Friday 5 – Favorite Winter Activities

It’s Friday again (thank goodness) and if you’re having a week like I’m having you’re super glad it’s Friday.  The drama, the drama.  Work has been extra crazy this week.  I’ve been training a new girl and she’s awesome but it seems that the change-up in activity in my area has brought out the worst in some of my other coworkers.  Yikes.

Friday is Friday 5 link up time with Courtney at Eat Run Pray DC, Cynthia at You Signed Up for What and Mar at Mar on the Run.  If you’re not reading these blogs, you should be.  This weeks theme is Favorite Winter Activities.  My top 5 (in no particular order) are:

1.  Snow shoeing…The last few years due to the drought in California I haven’t had much of a chance to do any snow shoeing.  Fingers crossed for this year.

2.  Snow wheeling…My sweetie is right in the middle of building a new Jeep just for this purpose (and some rock crawling in the summer).  I haven’t been able to go the last few years but I’m hoping this year we’ll have a chance if he finishes the Jeep in time.

3.  Running…It’s California.  Even in winter our weather is pretty mild here and running is a year round sport.  If it’s windy I stay home but rain doesn’t bother me.  I figure I’m going to get sweaty anyway so I may as well run.

4.  Knitting…when the weather get’s too cold or too windy, I like to settle in with a couple of cute dogs on my lap, a cup of coffee and knit.  I don’t think it should come as a surprise to anyone that I’m an old lady.  I freely admit it.  I go to bed at 9pm and I like knitting.  Whatever.

5.  Football…I know it’s really more of a fall thing but with college play offs going on in the new year, I’m looking forward to it.  The rivalries have been intense this year and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen at the bowl games.  *cough* GO Bama!

 

What are your favorite winter activities?

What it isn’t!

Tuesday after work I suited up and tossed on my new Glycerin’s for a test run.  But sadly the run wasn’t to be.  I took about 5 steps and realized the my right shin is still too painful to run on.  It’s causing a limp that’s really pronounced and majorly annoying.  So I decided that after almost 3 weeks of very little running due to the pain, it was time to call the doctor.  I just feel like it’s not healing up very quickly and it’s time to see the doctor.

Some how, against all the odds, I managed to get a doctor’s appointment with my doctor yesterday after work.  The doctor was running about 40 minutes behind schedule when I got there but I decided to wait to see her because of the “super” storm that is supposed to arrive today (so far very disappointing as far as storms go).  After talking to the doctor she sent me for x-rays because she was concerned that it might be a stress fracture.  I was sure it wasn’t for no reason other than I didn’t want it to be that.  And it wasn’t.  The x-rays showed no evidence of a fracture.  Thank you power of positive thinking.  She’s sending me back to the sports medicine doctor and expects him to send me to physical therapy.  Yay.  Not.

I don’t know what it is about physical therapy but it makes me cringe.  I don’t know why other than the fact that I’m extremely lazy and I don’t want to do the work they want me to do.  But I’m going to suck it up and go.  I don’t have an appointment yet but I’m hoping for next week.  In the mean time it’s ice, rest and stretching.  But I guess that I shouldn’t complain since it’s just shin splints and not a fracture.  But I’m tired of being injured this year.  I just want to run.

I think it should be illegal to have brand new running shoes when your injured.  It’s pure torture to know they’re there and not be able to use them.  Soon, my pretties, soon.

Have you every been injured?

How did you deal with not being able to run?

What I Did Instead of Running…

Since I’m not running anywhere near the mileage that I have been in a bid to rest and recharge my batteries I decided to run over to Concord to the closest Road Runner Sports on Saturday.

It was my first time hitting their store.  Concord is about an hour and 15 minutes from the house and a bit of a slechp since you have to drive out through the delta to get there.  The delta roads are narrow and rough but the views of the Sacramento River delta are totally worth it.

I picked up a pair of Mizuno Wave Rider 18’s on massive sale from Road Runner Sports on-line the weekend after Thanksgiving but when they arrived I discovered that one of the shoes had the wrong size insole in it and there was a gap between the end of the insole and the toe of the shoe.  My toes don’t really rest there but I could tell that it would drive me crazy and I would end up trying to grip the insole with my toes while running.   So back they went.

