No, Not in the Ribs!

What is the worst possible injury for a runner? I maintain that it is bruised ribs because that’s the one that I’m currently dealing with and my present reality trumps your facts and evidence to the contrary.

Two weeks ago I took an elbow to the ribs playing indoor soccer and launched myself across the pitch tout de suite, writhing in pain for the ref to see because that’s the way you play soccer. Despite my theatrics no foul was awarded so I guess I’m not as good at soccer as I thought. Ever since that unjust incident it has been painful to run for any length of time. Each step feels like someone is poking me in the ribs from the inside, and taking a deep breath is completely out of the question. You can see how that would make running difficult, more so than it normally is. I’ve checked my symptoms on WebMD and it says that I probably have radiation poisoning so obviously it wasn’t just an elbow to the ribs, it was a NUCLEAR ELBOW to the ribs! That really should be an automatic red card, in my humble opinion.

The worst thing about all of this is that rib injuries seem to take forever to heal. This is the third time I’ve injured my ribs playing soccer and in both of the previous instances it took upwards of six weeks before I could run without pain. I guess that’s just the way it goes. I get older. I get injured. I heal slower and complain about it here.

Also, I recognize that this is the second post in a row wherein I’ve used a French term and I do feel bad about that but I also think it brings a little class and culture to the blog, a little je ne sais quoi if you will.

G-g-groin Injury

About a week ago I pulled my groin and it felt so good I’ve been doing it everyday since! Hi-yo! No seriously, somehow I strained my groin muscle last week but I’ve been fortunate in that it hasn’t really hampered me too much. However, last night while I was playing rec league softball I managed to reinjure it. I’m going to do a couple more easy runs this week leading up to the Bolder Boulder and hope that I’m shipshape by Monday. Some of you may be thinking that it is extremely unfortunate that I injured myself the week before a race but then you people aren’t paying attention to my M.O. Now I have the perfect excuse for failing to meet my race goal. I mentioned yesterday that you should be on the look out for some good excuses this week but I had no idea that I would find one so quickly.

Actually I don’t think the injury is going to slow me down at all as I seem to be OK running on it. So why bring it up? Well, it was a good excuse to post this video of Sam Malone (Cheers) rapping about a g-g-groin injury. I cannot hear the words ‘groin injury’ without thinking of it.

Enjoy.


Sam Malone - I On Sports

My Knee is Painfree, Slower than I Remember

The good news with my running lately is that I’ve been able to run with almost no pain in my knee, probably resulting from the 600mg of Advil coursing through my veins. The bad news is that I seem to be slower. I’m blaming the slowness on the 2 weeks that I took off from running to nurse my injury, and I’m starting to rethink what my marathon goals should be, but that’s for another, more boring post.

Due to the icy paths and sub-freezing temperatures here in Colorado recently I’ve been forced to do some of my runs on the conveyor belt of boredom, which is probably better for my knee anyway. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself as I trundle along like an unclaimed suitcase, endlessly circling the baggage claim carousel.

Thus far in my training, the furthest that I’ve run is 16 miles and while it was a good run, it’s been more than 6 weeks since I went that far. I have two more long runs before the taper starts (18 miles and 20 miles) and the forecast for this weekend is not making things easy. There’s still ice on the paths and tomorrow is going to be 21 degrees with snow flurries. I simply refuse to run 18 miles on a treadmill, you’d have to be clinically insane to try that (looking at you Kristina). A friend suggested I go to a nearby Rec Center that has an indoor track, but the track is only a tenth of a mile which means that I’d have to run 180 laps and I’ll be honest with you, I can’t count that high. Seriously, I have trouble with any kind of math while I’m running. One time I accidentally ran 11 miles instead of 10 because of a miscalculation when adding ‘distance remaining’ to ‘distance already covered.’ I’ve never hated math more than I did that day.

