"Recharge Cycle"...

As K and I were reflecting on the past few weeks and the weeks to come, he dubbed the past month as a much needed "recharge cycle" for us. We haven't been traveling every weekend as we were for much of May-July, so we've had some time to relax at home and do some things around town. In addition, the sudden, dramatic decrease in my mileage has also given me more time and energy for other things as well. Overall, it's been a good break for us, especially as things are about to start ramping up again with fall travel, races, and of course, college football. I'm bracing for the latter.

I'm slowly trying to ease back into running and regain my base. How quickly that occurs is still to be determined. I'm hoping to continue incorporating cycling into my training over the next few months, as well as hit the trails again. K is starting to reemerge from his running hiatus as well so hopefully we'll both enjoy running pain-free again as the temps eventually cool down. There are so many upcoming events to choose from, but I need to get a better handle on my fitness level and recovery status before making any plans. I still haven't canceled my hotel reservation for St. George - just haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet, although I know I can't run this year. :(

We sold my car this weekend and are working it out with just one car until we can get down to Houston next weekend to pick up my new car. As I was making the final payments on my old car, I decided that there was no time like the present to finally get a Porsche. Let me put this in perspective..my dad has worked for PCNA since I was in elementary school. I grew up with him bringing home a new Porsche every month or so. I learned to drive in a Porsche. I always knew that I would get one someday, and well, now felt like a good someday. No, I'm still not getting my dream car (911). No, I'm not getting a new Porsche. Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how expensive these cars are? Honestly, I really didn't until we started looking into this last month. My dad is helping me get a nice, used Boxster at cost. K and I are both excited. Vroom, vroom.

We're heading to San Francisco for the upcoming holiday weekend. Once again, the cooler weather will be a welcome change (and this time I will pack more warmer clothes!). I'd really like to get out and enjoy the city with a couple of runs again, so hopefully my quad will cooperate.

Cha-cha-changes...

Well, there's been a few significant changes that have occurred recently in my life.

This stat illustrates the first one quite well - last week I logged 0 run miles and 160 bike miles (and I haven't been on my bike consistently since I had a stress fracture in Summer, 2005). Get the picture? I wasn't exaggerating when I said my body was wrecked after Tahoe. Unfortunately, I did not pay enough attention to my recovery since I was in the middle of my training plan for St. George. I thought that I was doing good to take a full week off after Tahoe, but then I jumped right back in the following week with 45 miles (down from the 50 miles planned for my recovery week). I didn't have any significant pain that week until the race in Chicago when my foot pain resurfaced from the latter stages of the Tahoe race and I had the sudden (obvious) realization that my legs were fatigued and not recovered from Tahoe two weeks prior. So, I took another week off before I tried running again (mostly because I was forced to because the swelling in my foot didn't go completely down until Thursday). So, I attempted a short run on Saturday...and I knew immediately that there was a problem. My quad and hip flexor on my left leg were screaming. I managed to get through 2 miles, then stopped to stretch, and finished off with 2 more. I tried to run again the next day and, again, I knew immediately it wasn't right. I stopped pretty quickly rather than try to continue and make the problem worse. That's when I got frustrated and jumped back in the saddle (after getting rid of the spiderwebs that had accumulated on my bike). I enjoyed the change of pace, but I was itching to get back in my Mizuno's. I heeded K's advice (this time) and didn't try running again until after seeing Ann for my biweekly massage. So, I had my session with her today and after hearing my initial description of the problem, her impression was that it was a problem with my psoas. But, it didn't take long once she started working to realize that it was much more than my psoas. In fact, K and I have the same injury with the rectus femoris muscle (one of the major muscles in the quads). The good news from today was that my right lower leg/foot seems to be recovered at this point, so I'll take the good where I can get it right now.

