Wow! I haven't updated this blog for a while. If I'm not posting, it doesn't mean I'm not running, just that other stuff is occupying all of my time! A lot has happened since my last post. I was excited to drive Finn to camp, and was switching days, so that I didn't have to worry about missing a workout. Well. I drove Finn to camp, or rather, almost to camp. Our 2000 Honda Odyssey, with over 300,000 miles on it, died. Somewhere on MO State Highway 8, between Potosi and Shirley MO. In a thunderstorm. The good news is, the wonderful folks from camp came and picked us up, and Finn got to camp with only a minor delay. The bad news, the van is dead. Really and truly dead. Transmission is shot, and the head gasket is leaking anti-freeze. Glad I didn't take the puppy along! Poor Jacob. After working a 12 am -2 pm shift, he had to drive the 90 miles to pick us up, and back home. That was July 6.
July 7th, I went to see the gastroenterologist, who was extremely unhelpful. He did tell me I can eat whatever I want to, but that's apparently because my colon isn't exactly healing, and he wants to do more testing in 3 weeks. Aargh. Didn't exactly have an inspiring day that day, then thunderstorms in the afternoon kept me from making my appointed rounds of the park. I do have to say, though, that I am extremely happy to be back to eating real food! Oatmeal, with soy milk, banana, almonds, and chia. Yum. Roasted potatoes and Asparagus with dill-lemon Cod. Yum!
July 8 I had a super-busy work day, but did manage to get a 3 miler in, in intense heat, with Jacob at Forest Park, which was a beautiful as always.
July 9th we were scheduled for a 10 miler. It was 110 F, with a heat index of 113, so we waited until about 4:30 pm to leave. Jacob pushed the stroller. We ran down to Carondelet Park, around it, back up to Tower Grove, and around part of it, then headed home. We only ended up with 9.52 miles, but I'm counting it as done. We ran for 2 hours and 15 minutes, which is adequate.
July 10th was crosstraining. I did an hour of Agility with Merlin, then did a bunch of stuff with the kids.
July 11th was a rest day, although not restful, because Jacob flew out to Washington, to help his parents with some farm work, and some other chores and plans. He'll be back on the 22nd. Until then, it's early morning runs or nothing for me!
July 12, got out the door by 5:45 am, it was a cool 86 F. Ran around Tower Grove Park in my Merrell Pace Gloves. I like running in them, they are super-light, protect my feet, and my legs actually feel like I have had a workout when I finish! It's getting to feel odd putting on my standard Ryka running shoes, like I'm wearing high heels! I realized that the park is pretty empty at 5;45, except for the hardcore runners and walkers. Everyone says good morning, and I like that! I saw a bunch of wildlife
Are we caught up yet? Good. Tomorrow, I will rise early, run 5, and get to work!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Update on Fund Raising!
Through so many of your generous donations, I've got a total of $743 to date! This is great! However, I still need to raise more to be able to scholarship someone to KPA. $5300 -$743 = $4557. Which means I need to raise $350.55 every week for the next 13 weeks. I am considering having a bake sale, or something like that. Any ideas?
Day 20
Today is scheduled for a 5 mile. However, I have to drive Finn to Camp Lakewood, so I'll be taking liberties with the schedule once again, making today a rest day, tomorrow a 5, and Friday a 3 instead of a rest day. This shouldn't adversely affect Saturday's 10 miler, or tomorrow's doctor's appointment. Hope to get an all clear of some type from the doc, but I suppose all I'm getting is the okay to get the colonoscopy.
My life is just fun on top of fun!
My life is just fun on top of fun!
