Almost Died!

Well not really.  I did fall off a small cliff and landed in a raspberry bush (lots of thorns) and a bunch of big rocks and stones.  My iPhone almost died though.  It got wet during my adventure.  What did I do yesterday?

A mountain bike friend of mine asked me if I wanted go on a bike ride with him near his home.  I said yes about 4 days before, not knowing it was going to rain and at some points, downpour causing the trail to be muddy and small streams to rise to mid thigh level.

When we first started, it was raining a bit but wasn't too bad.   Here we are excited to ride but not knowing what to expect (I'm sure my friend knew).

After 3.5 hours and 13+ miles later we came back looking like this:

What this picture failed to show was the ripped shorts on my back left butt cheek from a 14+ ft fall into thorns and rocks.  This left a nice raspberry colored cut on my butt which I should have taken a picture of.  This also doesn't tell the story of how my friend in red crashed into a rock that was hidden in a rising stream and fell over.  All we saw were his bike on top of his body with his head sticking out of the water.  It was actually very funny after confirming that he wasn't drowning and was okay.

You can see that my friend in yellow is smiling big because he didn't fall or get a scratch on him.  I'm still nursing my multiple cuts and bruises.  Would I do this again?  Absolutely!!  It was a ton of fun and if it wasn't for flashes of my wife and kids right before the big hills/jumps, I would have been a little more aggressive.  But with a 3rd coming next week, I thought it would be wise to meet her at least once.

I'm still sore from the hills and the falls which prevented me to running this morning.  Also my trusty iPhone alarm wasn't available to wake me up because it's a few inches deep in uncooked rice.  Yes I thought my Camelbak was waterproof but I learned that it's not.  Hopefully by tomorrow morning it'll be dry enough to use.

I'll be up by 5:30am to get at least 7-8 miles in.

Turned the Corner

Yesterday I had one of the best runs that I can remember.  Last week I only ran 9 miles mainly due to fatigue and minor PF.  I do feel like not running additional 20+ miles last week really helped me run with more energy and motivation this week.  The last thing I want to do is not want to run the next day.  And most of the days last week I was thinking it.  This week all I've been thinking about was how I can't wait to get out and run.

So yesterday I think I was supposed to run 6 or 7 miles but decided to go for 8.  This was the longest midweek run I had so far.  I felt great! I averaged a little over 9 min/mile while maintaining an average heart rate (HR) of 153.  I didn't feel any foot pain but did feel soreness in my calves during and after the run.  I think this is normal as I am still transitioning to my new shoes (Pure Cadence) and running midfoot.  The super nice weather also helped a little a LOT.  It was a cool 60 degrees (and dark) when I started and I didn't break a sweat until I was into mile 2.  I also didn't eat my usual Stinger Waffle prerun. 

I wanted to see how I felt running hungry and just drinking water before the run.  I was hungry but also enjoyed not having to worry about which bathroom I'm going to use to drop off the kids.

I finally finished reading Born to Run last night.  I know I'm very late to the party but so glad I finished it.  Very inspiring, motivational and educational.  There's just so much in this book that I still need to digest


Today is my rest day which I am enjoying.  Tonight I'm going to join a few brothers and go eat some Korean chicken wings!

Plantar What?

For the past few days I've been injured resting because of some pain in both of my feet.  From what I've read online, it appears to be the beginning stages of plantar fascitis.  For the past year, I've been dealing with patellar tendonitis and didn't think that I needed to worry about any other injury.  I've been good preventing PT but never thought I would get PF.  So for the past 3 days, I've been resting, massaging and stretching the heck out of my feet and calves.  As of right now, I think it worked!  I'm still going to take it easy and make sure I don't aggrevate it again.  So what could have caused it?  I can think of 3 reasons:

1.) Running in my new Pure Cadence shoes without much transitioning.   I've been wearing Brooks Adrenaline for most of the past year without issues but because of my new running form (Chi Running), I thought I can take advantage of a lighter yet somewhat supportive shoes.  I'm 85% sure this is 33% of the cause of my pain.  I'm going back to the Adrenalines next week to see I can see any changes.

2.)  I ran on pavement 2 days in a row on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I've haven't done that since last year before my 2nd case of PT.  I know I can't run on soft trails forever but until I get my milage up and get used to my new shoes, I will have to make that happen.

3.)  Too much too fast.  I didn't think I was running too much/fast but last week I ran about 28 miles.  I suppose I could have cut that down a bit (22-24) but I was feeling great last week.

I'm hoping to get my long run (12-13 miles) in either Saturday or Sunday morning.  I'm supposed to go to the beach with the family (and church friends) on Sat but the weather isn't looking great. 

Have a great weekend!

Trail Running

So the highly anticipated trail run yesterday wasn't as exciting as I had hoped.  I started at the usual start (Forbidden Drive/Northwestern Ave) and ran about 0.5 miles before I saw arrow on the right point to a trail.  As soon as I went on it, I basically ran 30 degrees up the hill for about 1/4 mile.  Okay, I didn't run the entire 1/4 mile but maybe half.  I probably started out too fast and ended up walking the rest.  After climbing the mountain there was a nice single track which lasted all of 1/4 mile.  After that section I could have kept going on the same trail or veer off to the right.  I kept going on the same trail since I didn't know where the other one lead to and also didn't have much time to be adventurous.  Well the rest of the trail was very uneventful and not fun.  I ended up running through a lot of spider webs and walked down majority of the way since it was very rocky and wet from the rain.  I ended up running back on Forbidden drive.  Ran 5 miles.

I will try to post with pictures but it's hard to bring a camera/iPhone on the runs unless I bring my armband.  If I get 1 request I will bring it and take pictures.  Right now it's just me reading this blog.

I'm Back!

I'm baaaack!  Yes after over a year of no blogging, I'm finally back.  Not that I blogged all that much on this site to begin with but I'm going to try to be more consistant this time forward. 

The last time I posted was exactly 13 months ago when I was training for the Philadelphia Marathon.  Well, so much has happened since then.  Here's a quick summery.  I didn't get close to running the marathon let along the R&R half.  I got injured July of last year with patellar tendonitis and was out of commission for about 5 months.  I thought I was good after 2 months of physical therapy but got hurt again (same injury).  For several months after that, I didn't exercise, ate junk and got fat.  I started PT again on 5/9 for 2 months and so far I've been injury free.  Now there's a whole TON of details that I left out but hopefully I can lay those details out over the next few months. 

But the good new is that I'm back running again. 

That's it for my 1st post of 2012.  I'm planning on doing something different tomorrow.  I will run on Forbidden again (my favorite place to run) but this time I will venture on to the trails.  I'm planning on running for an hour so hopefully that'll translate to about 5 miles. 

Stay tuned!