Day 502 – I’m Still Here

I can’t believe it’s been since August that I posted an update.  Since it’s been so long, I should probably recap the last few months…

I’ve stopped running due to foot pain.  I may pick it up again later, but I’m not going to attempt getting back into it until I have someone check out my gait.  Fort Worth Running Company is where I’ll probably go, but I don’t plan on being in DFW any time soon.  We’ll see.

I have continued to Mountain Bike (MTB).  I got some new gear for Christmas:  Shimano PD-M770 pedals, Innovations Second Wind minipump, and an Alien DX multitool.  I should be prepared to go on longer rides now.  The new “clipless” pedals have been…different.  I used to never fall unless I flat out crashed.  On my 3 rides since getting the new pedals, I’ve fallen 7 times — once into a little cactus.  Now I’m wishing I had a road bike too.  🙂

This past week I also started a rediculous diet.  I have an iPhone through my job, and I found an iPhone app called “Lose it!”  It’s really pretty simple, but it’s been working so far.  I’m on the “lose 2 pounds in a week” plan.  That means cutting 1000 calories a day.  You add the foods you eat and excercise you do for the day, and it keeps track of your calorie budget.  Because of a 1:30 MTB ride yesterday, I was 520 calories under budget for the week.  I started out at 175 lbs.  This morning I weighed in at 170.  If these numbers hold up, I’ll be at my ideal weight in a little over a month.  We’ll see.

One last thing.  A friend of mine got me tuned into Daily Mile.  It’s basically Fitness Facebook.  I had never heard of it, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Day 340: Three In A Row

I went out to Buck Creek for the third day in a row.  My tail was a little sore, but I managed to stay off of the seat as much as I could.  I ended up covering the entire trail except for the Technical Loop in about 1:20 and burned about 1300 calories.

I forgot to mention that I got a Camelbak Lobo hydration pack this week off of Ebay, and it’s been much nicer than toying with a little water bottle.  I can now carry 3 liters of water with me and keeping peddling while I drink.  Very cool.

Day 339: Quick Ride

I went out to Buck Creek this afternoon with Kevin — it was his first time on the trail.  I was a little envious of his Trek 4300, but I tried not to let it get to me.  We ended up going for about an hour, and I logged about 850 calories.

Day 338: I’m Hooked

Hi.  My name is Cameron, and I’m a Mountain-bike-aholic.  I went out again today for over 1:30 and burned about 1600 calories.

I decided to take the shortcut to Dave’s Loop today to cut out the first 2.5 miles of the trail because I wanted to hit some sections I had skipped before.  I took the Technical Loop this time, and the bike and I survived.  Yea!  There’s some pretty difficult stuff in there.  I didn’t crash, but I didn’t have to jettison the bike a couple times to keep from going with it when I got off-balance.  I also got to try out the back corner of the trail where Wimp’s Hill is.  It turns out that I’m a wimp because I had to get off halfway up it.

Buck Creek Trail is a great trail, especially for this area.  I’m mostly taking my time through most of it, and my heart rate still hovers from 160-190 pretty much the whole time.  It’s a great workout, and fun to boot!

Day 333: Back To Buck Creek

I returned to the Buck Creek Trail ahead of schedule today.  I was planning on waiting a few more days for my previous injury to heal, but I was pressured into it by a friend.  It didn’t take much pressure, mind you; it’s just that I didn’t think about riding until he texted me about going.  My knee started feeling much better over the last couple days and didn’t hurt at all during the ride.  Plus, I bought some knee and shin guards the other day to help protect my pretty legs.

We went out at around 2PM.  I didn’t check the weather at the time, but I’m assuming it was close to the 102° high we had today.  Great weather for shedding pounds.  This was my first ride with a partner, so we took our time and tried not to lose each other.  When I’m alone, I tend to tear off down through the trail forgetting what’s behind me.  We ended up stopping after about 1:10 of riding because my buddy got a flat — there’s lot’s of cactus and mesquite trees out there.  With no extra gear (pump, patches, tools, or tubes), he had to just trek back up to the parking lot.  It wasn’t a huge disappointment because I was running low on water already, and the water I had left was quite warm (it was all ice when I left the house).

Anyway, the ride went pretty well.  I managed to make it down The Gully this time without crashing.  My heartrate monitor said I burned about 1000 calories, so I’m pretty pumped about that.  Mountain biking feels more like your goofing around than actually working out, so this may be the sport/excercise I’ve been looking for.  Only time will tell.

Day 319: The Gully Got Me

First off, my foot is feeling pretty much “healed.”  After a couple days, I remembered that my previous “tendon pain” from running was happening on the inside edge of my foot and not the outside edge where the pain from bicycling was happening.  After talking to our trainer again and letting him know that it was real tender first thing in the morning, he thought it was probably plantar fasciitis, especially since it wasn’t an “old” injury from running.  So after a few days, I’m feeling good as new.

But instead of taking it easy, I decided to do something different:  go mountain bike trail riding.  So, I joined the Abilene Bicycle Club this week and went out to their local trail to see if my Target-special mountain bike could hold up out there.  Well, I’d like to blame it on the bike, but I think it was my fault that I ended up with a souvenir:

It looks pretty nasty, but most of that is just blood that ran down my leg.  I ended up getting four stitches at the walk-in clinic down the road.  I’m sure it gonna be nice and tender in the morning.  I crashed at “The Gully” about 20 minutes into my hour-long ride.  I probably would have quit sooner, but I didn’t know the trail well enough to make a quick return.  So, I ended up riding most of the trail (excluding the extremely technical area).

