Roadkill for Breakfast

This morning was a California day. It started out really overcast and drizzly, then the sky cleared up by mid-morning.

Got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Probably because my body is all messed up on one side. Same side as the hamstring, except now it's my back and butt too.

Yesterday I did something really stupid. I was taking a picture of the girls and had to lift them up, then take them down from this tractor. I was taking them for a walk and saw this. It's my mom instinct, wanting to take cute pictures of my kids.

So I'm not sure if I did it while lifting them up there or taking them down, but I strained my back and by the time I got them both down and started walking home, I was in serious pain. As soon as I got home I took some ibuprofen and made an ice pack, iced the crap out of my back. I was scared, I hoped I didn't do any serious damage.

As the day went on, I could feel the pain through the ibuprofen, but I did a bike ride in the rain anyway, because I felt like I needed to move. I knew running would only aggravate it. The bike ride didn't feel bad except every time I went over a bump, I could feel it in my back. It hurt.

After an easy 30 mile ride I came home and iced again, continued with ibuprofen, and kept getting down on the floor, lying down flat to ice my back and using Iris's duck to prop up my other butt cheek so I'd be even on the floor.

By the end of the day it was apparent that I didn't do any serious damage but I was sore and stiff as hell on that one side. Trying to heal this thing quickly is my priority. I could kick myself, how dumb of me, finally I have a decent week of running and then I ruined it doing something stupid.

So...I decided to call off work for Monday just to spend more time icing and taking it easy. Work involves a lot of twisting and bending, always working in tight spaces. I thought if I give it another 24 hours to settle down that will help keep the inflammation down, then I can work on Tuesday.

When I woke up this morning I was stiff and was having a hard time getting up and down into a chair and couldn't bend over to hug the girls. It doesn't hurt a lot, but when I hyperextend or twist it hurts the muscles all the way around to my ribs on the left side, and my butt. I'm so pissed at myself! I'm sure it will loosen up with activity.

In addition to being annoyed with myself for being stupid again, I feel growly and snarly and irritable. Not really in the mood for anything.

Then, I destroyed my laptop screen this morning, somehow, carrying it from the woman cave into the house. I don't know what I did, but it's cracked and I am going to have to wait a week for the part to come in, so until then I am staring at an old monitor screen that I bought for $20.

Before I ruined my laptop screen, I canceled my plans to go to Wisconsin and run the 12 hour race in the end of August. Not because of my back, but because I keep running into glitches, and the back strain was just one more glitch, so maybe it wasn't meant to be.

First the airlines changed the return flight on me. The nonstop flight from Milwaukee to Denver that I made reservations on was cancelled, and changed to two flights with a layover in Kansas City that would make it a long travel day. I have to go back to work on Labor Day Monday and I'd be trashed. So that wasn't very appealing. I was going to do it anyway, but then...

I had trouble making hotel reservations. There's some huge Harley Davidson event near Milwaukee at that time and every hotel was completely booked. I called around to half a dozen hotels and no luck. I wish the race director would have mentioned this in the race info, I would have made reservations a long time ago, but I'm not sure if that would have made a difference.

The way things have not come together easily, I think the universe is telling me not to go. I can always do my own 12 hour training run here. That's probably what I'll end up doing.

But I am looking forward to next Saturday, and I'm not even racing. It's Wheaties Boy's triathlon debut at Boulder Reservoir. I'm going to meet Megan (aka Mrs. Wheaties Boy) at the reservoir and go cheer for him at as many different places along the route as we can.

And then this morning I got this e-mail with a vaguely familiar looking subject heading: Congratulations you have been admitted... I didn't think it looked like a virus, so I opened it. I wondered, since being a nurse, admitted usually means someone is going into a hospital or some other care facility. Someone wants to admit me to a psych facility, maybe?

Actually it was from University of Northern Colorado. In June I applied to the gerontology graduate program. I already forgot all about it! I was thinking about taking four courses for a certificate in gerontology.

I think I'd still like to do it, but I might wait to start until January. The classes are all online and not self-paced, so I'd have to stick to a rigid class schedule and that's a bummer, especially with going on vacation in the beginning, and my race schedule.