Anyway, the success or failure of my scheduled 18 miler this weekend will be a defining moment in my marathon training, and ‘when a defining moment comes along, you define the moment, or the moment defines you.’ That’s a movie quote folks, 5 Half-Fast bonus points in the comments for the first person who can tell me what movie it’s from. 5 Half-Fast bonus points and $1.42 will get you a gallon of gas these days. Bonus points are non-refundable, non-negotiable, have no cash value and may cause a slight itching and burning.

Only 6 shopping days left, almost time for me to get started. Enjoy the weekend!

Cleaning Really Interferes with My Running

[by Candis, as if you couldn’t tell that from the title]

[image by Ian, as if you couldn’t tell, because this is how I pictured it]

Children and dogs are much dirtier than I was led to believe. I think owners of the previous understate this to those of us considering an acquisition.

This morning (is 1:30am morning?) my floors were bombarded with messes from both ends of our personal acquisitions. You should know that I’m a germ freak. Our home is not however freakily clean. (Odd eh?) Ian did not marry me for my cleaning skills- or he’d be gone already. He must actually like me. See, years of barely cleaning has paid off. I now know how much I really mean to my husband. Try it if you like, it’s risky though.

Even us ‘barely-cleaners’ must draw the line somewhere and I draw it at poop and throw up. As such, I spent a working man’s day and 3 boxes of baking soda disinfecting 2,000 square feet of floor.

My back is KILLING me (and to preempt the sarcastic, it’s not just because I’m not used to such extended periods of cleaning). I attempted a few lame runners’ yoga poses to fix my pain and trod off to our hamster wheel. It was the most painful easy run of my life. My arches hurt, my ankles hurt, my hip-flexors hurt, my back screamed and my shoulders locked. Usually I only come up with one reason I should stop running and have to talk myself through it- five is much harder to reason with.

This simply won’t do. It’s not even a running related injury, it’s an “I need a maid” injury. There you go honey, the perfect gift for me this year. I just can’t clean anymore.

“Maybe you just can’t run that far”

That’s what the orthopedic surgeon told me yesterday just moments before he doubled over in pain from a kick to the groin. OK, so I didn’t kick him in the groin, but I wanted to.

Since I went straight from work to visit the doctor’s office I was still wearing a suit and apparently you can’t take x-rays through suit pants. Really? The machine can see through flesh and muscle but it can’t see through finely crafted, Italian, merino wool faux polyester from Indonesia? I was handed a pair of one-size-fits-all shorts to wear for the x-ray part of my visit and fortunately for you, Candis was with me to snap a picture of me looking sexy as hell in oversized shorts, dress socks and a shirt and tie.

Tucking the tie into the shorts really completes the ensemble. As I walked across the office to the x-ray room I could tell from the looks I was getting that all of the nurses wanted to get in my pants, and the good news is that I had room in there for every single one of them.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor came in and inspected the x-rays. The only conclusion that could be drawn from the x-rays was that beauty is NOT skin deep as the x-rays proved that my knees are sexy all the way through to the bone. Other than that, everything looked normal. Perfectly healthy knees. X-rays = useless. Hopefully that means that I won’t be charged for them, right? Right?

Next the doctor had me lie down on the table and he flexed my knee every which way possible. He poked and prodded, he twisted, he hyper-extended, he did every trick in the book to try to cause pain or discomfort but nothing came close to the discomfort I had felt earlier when he paraded me across the office in sexy shorts like a piece of meat. It was not even remotely unpleasant and I think I may have even nodded off for part of the exam.

Finally, we got to talking about the injury. I explained where the pain was (behind my knee) and told him how it only comes on after an hour or two of running. I explained how excruciatingly painful it is when it appears and how it disappears completely after ice, Advil and a few hours rest. The final diagnosis was that I probably have a tiny Baker Cyst (also known as a Gargamel Cyst) in the back of my knee that gets irritated after running for any length of time. Incidentally, no one guessed Gargamel in the comments so you all suck at diagnosing running injuries as much as I do. That’s when the doctor told me, in between coughing fits, that I could continue running and that maybe the pain was my body’s way of telling me that I just can’t run that far. He even jokingly told me that maybe I should stick to half marathons, but it wasn’t funny. He suggested I keep running, building my long runs slowly to the point where the pain starts. He also recommended taking 600mg of ibuprofen before my long runs.

