running again

After 3 months of very little running, Kattie went 12 miles! She flaked out a bit on the last big hill, and clearly isn't in anywhere near the shape she used to be, but seemed to really enjoy it. I went with her.

(For the sake of the dignity of one of my running partners, please don't pay any attention to the fact that I'm wearing THE tights that I'm not allowed to wear around her friends because they didn't come from the *men's* section of Target and they match hers. They have zippered legs, and at $25 I thought they were a great deal!)

I figure my knee bursa feels 95% of normal. After 3 months, if it wasn't healed yet then it wasn't going to ever. What can't be cured must be endured--or else must be precisely injected with 40mg of triamcinalone. That near miracle was about 10 days ago, and now the main things that kept me from yesterday were a) laziness, 2) foul weather, and iii)fear of the return of pain, which is almost worse than pain.

There's a personal trainer in our ward who's partially come out of her motherhood leave-of-abscence. She's taken on about 15 couples for a 10 week fitness challenge. It's been enlightening to see how much I've been eating. I'm calorie monitoring, not counting per-se. She has us using www.sparkpeople.com. If you want to improve something, monitor it. I've been eating 1000 calories for breakfast each day.

Here's the initial measurements:

Measurement Type	Measurement	Category
Weight	156.6	Healthy weight range for height*: 125-168
BMI	23.1	Normal
Body Fat	13% **	upper end of "Athlete" range
Sit & Reach (flexibility)	20 1/2"	85th percentile, well above average
Push-ups	40	>90th percentile, off the charts for a skinny old guy
Abdominal Strength	50	60th percentile, above average- these were a new variation of the standard tortuous sit-ups.

*Healthy weight range determined by the weight range that would put you into a healthy BMI category, and at a low risk for disease and highest quality of life.

**Body fat callipers, which we used have a +/- 3% error possibilty, but are the best inexpensive body fat indicator.

She's made it a competition with a points system. I found out about it when my young men's counselors wouldn't have desert at the planning meeting we had last week.

7 Things

Sorry, I'm a little slow about jumping on to the band wagon but I wanted to put some serious thought and effort into this. When Grandma asked if I was going to write a blog about 7 things people don't typically know about me Grandpa kind of laughed and said I wasn't old enough. Which leads perfectly into my list:

1.) I like challenge; being told (or thinking) I can't do something or it's too hard and then proving others or myself wrong. One of the reasons I love climbing mountains and running so much is because it's, well, hard.

2.) I like pain; There is nothing that excites me more than a hard workout and racing (my team constantly pokes fun at my smiling while racing, I can't help it!)

3.) My two biggest fears are falling and failure; I do not enjoy the sensation of falling which is why I have such a hard time with heights - I am afraid that I will never live up to the expectations I have of myself or those of my family

4.) I can't go above 15,000ft in elevation because I get High Altitude Cerebral Edema; this was discovered while climbing mountains in Mexico.

5.) Over the last couple of years I've had problems with my tonsils, next March I will undergo my first surgery with a tonsillectomy.

6.) I was late to my senior prom due to the Oregon Relays; a track event held at Hayward Field where I ran two events, my mom curled my hair while my date waited downstairs.

7.) I feel make-up is a complete waste of time; God made me beautiful and if that's not good enough for the rest of society then DEAL because I have better things to do then rub foundation into my pores.

A day with no running

Emily's tonsils decided to enlarge to the point where they now have their own zip-code. She's spending the night at an expensive hotel in Medford. She's making plans to be separated from those swollen pus producing pieces of lymph tissue, most likely sending them on a permanent spring break.

(that lump to the left of midline is her uvula)

No wonder she didn't go very fast on our 6 mile run yesterday.