School is about as appealing to me as eating roadkill for breakfast. Realistically, I am looking at a good 15 to 20 years of working life left and I know I have to expand on my current knowledge base somehow, and this is definitely an area of knowledge and skill that is much needed out there.

So...whether I start this fall or postpone starting until January, it's something I think could be worthwhile. Except for the part about higher education being big business and way too expensive. Six thousand dollars is a lot to fork over, when you consider that I could run Badwater for that, and have a lot more fun than the slow torture of jumping through academic hoops for two years.

So much of it is bullshit. I'd like to skip the bullshit and take only the substance. Is the substance-only option cheaper? Just give me the damn syllabus and I'll teach myself, okay?

Maybe this isn't such a good idea...

I think I'll go back to bed and see which side I wake up on tomorrow.

Snarl.

Back to Running, Back to Life

Maybe all I needed was a good workout or two, some naps, and a few margaritas, but I feel like myself again. So far this week every day that I wasn't working I ran at least 10 miles, and three days I rode the bike 20 or more miles. All that's left is the weekend and I'm planning on a long run even if all I can do is shuffle. I need to get back to it, it's the end of July!

I was tired, three hour naps have been part of my afternoons all week, plus sleeping through the night. I wanted to go up to Estes Park today but sleep won, I think I'll have to skip it this week, do a long run here, and find a day next week to go back up there. I don't like to go up there on the weekends in the summer because the highway is jammed and everybody and their left nut is on the trail. Not worth it if you want peace and quiet.

The hamstring is feeling better as the week progresses. I'm still afraid to pick up the pace but I have plenty of time. I'm 14 weeks out from the 24 hour race, which allows for a two week taper and 12 weeks of training if I count this week as the beginning. I should end up with roughly 60-70 miles of running and about 100 miles on the bike this week. I'll continue with the bike as long as the weather allows, keep building the running miles, and see how the hamstring does. I can always do Tabata and intervals on the bike if I need to. It's the fitness I need, not the running speed.

Next week Wheaties Boy is doing his first triathlon ever, a half Ironman, and I want to go down to Boulder and catch some of it. Not sure how much I'll get to see but I'd like to at least see part of the ride and run segments. I have been considering doing some swimming this coming winter. I have no desire whatsoever to do triathlons though. I'm a runner.

I have a hard time getting my act together to go to the pool and it's been about 25 years since I've done any real swimming in a pool, so I'm sure I will be the world's worst swimmer. Wheaties Boy claims he was the world's worst swimmer when he started. If he can do a mile open water swim he can't be that bad. My goal would be to go from the world's worst to just bad.

As long as my hamstring continues on this improvement trajectory, I will go ahead and run in Wisconsin next month and get as long of a training run as possible there. For now I need to start getting more long days in to build the strength that pays off in the 24 hour. I also need to get some hill training in consistently.

I don't need to do too many super long runs before October but I need to get something in, 30-40 miles should be plenty. I'll do one in early August and one more in late September. Between those two long runs and the 12 hour run in Wisconsin I should be okay. The consistent 20+ mile days are more important anyway. Recovering from longer runs, especially if they are hard, is what takes away from training.

My strategy in October's race will be something like shuffling as much as possible and keeping the walking to a minimum to get as many forward miles as possible. On that course, with the three hills, there will be enough places to do planned walks, that if I can keep moving at a steady slow shuffle those little hills shouldn't be much of an issue.

We're making progress on the yard, two beds built, three to go, and I planted two more trees in the middle of the grass today, one on each side of the yard. We got some good rain earlier this week and I'm hoping for more. The new apricot and apple trees are growing and we haven't had to water all that much.

It will be next year before we can plant anything in them, but I'm excited to get back to real gardening. I can't believe it's already the end of July. I'm starting to think about next year and this year hasn't even happened yet. I did two things this week to prepare for next year: put in time off requests for the first week in April in case I get into Umstead 100 or American River 50, and for the middle of July so I can go out to work medical at Badwater next summer. There's talk of a 24/48/6 day race on a climate-controlled indoor 400 meter track in Alaska next summer, but I'm not so sure I want to go all the way to Alaska and then run indoors.