So, where does this leave me? Well, it leaves me on the bike for a few more days. I haven't really accepted (grieved) for what this will likely mean for my plans to run St. George since it looks like I will be going 3 weeks now without any significant running, which is a problem because of the sheer timing of this in terms of the race being 1 1/2 months away at this point. To be honest, it has been nice though to have the past couple of weekends free to do other things, but at the same time I'm antsy to get back out there and do what I do. I'm hopeful that I'll be back out there in the next few days and then we'll see where I go from here.

The other big change involves a re-organization at work that was just announced this week. This seems to happen every couple of years, but this time it has a direct impact on me as I have a new boss and my unit is being merged with another one. We'll see how this all shakes out once this goes into effect in a couple of weeks. My professional life and my personal life overlapped recently (and not in a good way) when a "horrific" home invasion and sexual assault occurred just two houses down from us. An adult and a juvenile were both charged in the case, so the kid is detained at work. It wasn't until a few days after he was brought in that I found out where the crime occurred, and it really, really freaked me out. Obviously I'm not going to be doing his psych eval now!

We're headed to Dallas this weekend. We haven't been there since Christmas, and I'm really, really looking forward to going. Now that I don't have to worry about getting my long run in then I have more flexibility in terms of our weekend plans (meaning I might be able to enjoy a night out with friends if I can actually stay up past 10 or 11pm!).

33 in Chi-town...

After a really difficult week last week in which I was feeling overstretched and stressed by everything, I felt a huge sense of relief when I left work on Friday to head out for a weekend in Chicago with K. We (I) opted to take the airport shuttle to the hotel rather than the train in an attempt to make things as easy as possible (the memory of me hauling my luggage UP the hill to our hotel in SF from the Bart station was still fresh in my mind). After dropping off the first passenger, we cruised into a nice party district on Rush with restaurants and bars overflowing with pretty people. Lo and behold, our hotel was right in the middle of all this. K was obviously excited about the prospects of this, but he also knows me better than that. We quickly checked into our hotel then headed out to explore the neighborhood and find a place to eat. In an effort to avoid a significant wait, we settled on a fun sushi restaurant nearby. K managed to keep me out past 10pm, but not by much. :)

The original plan for Saturday was to sleep in a bit and then go for a run along Lake Shore Drive. However, my body clearly told me in no uncertain terms that it needed rest after such a physically and emotionally exhausting week, so I ended up sleeping in a bit longer than I was expecting on Saturday morning. We opted for an early lunch to avoid the crowds at Giordano's for yummy stuffed pizza. It was a smart move because the line was out the door when we left! We then hopped on the bus from N. Michigan to go to packet pick-up for the race. The expo was held at the same place as it is for the marathon (McCormick Place) and I had a flashback of my emotional meltdown there for the marathon in 2006 when I was sick. The expo was held in one of the smaller rooms than for the marathon and it was relatively uninspiring...other than finding out that I would have a chance to meet Ryan Hall after the race on Sunday. What a great birthday treat!

After the Expo, we went to The Art Insitute for the remainder of the afternoon. What a great representation of art from so many different periods! I wish we had more time to take it all in. I was excited to see so many of my favorite artists though. Definitely a must do if you visit Chicago.

After the museum, we walked over to Millenium Park to see the Crown Fountain, 2 large glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers are really cool because they project different images on them (with water coming down each side).

We also saw the infamous "Bean" also known as Cloud Gate. It is a steel elliptical sculpture which reflects back your image in a very cool way.

After being on my feet way more than I should have been on the day before a race, I was pretty worn out and ready to eat. We met up with Phillip, a fellow P*Dipp who happened to be in town for a conference, and set out to find a place to eat/drink. We passed sculptor J. Seward Johnson’s 25-foot tall “God Bless America,” his tribute to artist Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” which overlooks Michigan Avenue anchoring the Magnificent Mile at the river.

