Well there’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is that I don’t have a tear in my leg like I thought I may have. The bad news is that I have an abductor muscle strain, and a hematoma (sp) the size of an avacodo. That’s what is really hurting me because it’s pressing up against my leg muscle. But it is getting better. So now the plan is to take a few more days off, and then run on Saturday. Wahoo! I was actually thinking of running today or tomorrow, but here in Denver we are getting hit with a snow storm. There’s sleet, and hail, and rain, and snow, and god knows what else. You know the weather forecasters here are so lucky. They predict how many inches of snow we may have, and they haven’t got a clue. Everything they say, it get’s doubled. For instance they will say 2 - 4 inches of snow. Or 4 - 8, or 10 - 20. If I did that at work, I would get fired. “Hey Dave, what’s sales look like for this month”? I could say, “well I’m thinking 1 - 2 million this month”. Yeah right. Loser. So the last thing that I want to do is go running when it’s icy out. I guess I could run on the dreadmill, but that sucker hurts my knee too much. So I will just wait until Saturday, and run along on the Hi-line canal with some other running buddies. My marathon is only 2 weeks away so at this point, and whatever running I can get in is not going to matter too much. But the main thing is that I will still be able to do it!
2 For The Price of One
Well that’s not really true. I’m sure that I’ll have to pay for two separate test’s. I had 2 MRI’s on Friday. One was for my leg (actually the groinal region) which took 28 minutes. The other was for my brain, which only took 21 minutes. I guess you can draw your own conclusions as to why the brain took less time than my leg. I’m not going to attempt it. My leg is actually feeling much better, but still hurts. Is there something torn? I don’t know, I’ll find out Monday. I actually had to get some Vicodin to help with the pain so I could sleep at night. Mmmmm…..Vicodin. I think that the MRI on my brain will show positive results which may mean that I will go off my meds. One of the comments that I’ve received lately on my blog has been from Blair, who had the same situation, and went off of the meds. It’s nice to hear from someone that was in the same situation and to hear what happened. I’m not sure when I’ll know the results of the MRI for my MS. My doctor is one of these guys that if you don’t call him, he’ll never call you. I think that if I had 2 weeks to live, he wouldn’t call me at all. If I had a month to live, he may call 2 months later. Good doctor otherwise.
Time for Plan B
Good news, bad news. My knee actually feels good. I’ve gotten 2 shots, and I’ll be getting 3 more. That’s the good news. The bad news is that my groin is hurting. It actually seemed to be getting better until I ran 14 miles on Saturday. About half way through, it started hurting, but of course I pushed on. Now it’s killing me, so I think I’ll have to shut it down for awhile. But for how long? 1 week? 2? I have no idea. I missed a long run last weekend, and it looks like I’ll miss another long run this weekend. The San Antonio Marathon looks like it may be another in a list of marathons that I have run while being injured or coming off an injury. But now, I will go to the gym and ride the exercise bike and do the elliptical trainer.
I have an MRI scheduled for this week and this could be the the beginning of the end for my medicine that I take for my MS. We shall see.
I eat, therefore I am
Wow. It’s amazing to me that when I’m not running, I eat like a pig. This past week was a “no running zone” week. I decided not to run and see if my knee would heal up. I finally headed out today, one week after my last run, and ran 14 miles. So far so good. The proof in the pudding will be tomorrow. If my knee is going to explode again, it will happen tomorrow. Right now it feels fine. So I didn’t run all week, and I was starving. I would eat breakfast and be hungry an hour later. I would eat lunch and look around to see what else I could stuff in my face. Luckily at dinner, I would eat and then drink 6 beers and not really be all that hungry. Maybe I should be drinking beer all day? I’m hoping my knee is going to be okay because I’m almost at the peak of my training. Next Saturday I do 22 miles, and then 2 weeks after that, I do 24. Eight weeks from now is the marathon and if I lose any more days because of my knee, it’s going to really set me back. Blah, blah, blah. Woe is me.
On a lighter note, my son Jason got engaged this weekend and it looks like the wedding will be next summer. Mmmm….maybe I could work that around some marathon in North Carolina?
Wow! It’s been a long time.
I don’t know what it is other than being lazy. I enjoy writing, but I just haven’t been motivated lately. But the good news is I’m still running. The bad news is my knee hurts again. I did a very hilly 20 mile run yesterday where the elevation change was over 1,000 feet! Actually got to the top of this hill and it was freaking chilly. But, I really had a great run. It’s the best I’ve I felt after a 20 mile run ever. But as I said, my knee is hurting, so I will need to go back to the doctor and get those wonderful shots in my knee. This will unfortunately, slow down my training for my marathon. I’m just hoping that it will enable me to bounce back quick enough so I don’t miss much and therefore be able to run decent come November 15. My dog Miles is now officially running with me. We did a mile last week, and a mile today. He does real well as long as he has a stick in his mouth. Maybe I should try that.
Football season starts today! Well it actually started last Thursday, but today is the official start in my mind.
50″ TV - check
Beer - check
I’m ready.
I’m back to it finally.
It’s about time that I write something. I’ve just been having a mental block as far as writing goes. I can always write little snippets of stuff, but it doesn’t ever seem to amount to anything. I guess I’m just not all that exciting!
