Yum!!!

 

All eating of sugary substances should be approached as such…

Six miles. Done!!!

 

Six miles in the books for today. Of course they were spent on the lonely treadmill.  And the heel felt good after a mile or so.  It’s not that great now… in fact it’s on fire.  You would think that I could learn a lesson.  Running = Pain later.  But it so addicting, how do you stop?  Today is such a nice day too that I could have run outside but in an effort to minimize the things that increase the pain in my foot, I am sticking to the treadmill since there is less shock impact.  Can you hire someone to take you piggy back through a race course?  If so then I am looking for a strong individual who likes to carry twice their own weight around for fun for hours on end.

Funny how I found a picture of me on the internet. And I’m not even getting royalty checks for this shot of doing what I do best, being lazy!!!!

Now I must attempt to mow the lawn.  This event has only ever happened once before in my life so if you want to see something funny, come over and heckle me, help me.  It doesn’t really matter.  I won't be able to mow a strait line to save my life.  In fact I should take a picture when I’m done to show you how bad it will be.

 

That is all…

Note to self, injury’s suck

 

After my 4.5 miles this morning my foot is starting to hurt a little more.  It’s not on fire but there is a dull roar going on down there especially when first standing up that is not exactly present.  The bright side is that it was fine during the run.  It took the first mile to warm up but the rest of my time in treadmill purgatory was decent as far as pain goes.  It’s the after that kills me.

I am beginning to think that this pain could be related to the orthotics that the doctor had me buy.  I can relate the intensification of pain to the wearing of those darn orthotics that I formed in the oven.  I don’t think that the left foot ever was formed correctly and the way they fit has caused some damage or something.  In fact, when I bought my new work shoes I went back to the old version of orthotics I used a couple of summers ago that I remember didn’t do this to me.

I will not let pain stop me.  If I can get through training for the half in Indy in May I can just take some time off to heal properly, maybe.  I don’t know.  This injury isn’t making my feel any less old right now.

I’m getting a fanny pack

 

Four miles on the treadmill today. Done!!!  And it wasn’t so bad today either.  I managed just under an 11 min mile most of the time and it felt very comfortable.  Maybe things are starting to look up now.  My left heel was fine during the run though I am now at home icing it due to some pain, though not anywhere near where it was pre injection. 

I did have a possible admirer who chose to use the treadmill directly to my right.  He might have been wearing a fanny pack of some sort and kept talking to me even though I was clearly wearing ear buds and singing to my self the entire run.  In fact he spent about 10 min “getting ready” to walk by facing me and fiddling with his ipod (I timed it I know).  I don’t know, maybe fanny packs could be sexy.

I told you it’s sexy. Hey there Steve…

So I broke down and purchased some new work shoes and I’m kicking myself for not doing so earlier.  You never realize how broken down your shoes are until you get some new ones and experience your feet walking on clouds.

These are the shoes (Sauconey Hurricane 14) I am now wearing for my 14 hour work days and I am thinking of marrying them in June.  We plan on making a happy life together.

Now I’m off to make some homemade noodles this afternoon.  Chicken and noodles for dinner. Come on over I’m making mashed taters too!!!

Back in the saddle

 

This week has not started out great as the wave of sickness crashed over from last week.  I did manage to get to the gym after work on Tuesday and run 2.5 miles on the treadmill before I went home and collapsed from my 16 hour day.  Then today I decided to attempt something a little different.

Since the cortisone injection last week I’ve been pretty hesitant to run.  Lets just be honest, I really don’t like pain and that injection made my foot feel pretty darn good.  But I swallowed my fear today but decided to run on the trail.  It’s a nice paved trail that I used a lot last summer.  But unlike the back woods country roads I have been running on lately it’s flat.  And by flat I mean I don’t feel like I running on the side of a mountain with my ankles bent in funny directions.  And you know what, my feet felt all the better for it.  I had to stop around mile four when the pain started to twinge and I didn’t want to do the tough guy thing and “push through it”.  I need to listen to my body more often.  I still took it at a snails pace but I felt great through most of the run.  And I’m glad cause I could really use a good run now.

Anyhoo…….

So I guess the new trend for the masses is to wear the skinny jeans in a bold color.

Great, another trend that 80% of women can’t/shouldn’t wear.  Why don’t we accentuate large calves and big thighs or muffin tops by planting a big caution sign on them.  I’ve attempted to try these types of jeans on and it’s not pretty.  Most of the time the calf of the jean is so tight that in order to find a size that fits that body part it makes the top of the jean huge.

Just cause it buttons doesn’t mean it’s your size.

Nothing like resembling a stuffed sausage!!!  I just want to be fashionable without having to adopt anorexia as a lifestyle change.  I like cupcakes and want to continue to eat them at my leisure.

Don’t make me choose… because the jeans will loose every time.

Maybe someday it will be fashionable to have large muscular legs and some brilliant designer will make some pants that make them look good.  Just a dream, I suppose.

You better read it!!!

