Earthmovers and Sandcastles

Eep. I hate injections.

Took the day off from biking. I’d gotten so used to working out every single day that it’s hard for me to remember that it might have been (probably was?) a contributing factor to the injury, whatever it is. Days off are not the enemy; rest days can actually help conditioning, not harm it. I’m not hurting, but I don’t want to start hurting - not now. Now is not the time to risk pushing myself too hard.

Sam is parked outside with a little table and chair, trying to sell paper airplanes. Not foreseeing a whole lot of success for him, but if that’s how he wants to spend his morning…at least he’s getting fresh air and sunshine. I had thought about taking the boys for those haircuts this morning (barber was closed on Monday), but driving with the boot is a pain in the neck, so I’m only doing the bare minimum of that. (Not thinking about how, if I wasn’t injured, the barber is within pretty easy walking distance.) Oh, wait; Mr. Patience is giving up on his sale; “It isn’t the right time for a sale,” he says. “Nobody’s coming.”

Tonight, we have conflict: our first choir rehearsal of the season and Gabe’s preschool’s Parent-Teacher Night. I think I’ll send Eric and the boys to church and have them drop me off at the school on the way. I’d like to go to choir, but it’s important to see what’s up at the new school; it’s not the one Sam attended, so we’ll be starting over. (This one is closer to home, and many of his friends from playgroup attend.) Hard to believe that it’s time for schedules to fill up and start smacking into each other again. And I was thinking about adding swimming lessons into the mix, too, for the kids. How? But it’s important, and now seems as good a time as any.

First, get through today. Leave later for later.

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…is that it’s much harder coming from a very physically active lifestyle than from a more sedentary one. Not the healing part, mind you, but psychologically.

…is that, in the scenario mentioned, you feel like you’ve surely gained 275,235 pounds within the first few days of being unable to maintain your previous level of activity, and you have nightmares that this is the way it will be forever.

…is that endorphin withdrawal is a bad, bad, hairy, scary thing.

…is that you find yourself really tempted to “cheat” with the cross-training and look for the hills and other things that might help ramp up the difficulty level and gain you those endorphins you miss.

…is that you run a very serious risk of developing a secondary addiction to your cross-training activity, and that can cause another injury - to your wallet.

…is that it can make your butt hurt (from sitting, from biking, from feeling like life is just doing some pretty unseemly things to you that you probably shouldn’t discuss on a family blog).

…is that it can be difficult to tread the line between trying to keep motivated to stay the course with running (or whatever else you happen to be missing like crazy) and making yourself absolutely depressed by reading or hearing about other people’s running successes. But you won’t be able to stop reading or listening, so don’t even try.

…is that the level of guilt you can make yourself feel is incredible: guilt for not running; guilt for possibly having pushed yourself too hard and earned the injury; guilt for the frustration that you’re taking out on those around you; guilt for feeling guilty when, on the grand scale, this is a pretty minor “tragedy” (but it’s my tragedy, darn it)…

…is that, even at your lowest, you can still crack a smile when your three-year-old calls the boot your “robot leg” and gives you a spontaneous and unexpected, “Mommy, you’re pretty.”

…is that it’s temporary, and I need to be reminded of that at every possible moment. I’m 32. This is for a few weeks. I will not end my running career this way. I have many, many miles of running ahead of me, and when I get back on my feet, it may take as little as seven gentle weeks to get back up to an hour of running. And I’ll have gained cycling endurance in the meantime, which can only help my general level of fitness. It will be okay. Please keep telling me that?

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So, here’s the deal: the orthopedist (who is not a runner, but who specializes in sports medicine) thought it was a stress fracture from the beginning. I brought up the idea of peroneal tendinitis, and while he agrees it’s a possibility, he doesn’t want to rule out a fracture, either. Here’s something I didn’t know: while you do treat tendinitis with anti-inflammatories, such as ibuprofen, doing that with a stress fracture can delay healing or make things worse. Yikes!

Anyway, only surefire way to test for a stress fracture is a bone scan. I’m having mine on Wednesday. Can you sense how thrilled I am about this? Can you just FEEL how happy I am to be having more scans, more tests… Ahem. Forgive. I yell so I don’t cry (which I’ve already done, thankyaverymuch).

In the meantime, I am booted. My leg is encased in heavy, thick…I dunno, lead weights, it feels like. I keep accidentally kicking myself in the other ankle with it. Stairs are a fun adventure.

I just want to run. Is that so much to ask? Why does it have to be an obstacle course? Does somebody out there have a voodoo doll with my face on it?

Need chocolate.

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What are you having, or did you have, for breakfast today?

What are the best packed lunches, in terms of flavor and practicality?

(I had a cup of coffee and some homemade oatmeal bread with peanut butter for breakfast. As far as lunches go, I’m stumped, as everything that I know that tastes great is a pain to pack and to clean up later, and I don’t like doing them very often.)

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I’ve got two doctor appointments today: one in the morning as a follow-up to the whole “free air” conundrum, and one with the orthopedist in the afternoon for my foot. In between and around them, we have to:

• Get Gabe’s preschool forms signed (luckily by the same doctor as this morning’s appointment, so I can kill two birds that way)
• Get both boys haircuts
• See if Sam can get his eyes examined quickly, since his glasses broke this weekend and he’ll need new ones before school starts on Monday
• Get my contacts and Sam’s allergy meds reordered
• Think about getting started on school shopping

It doesn’t sound too bad written out, but since much of that is stuff that will require sitting around and waiting, I know it will fill the day to the brim, and I hope I can get it all done. We’re not off to an auspicious start; I woke up Eric, as he requested, when I was heading out at 5:30 to bike, but he was still asleep when I got back at 6:45. Sam had crawled in next to him, which for Eric is the human equivalent to having a hot water bottle snuggled in next to you, and the early jump he’d wanted to get on the day was shot. Then we threw a breaker while we were all trying to get ready.