I need an adventure.

Work Hangover Wednesday: On Fire!

We're burning up again here in Colorado.

There are three fires that I know of going on in Colorado simultaneously. Yesterday afternoon at work, around 3 pm I took a quick walk down the hall to get something out of my locker in the breakroom, and saw out the window at the end of the hall a huge plume of smoke covering almost the entire sky over west Fort Collins.

It was from a fire in Rocky Mountain National Park, the Big Meadows fire. The temperature this week soared to almost 100 degrees here, and the wind picked up, perfect conditions for a repeat of last year’s fire season, which happened the same time last summer.

This morning, though, there was no smoke in the air, and the sky looked reasonably clear. I couldn't tell that there was a fire. Either the wind shifted, or the fire is under control, or both.

The past two days we were busy enough at work but it was manageable. Monday was a particularly challenging day for me because of all the time I put into a particular patient, but that’s a story for another place. Tuesday my big chemo got cancelled and it eased up the day considerably. Watching patients on different trajectories this week, some downward, some bouncing back, some in denial, has also been a challenge.

I woke up before daylight this morning and Iris pounced on me, wanting a belly rub. I scratched her for a while and then Dennis woke up, thinking I was getting up, he asked me to make coffee. I whined my way out of it, begging to sleep. I fell back to sleep and didn’t wake up until 8:00.

Just getting those extra two or three hours of sleep this morning made all the difference in my work hangover. It’s so much easier to face the day when you’re not sleep deprived.

It was already 70 degrees and looking to be a hot one. By the time I got the girls out for their walk it was almost 10:00.

I went out for my run, deciding to break it up into two runs today. I planned to do 6 in the morning and 6 in the evening. But there was a twist…I decided today would be the first of my Tabata workouts, to pick up the intensity to the max, to get a little fat burning and anaerobic benefit. If I survived.

It was almost 80 degrees when I got out the door, and I ran the Power Trail to warm up, trying to figure out where I might be able to sneak this workout in where no one would see me and call 911. I felt surprisingly decent on my run, even after the two twelve hour shifts on my feet and the hot morning.

On my way home I found a little isolated stretch of bike path near home where there wouldn’t be any people. It was 82 degrees in the sunshine, no shade. I dropped my water bottle, set my watch, stretched my hamstrings a bit, took a deep breath and prepared myself for the unknown…

I didn’t want to think about it. Without hesitating, I hit the start button on my stopwatch, and started the four minutes of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off as hard as I could possibly go. I went back and forth on the short little concrete path. The first couple were okay but after the first minute I could feel the effort catching up to me. I kept going, counting my steps to get through the hard intervals. Ten seconds is barely enough to gasp for an extra breath before you start the next one. By the last two I was digging hard, I thought I might collapse at the end but I didn’t.

My heart rate was easily up there around 200. I checked for 15 seconds immediately after the last one was done and it was at 180, but that was as it was dropping rapidly. It didn’t take me all that long to recover and run home for my cooldown. I got 7.7 miles in total not counting Tabata.

The flowers are going wild in our yard, and I’m hoping the summer doesn’t heat up too much and dry everything up so fast. We had all that good moisture this spring. The girls are not too happy about the heat either. I don't have AC in the woman cave- yet. That is my next priority.

Tonight I’ll go out and do another 5 or 6, and tomorrow is track day. I am really hoping the Big Meadows fire gets under control soon, or it could be a problem to have the Estes Park Marathon this weekend with the smoke.

But, I’m stuck here in the Fort for the summer and I need to make the best of it. I'm already missing Death Valley.

I do have some fun trips to look forward to later in the summer though…we’re going to Manhattan Beach again this year, and I did buy airline tickets to Milwaukee so I can run the Badgerland Striders 12 hour race in August. It’s already the middle of June! How did that happen?

Now the fun part begins: getting back into full training, adding weight workouts and core work, and burning off some of this fat that comes back so easily when I slack off even for a short time. I’m hoping to get the flame burning hot shortly…between two a day workouts, weight work, tabatas, speed, hills, and Wheaties Boy tempo runs spread out evenly and generously throughout the next few months, I can get back to feeling like a runner again before long.