The good news in all of this is that the marathon is still in the picture depending on how far I can run prior to the pain starting up. I’m going to take a couple more days off and jump back into running again this weekend, after all I’m running the Colder Bolder 5K on Sunday with Candis and Carl and it will be my final attempt at Shaving my 5K.

The most disappointing thing about the whole trip to the doctor’s office was that I didn’t even get to pee in a cup. That’s always the best part about going to the doctor’s office. I know it probably wouldn’t have helped with a diagnosis, but shouldn’t we at least give it a try on the off chance that it would? Maybe my knee hurts because I’m pissing out pieces of my knee’s meniscus and it would have showed up in my urine sample along with traces of excellence. Hey, you never know.

Edit: I Googled Baker Cyst and it turns out the other term I was looking for is Ganglion not Gargamel, however I will continue to refer to the little bugger as Gargamel because it seems more appropriate.

It’s Not a Tumor

The mystery of my knee has been solved, thanks to the miracle of internet self-diagnosis. I recently followed an ad to the iVillage Symptom Solver website which asked me lots of questions about the pain and then proceeded to tell me that I have rheumatoid arthritis.

If it is rheumatoid arthritis then I’m screwed because the Symptom Solver also told me that there is no cure for R.A. That Symptom Solver has the worst bedside manner ever. Seriously, you can’t break that to me a little easier? You can’t tell me gently that there isn’t a cure? You can’t warm up your hands before we do the hernia check?

Despite the thorough diagnosis of the Symptom Solver, I won’t be cancelling my trip to the Orthopedic Specialist this afternoon. Hopefully he’ll be able to give me a better answer, with any luck it will even be the right answer and hopefully his hands will be warmer too. I’m actually kind of excited to go see the doctor and find out what’s wrong with my knee and what treatment it requires. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that it’s not any of the items listed on Symptom Solver’s results because even if I lose, most donuts cost close to a buck now anyway.

My guess is that it’s Patellofemoral Syndrome or Chlamydia... no... wait, I think I mean Chondromalacia. It had better not be Chlamydia, I hear that will really mess up your knee.

Doctor, doctor, give me the news

I’ve got a bad case of... well... I’m not really sure what it is... it’s not a hamstring... it’s not an ACL or MCL... it’s probably some kind of inflammation that’s caused by... well... I’m not really sure what could be causing it.

There you have it folks. I went to the doctor yesterday and he couldn’t tell me what was wrong with my knee. He listed a whole lot of common runner’s injuries and then proceeded to tell me why it didn’t sound like any of them. After that, just for fun he stretched, pulled, pushed and twisted my knee to see if he could duplicate the pain but he couldn’t, probably because I’m a tough guy. In fact, while he was trying to hyperextend my knee I looked at him squarely in the eyes and said “Doctor, do you expect me to talk?”
To which he replied with a sinister laugh, “No Mr. Vanilla, I expect you to die!” Then he tied me down, set the laser to “obliterate” and left me for dead. If it wasn’t for my laser-deflecting watch I’d have been dispatched for certain, instead I managed to escape through the heating ducts but only after making out with the hot nurse practitioner.

Yeah, so, Candis and I went to see Quantum of Solace this past weekend and somewhere after the phrase ‘hyperextend my knee’ in that last paragraph I transitioned into fiction. Hey, I’m not running much right now, what else do you want me to write about?