It looks like I had a bad day, but it was really a lot of fun.  If I had a real mountain bike, it probably would have been a lot more fun.  And maybe some knee pads.  I doubt I got as good of a workout as running would have been, but I was working pretty hard.  I’ll probably take a week off from a doing much athletic work while my stitches do their job, but after that, I hope to go ride again.

Day 313: Hello, Sports Medicine

There are certain advantages to working at a university, and one of them is that you have free access to athletic trainers.  So, after all of the foot pain I experienced yesterday, I decided to have a professional look at it.  The verdict from our head trainer is that I either have insertional tendinitis on the tendon that attaches to the 5th metatarsal in my left foot or it’s a small stress fracture on that metatarsal.  The only way to tell the difference between the two is with an x-ray or MRI, but tendinitis could lead to a stress fracture if it’s not taken seriously.  I went back and checked my blog entries, and this foot pain started back in November.  November! Hopefully, this is not a stress fracture I’m dealing with.

So, my plan at this point is to lay low and take Ibrouprophin for the next 10 days and ice my foot (which I hate) as much as I can — both are treatments recommendations of our trainer.  Our family physician (who’s also a sports medicine guy) is on vacation this week, but when he returns, I plan on seeing him as soon as I can.  This blog may turn into an injury recovery blog for the next little while, but I’ll try to keep posting updates of what I learn.

Day 312: Cross-Training

A friend of mine bought a new road bike and wanted to go ride with someone, so I volunteered.  I rode his 15+ year old Cannondale using his old clip-in shoes.  We ending up going about 30.2 miles in 2.5 hours, and it was a lot of fun.  We left out at 1:45 in the afternoon to face the 88° heat.  The first half of the ride was pretty easy, but the second half was pretty tough.  We had about a 10mph headwind with a couple big hills on the second half of the ride that made it a lot more challenging than I expected.  We kept about a 15mph pace the first half and somewhere around 11-12mph on the second half.

All in all, I was surprised at how well I rode.  Road bikes are amazingly efficient.  I don’t think it matters what kind of shorts you wear because your butt is still going to hurt.  Overall, though, it’s much easier on your body than running.

Everything seemed to be going well until we stopped riding.  As soon as I got off the bike, my foot started hurting real bad.  It was the exact same pain I’ve been feeling after running the last several times.  I’m starting to think that I may have some kind of stress fracture on my 5th metatarsal or something.  I’m thinking (and my wife agrees) that I should probably had it looked at to make sure I haven’t really messed something up down there.

Day 304: Let’s Play Tag

Topher tagged me recently on his blog, but before we get to that, let’s deal with the fact that it’s been 58 days since my last run.  The main reason I haven’t felt like running recently is because work has been stressful lately.  I work in the IT department of a small university, and contrary to what most people think, the summer is our busiest time of year.  We basically do all of our upgrades during the summer while most people are gone and then try to maintain what we have during the Fall and Spring.  So, I’ve been a little exhausted at the end of most days.  I have two more major projects to tackle in the next month, but hopefully things will settle down after that.  Other than that, the Wii Fit and a new weekly outing with friends to go bowling has been keeping me from putting on pounds.

Now, on to Topher’s game of tag.  I think you’re normally supposed to tag 5 people, but I only know 2 runners who blog:  Topher and Joe Thorn; so I guess I’m tagging Joe.

1. How would I describe my running 10 years ago?

Ten years ago I was 20 years old, a sophomore in college, and spent most of my time playing on computers.  I think the only time I would have gone running at the time would be the day that a friend of mine trash-talking about how he could run further than me on a 15-minute run.  He was a runner but not a natural one, so I called his bluff.  We went to the track and I almost lapped him on the 1/3-mile track.  I was pretty proud of myself at the time, but for the next couple days, I could hardly make it up the stairs to my third-floor dorm room.  So, I would describe my running back then as “devoid of everything except arrogance.”

2. What is your best and worst race experience?

Since I’ve only had one official race so far, my best and worst would have to be the “Steamboat Challenge” Half-Marathon I ran last October.

3. Why do you run?

Because I need to lose about 25 pounds, first of all.  More important that than is the fact that we’re on Step 2 of Dave Ramsey’s baby steps to financial peace.  Step 2 is paying off all your debts except for the house.  Because of our old debt, I can’t go down to Bike Town and take home a $2000 road bike or even a $500 mountain bike.  Instead, I spent $50 on a pair of shoes and started running around the neighborhood.

4. What is the best or worst piece of advice you’ve been given about running?

As a newbie attempting a Half-Marathon after only 8 weeks of running, the best advice was to run an easy pace.  It took a while to train myself to slooow dooown.  It’s a long race.

Worst advice: at the start of the race, sprint up ahead of everyone and yell, “I’m winning!!”

5. Tell us something surprising about yourself that not many people would know.

For some reason music is all I can think of, so here’s a few factoids:  I can’t stand most 80’s music, but I like Bluegrass (and I mean real Bluegrass, like Ralph Stanley).  When I get a little stressed at work, I usually start listening to Collective Soul or the Beach Boys.

Day 246: Starting…Now

I had to put off my running schedule for a few days, so I will miss my 5-days-per-week goal for this week.  On Monday we went to PrimeTime and took in some go-karts, bowling, and batting cage time.  I’m still sore from the batting cage, but it was a good workout.  I’ll have to do that again.  Then on Tuesday & Wednesday, Bridget was out of town on business, so I was home alone with the boys.  Today was my first chance to put in some miles.

I ended up doing okay.  The first 0.9 miles was pretty easy, and then I ran out of juice.  Surprisingly, my first mile was under 8:00…by one second.  Unfortunately, my second mile was tough, but I finished with an 8:55 pace.  Not bad.  I’m looking forward to watch my times gradually go down.

Stats: 2mi in 17:49 @ 8:55 pace