Running Chick

Happy Snowy Saturday, Happy Valentine’s Day, Happy March and Happy every other day I missed since my last post.  Let’s jump right in with the updates, shall we?

Training officially started at the beginning of February, and I’ve been using the same schedule that I did last summer, running four times/week.  I had an okay fitness base built up from December & January, but it still felt like a bit of a struggle to hit my paces.  Combined with lots of snow and some cold patches which forced me to have several dates with the treadmill, and that equates to February turning out to be not that pleasant of a month.  Still, I only missed one run and ended the month with 61.50 miles.

I’m feeling a lot stronger and peppier now, and so far this month I’ve logged 27 miles, with a little over 20 miles this week.  The roads are mostly bare now, which is such a welcome state after spending the last couple of months slogging away in the squishy snow.  There are still some spots which are super icy and I had three close calls this morning on my long run where I slipped and ended up skidding on the ice, arms & legs flailing around.  I had to remind myself to proceed with extreme caution because I’m currently helping Josh as he recovers from this:

You can hop on over to his blog to get full story, but the short version is that he crashed his bike and broke his collarbone.  He had surgery last Thursday where they inserted a plate to repair the bone.  He’s bionic now, but laid up for the next few weeks.  Sounds like it’ll be about three months before he’s back to full strength, so I’ll be running on my own until probably May or June.

Random photos from my phone.

Pippen is now 1.5 years old.  Here he is at three months, when we first got home.  See how cute and teeny?

Here he is now.  Godzilla!  He barely fits in my lap anymore, and when he stretches out, he’s as long as my legs hereby proving that everyone’s taller than me.

Found a great new brewery in Marquette, Ore Dock Brewing Company. The place is pretty small, but the beer is really good.

We had a pretty good blizzard at the end of February that closed MTU for 1.5 days.  That was pretty significant because MTU does not close down frequently.  The last time was in 2007 and that one was on Josh’s birthday!  I forget how much snow that storm brought us, but it seemed like we were shoveling a couple of times a day for a week straight before we got a break.

I found the most enormous bottle of Sriracha I’ve ever seen in the hospital cafeteria.  That was about the only interesting thing I found there.  I might add that it also did not look like the cafeteria in Gray’s Anatomy, nor did any of the doctors look like McDreamy. Such a disappointment.

I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled weekly posts starting next week. Until then, think Spring! And don’t forget to turn your clocks back an hour tonight.

Scout says hello.

Weekly recap: Monday, 6 @ 10:46; Tuesday, 5 @ 10:44; Thursday, 4 @ 10:25 and Saturday 8 @ 11:10 for a weekly total of 23 miles @ 10:50.  Next week, I have 28 total miles on the schedule.  That’ll be my highest weekly mileage in the history of the (my) world, so it’s daunting.  However, I have a couple of things working in my favor: 28 is my favorite number and once the week is over, I start to dial back my mileage.  Focus on the positive, I guess.

This deer says hello, too. We had a 20-30 second stare-down when I was finishing up a run on the Nara boardwalk last Monday.  She let me walk about 10 more feet in her direction before she went bounding into the woods.  Earlier, just as I was starting down the boardwalk, I came upon a small red fox.  He didn’t stick around to check me out, like the deer did. He & his floofy tail took off into the bushes as soon as he saw me so no pictures.

Our first major delivery from the local CSA we joined included everything below (onions, cucumber, zucchini, squash, cauliflower, lettuce and turnips) as well as a giant bag of potatoes.  Today I made two loaves of zucchini bread and only used one zucchini.  Good thing I like them in salads.

Fiat 500. How cute! I sort of want one.

I always wear my compression sleeves after a long run.  I don’t know if they actually do anything useful to aid recovery, some people say yes, others no, but I do know that they do make my legs feel better so I’ve made them part of my long run recovery just like stretching, rolling and refueling with fries.  Unfortunately, they’re not the most fashionable thing in my wardrobe and I got two comments on them yesterday.  One was from the gas station lady who told me she liked my “calf wear” and another from some dude at the bar who asked me if I played soccer.  Wonder what they would have said if I’d been wearing my fancier socks?

Josh and I took a bike ride this afternoon and stopped for a short break at the Quincy Mine Hoist. Here’s a glamour shot of our bikes.

And here’s a glamour shot of me on Coal Dock Road just before a massive hill. I’m so glad we were going down instead of up.

Finally, I got up early today to watch the finish of the men’s Olympic marathon.  When I started watching, Meb was way back in 18th position. By the end of the race, he worked his way through the pack to finish fourth. I’m pretty sure that he could have finished bronze, just like Deena Kastor did in Athens in 2004, if he had a a bit more real estate, but it wasn’t so. Still, Meb is awesome.

Source

I can’t believe it’s already September. Wasn’t it June like two weeks ago? Guess it’s time to recap the running for last month. I managed to log 58 miles in August before I jacked up my ankle. The last time I was able to run was August 24th, so that’s makes about 3 weeks that I’ve been on the injured list. I’ve been riding my bike and doing yoga in the interim so I don’t feel like I’m wasting away or anything, but holy cow I feel like running. Things are moving in that direction, though. Last week I managed to run about two steps before I stopped due to pain. Sunday, I managed two minutes and tonight I think I ended up with about seven.  It. Was Awesome. My ankle was a little sore afterward, but I stuck the ice pack on it for about 20 minutes and it feels just fine now. Slow and steady.

Pictures! We took a ride to Marquette to do some shopping and general bumming around last Saturday. Spotted this old Model T driving around, and then it showed up at a garage sale we stopped at.

Our main visit was to the Farmer’s Market in downtown Marquette. We’ve been there earlier in the summer when it didn’t have much, but it sure is in full swing now.

We bought all sorts of fruit & veggies and a couple of ribeye steaks from grass-fed beef and a free range chicken. We had the ribeye, it was delish and I’m hoping to make the chicken this weekend.

Check out the Puli.  I’ve only seen them in dog shows on tv, never in real life.

Check out the balloon guy. I’ve only seen them in real life, never on tv.

Shorts Brewing Company was at the UP Beer Fest which was held in the lower harbor. We almost went, but decided that since we had to drive home that night, it probably wasn’t the best choice.

In keeping up with the interesting car theme of the day, we saw this peaceful van in the parking lot.

And then this hybrid monstrosity in another parking lot.

It’s a dump truck (or something big) turned into a camper van. That’s a real 21’ camper with the axles removed on the bed. Fully plumbed and everything. Both cool and weird.

And then there was this 4x4 factory van that Josh said I had to take a picture of. I thought my car was way more impressive with it’s TWO ham antennas.

The Portside has been replaced by the Blackrocks Brewery as our new favorite place to go. Good beer, good atmosphere.

But, the KBC is still my favorite and probably the graffiti artist’s as well.

Unless this is some gang-related graffiti. Who knows these days.

Anyway, some other stuff I did was lean how to can cucumbers. A friend of mine gave me a lesson and now I have six jars of pickles percolating in my larder.

Did you know that MTU now has a first responder team? Check out their bad ride. We saw them up @ Fat Tire in Copper Harbor over Labor Day weekend.

Time for a beer.