In addition to the insole issue, the Wave Rider’s were also way too wide for my foot.  I admit that my feet are narrowish but I was slopping around inside the shoe and it would have been blister city.  I tried the Wave Riders in a smaller size thinking that it might be the fix but they were too short and I could see the potential for black toe nails.  I don’t like black nails unless it’s nail polish.

So instead I exchanged the Wave Riders for Brooks Glycerin 12.  I was a bit disappointed since everyone has been raving about the Wave Riders but I want the right fit not what everyone else is doing.

I would have loved to have the Blue to Pink Omber ones but they didn’t have them in my size so I got the blue ones instead.  If these work out for me I might have to order a second pair in the Omber because they were super cute.  I mean after all I might be the girl who spends more time in running clothes than real clothes but I’m still a girl and girls like cute shoes! (Ignore the sterotype, please)

I wanted to go hog-wild in Road Runner Sports and buy out the store but since it’s close to Christmas I tried to show restraint.  I basically grabbed my new shoes and ran out the door to avoid spending any additional money.  But they did have a ton of really cute running clothes and different fuels.  I could have broken the bank in there.

So after the running store, I was headed back to Sacramento when I realized that I would have to pay toll to cross the bridge on 160 from Antioch back toward Rio Vista.  It escaped my mind that the Bay Area will let you in for free but if you want to get out you have to pay.  So I popped into the closest Starbucks for an Americano and some cash back.  This chick never has cash, so I decided to sacrifice (yeah right) and get coffee.  When I changed jobs last year, I gave up having coffee out because I wasn’t commuting anymore.  We don’t even have a Starbucks in my town (but if they’re reading this, I know the perfect spot where they’d get ton’s of business) so getting coffee out is a real treat now.

This bridge is really high but you get some amazing views as you drive over but $5 to get out-of-town is crazy!  It’s highway robbery, no pun intended.  I was so glad to get out of the Bay Area though.  The roads were so jam-packed even on a Saturday.  I was glad to return to my sleepy little town.

Since I’m not really running, I spent most of my weekend knitting socks and watching sports (Alabama is in the College Play Offs!!) and movies.  I watched Looper with Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levit, if you haven’t seen this movie you should.  I really enjoyed it.  Joseph Gordon Levit does not look like himself in this movie at all.  I had to google it to see if it really was him.  Emily Blunt is all good in this movie.  I love her in general.

Here’s the weekly recap for last week.

I hope you didn’t hit your head when you fainted at the low mileage.  That’s right folks, 7.25 miles.  I ran 3 days.  I haven’t run that few days since I started running years ago.  But I’m cool with it.  The shins aren’t going to get any better if I don’t let them heal.  It’s hard but I’m doing what’s best for my body.

I have no specific plans for this week other than to run a few low mileage runs to keep everything ticking a long.  December is now the month of rest.  I’m just doing what I want.  We have storms that are predicted to be pretty bad (for California) coming in later this week and if they’re windy like the last one was, I won’t be running on those days.  Since I’m not in training for anything specific, I’m not going to kill myself to run in bad conditions.  It just makes sense.

Happy Monday!

My most recent race was on November 22 and it did not go well…not at all.  Despite the amazing California weather we’d been having that Saturday dawned cold, rainy and very windy.  I don’t know what the wind speed was but it was enough to rock my car while I was on my way to the race.  It took me over 2 and half hours to finish but I did finish.  I thought several times about just giving up (ususally while running with a headwind).  It was horrible.  Enough said.

This is the face of someone who is very miserable in the first couple of miles.

I’ve sat at home and thought about what I wanted to say about this race and other than saying that it was horrible, I couldn’t come up with a single positive thing about it.  I didn’t like the course, I hated that the pacers weren’t marked as to what pace they were running and I hated the weather.  It just wasn’t a good race.  The only up I could think of was that I didn’t quit and I finished.

I’m only smiling becuase I’m done and my mom is standing right at the end of the chute.

So now I’m without a training plan and no race in sight.  This race was so horrible that I’ve been considering whether or not I want to run half marathons at all anymore.  Not to mention the injuries.  Pulled groin, shin splints and weird aches and pains.  It’s been a hell of year.

For the month of December I will not have a training plan.  I’m running what I want when I want.  It’s December 5th and I’ve only run 7 miles this month.  My shins are still bothering me and I really want to take some time off from running to heal without taking any real time off.  For now it’s a wait and see type thing.