The Doctor (Evil?) was somewhat baffled by the way the injury happened and the way it went away in the following days. He thinks it might be some kind of inflammation and he was convinced that a MRI wouldn’t help much. The Doctor (No?) did refer me to an Orthopedic Specialist, which is great news because under my current health care insurance I think anything with that has the word ‘specialist’ in the title is totally and completely free... or maybe I’m reading that backwards. Anyway, the Orthopedic Specialist (cringe) can’t see me until Monday so I’m going to take this week off from running and then see what the specialist tells me to do. If anyone would like to buy a child I have two wonderfully behaved boys (entering the realm of fiction again) that I will gladly sell to get my knee back to its original form.

Check back tomorrow for the Podcast, and in the meantime enjoy another funny video courtesy of Marci’s blog, Ramblings of a Running Addict via Mike’s Carnival of Running at Running is Funny. If you don’t follow the Carnival of Running then you really should, it’s a lot like my Weekend Splits, except it’s actually posted on a regular basis. He even takes pot shots at Viper, just like I do.



No ellipses were harmed during the writing of this post.

Monday Miscellany

Knee Problems Persist It turns out that my knee issue wasn’t just a one time, random occurrence as I had hoped. My long run on Saturday was abruptly ended at 14 miles when the pain in my knee became debilitating. Candis doesn’t think that I should run until the pain reaches the point where I would describe it as ‘debilitating’ but what would she know. On the plus side I made it 9 miles further this week before crashing to the ground in crippling pain. If that trend continues I’ll be able to run 23 miles next weekend before the pain kicks in. On the minus side, the pain was a lot worse this time and lasted a lot longer despite breaking open the Advil Liqui-Gels and mainlining that stuff right into my bloodstream.

I could really use some good advice here, and who better to turn to for advice than a group of pseudonymed commenters who seem to enjoy juvenile humor and sarcasm on a running blog. I’m toying with the idea of taking 2 weeks off from running to try and recover fully and then resuming my training. I have only 7 weeks left before the marathon so that would leave me 3 weeks to get ready for it and 2 weeks to taper. I’m really not ready to give up on it yet, but that won’t matter if my knee doesn’t heal up. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll let you know tomorrow who was closest to what a real doctor says, since I have an appointment with one this afternoon. Yeah, that’s how bad it is, I actually made an appointment to go see a doctor.

Podcasting You are probably already aware that the Runner’s Lounge has been putting together some really good podcasts lately. What you might not be aware of is that I was involved in one that was recorded last week. Amy Lawson, Nitmos and I joined RazZDoodle to record our first podcast. Well, it was a first for all of us except Raz, but he certainly performed as though it was his first. The podcast will be available on Wednesday and I’ll no doubt provide a link to it when it’s up, but let’s face it, the title Half-Fast doesn’t just apply to my running but also to my expediency in getting posts up at this wonderful little blog. If you’re really desperate to get your hands on the podcast the second it goes live then you’re better off checking Runner’s Lounge or Running Off at the Mind (Raz’s blog). Whatever you do, don’t miss it because we tackled many of the hard hitting issues that runners face, things like llamas, Fergie, and how to best let your coworkers know that you’re a runner. A couple of days after we recorded the podcast I found the following video at EverymanTri which is another funny way to let your coworkers know that you’re a runner, but not quite as funny or as good as our suggestions in the podcast. Enjoy.

“Think like an athlete...”

Running Again

I went running yesterday morning, because I couldn’t bear the thought of resting any longer. I have experienced very little pain in my knee since the end of the all the football games on Sunday evening, but I am certain that my FBNH injury recovery system is fully responsible for what appears to be a complete recovery... almost. I had intended to run a very cautious 3 miles at a relaxed pace, but after a painless couple of minutes I found myself running at a heightened velocity. The scenery in my peripheral vision blurred together and disappeared behind me, the crunching of gravel underfoot grew rhythmically faster, my legs danced like a flautist’s* fingers trying to keep up with The Flight of the Bumblebee, the wind rushed fiercely through my ears, in one and out the other, my stride returned to its glorious, pre-injury form, and with it all, my proclivity for longwinded, run on sentences was apparently restored.

