Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

No run tonight. I slept in this morning because I forgot to set my alarm last night, so I missed my Monday morning pump fest at the gym.

The reason I missed my run tonight is a little more serious. Catherine's heart thing turned out to be significant enough that the cardiologist wanted to see her today. And once he saw her, he wanted to keep her at the hospital for a few days. So I'm here with her, and we're waiting to hear more about what exactly is going on and how long we'll need to stay. For now, all we know is that it's idiopathic ventricular tachycardia, but since we're not doctors we don't know the exact implications. We do know that she may need surgery after baby comes, though. Hopefully not. Anyways, we'll keep everyone posted as we learn more.

We're still in the hospital, but we're a little more settled in now, so I was able to get out for a run. I hopped on the BST right behind the hospital and then ran up Dry Creek until I hit a semi-arbitrary turnaround point that allowed me to make it back just as the sun went down. The run was way too short, but incredibly satisfying nevertheless, and it makes me miss living in the Avenues. I could run that trail all day long (in fact, there's an idea for a long run).

As for Catherine. We've now figured out that we're here so they can keep an eye on her during a loading phase for her medication. At first we thought we might get to go home today, but then they decided the medicine they gave her wasn't working, so they decided to try something new, which means we'll be here for at least another night. Sigh.

Right now it looks like Catherine is in the clear, so we're mostly worried about Baby Girl. They tell us the medicine should be safe, but they also say there aren't enough studies to really know about effects on pregnancy. We're hoping for the best.

1:00:41

We're out of the hospital now, thankfully. It will be nice to sleep in our own bed, and without nurses coming in all night to draw blood and measure vitals. Anyways, Catherine has to be on a special heart medication until baby comes. We've been assured that any risk to Baby Girl is minimal, but it's still scary. Also, Catherine has to wear a heart monitor for the next 30 days, and she may need heart surgery after giving birth. Fun for her!

I was pretty beat all day. Something about not getting enough sleep. Still, I managed to drop by the gym tonight for four lethargic miles on the treadmill. I feel the need to maintain some consistency no matter what, just so I don't lose the habit forever.

31:45

Not much to say about today. With Catherine our of the hospital, things are pretty close to being back to normal, or at least as close as they'll be until the monitor comes off. I only have two classes on Thursday, so I woke up an hour later than normal and spent most of the day catching up on my reading. I managed to fit in an hour on the gym tonight. Forty minutes of tempo/threshold stair stepping, with 10 minutes of easy cruising on either end.

I got in a very short run at about 11:30 tonight, just to say I could, but that doesn't mean that today was so busy I didn't have time to work out. Running just wasn't a top priority. I woke up early and headed to the gym to do some lifting, and then I spent the entire day over at the law library. Catherine picked me up at 6:30 or so, and we grabbed dinner before running a few errands on our way home. Then we had to turn right around because I had an intramural basketball game at 10:00. As usual, we lost. And as usual, it wasn't really that the other team was that good. Of course, they did have a tall guy kind of like me but way, way better. I slowed him down a bit, but I didn't manage to stop him. Which is too bad, because he was pretty much the team. Anyways, I was hungry, sore and tired after the game, but I still got my miles in like a good boy.

24:02

I finally managed to get out of bed and on to the trail by a reasonable time today. I started at Grove Creek and then ran an out-and-back to Orem on the BST. It's a very nice run. When we do the Big Baldy loop, the BST looks pretty flat in comparison to the major climbs, but in reality it's a continuous series of short climbs and descents. The ground was frozen when I started, and all of the horse footprints made footing difficult. On the way back the ground had thawed and all the mud made the footing very sloppy. I guess you could say it almost felt like spring.

Anyways, so ends another low-mileage week. Really, my training volume isn't as low as it seems, because I don't count many miles for my hour-long stair stepper workouts. But I think I may be paying the price and getting out of shape. I bonked pretty badly on the return trip today, and what should have been a nice, easy cruise turned into a bit of a slog. I can point out that I didn't eat much yesterday or sleep much this week, and that may explain things (after all, I did feel fantastic on Tuesday), but a more plausible explanation may simply be that I'm not training enough and therefore I'm losing fitness. At least I still have 6 weeks or so to whip myself into shape for the Fubfallo Run (not a typo).

1:49:17