I’ve started to ramp up my training a bit, and I even joined up with a small group of people for runs twice a week This group is put together by a local athletic club called Qi (pronounced “Chee”), and they run on Tuesday and Thursday mornings around a local park here in Denver called City Park. The best thing is that it’s free, and the next best thing is that they are mostly at my speed, which right now is slow. Not to say that they are slow, I think they just don’t want me to lag very far back and then lose interest.
Then on Saturday’s for my long runs, I run with a group from the local running store, Runners Roost. They are the greatest people and the best part is they have food and drinks for you afterwards! One time they even had someone there making pancakes. They were awesome. We run in Parker and Aurora, CO, and a lot of times we go into the Cherry Creek Park, which makes for some nice trail running, when it’s not too wet and muddy. After I ran with them yesterday, I needed to buy some shoes, and they found a pair that I usually run with, the Mizuno Wave Alchemy, that were “last seasons model”, and they gave them to me for half price! Perfect!. So of course I had to buy some socks and some gels because I felt guilty.
This past week I ran 32 miles, which is the longest I have run in a week since last year! I think my schedule has me running more this week, and then I go back down a bit for some recovery. I am definitely looking forward to that!
A Wedding and more
Today is my son Mike’s wedding. I’m back in Michigan for the ceremony, and while today should be a happy day for me, I feel conflicted because my best friend’s mother passed away the other day. He and his wife were going to be at the wedding, but now they will be driving from Michigan to Philadelphia to bury his mother. I’m sure that once the wedding starts, I’ll put that behind me, but once the wedding is over, I’ll be in a funk. I went to my best friends Dads funeral in Philly 35 years ago, and I’m trying to hook up a flight to Philly once again that day after the wedding, but the problem is last minute tickets cost an arm and a leg. On one hand, I should just buck up and pay the money, on the other hand, it’s a lot of freaking money! Another option is to drive to Philly, and then fly back to Denver from there. That’s not as much money, but it’s a long drive from to Detroit to Philly.
But today is a day I need to focus on my son and my other kids that I don’t get to see very often. It has been raining all morning, but now it’s cleared up and I think that today is going to be a great day.
San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon
Well I finally picked a new marathon to run. On November 15, I will be doing the San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon with my oldest son Jason. This will be my 5th marathon and his first and I really can’t believe that he decided to run one! Although I have been running, the serious training starts now. One thing that I don’t like about a fall marathon is training in the summer. One of the major problems that I have with my MS (and a lot of people with MS have it) is getting too overheated. It wears me down real fast. Today I ran 12 miles and by the time I finished it was 80 degrees, so I struggled the last few miles. It’s not bad during the week when I can get in 5 miles or so in the morning. I get out the door at 5:00 and it feels great. It’s harder on the weekend because I like to run with someone when I do a long run, but it’s harder to find someone to run with that early. The best I can do is run with someone at 7:00. I can run by myself, but I can’t seem to do very well at it. It’s probably all in my head, and being that I don’t have many brain cells left, it can mess me up.
My other son Michael, is getting married in two weeks. Yikes! Other than now it will be “official”, it’s not much different than before because they have been shacking up for 2 years or so. They are getting married back in Michigan so it will be nice to get back home and see my dad and daughter.
A Brief Race
This past Saturday was a new race this year to Denver called the Undy 5000 5K to help fund colon rectal cancer research. The hook is that you get a pair of boxer shorts instead of a tee shirt, and there were probably 25% of the people “dressed up” in some form of underwear attire. Most were pretty tasteful, and at least the ones that were a bit risque, they had the bodies to pull it off.
I was hoping to do around an 8:00 mile pace for this run, and I ended up doing a 8:16 pace. I didn’t really prepare myself properly for this race, and it didn’t even start until 9:00 am which by then was already 75 degrees. Usually for a short race like this, I warm up with an easy 1 mile jog, and then I do some strides to get the heart rate going. But it was already getting hot so I decided not to do anything, which wasn’t too smart.
The first mile I started out and did a mile in 7:37 which really killed me right there. Between the first and second mile, I wore out and did it in 8:34. I even stopped at the water station and walked a bit. The third mile I did in 8:22, and the last tenth of a mile I smoked it at a 7:15 pace! Wahoo.
A Great day for a Run
Another half marathon is run and done and today was a great indication of how much training means to a successful run. I haven’t run very much in the last three weeks and when I did run, I didn’t push myself. Today was the Rocky Mountain 1/2 Marathon, and I knew going into it that I wasn’t fully prepared.
One thing about this run that I didn’t like, is that they don’t start until 7:30am. I know that I would have done much better if it had started at 6:30, or even 7:00 because it really got hot the last half hour or so of the run. I ended up taking a few walking breaks in the last 4 miles, so that alone probably cost me 3 or 4 minutes.
My final time was 2:02:54, which is the slowest half marathon that I’ve ever done. But that’s okay. I was hoping for around 2 hours, so I didn’t miss it by too much. I ended up with the following stats;
I finished 616th out of 1497 runners and 352 out of 585 males.
The good news is my knee felt good and they had some great beer at the end from Left Hand Brewing Company. None of that Michelob Ultra Light crap that are at some of the runs.
I was diagnosed with MS about 6 years ago and I am one of the lucky ones. I don't have too many problems associated with it, and the disease has actually slowed down. I took up running 4 years ago just to see if I could do it. So far I've run 4 marathons in 2 years and 12 half marathons.