Running Chick

Pretty much sums up the final miles of my 17 mile run this morning.  Feet aching, out of water and food, and I think it’s a good idea to climb a giant hill.  What the hell was I thinking?  Running does do that to you, though. You have a couple of really good runs, think you’re all badass and then it bitch slaps you right back into your place.

Josh does this climb on his daily bicycle commute to work and he says it’s pretty brutal on a bike.  Basically it’s a 500’ elevation gain in just over 3 miles on a twisty road with no shoulder and in terrible condition.  Add in a bunch of lunatics driving way too fast and there you have Cole’s Creek Road.

Josh and Zoe did come to rescue me with about 1.5 miles left, just as I was giving serious thought to dropping down to the half marathon instead of the marathon.  Either I got a second wind or Zoe pulled me up the rest of the hill, but we knocked the last of the miles off at a 10:19 pace, that’s faster than my entire long run put together!

Aside from my aching feet, and the shitty last five miles, my run was pretty uneventful.  It got a little warm in the end once the sun came out, but the morning was long-sleeve weather. 

I ordered some new Glycerin 10’s, which will hopefully take care of my sore feet. I also ordered some S!Caps, which is an electrolyte supplement meant to replace all the stuff that you lose from sweating. I’ve been on the fence about taking them for a couple of years, but now that my runs are getting longer, and I’m sweating more, I decided to give them a shot.  We’ll see how they treat my stomach.  On a side note, I’ve always wondered how much, if any, weight I was losing during a long run but I could never remember to weigh myself before I took off. Today I actually remembered and when I got on the scale when I got home, I found I’d lost just over 3 pounds.  I have to do some reading on hydration, but I think that might borderline on too much. In other words, I’m sweating too much and not drinking enough. 

After some stretching, lunch and a shower we headed up to Calumet so Josh could bike the Swedetown trails. He’s doing the Great Deer Chase mountain bike race in a couple of weeks and wanted to do a pre-ride of the course.  Zoe and I walked around the trails for an hour and then hung out on the deck of the chalet until Josh came & found us.

Last weekend, I did my long run in Waterloo, IA.  Josh finished up a RAGBRAI, a week-long 400-something bicycle ride across Iowa and I headed down to pick him up at the finish. The Waterloo/Cedar Falls area has a pretty extensive paved trail system, so it wasn’t a big deal finding a 15 mile route. Josh biked along with me and did my navigation and carried my extra water. I like having company on my long runs, it makes them go by faster.

Zoe is transitioning well. She’s a lot more calm & mellow than the day we brought her home and she’s not had any accidents in the house.  We’re still working her cues for going outside, and making some really good progress.  She’s getting better on the leash, but there’s still work to be done in that area. She’s skittish around cars, but interested, so she gets distracted easily when they go by.

The cats are also transitioning well, but you can tell they’re not exactly amused by her presence. She mostly leaves them alone, thanks to a few well aimed swats to the nose when she got too pushy.  She’s confined to a crate at night at the moment so their favorite thing is to sit outside the door and stare at her. Probably moon her as well. Brats.

It finally feels like summer around here, what with the 90 degree temps we’ve had for the past few days.  It’s been nice, but I really miss having central a/c.

I’ve been dealing with some left knee issues since April that really got bothersome in June.  I thought it was a tight IT band so I really worked on getting that stretched out, only to find that the pain didn’t go away.  After a particularly bad run that had me limping, wincing and cussing the entire way, I consulted with my physical therapist friend who diagnosed me with patellar tendonitis.  I didn’t have to stop running (“..I won’t tell you to stop running, because I know you won’t..” says PT) but I did cut my mileage and pacing way back (four days to three), quit running on the cambered roads around my house and did lots of stretching/strengthening exercises.  Particularly the ones here and here.  The exercises in the second link were the ones that really made a big difference for me, I noticed improvements in mobility and decreased pain after about three days and I’m just about back to normal about two and a half weeks later.  I’ll probably start to slowly rebuild my mileage this week and hope to be back on track in the next couple of weeks.

My totals for June (bum knee and all) were 68 miles running and 55 miles biking.

This week I did two five milers and one hot, humid, miserable 10 miler early Saturday morning.  My overall pace ended up being around 11:46/mile (gah) and I’m very lucky I was able to get that. My body does not do well in the heat and humidity.

There were a lot of people out on the trail that morning, we all probably thought we’d beat the heat and get out very early.  Everybody I passed was drenched in sweat, had beet red faces, and huffing and puffing like crazy.  Haha, that Mother Nature sure is a jokester, she got all of us but good.

Josh has been training for RAGBRAI (two weeks!) and I’ve been riding with him a couple of times/week.  On the 4th of July, we did a 50 mile ride from Calumet to the Jampot in Eagle River, and back with stops at the Fitz (Short’s on tap!), Drift Inn and Shute’s.  That was the longest I’d ridden in quite some time, it was a lot of fun.

Wildlife report!

Modest Sphinx moth. 3” wingspan. Cute in a please-don’t-eat-me Mothra kinda way.

Raccoon prints on the grill.

Our bear friend, who is apparently training to join the circus.  Good thing we have our garbage barrels outside and he can train whenever he feels like it.

Just don't hit my car, dummy.

House update! We are in our new place.  It’s a weird combination of awesome (so much space!) and ugh (so many projects). I sure am sick of having half-unpacked boxes hanging around and I’m still looking for items that I know I packed, yet cannot find and I swear, I keep on looking in the same boxes over & over again.

Living out in the country has it’s perks.  We have white-tailed deer visiting us regularly.  This guy (gal?) was just a little ways from our living room window.

And birds!  I put up four seed feeders and one hummingbird feeder and got lots of customers.

American goldfinch (female)

American goldfinch (male)

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (male)

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (female)

Indigo bunting (male)

Ruby-throated hummingbird (male)

Ruby-throated hummingbird (male)

Black-capped chickadee (male? female? not sure)

Then, we went outside one morning and all the feeders were knocked down and empty, including the hummingbird feeder.  We figured raccoons.

Then we found this:

And then a bit farther away, this:

And finally, telltale footprints in the volleyball court:

Bears!  We measured the prints and the biggest set is 6” across.  Apparently the bear paw width:length/size ratio is 1”:1’ so it’s possible the largest bear was 6’ long. Yikes.

They haven’t made a second visit, so maybe they were just passing through on their way to their summer cottage deep in the woods.  Far away from our house. Preferably in the next county over!