You might have deduced that it was a good run from my magniloquent description of it above, but at the very end of my 3 miles I did start to notice a faint pain in the back of my right knee again. Fortunately, I was finishing up my run and was able to kill it with a fun-sized pack of Advil. I’m going to rest up over the next couple of days and then make a second attempt at the 17 mile long run that was cut down in the prime of its life last Saturday. If I am unable to finish what I’ve started this coming weekend then it will be a sure sign that my work life has started to slip into my personal life, and also I’m going to look into having my knee replaced so that I can be ready for the PF Chang’s R‘n’R Marathon in January.

Do you hear me, right knee? If you screw up again you’re getting replaced. I simply won’t tolerate certain body parts quitting on the rest of us.

*Or ‘flutist’ if you prefer to be a little less pretentious, which I don’t.

You’re Hurt Because You’re Weak!

[a post by Candis]

Remember this post? It’s payback time!

As you all know from Ian’s last post he hurt his widdle knee on his long run last weekend.

Ian took his usual hour to prepare for his run Saturday. He mixed potions, calculated gels, went out on the back deck and then put on gloves, went out on the front porch and then took off his gloves, set up his private water station at the street and triumphantly announced he would return in an impressive 2 hours and 40 minutes (while we could also see him at his water stops). He bounded down the street while 2 PJ clad boys screamed “run blazing fast Daddy!” maybe they should have shouted “Don’t bust a knee Daddy!”

Tick, tick, tick... 45 minutes gone and the phone rang. I knew who it was and knew he needed a ride. Let’s just say it’s happened before. It’s a bad habit someone started. “Something’s really wrong. I can’t put weight on my knee... wait, let me try to run some more (genius)... argggg! Can you come get me?”

“Boys! Gotta’ go get Dad.” They jump in the car without so much as a question (normal).

All the way home, Ian showed his calmness and played down the injury. “I missed another run this week because of that dinner and now I owe RazZDoodle a beer and I probably won’t be able to go long next week, my marathon training is ruined!”

All day Saturday and all day Sunday Ian sulked around the house and used his “injury” to get out of being a useful human being. I thought he was really, really injured. “Oh, I wonder when you can get in to the doctor to get that looked at,” I asked worriedly.
“It’s not serious enough to warrant a trip to the doctor’s office,” but it was serious enough that he was unable to get up and get a beer. It was serious enough that he couldn’t stand to make chocolate milk for the boys. It affected his ability to think. He couldn’t even remember for himself when he had last taken Advil! “Honey, can I take more Advil yet? Do you remember what time I took it?”

Why is it that men are such babies about getting hurt or injured? I’ve never heard a grown man complain so much about how cold an ice pack was. Ya, it’s ice, it’s supposed to be freezing.

Don’t even get me started on his FBNH recovery system or whatever he called it. It was more like CLAW- Complaining, Loafing, Advil and Whining. (At least mine actually makes a word.)

This is all very suspect. It’s convenient that Ian got injured at the start of the weekend. He had to rest during football- all 7 games that we watched.

Hey, Ian was right -for once- it is fun to mock other people’s pain!

[Expletive Laden Title]

Until Saturday morning I was able to count myself as one of those fortunate runners who had never suffered a running injury. Until Saturday. I really don’t have the words to describe how frustrated I am right now, but that’s only because this is a PG-13 blog and I try to avoid using words like [censored], [redacted], or mother[expletive]!

At the end of my first run of the week I noticed a twinge in the back of my right knee. I skipped my midweek run due to other commitments, although I used the aforementioned twinge to justify skipping the run. Then on a brisk Saturday morning I headed out for a 17 mile run (my longest run to date). Through the first 5 miles things were going swimmingly. I was feeling good and the pain behind my right knee was barely noticeable at all. I stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the traffic to stop. The cars stopped, the walk signal lit up, and I took off at my crosswalk pace, which is a little faster than my usual pace because there are more people watching at crosswalks. I made it two steps before wondering who was stabbing the back of my right knee with a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils. I stumbled, hopped and caught myself from falling before beginning the walk of shame. No, not that walk of shame, the runner’s walk of shame. You know, the one where people see you walking in all your running attire and know that you’re a quitter. Yeah, that was me on Saturday.

