shameless self-promotion

I ran 10 miles this past Saturday! (View my route.) There’s an intense hill in there that goes on for a couple miles. That was kind of fun, actually. My left knee started to give out around mile 8 and I ended up having to walk limp the last mile. I finished 20 minutes behind everyone else and the team was ready to send out cars to look for me by the time I made it back. D’oh! However, that knee lasted 2 miles longer than the previous week so maybe it’ll continue to get better.

After the run, I iced the knee for a bit and went to Phil’s sushi birthday lunch. The whole gang was there and it was a lot of fun to see people. Directly afterwards us Burners met up at Cathy’s house for a meeting to organize our finances. I continued to ice the knee and was in pretty good shape for the drive back home.

Sitting in the car for 4 hours was probably not a very good thing to do, however. When I finally made it to Rick’s house that night, my legs and feet were as swollen as if I had sat in an airplane for a trip to the Philippines. The next morning, I got out of bed and almost fell over because my feet had stiffened solid! Stretching helped some but a one-hour full-body massage that evening helped even more. The massage therapist said she’d never felt quadriceps that tight before.

Monday I was back to school and work. This week has been so crazy - everything seemed to go wrong and I had my midterm drawing portfolio due along with two major projects. Right now, I’m so grateful that it’s over and I have a nice, long weekend to relax and NOT drive to LA again.

Also, my auntie (who had emergency surgery for an aneurysm) has been moved out of Critical Care and into the Step Down unit. She’s off the ventilator that they had to put her on when she crashed last week and is on oxygen. Thank goodness. Send some good thoughts/prayers her way if you can.

I went down to LA for a Friday for a dental appointment and my first Saturday training session with the East Valley Train To End Stroke Marathon team. I ran 7.7 miles in 1 hour and 45 minutes. (View my route) That’s an average of 13.64 minutes per mile - my best time ever! Even at 7am it was so bloody hot in Griffith Park on Saturday. I’d never run in such heat before but I carried Gatorade with me and stopped 3 times at water stations. I also carried Gu with me and downed a shot 15 minutes before the run and every 45 thereafter. It worked out very well - I never got hungry and didn’t tire until the last 1.5 miles. I think the big bowl of pasta the night before helped, too.

I feel so good about it and am very excited to do 10 miles this coming weekend. Hopefully Griffith Park will be a little cooler this time.

Today I ran 5.9155 miles in 96 minutes! (View my route) That comes to 16 minutes per mile. It’s not as good as I have done in the past but I think that’s because I didn’t run much last week (due to stomach troubles) and I didn’t bring any hydration or food with me (like my trainer told me to start doing). The doctor tells me the stomach troubles are almost certainly an ulcer. She’s prescribed an 8-week course of double-OTC-dose Prilosec and an endoscopy. This week I’ll pick up something to carry hydration in and food for the road. Next weekend’s 8 miles should go better. I feel that I’ll be in good shape if I can get under 14 minutes per mile.

Still continuing the 6-minutes-jogging, 2-minutes-walking intervals. Am wondering if I should step that up to 8min/2min. But am feeling GREAT about completing 6 miles today. Whee!

It started with heartburn on Saturday. Strong and persistent—8 Rolaids didn’t make a dent. On Sunday the burn was gone but the feeling of pressure in my upper abdomen had increased. I kept feeling like I needed to burp but then I thought I might throw up.

On Monday, it seemed to be almost gone so I went for my scheduled-for-Saturday-long-run of 4 miles. Big mistake. I could only run 2 of my intervals and then had to walk most the rest of the way. My abdomen just plain hurt. At least I finished 3.67 miles in 55 minutes, averaging under 15 minutes a mile mostly walking.

As the day went on the pain just got worse. In the late afternoon I made a little Costco run for incidentals but even that small activity left me stumbling behind a cart and sweating with pain. Ugh. Got on the phone to the doctor and crawled into bed. I got up that evening to straighten up but couldn’t do much more than some laundry and TV.

The doctor told me to go to Urgent Care if the pain got bad but otherwise to keep an eye on it and call her the next day. This sucks.

Woohoo!

I ran 4.1293 miles today at 6-minutes-jogging, 2-minutes-walking intervals. I’m still averaging 14 minutes per mile. I was anticipating torture when I started out today but I bought a jug of powdered Gatorade and have been mixing it in with my water for the past couple days and it’s made surprising difference in my endurance. The only problem was that my right groin area started hurting around mile 3. Hopefully my continued stretching will help.

I’ve been upgrading my computer set-up at home. After 9 months of working on a 15-inch laptop, I picked up a 24″ Samsung display, Apple wireless ultra-thin keyboard and Mighty Mouse. Working is a pleasure now and the keyboard is particularly enjoyable. This thing is so tiny and cool. The mouse presented a problem with Warcraft at first but I figured out how to use the scrolly ball as my look-and-move button. I also bought a new PC - a 2.4 GHz Quad-Core with 2 gigs of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, despite the bad reviews. Out of the box, video didn’t work and I had to open it up and re-seat the video card to get everything working. This thing is fairly bad-ass, however. Yay!

Work is still keeping me busy and although I’m looking forward to starting school on the 16th, I’m a little concerned about balancing school and work. I’ll just have to be careful to schedule work lightly at first and see how it goes.

I’ve made the decision to finish my bachelor’s degree. I’ve taken the first step in signing up for a summer-session class at my local community college to begin establishing a stellar college record. And now, of course, my freelance business has exploded and local businesses are putting up job listings for a variety of designer positions. The universe works in mysterious ways.

