Little Miss Wildpants and Fall in the Fort

Finally got my butt out the door today, I ran 6 miles. It took me a solid hour plus a few, but I did it.

Every step was a struggle mentally. My legs don't feel all that great either, but I think my brain was worse. I have what I call "elephant legs". It feels like every step is such an effort to pick each leg up and put it down.

But I did it. I deserve a beer after all that. But I haven't cracked one open yet.

Two days in row, I ran. Amazing. We'll see what happens tomorrow. If my legs are dead tomorrow, I'll know it's my legs too, not just my brain.

Iris keeps following me out to the woman cave. Little Miss Wildpants. She tells me what to do. I wish I could get some of this 13 1/2 year old dog's energy. I did text Wheaties Boy for a shot of motivation before I got out the door. He's the only creature I know who has more energy than Little Miss Wildpants.

Isabelle after a walk. She's not Miss Wildpants. She's toast.

Looking out the woman cave now, this is what we see.

This fall has been spectacular. Here are some photos of the flower garden in the front yard and the tomato boxes after the first hard frost we had.

Earlier ths week I was out at Horsetooth and climbed Horsetooth Rock, instead of doing rock Repeats, I took the trail from the top of the Rock Repeat course and climbed to the top of the rock, then took off on the Audra Culver trail for a brief little run back to the service road. I wanted to share some of the photos from that day.

Longs Peak from partway up.

There were flowers still blooming near the top, at 7000 feet, in November!

Views into Redstone Canyon on the other side of the Rock and looking out at Longs Peak, below.

Looking out over Horsetooth Reservoir and Fort Collins to the east.

This little guy was at the top waiting for me to take out some food.

Views of the Audra Culver trail.

I am so lucky to live here.

Cat Saves The Day

I have had absolutely ZERO motivation to run lately.

I did make it up Horsetooth Rock on Wednesday, mostly hiking and ran the Audra Culver Trail section to come back down for a grand total of maybe 5 or 6 miles. Tuesday I went to the track at noon and ran for 20 minutes before I called it a day. I don't know why, I hit the 20 minute mark and I just didn't feel like it anymore.

I don't have anything physically wrong with me, except maybe still some fatigue, but I can't seem to get myself going. I can walk the girls, I can go out for walks, but no cross training or running appeals to me.

The one thing that did appeal to me, temporarily, was when I was up at the rock and I had a brief fantasy of being able to run trails again and go do the Grand Canyon R2R2R again or do some of those beautiful trail runs like Paatuwaqatsi on the Hopi reservation next fall. But the thought didn't get me any more motivated to run.

Then Friday morning I was trying to figure out how to get my lazy butt out the door when Cat called. I only had a little time because of an appointment later, but it was enough time for us to go for a short run.

What a concept, we could just get together and run for an hour. No need to run a gazillion miles!

And we did it. We dragged our bodies around Warren Lake, and I joked that crossing the street we looked like two little old ladies, and we commiserated about our mutual lack of motivation and menopausal mood disorders among other things. It was the perfect match. It got me out the door, even though I feel like I was waddling. If I can actually get my butt out the door today and/or tomorrow, I will be ecstatic.

It's always harder to get through the first few runs coming back because I feel so clunky. It doesn't help that I've been eating everything in sight lately. I can tell I've packed quite a few pounds back on. I am a fat magnet right now since I haven't been working out. Just gotta get moving again and maybe the appetite will go away, too.

I had a very busy week, work-wise, and Monday is busy, but after that I will have a little time to relax and re-focus.

Thursday I did a webinar with Kate from Pennsylvania. Similar discussion to my previous self-produced video, but it went in different places. We had some technical glitches and it's even longer, about 47 minutes. But my own videos will be much shorter as I go forward.

I have a ton of work to get done in the yard this weekend. The leaves have been slow to fall this year and we always wait until they are all down so we only have to pick them up once. But it's getting deep out there in the yard and there are still more leaves on the trees! The weather has been perfect. Next week it's supposed to get cold, anticipating snow. Maybe. It looks like November, but it doesn't feel like it yet.

As far as I'm concerned, January 1 is the first day of spring, it's coming soon!

