A modern man doesn’t need a pedometer

I’ve been lazy to some considerable extreme lately, only playing basketball periodically and golf over the last two weeks, and have eaten in gross excess just prior to my martial arts course starting.  I completely detest basketball, and it aggravates me to no end to play team sports with people that know the rules better than me.  Nevertheless, I need to retain some degree of shape and was awfully board so I decided to go for a run in the 82 degree weather.  It’s amazing how much temperature makes a run feel.  I figured I easily did 5 miles, down Douglas, up some huge pile of dirt, down SR 23, down a power line right-of-way and back across Juday creek via connected trailer parks.  Sadly, however, my 5 mile run turned out to be merely 2.7011 miles, give or take.  I figured, what with technology being so everything to everyone, the runner should have some sort of fancy Google based application and, indeed, they do.  Using Gmaps Pedometer, you can double click your route and get the distance you ran and the calories you theoretically burned running.  Here is my route.  Not too bad.  You can switch to satellite view to see the dirt and crap that I ran through or just look at street view to see the roads (or lack thereof) that I took to run through there.

Here is the walking route I would usually take at Warren, the 18 hole golf course, if I were to actually walk the thing.  Five miles.  Yikes.  Makes me wish I hit the ball straighter.

A little b-ball and such

The 10K being run and martial arts class not starting for another two weeks, there’s not much for me in terms of setting “goals.” Couple that with the fact that I’m not sure what “goal” I wish to attain from the martial arts buisness and we can safely say that I’m sort of flying without much of a destination. After the 10k I pretty much ate everything I could. I was unbelievably hungry for a few days afterward and more or less lethargic. That was the longest distance I have ever continuously run, the first road race I’ve ever run in and the longest amount of prolonged activity I think I’ve ever engaged in. Feeling fairly confident in myself, I decided to play basketball which, if you know me, I’ve always hated with a passion. I hate basketball because I’m so horrible at it, it’s quite pathetic. I was pretty much the most athletic person on the court (it was a competition with other chemists) but I was by far the worst on the court. My knee also prevented me from moving side to side, which was sort of important. So, the bad news is the knee is not totally repaired. Who knows what’s wrong with it. I do know that basketball will never be one of those sports that I will try to become good at. Even though it was fun to play a sport with a few buddies, I hate the fact it was basketball.

10K done.

I have to admit, it was looking pretty bad there for a while. Two weeks ago I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to be able to do it and had to stop training. I wasn’t able to start training until about 7 days ago, and then it was light. I did a 5 mile run on Tuesday around the lakes at ND to see if I was going to make it. It wasn’t easy. Wednesday and Thursday I was too sore to do anything and by Friday, I didn’t want to do anything. Yesterday I mostly sat around eating jelly beans and pasta dishes to load up on carbs.

Dad got here at 6:15am this morning, about 15 minutes earlier than I had expected. My alarm had just gone off, so I wasn’t totally asleep, but it was a abrupt wake up. I drank a can of Coke Zero and took about 600 mg of ibuprofin, just in case. The knee looked rather normal and felt rather normal and, indeed, it caused me no problems for the race. In typical Vince fashion, we arrived two hours earlier than necessary to the race and watched the runners for the 5k and the half marathon run off. It was neat. I had been to a number of races in my life, mostly the ones my parents’ were in, but I had never run in one. I never figured I would, either. I saw Joe Donnely, our congresscritter from Northern Indiana and put in a good word for a piece of legislation I’m hoping doesn’t pass. He wasn’t too thrilled to be talking to me. After waiting for a few moments, we moved into the race line behind the 9 min/mile pace marker for the race to begin. I didn’t even hear the gun go off - there were about 1000 people in the line and everyone began moving.

Initially, we were getting passed by a lot of people. It mostly didn’t matter to me, since I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do a 9 minute mile, but the fatties and little kids were annoying. After about mile 3, most of the fatties had started walking and I had passed the little kids. I was doing about an 11-12 min/mile at that point and, with the race about half over, I picked it up. Mile 4 was done at about 10min/mile. Mile 5 was done at about 9min/mile and the last 1.2 miles was done at around an 8min/mile pace. I completed the course, all 6.2 miles of it, in an hour and five minutes of continuous (indeed accelerating) running. So I can declare victory there.

There was one casualty though. My poor toe. I dunno how it happened, but it’s pretty messed up. My legs are all like Jello now, so I think I’ll go take a nap. Small price to pay, I guess. I’ll post the official time when they post it on the website. We were chipped through the race, so I’ll have a better idea of how I actually did.

Here are my official results. Not too impressive, actually, but it was my first race ever.

5K OK… 10K in 5 days.

I ran a 5K yesterday around the lakes of ND and everything seemed to glide along all Kosher like. The knee presented no problems. The problem, however, is that the 5K was pretty hard toward the end. It being only the second time I ran in the last 2 months. The question is, how will 10K work with virtually no training? That’s tough to say. I’ve been keeping it at around 9 min/mile, which would be my ideal rate, since moving much slower is little but glorified walking and moving any faster is certain failure.