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Day 19
A sunny fun day. Since Jacob is working the crazy weird overnight shift right now, and Selena is at camp, going this morning while it was cooler wasn't an option. I took the kids to work with me this morning, then came home, had lunch, and went for a 3 miler with Jacob pushing Rory in the stroller, and Finn riding his bike. Tower Grove Park. Wore the Merrell Pace Gloves, they are still really awesome! My legs are a little tired from Saturday's long run and yesterday's bike ride. My right calf has been a little bit crampy, off and on, but I think it's an overuse injury from driving too much! All in all, a good day of running, now back to walking dogs and grocery shopping. Calisthenics later today. I'm still pretty weak, I suppose from the meagre diet. I see the doc on Thursday, here's hoping for some good news on the food front.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Day 17 and 18
Day 17, Sunday, was supposed to be a cross-training day. I had a lot of work, and we had to drive Selena to archeology camp in Kampsville, IL, so I switched Sunday with Monday's rest day. Good thing. We drove up to Kampsville, and I was commenting all the way about how high the river was, and how it was about to storm, and worrying about the river coming up over the road. (I have a serious phobia and recurring nightmare about driving into a river, sometimes off a bridge, sometimes just off the bank) The family kept telling me to take a deep breath, chill and stop being neurotic. We finally got to Kampsville, ate some dinner at a fun place, The Kampsville Inn, which is right on the Illinois river and you can watch the Ferry crossing back and forth while you eat. The storm started, the power went out, briefly, in the restaurant, and we finished dinner. Dropped Selena at the dorm, and got a tour. I said, "We need to get out of here, so we can get home before the road floods!" Again, I was told to "Chill". We left, drove about 4 or 5 miles down the road, and the Sheriff flagged us down and told us to turn around, Highway 100 is flooded. We could see the water streaming over the road, probably 3 feet deep and moving very fast. I began to panic, knowing I had dogs to walk (mine and other peoples'), and not knowing any other way to get home. I made Jacob ask the Sheriff how to get back to St. Louis. He pondered on that for a moment, and said, "Probably the only way to do that is to go up and take the Kampsville Ferry across to Carrollton, and get on 67 to Alton, and cross the river down there." Sigh. At this moment, I had a serious anxiety attack. Actually, it didn't totally hit until we were in line for the ferry. I was crying uncontrollably, trying to be quiet so the kids wouldn't notice, and hyperventilating. Flooding is NOT good, either in the literal sense, or in the psychological sense. Especially if you're me, and they are directly related in both senses! At any rate, we made it across the river, into Carrollton, and started down 67. Jacob was driving faster than I would've, and I told him that. He wasn't worried. Then we hit a sudden patch of flooded road, and he kept it together, but it was scary. A couple miles later, here is another Sheriff. The road is flooded, but he's letting people drive through, slowly. It was probably a foot or two deep. More scary. We made it the rest of the way without major events, but I'd really had enough already. I got my work done and went to bed. I must've been grinding my teeth the entire time, and all night, because I woke up with a terrible earache, and a TMJ attack like I've not had for years.
Today, however, is a new, and better day! A wonderful day. It was still raining buckets this morning, so I gave up my plan to bike to work. I tended the pups and kitties, grabbed some groceries, and came home. I baked an Angel Food Cake, sliced up some strawberries with honey to serve with it (for the family, not me, no berries!). I also bought some strawberry syrup for myself, since I can't have the berries. Jacob got some work done painting beehives.
The sun finally decided to make an appearance, so we packed up some picnic lunch, put the bikes and bike trailer in and onto the van, and went to Grant's Trail, one of our local rails-to-trails projects. It's a perfect place for kids to work on their cycling skills because it's wide, flat, paved and closed to all but foot, bike and skate traffic. Finnegan rode his new bike, I rode my awesome bike, and Jacob pulled Aurora in the Burley trailer. We only did about 6 miles, but it was fun, and Finn worked on passing, announcing "On Your Left", and hand signals. We saw and heard lots of critters, and got a wee little cross training workout.
Came home, dropped Jacob off since he has to work an insane midnight to noon shift tomorrow (Starting at midnight tonight). Took kids with me to care for some doggies, then to Mr. Wizards Frozen Custard!
Came home and took Merlin for a walk. Now the kids are watching a movie, getting ready for Macaroni and cheese and peas, dogs are fed, and all is well.
Tomorrow- 3 miles and pack Finnegan for his first experience at sleep away camp on Wednesday!
Today, however, is a new, and better day! A wonderful day. It was still raining buckets this morning, so I gave up my plan to bike to work. I tended the pups and kitties, grabbed some groceries, and came home. I baked an Angel Food Cake, sliced up some strawberries with honey to serve with it (for the family, not me, no berries!). I also bought some strawberry syrup for myself, since I can't have the berries. Jacob got some work done painting beehives.
The sun finally decided to make an appearance, so we packed up some picnic lunch, put the bikes and bike trailer in and onto the van, and went to Grant's Trail, one of our local rails-to-trails projects. It's a perfect place for kids to work on their cycling skills because it's wide, flat, paved and closed to all but foot, bike and skate traffic. Finnegan rode his new bike, I rode my awesome bike, and Jacob pulled Aurora in the Burley trailer. We only did about 6 miles, but it was fun, and Finn worked on passing, announcing "On Your Left", and hand signals. We saw and heard lots of critters, and got a wee little cross training workout.
Came home, dropped Jacob off since he has to work an insane midnight to noon shift tomorrow (Starting at midnight tonight). Took kids with me to care for some doggies, then to Mr. Wizards Frozen Custard!
Came home and took Merlin for a walk. Now the kids are watching a movie, getting ready for Macaroni and cheese and peas, dogs are fed, and all is well.
Tomorrow- 3 miles and pack Finnegan for his first experience at sleep away camp on Wednesday!
