Running Chick

We’re back! We made it home late Saturday night after two l-o-n-g days on the road. We brought back Josh’s new boat, so this summer should be full of boating fun.  At least that’s what Josh tells me as I’m not much of a boating person.

Of course, we had to stop at Boating Mecca on the way back.

And then we saw this nasty accident going through the mountains just North of Chattanooga.

Sorry about the blurry photo, that was an over-the-shoulder-backwards shot. That big yellow rig is the tow truck, the tractor and the driver were gone when we came through. Wonder what happened.

I can’t remember where this was, but it was a Baymont Inn before the tornadoes came through.

I had my camera poised to take many of these photos since there were everywhere the last time we were ‘down South’, but I finally saw a set in mid-Illinois. Truck balls. Classy!

The obligatory Kill me now, I’ve been in this car for the last 19 hours and I have 6 more to go shot.

After that, I pretty much degraded to taking pictures of baby cows running through the field …

.. and reflections of the road in the shiny truck ahead of us.

And then we were home. The End.

Running – I went for two short runs last week. My Garmin died about 30 seconds into my first run, so I have no exact distance or time, but I guessed that the first run was about 1.5-2.0 miles and the second was 2.0-2.5 miles. My legs were super stiff and tight on the first run, but I suspect that’s because they were stuffed into the front seat of a truck for the previous 23 hours. They felt much better on the second run, and I didn’t have any post-run shin pain for either of them. I suspect it’s because I did half of each run on gravel and kept them short.

Yesterday, I did just over three miles and my right shin started to ache slightly just as I was finishing and it’s been just a tiny bit achy today, too.  I’ll go for a short run tomorrow, maybe on the Chassell gravel trail and see how it feels. If I do okay, then I’m seriously considering heading down the Eagle River to do the 5k event at Journey’s Marathon this weekend. I really, really wanted to do the half this year, and I probably could, but chances are it would end with bad consequences. Dang it, anyway.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of getting evaluated at the UW Health Runner’s Clinic in Madison, WI for a few months now, and I finally went ahead and contacted them for an appointment. I’m hoping that they’ll be able to give me a definitive answer about what the heck is wrong with my legs and why I keep getting injured. It’s one of those places where you send them your contact info and then they contact you to schedule your appointment, so I’ve yet to hear from them. Who knows, they might tell me they have a six-month waiting list or something. I hope not, I’ve really hoping to be able to do either a half or full marathon this fall.

Has anybody gone to or heard anything about the Runner’s Clinic in Madison? Let me know!

Did you know that Vidalia is the called The Sweet Onion City? Me neither.  It’s famous for sweet onions as big as your head.

Last weekend was the Vidalia Onion Festival and Josh’s parents bought us a bag of eight onions which weigh about 1.3 to 1.8 pounds each (we weighed them, we were bored).  I have no idea what we’re going to do with that much onions.  French onion soup?

Our trip is coming to a rapid close and we’ll be back on the road tomorrow.  There’ll be lots of recap picture posts in the near future.

Greetings from Vidalia, GA, where it’s hot and humid. 

Our first night on the road, we stayed in a Fairfield Inn that in Marion, IL was so new it still had the wrapping paper on it.

It’s been raining so much in Southern Illinois that they are currently under flood warnings.

Some of these cows decided to take advantage of the flooding and go for a little swim.

Lots of boring stuff later, we were going through the mountains close to Chattanooga, TN.

Yikes.

We smelled this guy before we saw him. His brakes were smoking bad.

I was secretly hoping he’d use one of the runaway truck ramps and provide me with an awesome photo opportunity, but alas he just rode the brakes all the way down the hill. Boo.

Here’s the Southern Belle dining boat cruising along Tennessee River.

On the other side of Chattanooga, this giant thing was causing a major traffic snarl.

It’s a partial dump truck box being towed by a semi. Pilot cars were leading and following.

It took up close to two lanes, it was enormous.

We started seeing carnage from the storms that swept through Alabama and Tennessee.

We cruised through downtown Atlanta with no trouble and were doing a lot of gloating when we came over a hill and ran into the end of this mess.

It looked a lot worse than it was (Google Maps only gave it a yellow on the traffic jam scale), and we were delayed by maybe 15 minutes. I was able to snap a picture of a plane taking off from the Atlanta airport, but I can’t remember if it was before or after the traffic jam.

We started seeing signs of damage from the storm that swept through last week. Downed interstate signs, guardrails ripped up and trees sheared off. Scary stuff.

We stopped a few times for shopping and dining and rolled into town around 10pm, road weary and glad to not be moving.