Celebrating A Year: Something Different

This is a video I made today as I was preparing for an upcoming set of online interviews. I was out in the woman cave playing with the webcam and of course I did not do hair, makeup or professional dress etc.

This is just me, raw footage, speaking about my transition from traditional nursing to having a nurse-owned business, what I do now, and why.

It's pretty long, nearly 30 minutes, but if you care to watch the whole thing, you'll learn more about the AleneGoneBad outside of running, nursing, and gaps in cancer care in our health care system.

It's been nearly a year (November 16th to be exact) since I left my nursing job and started my business. That calls for a party!!

On the running front, today I could not motivate myself to run. I'm not worrying about it. I'll get back to it when I'm ready.

If you do watch the video, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Obesify Fort Collins...

So the big news this past week was that Dunkin Donuts opened in Fort Collins. Midtown Fort Collins, only about a mile from my house.

For a town that has so many mediocre restaurants and franchise chains, you would think, no big deal, just another restaurant with crappy food.

Well I found myself in a traffic jam while trying to cross College at Harvard, at mid-day in the middle of the week, so I made the mistake of trying to turn up the frontage road along College to escape the traffic jam.

Bad idea. It turned out that the traffic jam was cars lined up and wrapped around the entire block and blocking the frontage road both ways, trying to get in what appears to be a drive-through window at Dunkin Donuts!!!

Excuse me, that's spelled "drive-thru". This is Amurrica.

Hell, you would think they were giving away an iPhone 6 with every dozen donuts, or that Black Friday was moved up by four weeks. Haven't you people ever seen a donut before?

Once again I take refuge in my woman cave...

This morning I ran the Tortoise & Hare 5K with the Fort Collins Running Club. My third run this week. My hips and knees ache, I feel stiff and old. I did not go there to run fast and I stuck to my plan, which was to run at a leisurely pace and cheer for all the runners. There were well over 100 runners this time. I had to run to the bushes too because I drank too much coffee this morning, and still managed to somehow run it in under 29 minutes even with the pitstop.

I ran there and ran home, and then spent the rest of the day working on various writing projects and preparing for a webinar this week. Having to turn on lights in the woman cave now, since it's getting dark so early after the clock change last night.

Maybe this week I will be a little more active than last week. Right now I feel like I need about a year off...

Scary!

The other morning Dennis went out to get the paper and found this dude passed out in front of our garage.

Felix was out late, probably took SpongeBob drinking, and like the sponge that he is, he wandered off and found our house and passed out.

Felix claims he is glad that SpongeBob is no longer couch surfing at his house, so we're stuck with him for a while. Until he ends up back in Felix's custody. When he least expects it...

I feel really "off" today. Not sure if it's a delayed body hangover from doing the Rock Repeats the other day, I doubt it- or being ahead of an incoming weather front- possibly- or what. I just feel tired and not very motivated.

This morning started out rough, we found out that one of Dennis's college teammates had an emergency aneurysm repair after being rushed via helicopter to a hospital in Denver yesterday afternoon. He's my age. I don't even know all the details yet.

And just yesterday I heard about a guy I knew in junior high back in Pennsylvania who suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack, 51 years old.

For some reason those events smack you in the face. I suppose as you get older, these things happen with more frequency and hit closer to home each time. Life is short, live it now.

Live From The Woman Cave: False Start

Only three days into the week and I can tell I need a long rest. Monday and Tuesday were crazy jam-packed days with work and I got out for an hour run on Monday followed by a very brief half mile run with the tire.

I could feel the tire in my low back just slightly on Tuesday when I woke up, but it went away over the day. At noon I met several people from the Fort Collins Running Club at noon at the Fossil Ridge High School track. I jogged easy laps while they did 400s. I just wanted to be there and meet some of the new members of the club. I ran about 4 miles and did a short ride on the bike, mounted on the trainer, that afternoon.

Today I went up to Horsetooth Mountain park and did two Rock Repeats, something I haven't done in months. I figured it would be good to get some climbing in, all I did was hike the uphills and jogged the downhills, I know I will be sore as hell even from that, but I needed to do it.

