, snowy, frozen wasteland kind of place. At least, it was while we were there. On the TV news the anchor said that 100% of Canada was covered in snow, say it in the same matter-of-fact tone that a Phoenix weatherman would mention it's "sunny in the desert". Despite the fact that Canada is a frozen tundra, we had a good time. Avery got to go ice skating for the first time. At the famous Butchart gardens, they had the whole place decked out in x-mas lights, and had an outdoor ice rink set up. We all rented skates, and enjoyed an hour of skating, while heavy snow began to fall. It was quite the Norman Rockwell occasion. Less Rockwell-esque was trying to drive back into town in the developing blizzard. Nothing says holiday cheer less than freezing one's fingers while trying to attach tire chains, after getting stuck trying to ascend a Canadian hill.

But Victoria was nice. And the food was good. And the drive back to Oregon was easy, except for the six hours or so that it took us to travel the 30 miles or so from Portland to Salem (again with the tire chains). By about 9:00 pm we were starved and needed a potty break, and finally came across an open place - a meat intensive fast-food chain restaurant (not our typical style, being plant and dairy types). Avery enjoyed cheese nachos and a chocolate chip cookie. I had some sort of allegedly bean based burrito. My insides paid for it over the next several days.

But we made it home for x-mas. It was nice. Santa came and did his thing. Avery got lots of books, some toys, a pretty dress, and her most played with gift: a hula hoop. Christmas day was entertaining as we all took turns trying, and failing, to match Avery's hula huping skills.

After Christmas, "the boys" (as Jasmine calls any sub-assembled group of my friends) and I took an ill-advised over-night ski trip up Mary's Peak, bringing critical essentials for a winter overnight adventure, including dura flame logs, a stinky wet dog, and an over-supply of adult beverages. We skied in for four hours or so and set up "camp". Our camp consisted of a hastily and sloppily dug "flat" spot in the snow, one tent, two bivy sacks, and a sheet of plastic. Naturally, being winter in Oregon, it poured down rain all night long. Our elevation was just high enough to ensure the rain was as cold as physically possible before turning to snow. Outstanding misery!

We returned to town the next day (New Year's Eve). I managed to stay up until about 9:00 pm on New Year's eve - several minutes longer than Avery, at least.

Other than that, I've been doing lots of bike riding, and am, FINALLY, starting to run semi-regularly again. I decided a few weeks ago to take a break and let various injuries heal up, as one injury kept seeming to lead to another (IT Band, calf pain, shin splint... whine whine whine!). Today I had a good 6 or 7 miles of wonderful trail running, followed by an hour or so of mountain biking. For some reason, my calves always get super sore after a bit of a running layoff, so I'm trying not to push the mileage back up too soon, and still substituting biking for riding quite a bit. My IT Band feels great though, and my shin feels pretty close to normal. Yahoo!

Oh yeah, and we finally got the new car we ordered about four months ago - a metallic blue Nissan Versa hatchback, which nicely combines fuel efficiency and my innate cheapness. But it's a nice little car, with a big inside and plenty of headroom for me, and a good size back seat for passengers. No complaints at all. Though, when watching the Rose Bowl, we noticed two Nissan commercials: one for the car called the "Z", which had a soundtrack that went "VROOOOOOMMMM... VROOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!", and another for the Versa, that featured light, airy, plinkity-plink type music that suggested somewhat less in the manliness department than did the "Z". Oh well. On the bright side, my Versa has a rear spoiler, for extra downforce on those high speed driving maneuvers I do while hearing "plinkity-plink" music in my head. I didn't actually order the rear spoiler, but I did order ABS brakes. It turns out Nissan insists on packaging the spoiler and ABS brakes together. Which makes sense; to someone, somewhere, I hope. But not to me.

Happy New Year!

Avery's Big Blog

I've been meaning to write and post pics from our Arizona trip, but somehow I never get around to it. Instead I'll link to my parents' pictures from the trip, and steal a page from Avery's journal, which she did for school in lieu of her regular homework:

Ouch.

Javelina didn't go so well for me. My IT band on my right side flared up again, and I had some other issues lower on that leg, I think from over-compensating a bit. At mile 30 I sat down to change shoes, and when I stood up again, I had that all-too familiar lock-up in my knee from an over-stressed IT band. IT isn't something to "run through". And I wasn't in the mood to walk 70 miles and wreck myself for the rest of the year. I wasn't happy about it, but I guess quitting was the right call.

Nice job to Jeff Riley who represented Oregon strong, and took the overall victory. There was some stiff competition, but Jeff ran smart early, and put the hurt on the field late to take the win by a large margin.