Disaster strikes (no, not that)

Last night, a true disaster occured.  Before I go further into it, let me reassure you - I am not injured so its not THAT sort of disaster.

I was running on my treadmill after deciding that five miles in my Sauconys would be nice, watching Battlestar Galactica on the tablet... And then.. It happened.  I suddenly realized, I didn't really care what happened.   It seems I have over-done it on the show, and I am sick of it.  I must have felt it coming on as I wasn't as excited as usual to get running.  Now, I am faced with the disaster of not knowing what to watch while I run.



You see my friend, if I don't have something engaging to watch - then it goes back to being the "Dread Mill."  My warmup, five-mile run and cool down will be come the longest hour of my day. IT might even be longer than that last hour, spent tossing and turning in bed just wishing I could sleep.

This is where you, my friends and readers come in.  Please, help suggest shows that I can watch on Netflix/Hulu to stave of the eternal boredom that a treadmill represents!

On the road again… I just can’t wait to get on the road again…

This is a re-post from: http://oddfutures.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/on-the-road-again-i-just-cant-wait-to-get-on-the-road-again/ - the original location of my blog.
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So, on my before-last post - I was talking about doing the couch to 5k.. And here is what I discovered.

I can't do it.

It was BOOOOORRRRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!! And exceedingly aggravating. Now Mind you, I'm not saying it isn't a good choice for a new runner - but to go out there and "jog" (I'm notajogger either!!!!) for only a minute, and then walk for a minute and a half (and repeat until you hit 20 minutes)- when I know I can just run the entire 20 minutes.... I couldn't do it.

I got to see my skeleton today.. Did YOU do anything that exciting?


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You only get to see the top of the machine
because my phone lost the bottom somehow



So, today I had a bone scan done - it was a pretty cool experience.  I had to go in at 8:30 am, and they gave me a shot of radioactive material (my son is going to be so jealous.)  They then did the scan and at that point they could look at the blood flow.    They had me lay on the little bench, and then they set up the machine just over my shins/knees and took the scans.  Then they told me to go away for a couple of hours.



The screen on the right is where the pictures appeared



Back to work, then back to the hospital at 11:30.  After the required thirty minutes spent sitting in the waiting room (doesn't it always seem mandatory to you?) in we went for the actual bone scan.  Now this time, they actually did a full body scan.  It started over my head with it almost touching the tip of my nose.  For the next 25 minutes it worked its way down my body slower than a Caterpillar could crawl.  I could see the monitor (its blank in the picture, I know -bad timing - but they took my phone away for the full scan) as my skeleton slowly appeared on it.

Now to me it was just a cool skeleton shot - but the tech was able to look at it and let me know that I had pain in my knees - both left and right.  He also asked me what sort of trauma had occurred to my left arm (I don't recall any to be honest, but with an older brother and sister?  Probably..) 



They taped my VFFs together to help keep my legs still.

The guy who ran the machine was also a runner (though to be fair, he prefers biking -so his tastes could be questionable) who owned VFFs.  It suprised the first tech that helped me that not only did I have bizarre toe-shoes, but that his coworker did too - and apparently had worn them to work before!
We discussed shoes - he told me he had seen people come in that were wearing VFFs and switched back with shin splints (both the actual medical issue with the shin bones, and just muscular) from switching BACK to normal shoes. Moving back to the lifted heel and a more heel-strike style of running seems to help cause aggravation of the shin muscles.

The tech also explained how the bone scan works - the radiation they had injected me with gave off gamma radiation. This radiation hit the salt crystals that were in the flat thingies (you can see them on either side of my VFFs in the third picture).  That is what gave them the "picture" - just like a time release photo shot.  He told me that a stress fracture (such as the one he himself had in his thigh bone [though he used fancy medical terminology.. the show off...] shows up as a bright white compared to the greys of the normal imaging.  He explained this to me and showed me the monitor. Now let me be clear - he did NOT diagnose me, or tell me if I had a stress fracture or not.  He wasn't a doctor and could not do that.  But after explaining to me that a stress fracture would show up white - he pointed to the screen for me to look at.

I didn't see any white. :)

Happy Feet! or "I love my Vibrams!"

[caption id="attachment_388" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Bryce Ran from the green dot, up through Rec. Park and back - The Blue Dot is where we stopped and stretched."][/caption]

So, Last night's run was a nice mile run with my son.  I am very proud of him - he can do 1 mile (in 2 legs of .5 miles each with a side stretch in the middle) in 13:42!  We enjoyed ourselves, did a full stretch at his 1/2 mile side-stretch.  It was a nice distance for a warm-up, and great preparation to help avoid more muscle strains!  We then headed back home, and he headed in while I kept going.

I picked up the speed a bit for my solo run and ran another two miles.  It felt sooooooo good.  My feet were happy as could be, and the whole run was a blast.   I ran faster than the previous day, and enjoyed it so much more!  I have a little bit of soreness on my right foot, where the muscles haven't been

being used for the last 3 weeks.  My physical therapist showed me a way to use the a can that you roll back and forth with your foot to massage the bottom of the foot.  Its an exercise they use to treat planar fascitis, but seems to work well to massage the arch of the foot as well. Its one of the exercises I have been doing in physical therapy to help strengthen my other foot/calf muscles.  You just put the can/ball under the foot like in the picture to the left - and roll it forward and back.  Luckily, its not a very complex exercise, so I can manage it!

 I am going to go back out in my Asics soon - as I don't thinkit is fair to judge them based on my first run after being off for 3 weeks.

Hills... Equal to more mileage/pain...

Hmm..  So it was beautiful today, and I took advantage of that - to take  nice run.  I went with the Vibram Five fingers - and it was nice..  There is just something very different about running in these.  I could feel it along the bottom of my feet - some tendon/muscle/something - that almost seemed tight.  With some time - it took care of itself (although i can still feel it now).  I decided on a four mile loop in the VFFs, although I suspected I was going to feel it at the end of the run.  One of the nice things about this particular loop - is it has a really nice hill in the middle of it, one that my old cross country coach used to torture us with.  I didn't stress myself going up the hill - took it nice and easy although it was definitely not "simple" - could feel it as i went..

The problem was when I reached the top of the hill - it hadn't occurred to me how much more running up hill could stress the calf..  I had run 2.3 miles at that point - which was the limit of what I had been able to do pain-free until then... and it seems it was or should have been the limit today too.. luckily my wife was able to come get me... the problem is these feel so good to run in - it is so easy to over do it.. and unlike sdealing with some minor sore ness the next day - since it is using muscles  differently than they ever have been - the pain is far more immediate..

So, it looks like tomorrow's run will be in my ASICS..  unfortunately.

Wonder if I can come up with a way to carry my normal shoes.. could run for 1.5-2 miles (gradually increasing it over time) and then swap to my ASICs, and carry my VFFs..

hmm.