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Day 16
This morning's run was everything I could ask for in a run. I woke up, took care of the dogs, cat and birds, and debated waking Jacob. I left him sleeping. He's worked so many long hours over the past few days, and will be working another dreadful shift on the 5th, so I thought he needed the sleep. And sometimes, I just like to run alone. I had a glass of apple juice, since I'm having a lot of gut pain again, and am back to clear liquids. I prepped my stuff (bottle belt, phone into ziploc bag, shoes, socks, hat, sunblock), and drove to Forest Park, which is a beautiful park in the city. It's large, the site of the 1904 World's Fair, our Science Center, Art Museum, and our fabulous St. Louis Zoo, two golf courses, two tennis centers, an ice rink, an archery field, the Jewel Box (a beautiful glass greenhouse), the Muny Opera, baseball and softball, soccer and cricket fields, and woods and streams, playgrounds and trails. I started my run at the Fieldhouse, and ran on the gravel path along River Des Peres, to the new sections of boardwalk over the wetlands restoration. It was amazingly gorgeous. Cup plants taller than me, cheerful, rippling water, water lilies, frogs, egrets, a Blue Heron, and a Green Heron, and a flurry of red-winged blackbirds. A male, Eastern Box Turtle was in the middle of the path, in all his neon colored mating season glory. I saw the spot where the raccoon feeds, lots of empty, shining, discarded mussel shells in the water, just off the edge of the rock. So much beauty, just in this small space.
I'm glad I ran by myself today. The thing I love most about distance running is the time I can spend with myself, and enjoying the world around me. I can run for two hours, and process a lot of information, internal and external. I'm not able to do sitting meditation for that period of time, my body is too distractable, I have to keep it busy with the motion of running to be able to focus enough to map my internal landscape. At the moment, I have a lot to process. This colon issue has me thinking and chasing my mental tail. Everything I read tells me that what I need to do to solve this, is what I have always done, before this happened. I feel betrayed by my body, we've been partners for so long, and yes, we've had our ups and downs, but I thought we had a good thing going, and now this. I have a deep seed of fear that it has to be cancer or some other invasive problem, because I can't believe my body would let me down like this. And I can't stop thinking about my dad, diagnosed with colon cancer and dead in a couple of years. It's good to be able to write about things you don't really like to say out loud. I've said it, but not often. I'll say it here, though, I am not going to die. Then I think more about this, how they say lots of people have it, it's no big deal, it's controllable, but I was already doing everything they say to do, and THEN I got sick. So, I spent some time thinking about fear, and death, and how I can be proactive in my own healthcare, how I'm going to heal this, and thinking about how many people are so much worse off than I am, and still going out and getting on with their lives. Which seems to be the only smart choice. To live each minute that you're alive.
Then moving onward into appreciating the world around me, and thinking about how I am still able to move myself forward, and motivate myself to do the training I want to do. I was extra thankful for the local running store, Ghisallo Running, who had an aid station set up at the park, for anyone who needed a drink. They gave me a nice cool cup of watered-down Gatorade, just what I needed at that moment, as my water was warming up.
The west side of the park is hard to find shade in, because of the golf course. I don't begrudge the golfers, but I do think golf courses are a selfish use of space, monoculture, and elitist by their nature of denying anyone else use of that space. They won't even let barefoot runners on the course, even if no one is playing. I'm alway a little worried about mis-fired balls hitting me when I run down the side of the course. I know that's a somewhat irrational fear, but I guess I'm worst-case scenario girl when it comes to being whacked in the head by fast moving objects.
When I run I think about lots stuff, some profound, some not so much. Like that Standard Poodles (of which I saw a herd, a woman with 6 Apricot poodles) have the same body type as Afghan Hounds (of which I saw two, running, much more graceful than I). They have an upright posture, small waist, smooth, light gait, high tail carriage. On the only slightly more profound end, I spent a lot of time pondering the word play of running as a soul-baring, sole-baring, and weight-bearing, activity.
I know this is a long, disjointed, rambling post. It was a long, disjointed, rambling run. I'm not a fast runner, for me, running, like everything else, is a process, not a product. Today's process was exceptionally good.
The stats for today, 2:02.10 hours, 8.80 miles, max speed 7.25 mph, avg speed 4.49 mph, elevation gain 1,472 ft, min elevation 451 ft, mx elevation 728 ft. This from My Tracks on my Droid. Wore my Ryka shoes today, since I'm not quite ready to do long runs in the Merrell's.