Javalina Jundred

Also known as a peccary, the javalina is a pig-like mammal.  It is also the name of a 100 mile race I attempted.
This is the first race to which I've flown. I met up with my running buddy Todd Ragsdale, who took the costume contest seriously by dressing as a zombie. I've never written "eat brain" on anyone's scalp before.
It was a 25 mile drive to the start in a big park in the desert NE of Phoenix AZ. The course consisted of 7 laps on a 15.4 mile loop with a few hundred feet elevation gain each way on dirt/sand/rocky trail.
We started in the dark, and at first the pace seemed really slow. I made a point of staying behind the leaders, and even dropped back a little after the first 5 miles thinking I was saving myself. But by the time we reversed directions after the first loop I knew it was going to be a long day. At 31 miles my stubborn pre-patellar bursa was really hurting. I put a stop to that with a little self medication, and felt great for the next 9 miles then limped in to the 41 mile aid station. Todd caught up with me there, and with a little more medication I ran hapily with him for the next 5 miles in the 80 degree heat of the day. My knee got progressively worse after that, with shorter periods of comfort and longer periods of walking stiffly. I think I walked over half of my 4th loop. Perhaps from limping, the arches of my feet started to hurt a lot as well. So I called it quits a little while after sunset after completing 100k in something over 12 hrs.
Todd made it 93 miles before his knee did him in.
So now I've taken 3 weeks off with no running (other than limping 1 mile with Esther and Zachary, and some soccer with Esther.) I think the left foot instep pain was coming from my navicular bone. It is hurting less, and the knee doesn't bother me on a normal set of stairs anymore. I think a couple more weeks and I can start running again.
I went 62 miles without a blister, but 30 minutes of soccer gave me big ones on the balls of my feet. They still weren't nearly as bad as Todd's toes.

PROOF : I am my father's daughter

A couple of weeks ago I went on a run (surprise). I had heard about some trails on Witham Hill and was desirous to see what they were like.
So during one of breaks in between classes I found my self running down Harrison towards the bike path that would take me to the trails. There are some great trails up there. There’s not that many and they mostly loop back and forth but it’s some great scenery. During the course of the run I took a side trail that looked promising but soon found myself lost without a trail weaving through trees and hopping over brush. “This is something my dad would do” was prominent in my mind. As I was doing this I came across a homeless camp, it most terrifying. I quickly turned around and tried to find my way back. I soon found a trail and started running along it only to come to a gate, I hopped the gate and continued on my way only to discover I was running down a rather steep hill in a horse pasture and I wasn’t sure how to get out. There was a series of horse pastures and a road just beyond them which I was determined to get to. I made my way out of the horse pasture and started running along a dirt road that ran parallel to the road I wanted. Unfortunately there were several horse pastures preventing my access. I soon came to a falling down barn and a creek, with a running jump the later was soon taken care of and I found myself roughly twenty feet from the road with only a ten foot fence covered in barbed wire in my way. With some tricky climbing and “I really hope no body sees me” running through my head, I soon slipped through the fence and stood at the edge of the road. I didn’t know where I was, what road I was on, or which way to go. I did know that I came from the east, so that’s where I wanted to go. As I started running in that direction I realized there was a bike path on the other side of the road which led me to believe I was on 53rd. This hypothesis proved to be correct within a few minutes when I reached Harrison. Grandpa wasn’t so pleased when I told him the story, my dad laughed and said he was proud of me.
On my run yesterday I was able to study the anatomy of rotting deer. It stunk.

bad nursing

I've been nursing an injury along for over 2 months. Every time it starts to get a little better I test it out, and realize I've lost conditioning, so I push myself and then it hurts worse.

It's just a pain that comes from the front of my knee cap. It was numb for the St George marathon, so that was good. I've had days and even some runs where it hasn'tt hurt at all, so I thought I was on track for this coming weekend, but I ran on the bike path 3 days ago while Pam biked, and it continues to hurt. My plan now is to not run until Saturday morning, get 100 miles in, then rest it some more.

Weeks 3 & 4

Last week I had my first college mid-term, EVER, in Biology. The following day I broke my lap top by dropping it accidentally on its side. And something else rather sad happened but I don't recall. I also officially gave up sleeping and have moved on to do better things with my life. I ran my first 5k of the season and pr'd from last year by roughly a minute finally breaking 20min with a 19:16 time.
This week I had two more exams, and the last race of my season. For the last three weeks or so I've been dealing with some pain in my calves. The muscles are really tight and I have some nasty knots. The trainer literally had to dig her elbow into my calve in an attempt to get them out. It really hurts. But while I race for some reason I don't feel the pain, after wards it kills.
The Beaver Classic is not a spectacular event. It's open to colleges of any division and locals who wish to run. As a 6k it follows the circumference of Avery Park on the grassy section three times. I started out to fast, a rather bad habit, and broke 6 min for the first mile. The second mile didn't feel so bad but the third was hard and it hurt. I did finish with an average of 6:06 per mile and a pr of 22:54 taking roughly a minute and a half off of my last time placing 29 out of 120 girls.