I walked for a minute, barely able to put weight on my right leg before deciding to try running again. Yes, you read that right, even though it was difficult to put weight on my right leg I thought I’d give running another try. Needless to say, it did not go well. I actually ended up calling Candis and telling asking her politely to come and pick me up so that I wouldn’t have to do the walk of shame all the way home. It sucked.

Since Saturday morning I’ve just been R.I.C.E.-ing it (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation for those of you who aren’t ‘in the know’). Except, the Ice was really, really cold and I didn’t like that so I replaced icing my knee with drinking beer, and that seems to be just as effective at relieving my pain. And then I also modified ‘resting’ to be ‘watching football’ which is still pretty relaxing even though it often involves me raising my voice at the TV. I don’t have anything to compress my knee with either so I changed ‘compressing’ with ‘nachos’ because nachos go great with football and beer. Elevating my knee worked out OK, but I usually have my feet up when I’m watching football anyway so I changed ‘elevation’ to ‘hot-tubbing.’ Suffice it to say it was a pretty relaxing weekend, even taking into account the intermittent screaming out obscenities at my right knee, and on the plus side I did come up with a new injury recovery system for runners: F.B.N.H. which is short for Football, Beer, Nachos and Hot-tubbing. Sure, it’s not an easy to pronounce acronym like R.I.C.E. but it more than makes up for its difficult pronunciation in its enjoyment factor.

For those of you are wondering (including you Candis), no, I’m not going to see our family physician, those people are nothing more than witch doctors and voodoo specialists with their fancy cars, high priced degrees and white coats. No, I’ve always believed that laughter was the best medicine, which is why we took our kids to the circus instead of the pediatrician when it was time to get their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, the weather has been absolutely perfect for running these past few days in Colorado. I can’t tell you how many runners I’ve cursed at for having the nerve to be out running while I was injured. Have they no sense of decency? No compassion for a fellow runner? Those selfish rat-[censored] can kiss my [bleep]ing [expletive]!

My Balls Ache

I ran 12 miles on Saturday and ever since then the balls of my feet have been killing me. What? Oh, you thought I meant those balls? How uncouth of you. To be honest I am a little bit offended at your boorish imagination. Sitting there reading my blog and thinking about my private parts, it is quite unacceptable! Not only that it's downright discourteous and disrespectful to me as an individual.

Let's be serious, if I were to ever experience discomfort in that area, my very favorite area, I would give up running faster than you could say "testicular fortitude." Heck, I'd give up eating and probably breathing too before I'd put up with any discomfort down there.

As I was saying, I ran 12 miles on Saturday and the pain started around mile 9 or 10. It began in the ball of my right foot and by the end of my run it was affecting the balls of both feet. It's actually much better today but it was pretty painful yesterday. Has anyone ever experienced this? It just figures that something like this would show up 3 weeks before my half marathon. It's like a metaphorical kick in the balls (yes, now I'm speaking about those balls... metaphorically anyway).

Excuses

"I cannot run this race today,"
Said Half-Fast, while in bed he lay.
"I pulled my hamstring and my groin,
I have a serious swelling in every loin.
My feet are blistered, my ankle's sprained,
And what if I have over-trained?
My arches have fallen to the floor,
My body feels like it's ninety-four,
I've got shin splints, athlete's foot and stitches,
And now my kneecap really itches.
My heel is burdened by Achilles Tendonitis,
Or it might just be Plantar Fasciitis,
Either way I should stay at home,
And not risk Patellofemoral Syndrome.
My feet are too slow, my legs are too fast,
And what if I keep getting passed?
I once heard that running can cause arthritis,
I'm already developing Hip Bursitis.
My quad's are too loose, my hamstring's too tight,
My left leg's faster than my right.
My calves have turned a dark shade of orange,
I got my toe caught in a door-hinge,
It caused a muscle tear, just partial,
And I know it broke my metatarsal.
I have Iliotibial Band Syndrome, or I.B.S.
And look! My hair is such an awful mess.
I dislocated my funny bone,
I'm sure I suffer from Plica Syndrome,
I have Tennis Elbow, and my belly is -- what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today's the scheduled pre-race rest day?
G'bye, I’m off to carbo-load and eat soufflé."