The Hunger Games opens tomorrow in theaters.  Get pumped cause we are going and you are gonna love it.

The flu???

I'm on day five of taking care of little girl #1 and her 103 degree temp. Maybe this foot resting came at a good time since I can't take care of her and run too.

So I'm praying she gets better soon and that I can get back to training.

Little girl #1 doesn't deal well with sickness. Much like her father...

Well today turned out differently than planned

 

Now, I can’t be sure how long this will last but my left foot feels pretty good.  Not perfect but soooooo much better than the day I wanted to slice it off my leg. This may be the Cortisone talking but I think things are looking up. 

After two days of letting my feet rest I decided to gingerly attempt a run this morning.  The left ankle is still a little stiff but OMG did it feel great to not be in severe pain while running.  I still ran slow because I wasn’t sure how much I should really push it.  The plan was to do 3 easy miles, but about 3/4 of a mile in I received a phone call.  The grade school called and little girl #1 was running a temperature of 101.  I’m sure the nurse wondered what the heck was going as I was breathing rather heavily in her ear.  I tried to explain to her that I was outside running and  would have to run home in order to pick her up.  She probably hung up and filed my name under “crazy heavy phone breather”. 

So, I ran all the way home, which I don’t normally do.  I usually stop before the giant hill near my house and walk home but I struggled up the mountain and made it home and only ran 1.5 miles.  Maybe that’s God’s way of keeping me from over doing it. 

The school secretary probably thinks I’m also crazy too, since I walked in the office still dressed from my run and sweating profusely.  It didn’t seem to stop them from letting me take her though…

I am now sitting at home and letting the sickling tattoo my legs with markers.  Let’s not discuss how we got to this point, it’s keeping her happy and not thinking about being sick (and possibly missing the field trip tomorrow).  Sexy, no?

Crappy feet, can I get some new ones?

 

Here is how today was supposed to go: see foot doctor, let him hem haw around and tell me to come back in 4 weeks, go for a 4 mile run, and then clean the house.  Seems simple enough, no? Not exactly and I’m a little upset about it.

Here is how the conversation went at the doctors office:

Doctor: “How’s the feet doing?”

Me: “I’d like to cut my left foot off my leg.”

Doctor: “Oh…well lets stick a really big needle in your heel and poke it around for awhile with some steroids.”

Me: “I guess that’s better than cutting my foot off.”

This is the reenactment of the face I made while the doctor stabbed me with a really big needle.

Long story short, I let him inject my heel today with a steroid in hopes to decrease the swelling and inflammation in hopes that the plantar fasciitis can heel properly.  Of course this interrupted my plan of running today.  I was ordered home to put my foot up for the rest of the day.  I’m also not quite clear when I can actually run again. But if I know me I won't do half of what I am supposed to do and probably end up hurting myself more.  It’s my curse in life to know what I am supposed to do but not really do it, at least when it comes to my health.

Well they are…

So I’m catching up on the DVR today and “resting” the foot.  I just pray that it gets better.  Or else I’m going to look funny running with a stump.

 

What would you do if you suddenly found you had some extra lounging time on your hands?

I’ll try to do better next time

 

Let’s be honest, 7 miles might have been a little ambitious of a goal today.  The wind wasn’t bad and temperature was wonderful all day today.  But I had a few things stacked against me today.  I knew today was going to be an afternoon run since it’s Sunday and we attend church in the morning.  Knowing this, I ate a very light breakfast of a clif bar-oatmeal walnut raisin ( tasty!!!) and figured that when we got home I would be prime for my run.  But other forces conspired against me.

Ok, maybe it was my own weak will power combined with the restricted diet that led me to agree to lunch at the Tepanyaki Grill.  To be frank, it’s a buffet.  A decent buffet, but a pig trough non the less.  I was able to make good decisions while there.  Salad, some baked fish, and green beans but I am awful at running after eating a meal no matter how nutritious.  So the “Oh so nutritious meal” had me sluggish from the start.

My heel has been on fire the past couple of days and nothing seems to make it feel better, plus some other unmentionable monthly issues.  My foot warmed up after about a mile and a half.  In fact the first two miles were decent, I took them slow knowing that I wanted to be able to speed up for the last 4.  Well, my plan was blown out of the water fairly quickly.  I started to peter out around mile 3 and the miles seemed to slow down from there.  But the bright side of running outside is, unlike the treadmill where you can just get off and hit the gym when you wanna be a quitter, you gotta get back. 

So long story short I manage 6 agonizing miles today at probably the slowest pace I’ve ever run.  Now I pretty much want to cut my left foot off my leg and feel slightly depressed about my performance today.  But hey, at least I got up and did something today.

 

What did you manage to get through today?

Whatever Wind Advisory, You Stink!!!!

