run this amazing day

It was a LONG month here. September Goals Don't get angry at the HR monitor.  It's your stupid heart. Mostly success.  Mostly. Figure out race day clothes and train in them before race day.  I MEAN IT THIS TIME.   Done and done...at least until Mother Nature threw a 40º-temperature drop at us. Put some green stuff in the recovery smoothie. I tried it, I didn't like, I'm moving on... Make Molly "Happy Birthday" pupcakes.   We decided to celebrate her birthday with Graham's this month, but she did have some puppy frozen yogurt. Do the core work on the day it is actually scheduled. Mostly a win, until my back went nuts. Start taking pictures again!  Your cell phone is not a nice camera. Done! I made a lot of decisions in September.  I decided to change my A race, I decided to bring a sexy new ride home, and I decided not to   to   not to   am still deciding to ride it in the A race.  I followed my training plan pretty perfectly.  I survived two i

  The shot you are looking for is at 2:00.  You're welcome.

1. Well, I'm 9 days out from my A race, so what am I doing?  Why, I'm sitting in a physical therapist's office crying again , that's what.  My bruised foot has returned to normal but my cranky lat has exploded into a stiff neck crunchy shoulder back spasming mess.  I skipped last Friday's swim.  Saturday it was all pretty cranky but Sunday it actually started to feel better.  Monday morning I woke up and could move, so I went ahead with the swim on my schedule, although I kept the intensity very low throughout.  The rest of Monday, my lats and shoulders felt tired and sore - the way they usually do after a long swim - but nothing hurt.  Tuesday I saw my PT, and he moved lots of things around, and Tuesday night everything just exploded.  The original issue was that I had a rib out of alignment which was making my lat spasm, but now my ribs are all back where they belong and the spasm hasn't ended.  The pain is traveling up from my lat into my upper back and neck

I might never be fast, but I'm so happy to be able to run. Or (possibly) to be able to punch someone in the face while running.

I used to be a devoted stretcher.  Before, sometimes during, and after all of my runs, I would stretch all my leg muscles.  When my IT band issues started popping up in 2002, I learned how to stretch those and added it to my rep.  In late 2006, a PT introduced me to a foam roller.  I pretty much only think something is working if it REALLY REALLY HURTS, so I happily bought one and rolled those suckers out daily.  I shook my little angry finger at people who told me they ran all the time without stretching. Fast-forward to 2011.  I've now met quite a few doctors who have informed me that I'm hypermobile.  Hypermobility essentially means what it sounds like - my joints have a lot of motion around them.  No one PT actually suggested that I stop stretching so much, but one did tell me to maybe focus on foam rolling instead of stretching.  The difference, to me, is that with stretching, you are lengthening the muscles and with foam-rolling, you're just hunting for knots and usi

I decided last week to do Waterman's Half instead of Poconos 70.3, and with that, planned to go down over the weekend and check out the course.  Fortunately, Lauren had already done a course recon, so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.   I headed down early Sunday morning.  The state park is about 50 minutes from my house, and I pulled up to the gate only to realize that I had left my wallet sitting on the dresser.  Fortunately, the poet was willing to drive my way with it (my hero!), so after an hour of banging my head on the steering wheel and cursing my poor packing skills, I was back at the front gate with my $3 to head in.  I unpacked and headed out...only to get 15 feet out of the parking lot and realize I had forgotten to put on any ride glide (a mistake I make fairly often).  I looped back, threw a handful of goo in my shorts, and finally - FINALLY - headed out. The first stretch of the course is on the side of a small highway.  Traffic was sparse, but the

1. I think I would have really enjoyed being a doctor because of the triage. 2. I really like Sudoku.  I do not like crossword puzzles. 3. One of my favorite things to do is read in bed with something crunchy to eat. 4. Whenever I decide to make a big purchase, I have a last-minute freak-out about spending the money.   5. I'm having a hard time focusing on anything except how crackly and angry my back feels today. 6. I bake a lot of things, but don't eat very much of what I bake.  That's the poet 's job. 7. When I was an undergrad, I started out doing technical support on the Mac side and was incredibly bored.  We got 1-2 calls per day, if any, and fought over them.  I switched to supporting the PC side and was never bored again. 8. I started wearing glasses when I was 5.  My eye doctor switched me to contacts in the third grade because of how quickly my eyesight was disintegrating. 9. I've been working from home for over 2 years now and I st