We settled on dinner at Rosebud on Rush (which was across the street from Giordano's where we had lunch and the line was still out the door!). After relaxing at the hotel for a couple of hours (and letting my food settle), I remembered that run that I was supposed to get done today. The smart thing to do would have been to let it go, but I clearly don't always do what's smart when it comes to running. So, at 9pm, tired, I hopped on the hotel treadmill for an easy 6-mile run. Then it was off to bed with an early birthday wake-up call on Sunday.

I ran the 2 miles from our hotel to the start line at Grant Park (this was part of my plan to extend the race into my long run for the weekend). What a beautiful shot of the river on my way to the start!

As I arrived, I passed the elite runners warming up in the start area and immediately saw Kara Goucher who was "the" elite runner in this race. She was very friendly posing for pics as she was warming up. She gave a short interview before the start and said she was using this race as a training run for the World Championships. I saw her on the course later when the course ran parallel for a bit and she was FLYING! It was so amazing to see how fast she was going. She won in 1:08. Amazing.

Okay, back to my race. My initial plan was to use this as a MGP run for St. George. I had hoped to run with the appropriate pace group, but couldn't make my way over to them because the corral was already packed by the time I got ready to line up. Oh, well. My Garmin was off again in the early miles because it told me that I went through the first mile in 7:58 (too fast) but I didn't hit the official mile marker until 8:33 (much better). The pace felt fine for the initial miles, but I was aware that I didn't have the mental focus to sustain it. I checked in with myself and asked myself "Do you really hurt?" because as we know I don't like to hurt, but no, nothing really hurt per se (at that point at least) and I wasn't running beyond myself effort wise. I was aware that I was not running my "easy" pace where I could just zone out though and I don't think I wanted it badly enough to maintain a focused effort. During my check-in with myself, I also realized that my legs just felt dead. Um, duh. It wasn't until much later in the race when I was trying to figure out how things had gotten so far off track that I remembered that little 34 mile jaunt I took in the Sierra Nevada mountains two weeks ago. Oh, yeah. And, that explains the pain in my foot that reoccurred halfway through the race. Ah, it's all coming back to me now. My body has apparently not recovered from Tahoe yet! And, really, it is unrealistic to think that it would have. For a smart person I can be really stupid sometimes. Once I put all the pieces of the puzzle together, I backed off and just focused on getting through the rest of the race.

What did I learn though? Well, I learned that all of this mileage has taught me to run when I am tired, although I have been so sucked into the easy runs that I have not been running at the faster paces that I need to. I re-learned that I have a lot of work to do on the mental aspect of my running. I learned that I need to stick to my training plan when I have an ultimate goal in mind. I am worried that I may just have compromised my training for St. George by running Tahoe during my "recovery week." My body feels wrecked right now. I'm not quite sure what is going on with my foot (the one that started becoming an issue during the later miles in Tahoe). I didn't have any major problems running last week until the race on Sunday. It doesn't hurt to walk on at all and it's not sensitive to touch, but it is swollen and hurts to flex. I am looking forward to a much needed massage tomorrow. This week is a recovery week and it comes at a perfect time for me. I'm going to take a few extra days of rest to mentally and physically regroup. Right now I have dead legs, a fat foot, and a broken spirit. And a goal race 2 months away...

Fortunately my pity party about my race was short-lived because I got to meet Ryan Hall afterwards. I absolutely heart him. I gushed when I talked to him. He was very kind.

After getting cleaned up and taking a short nap back at the hotel, we had lunch at an Irish pub nearby because I wanted a good ol' burger after running. It was a beautiful day in Chicago and we spent the afternoon strolling (well, hobbling for me) down Michigan Ave. We've been there just a handful of times now and still haven't done nearly anything on our to-do list! There is so much to do there - sports, culture, food, museums, outdoor festivals, shopping, architecture, beach, etc. Although, I could never live there. In addition to the obvious weather differences, Dr. Pepper is not a standard item to order in restaurants. When I asked for one at dinner on Saturday night, the bartender looked at me funny and quizzically inquired, "Dr. Who?" :)

Happy freakin' birthday to me.