Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

I'm still realizing just how bad I messed up my left ankle last week. It's weird, because I knew I was being stupid at the time, but I  honestly didn't think I was hurting myself. I just thought I would be really, really sore for a day. Anyways, nearly a week later (I think, although I didn't actually bother to check my calendar from last week) and all the soreness is gone, except for the pain at the front of my lower left leg. 

And even that has been feeling a lot better. Enough that I got up before 5:00 this morning for a quick out and back on the BST from Battle Creek to Dry Canyon. But about a mile and a half I could tell my leg was in bad shape. I second guessed myself twice before making the right choice and turning around to hobble back to my car. If it weren't for the shooting pain in my left leg, it would have been a nice run. As it is, I wound up with just over three miles in just under 30 minutes. And a sore leg. I was worried that I had set myself back a few days on the recovery, but within an hour or two I felt like I had before the run.

This evening I went to the gym for a hard hour on the stairs. I borrowed a workout from my cycling days and did a 5-20-20, which is nothing more than 5 minutes at threshold followed by two 20-minute intervals at threshold, with five minutes of recovery between them. I think I got the intensity about right, because by the end I felt like I could keep going but I was dying for it to be over.

Anyways, I think I'll cross train again tomorrow and then I'll test out my leg with a short run on Wednesday. 

No pain at all in my leg today, which is a good sign. Just to play it safe, I stuck to the stair machine for one more day. A steady 75 minutes at a moderate pace, good for 510 hypothetical flights of stairs.

Anyways, it's game on tomorrow, with my first final (Structures of the Constitution) at 8:30. It's been a great class, but the test is going to be rough. If the weather and my leg cooperate, I'm hoping to blow off some post-test steam with some mellow miles on the BST.

That's one final down. Throughout the test I never felt unprepared, but since the moment I finished I've been second guessing my answers. I guess I may as well put it out of my mind, since I can't change anything and I won't know my grade until June. Three to go.

I celebrated the completion of one class with an out and back on the BST from Battle Creek to the shooting range. I ran into Dragon Vulture and his friend, who were running the same route in reverse, and on the way back I tried a side trail that they mentioned to. Good choice.

Anyways, no pain in my leg today. Both legs reminded me that I'm not quite in the clear, but I felt fine for the whole run. I'll probably continue alternating between running and cross training for the next few days, and I hope to be ready to return to a steady diet of trail running as soon as finals are over next week.

1:06:19

I had planned to cross train today, so as not to push my luck with the injuries. But I decided to run at the last minute, and ran a few easy miles on the treadmill in my XC flats. It's surprising how much strain the flats put on my calves. Still, I'm determined to adapt and see if that helps my knee at all. I ran three miles on the flat, after which my calves were starting to feel worked, so I dropped the speed and cranked up the incline to finish with a 1.1 mile hike and about 675 feet of imaginary vert.

40:00

Worst. Test. Ever. We opened our test packets, and it turned out someone had included the *$&% answer key. After three minutes of deliberation, the administrators decided to have us hand in the answer keys and then take the test as if nothing had happened. Which ignores the fact that even if no one cheated (and it wouldn't surprise me if no one did), more than half the class still saw the answers. And it's not like you can exactly un-see that, either. So the entire curve for that class has been severely compromised. And given that our entire grade for the course will be based on that two-hour final, and given how merciless the law school curve is, I'd say the entire course has been effectively invalidated. 

Speaking of compromised curves, 10 of the 40 multiple choice questions were plagiarized verbatim from exams given by professors at other schools. The problem is that these exams are available as practice tests on the internet, along with the answers, to anyone who happens to stumble across them on google. So a few students in our class, through the course of normal exam preparation, happened to be handed the answers to the questions on our test.

Can you tell I'm angry?

Anyways, I blew off some steam with a trail run in the Draper network. Hog's Hollow to Ghost Falls to Clark's trail. Or something. Nice trails with about 1,500 feet of mellow climbing. I even took a page from Jun's book and drank out of Ghost Falls.

1:13:27

My knee has been unhappy again for the last couple of days, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend hours on a stair machine when the weather is finally getting nice. So this morning I headed over to Alpine and ran up into the Draper trail network again. I started with the same run as yesterday, but before I ran back down Hog Hollow to the car, I threw in an extra loop on a few trails I'd never been on before. In the end I wound up with a little less than 12.5 miles and a little more than 2100 feet of vert.