Must. Resist. Compulsion. To. Apply. For. Amazing. Jobs.

I was planning on running 5 days last week but only did 4. I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

Since I listen to audiobooks while I run and since I don’t have a cool timer-watch thingy, I’m counting steps instead. Two steps = 1s. Probably not very accurate but the point is to run so I won’t worry about it. This week (week 3) I’m supposed to be running the following 2 times:

• Run 90s (180 steps)
• Walk 90s (180 steps)
• Run 180s (360 steps)
• Walk 180s (360 steps)

Walking for 360 steps feels like too long. And running for 180 steps is annoying when I know I can do 360 steps without becoming too tired or winded. So I changed it: I’m running 360 steps, walking 180 steps, and repeating that for as many miles as I can.

Today, I did 2.75 miles at that pace. It felt great! I’ll continue that pace this week (hopefully for 5 days) and then move on to running 540 steps, walking 180 steps for 3 miles next week. My goal is to get to the point where I can run 3 miles straight without stopping.

I read about the Couch-to-5k Running Plan over a year ago but wasn’t inspired to start it until I heard that a friend of mine, a busy working mom of two, had run the 5k Wine Run April 13th. I started week one April 14th but training was interrupted by my Chicago trip. So I re-started week one last week and have moved on to week two this week.

My previous experience with running consisted of jogging with Rick at 5 in the morning, running until I could run no more and hating every minute of it. This program starts off with running and walking and is much more tolerable. Listening to audiobooks while I run even makes it enjoyable. Getting the motivation to get out of bed is difficult but I’ve found that if I get out of bed with the intention of simply walking for 5 minutes to warm up and then stretching, the rest follows fairly painlessly.

I had been running in men’s New Balance 507s that I’d bought a couple years ago and had never really used. They were a little too long and made my feet sore. So today, I went Running Warehouse in SLO to get proper shoes. There, a saleswoman named Tara put me in some neutral shoes and got me on a treadmill to video my gait. I was over-pronating, which is a common problem. She put me in four or five different pairs of shoes, videotaping me in each one, until we found a pair that was comfy and supportive. It was a fun experience and I appreciated the time she took with me to find the right pair. I ended up buying a pair of Brooks Ariel shoes and will try them out tomorrow morning.

Gene and I are planning on running a marathon with Train To End Stroke, and organization local to California. I’m going to their information session on the 17th in Sherman Oaks. The Pasadena marathon is November 16th, which is about 6 months from then. Hopefully that’ll be enough time to train. In the meantime, I’ll continue the Couch-to-5k plan at a double pace.

On Monday Rick and I took the train West to the Chicago suburb of St. Charles to visit Rick’s parents. We visited and looked at boxes of pictures from Rick’s childhood. My favorite was a picture of Rick during his potty training days, sitting stark naked on the potty, grinning and covering his privates with an empty Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on his head as a hat! Rick’s mom and dad kindly gave it to me to keep for blackmail. We all went out for a fabulous king crab dinner that night. I’ve never seen crab legs that big! So yummy.

On Tuesday, we caught a Cubs game with Rick’s dad. The scene outside Wrigley Field was like a huge party and sitting in the bleachers was even better. The weather was great and the Cubs kicked butt. Wrigley Field is amazing. Afterwards, Rick’s dad took us out for some ribs at Carson’s in downtown. The restaurant was very cool and old-school and the ribs were delicious. Wednesday, we headed back out to the suburbs to hang out with Rick’s childhood friend, his wife and son. We barbecued and shot some hoops and talked Warcraft.

On Thursday, we went to the Sears tower and had lunch with Rick’s Uncle Bill at a very cool restaurant in the lobby of a building downtown, one block South of the Sears tower. The lobby had a glass ceiling and a gorgeous fountain. It felt like an atrium. That night was a taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, one of my favorite NPR programs. They had a new panelist, Drew Carey, who was very funny. Moby was their special guest and, unlike most previous guests, showed up in person instead of calling in! Unfortunately none of my pictures turned out - the theater was too dark

On Friday we checked out the Art Institute which was AMAZING. They had a special exhibition of Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer that blew my mind. I wasn’t familiar with Hopper’s work beyond his iconic Nighthawks painting and the rest of his work really moved me. The style reminded me of Magritte’s work - although there were no surrealist elements, the style and composition made me feel that they were surrealist nonetheless. I especially loved one of his last paintings, Sun in an Empty Room. That night, Rick’s Uncle Bill took us out for ribs at Twin Anchors and they were the best ribs I’ve ever had in my life. The meat was so tender that it was difficult to eat - it just slipped off the bone!

Saturday was our day of departure and we had breakfast at Wishbone, a southern-style eatery near Oprah’s taping studio. Their salmon cakes with hollandaise blew my mind and the decor was very fun and cheerful. Afterwards, we went to O’Hare to check in where (surprise, surprise) my bag was way overweight. We had to wait half an hour to check-in with an agent because their check-in machines weren’t working for us and in the end, our flight was delayed by half an hour. I was worried we wouldn’t make our connecting flight because we landed with 10 minutes to get to the next gate. Luckily, we caught a ride on one of those electric cart things and made our flight.

In the end, I had tons of fun. Chicago is a great town (when the weather’s good) and I definitely want to go back to check out the museums we missed. However, I’m not too happy with the extra 10 pounds I brought back with me. Time to get back to my running program, eating veggies and working.

More pictures here