Marathon Top 10 Finishes: 7 Bridges ('15), Utah Valley ('13), Salt Lake City ('08), Top of Utah ('07), and St. Louis ('04). Ran around the equator (24901.55) in 4,388 days.
And my largest challenge to date, raise $20,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in honor of my cancer survivorship and in memory of those lost to blood cancer...
DONE! $26,403.70
Grew up outside Chicago and joined the blog while I lived in Salt Lake City. Now living outside Birmingham. I am married with two daughters. Wife thinks I'm crazy for doing marathons. And yes I am crazy I'm a scientist for a living...
Rest day. Yesterday's run went ok and so far I have lasting additional pain. I'm keeping up with the stretching. Today after a morning of usual routine I took Kaitlyn for a hike at the top of Millcreek after her nap. We went for an hour hike but didn't make one mile. It was great though. She liked all the leaves on the ground and running with me for a portion of the hike.
Planning on some running tonight. Yesterday both my wife and daughter woke up with colds, again! I'm coughing a little but nothing like the two of them. Kaitlyn attended three Halloween parties last week so take your pick of were they picked it up from. So I didn't sleep well between them coughing and me worrying about them. Knee was a little more achy today than yesterday but two days post run and with the hiking... Also, I have to stay focused on rest to heal and that wasn't happening last night. We did watch some movies this weekend and that was something but otherwise finishing house set-up (of which I think I'm done) and lab work. I have my next meeting in two weeks and I have to have the poster prepped a week from today, not a problem BUT I'm still waiting on data from one of my co-workers and he was supposed to have it to me by last Monday and I still haven't seen it... Oh well worse comes to worse I present the same poster as the last meeting :)...
Just keep it simple. Knee hurt a bit but kept it short and easy.
Sleepy, sleepy... I'm very tired. I had a total of 14 hrs of work today. I got some done but just have too much on my to do list for the next two weeks. The great news is that I was able to get in a run after the bedtime routine. Just an easy three again but this is the best I've felt running two days in a row for about two months. Tomorrow I meet with an orthotics specialists. He is supposed to look at my orthotics that I've had for about 7 years. Robin's advice was that maybe by tweaking it a little and keeping up with a good stretch routine I can get back to some "real" training...
Well today was just adding to the "fun". Those of you who have
been following (thanks JD for the continued push), now know that I've seen an
Orthopod, a PT, and now an Orthotics specialist. The good news is none of them
have found anything overtly wrong. The bad news is that none of them have found
anything overtly wrong. I'm confused about this pain. I think it is an overuse
issue. Mainly too much training without proper rest and stress relief. I think
as my life gets more hectic combined with elite level training something has to
give... Unfortunately that typically turns out to be my knee. When I look back
over my injury record it almost always happens as my mileage crests 80 mpw, my
work week crests 70 hpw, and something big is going on in life, marriage,
birth, graduation, move, etc. I speak of a balance but have yet to find it. I
know Jon had a great thread awhile back about, impossible to run 100 mpw, or
something to that effect. I think for me I need to focus on stress relief,
keeping up with the stretching, and proper sleep. If I cannot do those three
things I'm too high in one of the three things that I do with my life (family,
work, and running). I'll continue to struggle with this and hopefully find the
answer. I would like to run competitively for at least 5 more years if not 15
more years... We shall see.
On to today. I got up and into lab early as I had some experiments to do
before heading to see Bill about my orthotics. Got there on time and he had a
look at me. He came to the same conclusion as the others as well as the PT I
saw in St. Louis. That is that I have no flexibility, my right leg is about
1/8-1/4 inch shorter than my left, and my leg has a slight twist outward. He
said he would not feel comfortable changing my orthotic at this time since I've
run in it for so long now. He stressed the importance of the stretches that
Robin told me about last week. So I will continue with the slow recovery and
just keep in my mind that when I do get back to 80+ mpw that I will need to keep
up with the stretching and maybe get some monthly sports massage...
Now to add insult to injury I finally caught one of the colds my household
has been incubating over the last month. For the last four weeks my wife and
daughter have been alternating colds. Today by noon my throat was sore and by
4pm my head was so stuffed I wasn't thinking straight. I misread the clock and
thought it was 5:30 not 4:30 and was rushing around lab like an idiot because
my wife had something at church and I had to be home on time... The good news
is when I ended up getting home almost an hour early we were able to head over
to the Union and vote early. The rest of the night I laid on the couch feeling miserable.
I took some Nyquil and crashed but woke up at 3am, was finally able to get to
sleep and then when my alarm went off I gave myself another 1.5 hrs of sleep to
6:30. Took a Dayquil and now my nose is at least clear but my throat is still
pretty sore… Now I’m in lab trying to get things organized and focus on how I’m
going to finish off this year. This last part is actually Thurs morning...
One step at a time. The cold started bugging me again at about 2pm. I forgot to bring a second dose of Dayquil. After work we did some pre-Halloween trick-or-treating... Then I did two easy miles on the treadmill to get warmed up enough to stretch well. I was coughing a little but the run overall made me fell a little better. My leg was stiff but I think that was because of all the twisting and poking yesterday.
Happy Halloween. In to work early this morning so that I could leave early. Left at about 3:30pm so that we could go Trick-or-Treating at Foothill Village. It is nice that the shops to that for the community. It makes life a lot easier. It was packed but still fun. After that we went to dinner and then hit a couple more houses. After bedtime I did a few easy miles on the treadmill. I bumped the pace to a blazing 7:30... Felt ok and just made sure to keep up with the stretches afterwards.
Long run, all things relative. Full night's sleep and then breakfast with the family. Kaitlyn and I then went for a run to the park. We stopped to feed the geese and watch a guy fly his model airplane and helicopter. The weather was perfect today. I'm now in lab as I have a mock up of my next meeting on Monday and have to have my poster prepared (including a new set of data that I didn't even get until last night). So I'll have a work filled weekend. The run overall went fine. We kept it very slow and my knee is definitely tight now I'll stretch a second time tonight.