On my way out there I ran into some old running friends I hardly ever see anymore, they were out with their dog to hike the rock once. We talked for a while before we got started and again before I went out for my second climb, they were finished with their hike.

There were deer out everywhere, on the roads and trails.

Tuesday before I went to the track I had a long conversation with an acquaintance from some of the cancer-related organizations I've been involved with in town. We had not talked much, just briefly when we ran into each other at social functions, since I left the hospital, nearly a year ago. It was a great conversation, ranged from local cancer politics to life and death existential issues to our mutual dislike of the profit-focused lack of care in health care.

It's the kind of thing that sticks with you, and when I was running on the track afterwards, I couldn't wait to get to a quiet place to process what we had talked about, it fit perfectly into a piece I'm writing now.

This week I've been working mostly from home and been spending time with the girls. Iris was waiting for her dad to come home from work in this picture.

Tonight I indulged in a seasonal beer from New Belgium, Accumulation IPA. It has a light body, a mildly citrusy hoppy taste without being overpowering, and hardly any bitterness compared to most IPAs. I like it. Okay, maybe the hard core beer connoisseurs would say it's girl beer. Girl IPA. Girls appreciate the good things, we don't have to drink tar or acid to prove ourselves.

Speaking of girls, they had an extra little treat tonight before we came out to the woman cave, while I opened my beer. They love to lie down at my feet while I work, but occasionally they'll want in or out of the cave.

The rest of the week has some walking, time on the bike, a swim or pool run, and the Tortoise and Hare 5K, a Fort Collins Running Club event which is low key and I will jog it, just to be there. I got a text from Wheaties Boy today asking me if I wanted to meet for speedwork on Friday! I said, you're dealing with a geriatric runner here, how about a beer instead? I don't think I'll be ready for speedwork of any type until 2015.

I can tell how tired I am, I can run and feel decent one day, but then the next day I feel like death. Not ready to jump back in yet, this week has been an experiment with short workouts to see how everything feels.

Definitely far from being ready to get back to anything called training. That's okay, I have enough deadlines and projects to keep me busy.

Tonight I made chicken-spinach enchiladas with a new recipe I invented, sort of. I borrowed a salsa recipe from a restaurant in Manhattan Beach that the owner gave me, and adjusted it just a little.

There is this breakfast place we go to when we're there and it is amazing, it's right next door to a very popular restaurant that people wait in line for hours to get into, but just down the hill there is this tiny café that serves the most incredible food, and they make this fresh salsa that they put at the table and I think I go there for the salsa as much as I do for the food.

The owner is from Mexico and he made this salsa from dried chiles and it has oregano and bay leaf in it, and the flavor is too good to describe, you have to eat it to understand.

I had some chicken breasts that I cooked a few days ago, ground those up in the food processor, sautéed some spinach and onions and red bell pepper, and threw it all together with some nonfat sour cream, and corn tortillas, and a little cheese. I baked it in the oven while I made the salsa.

I added some hot chicken broth to it. About 10 minutes before the enchiladas were done I took them out and poured the salsa broth over the pan of enchiladas and stuck them back in the oven. The enchiladas were mild, with almost nothing spicy, but the salsa was super hot and spicy, and it was a perfect combination.

Eventually I'll remember to post this on Bitchen Swill, but maybe I'll keep it a secret for a while. Good thing I made a big pan, we'll have leftovers tomorrow.

Iris is staring at me from outside. I think she's telling me to quit for the night and come in the house and go to bed.

She gives good advice.

Color, Sky, and Trails, Pain-Free

As we move later into the month of October, which is my favorite month, along with September and May, I am mesmerized daily by the colors and the sky.

This morning I went slightly out of town and hiked Arthur's Rock with Emma. I have not been in Lory State Park at all since we came back from Arizona, except to watch the staging area at the Quad Rock race. I always go to Horsetooth Park instead.

I forgot how much I love the trails in Lory. I used to run there all the time back in my Leadville training days but since my ankles went bad I haven't been up there.