I'm glad I ran by myself today. The thing I love most about distance running is the time I can spend with myself, and enjoying the world around me. I can run for two hours, and process a lot of information, internal and external. I'm not able to do sitting meditation for that period of time, my body is too distractable, I have to keep it busy with the motion of running to be able to focus enough to map my internal landscape. At the moment, I have a lot to process. This colon issue has me thinking and chasing my mental tail. Everything I read tells me that what I need to do to solve this, is what I have always done, before this happened. I feel betrayed by my body, we've been partners for so long, and yes, we've had our ups and downs, but I thought we had a good thing going, and now this. I have a deep seed of fear that it has to be cancer or some other invasive problem, because I can't believe my body would let me down like this. And I can't stop thinking about my dad, diagnosed with colon cancer and dead in a couple of years. It's good to be able to write about things you don't really like to say out loud. I've said it, but not often. I'll say it here, though, I am not going to die. Then I think more about this, how they say lots of people have it, it's no big deal, it's controllable, but I was already doing everything they say to do, and THEN I got sick. So, I spent some time thinking about fear, and death, and how I can be proactive in my own healthcare, how I'm going to heal this, and thinking about how many people are so much worse off than I am, and still going out and getting on with their lives. Which seems to be the only smart choice. To live each minute that you're alive.
Then moving onward into appreciating the world around me, and thinking about how I am still able to move myself forward, and motivate myself to do the training I want to do. I was extra thankful for the local running store, Ghisallo Running, who had an aid station set up at the park, for anyone who needed a drink. They gave me a nice cool cup of watered-down Gatorade, just what I needed at that moment, as my water was warming up.
The west side of the park is hard to find shade in, because of the golf course. I don't begrudge the golfers, but I do think golf courses are a selfish use of space, monoculture, and elitist by their nature of denying anyone else use of that space. They won't even let barefoot runners on the course, even if no one is playing. I'm alway a little worried about mis-fired balls hitting me when I run down the side of the course. I know that's a somewhat irrational fear, but I guess I'm worst-case scenario girl when it comes to being whacked in the head by fast moving objects.
When I run I think about lots stuff, some profound, some not so much. Like that Standard Poodles (of which I saw a herd, a woman with 6 Apricot poodles) have the same body type as Afghan Hounds (of which I saw two, running, much more graceful than I). They have an upright posture, small waist, smooth, light gait, high tail carriage. On the only slightly more profound end, I spent a lot of time pondering the word play of running as a soul-baring, sole-baring, and weight-bearing, activity.
I know this is a long, disjointed, rambling post. It was a long, disjointed, rambling run. I'm not a fast runner, for me, running, like everything else, is a process, not a product. Today's process was exceptionally good.
The stats for today, 2:02.10 hours, 8.80 miles, max speed 7.25 mph, avg speed 4.49 mph, elevation gain 1,472 ft, min elevation 451 ft, mx elevation 728 ft. This from My Tracks on my Droid. Wore my Ryka shoes today, since I'm not quite ready to do long runs in the Merrell's.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Day 14 and 15
Day 14 was a real trial. I had a lot of "kid-stuff" to deal with, and it ate all of my run time during the day. Then we came home to a plethora of dog puke and diarrhea, which I had to leave, because some guy was harassing Selena on her walk to Target from a friend's house, so I had to go drive her back, and Jacob didn't get home from work until 8:30, then graciously cleaned up the horrific mess, but we didn't get to run, then, either.
This morning, I planned to run early, before it was 95F, but woke with a lot of gut pain, again. It seems to be dissipating, so I'm hoping to take the kids on their bikes and run a long, flat, stretch of Grant's Trail this afternoon.
I am determined to get my marathon training done, and I will. These sorts of obstacles always come up, and they are always surmountable. I always get to the finish line, and I don't intend to change that now!
And a quick shoe note! I am still LOVING, LOVING, LOVING the Merrell Pace Glove shoes! They are fab for everyday wear, I love the color (chili pepper red), and they are non-smelly (a big issue for me) and they are easy to rinse off (stepped in a LOT of muck the other day) and are holding up well to my abuse. I tend to go through shoes very quickly, the soles, although soft, are not showing signs of wear.
This morning, I planned to run early, before it was 95F, but woke with a lot of gut pain, again. It seems to be dissipating, so I'm hoping to take the kids on their bikes and run a long, flat, stretch of Grant's Trail this afternoon.
I am determined to get my marathon training done, and I will. These sorts of obstacles always come up, and they are always surmountable. I always get to the finish line, and I don't intend to change that now!
And a quick shoe note! I am still LOVING, LOVING, LOVING the Merrell Pace Glove shoes! They are fab for everyday wear, I love the color (chili pepper red), and they are non-smelly (a big issue for me) and they are easy to rinse off (stepped in a LOT of muck the other day) and are holding up well to my abuse. I tend to go through shoes very quickly, the soles, although soft, are not showing signs of wear.
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