Oh, and I want to try to get the rest of the vacation photos developed. Do I have time for that? We’ll see!

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Local bike store recommended the Trek 7.2FX WSD, or possibly the 7.3. Supposedly, they’re ideal for bike paths and roads, both of which I do, and they’re a good option for my current level of riding (athletically inclined ( ) but not a “dedicated biker”). Still looking, but this sounds like a good start, and both are cheaper than what Eric and I had anticipated.

Anybody familiar with these?

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I swear, I have not been bitten by any biking bug, regardless of what it says in the foreword to the book on biking that I bought yesterday. Buying a book does not equal being addicted; it just means that I don’t want to get further injured by ignorance. I rode a little over eighteen miles today. Is that a lot? I have no clue what “long distance” means in cycling; all I know is how much time I have available, and I just go with it.

The problem with riding for exercise is that to really maximize it, you have to either do plenty of hills, which I can’t do right now (or very well in this geographic area in the first place), or move at speeds that scare the crap out of me. I went down one hill today, heading for Lake Michigan, and I tried so very hard not to ride my brakes, but…dude. Moving that quickly with my body not actually touching the ground is terrifying for me. If something goes wrong, or I hit an unexpected bump, I could do some pretty serious damage to myself in a way that’s unlikely to happen during running. I’m not sure how to get over the fear, other than just to keep at it. So…just keep at it, then?

But my bike sucks. I knew that when I bought it at Toys R Us eight years ago, but it was fine for my purposes back then: getting to and from work, with a little bit of in-town toodling in between. If I plan to start putting serious mileage on the thing, I may have problems. For one thing, it does not shift well. It’s had a tune-up in the past year, but trying to get onto the third chain ring (please forgive bad nomenclature; I’m a newbie) is futile; it never seems to “catch.” Today, trying to go from the second to the first also wouldn’t work, and I have no idea why. Also, the handlebars keep rotating toward me, no matter how much I try to tighten them into the proper position. They’ve done that since the beginning.

Bikes are either cheap or expensive, though. I could (and will) try looking through Craigslist, but when you don’t know squat about bike tech, I’m not sure that’s a good solution. Might end up paying top-dollar for something not worth it, or else pay nearly new prices for something beaten all to heck. Ugh!

Oh, and Kate: this still does not mean I’m becoming a triathlete. Still got one sport missing, and since I don’t belong to any place with a pool (and have you seen membership rates at the RecPlex?!), that’s not likely to change in any real way. I laughed to Eric that I could go buy a wetsuit and jump in Lake Michigan, and he looked at me like it might just be time to call the men with the pills and restraints.

(But I did add this book to my wishlist. See? Duathlon! Not just tri! See? Oh, be quiet.)

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Little over 17 miles today - biking. Boy, I hope I get cleared to run soon, but this wasn’t bad. I haven’t been bitten by the bicycle bug, but it will tide me over for a little while, I guess, so long as I can do long enough distances. I definitely am more of a slow twitch athlete, and if I don’t get to push those muscles all the way to fatigue, I don’t get the rush that I crave. It’s harder for me to get there on a bike, if that makes sense, especially since the doctor advised me to skip the hills for now.

It was a gorgeous day along the bike path. Lots of runners, makin’ me jealous. Many bikers, too, though. I went way down into the county below us, following the trail until it stopped, turned onto a road, and vanished. I hadn’t examined the map well enough to know where to go at that point, so I used that as my signal to turn back. Plus, I didn’t start out until 7:30, so I figured I’d better get home soon enough to help with the kids, who would be waking. Only saw one stray dog today, which amused me; when I’m on a bike and actually stand a chance at outpacing a mutt, all I see is one little furball of a creature. On foot? I’ll meet a pack of attack dogs.

My foot is feeling much better. A little twingey on occasion, but better. Appointment on Monday!

Anybody running out there? How’s it going?

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We’re back! I’ve posted a bunch of pictures from the trip, starting here. It’s not all, since some are on my phone and some are on a waterproof disposable camera I got to use at the waterpark, but it’s a start. Don’t miss all the lovely expressiveness of Gabe; what he lacks in subtlety, he more than makes up for in everything else.

What are the generic “just got back from vacation” journal entry standards? Oh, yeah; I have a ton of laundry to do…gotta get back into our regular routine…why is the fridge so empty…fill in the blanks, since they all certainly apply.

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Gabe nearly punched Sam tonight and then angrily insisted he wasn’t leaving the hotel with us…because Sam folded a map incorrectly. Seriously. And Eric, while trying to mediate, murmured that it would have bothered him, too.

I told Sam that we were living with crazy folk. He just kept saying, completely mystified, “Why does it matter how it’s folded?” But Gabe is Eric, up and down, only with a three-year-old’s inability to cope or self-edit. He likes things done “right,” and he’s very clear about what that one “right” way should be.

But we got out of the hotel and went to play mini-golf, and Sam got frustrated with our coaching tips and declared that he was doing it “his style.” “His style” involves high-sticking, I guess; he cracked Eric in the teeth with his putter on the next stroke. Whoops.

Heading home tomorrow.

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