Inspired by Shel Silverstein's poem 'Sick' which can be found in the book 'Where The Sidewalk Ends'. The orange/door hinge rhyme didn't work so well, but I've always wanted to try to rhyme something with orange and that was the best I could do. Yes, I know that Iliotibial Band Syndrome is technically shortened to 'ITBS' but 'I BS' seemed a much more apt abbreviation for my purposes. What are you a doctor?

Frustration

I rolled my ankle playing indoor soccer on Friday night and when I say ‘rolled my ankle’ I mean ‘was kicked in the foot by a dirty, cheating, European player’. Had I myself been a ‘dirty, cheating, European style player’ I would have avoided the injury by diving at the first hint that there might be some contact and then complained to the ref. The player in the video below, (who is one of the most talented in the world by the way) has it perfected. Notice that he is grabbing his ankle and appealing to the ref before he even lands on the ground! Lesson learned.



I have since gone 3 straight days without running. Saturday morning I couldn’t even put weight on it, but I’m walking normally now. If I believed in karma then this would clearly be due to my mocking my coworker’s injury, but I don’t believe in karma so it’s not. This is all just great timing too because I’m running a 10K in a week, and according to this article on Cool Running your body can lose running fitness quickly.

After all the time and energy and miles you have invested to get it into shape, your body will thank you by forgetting it all at the earliest opportunity. It's a difficult truth: you lose fitness quickly when you stop all training.

A general rule of thumb is that it takes about two weeks of "retraining" to come back from every week in which you do no exercise.

This is good news indeed! It means that I’ll be back in top form
2 weeks after the race. Fantastic!

Personal Running Log

Once again, the only posting that I plan on doing on the weekends is to update my personal running log which is abysmal this week.

Week of 5/13 through 5/19
Tue 5/15 - Tempo Run 8 miles total inc 6 miles @ 9 min/mile pace
Thu 5/17 - Easy Run 3 miles @ 10 min/mile pace
Total Miles: 11 miles

I rolled my ankle on Friday playing indoor soccer so I missed my final run this week which would have been my long run.

My Co-worker has Shin Splints!

I just moved into a new office and the guy that works next to me was telling me that he has shin splints. Awesome! This is perhaps some of the best news that I've had in a long time. Is he a nice guy? No. He's a great guy, model citizen, hard worker, loyal friend, and what's more he's training for a half-marathon that's coming up in 4 weeks.

As you may or may not know I myself am training for a 10K race that's coming up in less than 3 weeks, and I'm always concerned about getting injured right before a race. It's that time when you are peaking in your training and there's always that worry in the back of your head that you will suffer from an over-use injury and miss the race. Either that or you will enter the race knowing that your likelihood of walking is so high you might as well be dug in against the Yankees middle relief. But now, I don't have to worry about injury. Why you ask? Do you have any idea what the odds are of two people who work in adjacent offices both getting shin splints? They're 1 in 340,774. (This may or may not be true). It's kind of like how TSA always advises you to carry a bomb with you on the airplane (also, may or may not be true). Because again, the odds of two unconnected people both carrying bombs onto the same plane are insanely high. So if you take a bomb onto a plane and don't detonate it you're bound to have a safe flight (Definitely, not true).

So rejoice with me all you readers, rejoice at the misfortune and pain of others that all but ensures an injury free upcoming 3 weeks.