 

This morning as I checked “Weather Bug”, like I do every morning, I was pleasantly surprised by the 46 degree temperature at 7am.  And somewhere in the back of my mind was a stirring, like someone blowing the dust off an old book.  Somehow I made up my mind to forgo to gym today and brave the outside world.  It seemed mild, and the temperature sure felt nice.  So how did I miss the WIND ADVISORY????  My phone led me to believe that 13 mile per hour winds wouldn’t be all that bad.  But it was the gust of up to 33 mph that did me in.  But I got through, all 4 miles of it.  I was hoping to have a good negative split today.  Technically I did, but only by 30 seconds or so, seeing that I had to run the 2 last miles into the 33 mph wind.

Where we live in IN in very sandy and the wind has blown sand drifts on the side of the road.  Can they call school for that???

 

Wind that took my breath away!  And I am ashamed to admit that I had to used the “farmer blow” a couple of times seeing as sniffing was entirely too difficult.  Cars were great about making room on the road this morning, or they just felt bad about me being blown off the road so they just tried to avoid hitting the human sail.  Even with the crushing wind I still enjoyed it more than being in treadmill purgatory.  At least there was landscape to view.

Come visit if you want to see miles and miles of brown. 

The cows didn’t know I was running today or else they might have come down from the barn to cheer me on like last summer.

 

And I’m back on track with my training schedule.  I did squeak out 3 miles yesterday on the treadmill at the gym where I believe I saw a man exercising in swim trunks.  But that’s a story for another day.  This next picture is very random but makes me laugh as it makes me think about my workplace fridge.

Eat your own lunch fool!!!

Last week I began a “diet” to lower my blood pressure.  To be honest it’s not really a diet but an assessment of what I eat and attempting to eat properly and not put crap into my body.  I am using an app on my phone called “Fat Secret” that is awesome.  The name sucks, like fat has a secret, it’s fat there is no mystery there.  But it is useful.  You can scan the barcode of food for the nutritional information or just manually search for food.

 

 

This app has set my avatar picture set as a hotdog.  Really?!?!?!?  A hotdog?  as if fat people don’t have enough difficulty about self image already…

 

It really has me aware of the nutritional content of food.  The original intent was to restrict my Sodium intake to the recommended daily allowance but not focus on the calorie content as much.  I also have cut back on my caffeine intake.  (Little to no coffee is going to slowly kill me.)  Turns out that a lower Sodium diet has led to a low calorie diet… who knew?  In one week I have lost 7lbs and slightly lowered the blood pressure.  And not only that I feel better than I thought.  I am hungry at times, but I’m used to eating lots of crap and not caring, it takes getting used to.  In 3 more weeks I will evaluate the whole process and decide if my blood pressure has come down enough to avoid the doctor or if I will still have to call her, but overall I feel good that I am moving in the right direction.

 

Here’s to hoping that I succeed!!

I’d be the first one gone in a horror movie

 

Today was supposed to be a 6 mile run, but because I’m behind on my schedule I did 5.  Lets just be honest about it, I couldn’t do 6 miles today if Freddy Kruger were chasing me down at midnight.  I couldn’t get over an 11 minute mile to save my life.  I’d be more depressed about my lack of ability if it wasn’t for the fact that a 5 mile run hasn't happened in a long time, so it made me feel slightly more accomplished than, oh say, Snooki or Lindsay Lohan.  I had to keep bouncing back and forth in my music to find songs to keep me going after the first 2 miles.  But at least I can say that it’s done.  So BOO YA!!!

Totally winning!!!

 

 

When I was young and dreamed of having kids I didn’t really thing through the thought of them getting older.  That dream always involved a baby but never the older child.  Well, I had a reality check yesterday.  My oldest daughter turned 6!!!  I think I actually saw her get older yesterday right before my eyes.  And she didn’t even ask permission.  In fact I’ve been telling her for years to stop growing, but does she listen?  It’s quite rude of her to disobey her mother.

What a ham.  Always posing!!!

We had a bowling party at a local place with the other little girls from her Kindergarten class as well as some cousins who are around her age.  It was pretty fun…for her.  I spent most of the time pondering how quickly this all seemed to happen.  Over all I thought it went well and Little girl #1 said it was “Awesome”.  (I know, I throw a great party!!!)  After the may lay was over I have to settle the bill with the server who did an amazing job keeping the drinks filled and the pizza around.  Somehow I got it in my head that the bowling lanes were $10 per lane per hour, which would have totaled $40. So when the receipt had double that on it I was a little shocked to say the least.  I ended up getting a manage and arguing for the price I was quoted on the phone until they re-rang my ticket.  Then I got home and double checked the notes I had made while talking with the event coordinator just to confirm that I was right.  Much to my horror I WAS WRONG.  I’ll even say it again cause it doesn’t happen very often, I WAS WRONG. 

It’s hard for me to believe too.

I felt awful, so very, very, awful.  I called my husband who was still out and about and made him go back to tell the server that I was a giant ninny head and was wrong and pay for the rest of the ticket.  Of course, he wasn’t keen on being the one to go but I made sure that he let them know I was the one who screwed this up.  I guess I’ll never be able to show my face there again.  I’ll have to change my hairstyle and speak in a British accent so they won't know who I am if I ever go back.

 

Don’t you hate it when your wrong????