I'm back ... sort of

I know this blog is supposed to be about me running, but frankly there's been so little to write about on that front. No, I'm not giving up on this whole thing. I just can't do that. It's on my list of things to do and dang it, I'm going to do it.

That being said, the 30's haven't been as easy on my body as the 20's, to say the least. And my right foot, in particular, has given me all kinds of trouble. I don't know what's wrong with it, but it hurts every single time I go running. It actually hurts more after the fact, like the next day or the next night, than it does while I'm running. It just stinks.

So I've put the brakes on running for a little bit. The plan is to wait until March 1st and give it a go again. If I keep having problems, I'll probably need to go to a podiatrist and get an x-ray or something. And I'm guessing that's probably going to have to happen because my foot hurts sometimes even without the running. I can't tell if it's bone or ligament or what, it just hurts.

Fun post, I know.

Conquering the Treadmill

In my long and illustrious running career, I had never run on a treadmill. Yet with the nights getting darker and colder faster, it was inevitably going to happen. So I ventured over to the Y this evening and hopped on the treadmill and pounded out a 5k.

I couldn't figure out how to program the thing, but pretended that I knew exactly what I was doing. It's not all that complicated, I know. I managed to figure it out in time to get going. It was rather uneventful. The end. Well actually, the end of it was a little weird. I felt like I was still moving when I got off, kind of like how you feel like you're still bouncing after getting off a trampoline.

In other See-Scott-Run-related news, the arch on my right foot is hurting now. My right foot must hate me at this point. First, the ingrown toenail. Then, my grotesque amateurish surgery on said toenail. And now something is going on with my right running shoe and now my arch hurts. I guess I'll be checking that running store where I got my shoes to see what kind of statute of limitations they have on right shoe returns/exchanges.

Building a Base

I'm actually starting to do this. I ran last Saturday. I then ran again this past Tuesday. And I'm going to run again today. For a while now, I've been joking that I'm still "Building a Base." In other words, I'm just trying to get back in shape. But I hadn't really been running on a regular basis. One reason was described in my previous post. That being said, I'm actually starting to get a little better at running again. On Tuesday I ran the same route I normally run, but I forced myself to not stop and walk at all. Jessica can attest that the hills around here make not walking a difficult task. It was pretty brutal and I was dead tired at the end, but I did it.

This Wednesday I had the chance to see a presentation by Matthew Kelly. He wrote the book The Dream Manager and I went in with a healthy (one might say unhealthy) bit of skepticism. Long story short, I really liked the presentation. The main idea is to get people to start dreaming again. It has a business slant, but if people start dreaming more in their personal lives, they'll become better in their professional lives. So companies and managers should be interested in helping people achieve their dreams. Step 1 in getting people to achieve their dreams is to get people to write down a list of 100 dreams.

I guess I'm writing about that here because running a marathon has been one of the dreams on my list. I'm going through the process of writing down 99 other dreams. It's exciting and gives Jessica and I something to shoot for in the future. So I'm hoping that by blogging about this marathon, it increases accountability and helps me to actually achieve it. I know I can run this thing. I have other goals in mind with it too, but moving forward and trying this again is exciting for me.

Slowed by a Toe

No, I did not take a picture of my actual toe for the benefit of my faithful reader(s). That being said, this looks a lot like my toe did for the past couple weeks.

Ingrown toenails are really disgusting. I get that. Yet when I'm sitting there with just sandals on and that big toenail starts calling out my name, "Scott, dig and pull, dig and pull." I know, you're thinking that's absolutely totally disgusting. But for those of you reading this (oh who am I kidding? Nobody is reading this thing ... not even me), any of you that have had an ingrown toenail know exactly what I'm talking about. It just sits there waiting for me to perform surgery on it with a pair of toenail clippers and my two bare hands.

And so I dig at it and pull on it and end up ... well I have no idea what I end up doing. I pull something off of the general area of my toe and there's usually blood involved. If done incorrectly (i.e. almost every time I do this, and I've tried it many times), a throbbing pain results. This time resulted in something that looked a lot like an infection (because it was an infection) and two weeks of rather uncomfortable pain.

So this is just a long way of writing that no, I have not gone running in the past two weeks.

Back on Track

It's been a couple weeks now since I posted, and an equal amount of time since I ran. I was out of town twice in the past two weeks (and the power went out here) so it made it difficult to get any runs in. I actually was back in Utah for four days for a team meeting. We were in Park City and one of the afternoons we did an alpine slide, alpine coaster and then I decided to get on one of those trampoline things where they hook you up with a harness that's connected to some bungee cords. It looked harmless enough and looked like fun.


I saw a bunch of other people doing back flips and front flips and double back flips and figured I'd try it as well. Let's just say it was quite the workout. My abs were burning by the end and the next morning I actually had a rather large bruise on the left side of my stomach. So while I didn't run, I considered that my workout for the week.

Today I got back to running. I ran the same route I did two weeks ago (about a 5k). This time I only had to walk once, although I wanted to walk a few other times. These hills are really really hard. It felt a lot better this time though and it took me about 5 minutes less to cover the same distance. My goal is to get out at least 2-3 times a week for the next couple months, just trying to build a base for more of the formal training. I was just telling Jessica that this is the first time I've started running when I was legitimately out of shape. 31 sure feels different than 26.

New Shoes, Still Out of Shape

Jessica and I went to that running store on Thursday night to get our new shoes. The guy that helped us was really great. First thing he had us do was take our shoes off, pull our pant legs up to our calves and walk to the wall and back. While we did this, he watched our walking styles intently and then diagnosed issues with our feet. He used big words that I'm too lazy to figure out how to spell, but the guy knew what he was talking about. He nailed the fact that my right foot/ankle is significantly weaker than my left ankle (from breaking it and tearing ligaments and rolling it more times than I can count). Then we both tried on a ton of different shoes. I ended up with this new pair of Saucony's and really like them.

So Friday I went running again, this time by myself. 2 minutes after starting, I felt a raindrop or two. But I actually like running in the rain, or at least I used to, and figured it wouldn't be a big deal. A minute later, it started coming down pretty hard and by the time I finished my first mile, I was completely soaked. I still felt alright, but mile two was harder and my pace got much slower. And mile three I officially hit the wall. I walked ... twice.

I love the fact that there are a lot of nice hills and it's rather pretty here and all, but the hills were killing me. I have a newfound respect for Jessica for actually running those things all the time. I just couldn't do it, and realized yet again how difficult this whole marathon thing is going to be. I'm ridiculously out of shape. No, I'm not morbidly obese or anything like that, but I have gained 10 pounds and age 31 is hitting me harder than I expected.

What have I gotten myself into? No really, what am I thinking?

The Day After

I'm not sure how I thought I was going to avoid the day-after soreness from running for the first time. It wasn't that bad when I first got up, but this afternoon everything started getting tight and heavy. I'm guessing tomorrow's going to be awful in the morning. So yeah, I'm out of shape. And yeah, I need to go running again either tomorrow or Thursday. Ummmm, that should go well.

On the way home from work tonight, I stopped by a famous running store here in town. It's the type of place that measures your foot in all different ways and then diagnoses what shoe would work best. I didn't have time for all that, just wanted to check the place out. Jessica and I are going there for a date soon to get shoes. Romantic, I know.