I've been wanting to get out and do some vertical, and even though this is hardly challenging vertical it was so good to get out. The trail is rocky in a few places but not bad. I didn't have any ankle pain at all. Not even one little twist or peep!

I've been working on my hip adductors and hip strength in general, and I think it's helped. Less likely to twist my ankle and not be able to correct myself.

I kept having to stop along the way to take pictures.

I am starting to go a little stir crazy from not doing much. In a way I'm enjoying it but my body is not too happy about being so sedentary. I'm looking forward to starting the workouts. I've been pretty much of a sloth this past week. I will start something next week, at least consistently get an hour or so of something with an effort each day. I've been walking a lot but that doesn't get my heart rate up very high.

I've been busy, between webcasts, Hanginars, radio shows, tweetchats, speaking to students, the exercise support group I started, a book chapter I'm writing, a couple of guest blogposts and podcasts here and there, a magazine feature here and there, some advertising, and attending social and business gatherings, I stay busy. And of course, my clients. I love this.

I finally got my hair chopped shorter yesterday, I realized I haven't had a haircut since April! It was starting to look like a gray haired granola hippie version of myself at age 17.

Not much to report on the ranting end of things though, just a mild one today. I was happy to hear that both nurses who were exposed to Ebola are now clear and discharged from the hospital. I hope the other doctor in New York is able to recover. We have so many more problems in our health care system that need to be addressed, Ebola is a tiny problem by comparison. It's not a tiny problem in West Africa though, and they need help there.

In the U.S., hospital acquired infections (HAIs) like MRSA and C.Diff infect and kill so many more people and cost so much more. So do medical errors. Yet the people in power don't get that underfunding and understaffing lead to these problems. It is interesting to watch the reaction of the health care community and the media hype and paranoia machine, Ebola is the pornography of the day and HAIs are just boring now. Doesn't anyone remember all the hype about MRSA a few years back? Most people probably forgot what it was. It's not this month's centerfold.

Nobody ever said you have to be smart to be in health care. Just because someone is a doctor doesn't mean they can think outside any box. Sometimes the people who are supposed to be the smartest are the ones who have the most inflexible ways of thinking and functioning. I've seen a few dumb nurses, but I think I've seen a lot more dumb physicians. And even more so in administration, Dumb and Dumber, because you always have to have the VPs and alphabet soup of chief executives to prop each other up.

I am looking forward to next Wednesday because the election will be over. I am sick of the political ads and disgusted by how much money is being spent. I got these huge oversized postcards, full color, from the Colorado Democratic Party to remind me to send in my ballot. Are you kidding me? I would think if someone bothers to register with a political party these days, they are going to vote. Why spend all that money on direct mail? I already sent in my ballot.

I wasn't happy about the choices either. Don't tell me that Udall is going to do anything special. I only voted for him because I think his opponent Cory Gardner is terrifying. Needless to say the Colorado Democratic Party is not going to be getting any donations from me. We waste so much money in this country on these stupid political campaigns to elect people who don't do shit. And then we pay them even more to do nothing.

You know what scares me? Over the past couple of weeks I've been paying more attention to the mainstream media online than I usually do. I know about trolls who stalk the comment sections on most of these media sites. But I never read their comments. Until this week, because I was curious to see what people were saying about the Ebola thing and health care, to see if the real important messages were getting across to the public.

Nope. It became the same old slugfest of people who don't think because they can't form a rational thought. They can't write sentences, either. It's ignorant, hateful, racist and creepy. I hope that they just represent a small percentage of public opinion and voice because if this is mainstream thought, then we're in big trouble. We might as well forget about Ebola protection, let's have an epidemic and wipe everybody out and start over in a few million years. I am convinced that those people who troll the comment sections are not human. No hearts, no brains. Chilling.

There's color everywhere. Just this week the leaves started to fall down, I know what's coming next, gray skies, bare trees, and ice. I'll enjoy the clear streets while I can.

This, by the way, is the mother tree to our apricot trees. I took the pits from the fruit on this tree a few years ago and sprouted the seeds, and I planted 5 of them in our yard. Three of the five are doing well, two are as tall as me and another is 8 feet tall.

And the Buffaloes are enjoying the crunchy leaves.