I guess the point is, barring something unanticipated, I’ll run the 10K and hope for the best. The last two weeks of doing nothing but popping pills to keep the swelling down may have helped the recovery process, but it’s seriously hindered the training process.  I’m also saddened that Katie won’t be running with me, since she has to go to an orientation or some garbage for Ecuador.  Which means I’ll be running solo.  If anyone wants to just come up and jump in the race with me, that’d be cool with me. (dad? if you even read this?)

In other news, I’ve lost all the weight I gained and am back to a feather-light 180 pounds. (hooray)

Hooray for running!

Finally, the knee behaved itself. I did 30 minutes of elliptical to warm it up and decided to test it out on the treadmill. Not one for half measures, I decided to push a 9 minute mile right off the bat and see how it help up over the 9 minutes. The first four were easy but at minute 6 I was dying. Not my knee, mind you, which was fine, it was me… running and elliptical are not the same beasts! By 7 I could tell my legs were getting spongy and that stabbing pain in my chest started to swell up. 8 minutes in I was dropping sweat, just trying to focus on anything other than the remaining 60 seconds. By the end, I was exhausted, but my knee held itself well. I did a cool down lap around the track and could feel the knee begin to swell, so I showered and took some NSAIDs. Hopefully tomorrow I won’t regret it. One thing is obvious, I’m not going to run the Sunburst at a 9 minute/mile pace, which is only 9 days away and… maybe… I’ll still be able to run it.

The knee is behaving itself?

I did some elliptical yesterday for about 55 minutes and my knee is quite fine.  I think I’ll try another hour on the elliptical tomorrow to see how it holds up.  If it does, maybe a run on the weekend?  Who knows.

MRI results are in

and they didn’t find anything.  So, I was “prescribed” 2 ibuprofen, 3 times a week for a week and to take a week off of exercise.  Which is really lame, since I took last week off because I was depressed about not being able to do the Sunburst.  Now, I’m feeling fairly confident, that after two weeks of not training, I’ll fail.

So, I guess it’s good news that nothing is horribly wrong, but not finding anything is disappointing and not being able to run is even more so.

Fail.

Two minutes into a 30 minute run I had to stop because of knee pain. I can do elliptical for over an hour but I can’t run for more than 2 minutes. At this point, running in the Sunburst seems very unlikely since it is only some 28 days away. My right ear bud is also suddenly defective on my iPod and I have an MRI scheduled for my knee on Wednesday. MRIs make me think bad, bad things - though, the X-ray was negative - but sometimes that don’t mean much.

It’s a real bummer since I’ve been working pretty hard to get to this point and it’s looking pretty glum. I just wish my knee was good. Life’s so unfair :(

Swimmy swimmy swim swim

Swimming in a pool is my least favorite of all things. Lately I’ve begun to enjoy the serene meditation of the elliptical, especially after about 30 minutes on it. I think that may be a function of the rhythmic pumping and the music (which I must have - I cannot run without it). Swimming, on the other hand, has gone very much the opposite. Where I used to look forward to swimming, I sort of don’t any more. I still enjoy it, the water and the splashing and the chicks with the tight swim suits, but 90% of the time my face is under water and I’m following a black line back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for 30 minutes. But I appreciate that it’s important since I can’t run regularly due to a certain body part:

What do you say to that? *sigh*. It doesn’t hurt. Doing copious amounts of elliptical actually remove the pain the next day, so long as I ice it down for hours the night before and feed myself NSAIDs before I go to sleep. If I take a day off, it hurts like a beyotch though. I’ve made an appointment with my family doc so she can look at it, concur with my observation that it’s larger than the other one and send me to a PT doc who will help me more than the university sports med guy who just told me to do some squats. A month later, that’s not doing anything and I’m a month out from the race. Barring horrible bone pain, I intend to run no matter what. Besides, I earned it doing this:

The good thing about shrinking is that you don’t have to buy new clothes if you don’t mind looking like a homeless person.

The bad news is you look like a homeless person.  This wouldn’t matter much for me if I didn’t have a wife that it actually mattered to who nevertheless doesn’t buy me new shorts to replace those that don’t fit.  Complaining is free, you know.

mmm bad week

I’ve done something bad to my calf muscles and had to abandon my work out only 13 minutes into a 35 minute eliptical thingiee yesterday.  It’s quite a bummer because now I not only have a weak knee but also seriously sore calf muscles.  To top it off, digestive problems (which are always around the corner for me) is going to make swimming unlikely today.  I’ve decided that I’m going to have to take today off, which will be the first day I skip a work out, but it’s sad nonetheless, since I didn’t get a full workout yesterday either.

Running is really painful.  I don’t know why people do it.  I don’t want to lead anyone on to the notion that I like to run, because I don’t.  There’s a buzz or a high at the end, but getting it is really awful… like whoring for crack.  My body is also rejecting it as evidence by my legs and knees, though with the PT (which includes regular leg presses), my legs are getting huge.  I could seriously kick someone in the lower part of their leg very hard if I wanted to.  Beyond that, I’m not sure what the function of huge legs with bad knees could be.

In other news, I’ve decided what chapter 3 of this blog is going to be.  Since the race (and training for the race) is over at the beginning of June, I need something that starts in June so… MARTIAL ARTS!  Woot.  I’ll be starting a martial arts course in June that combines Taekwondo with Brazilian Jujitsu.  I have no idea what that’s going to be like…