Running Misfortunes

To warn you, this may be a bit of a rant post. My runs this week have been HORRIBLE to say the least.

Let's start with Sunday. Michelle and I scheduled a good 15-miler. We met up and neither of us were feeling too excited about the run. Well, we tried to turn our attitudes around and set out. I ended up getting us lost around Lake of the Isles. Not so much lost since it's essentially a loop, but I definitely misguided us. We ended up going around the lake twice because the first time I missed our turn off to head back around Lake Calhoun. I've discovered that it's easy to lose where you are on that lake because of it's shape and how the trails are laid out. I'll be more careful next time. After this we continued on and still felt a little crappy. Michelle has some crazy knee issues that started acting up. There's a screw in one knee that holds a ligament from a cadaver in place. Really cool in a nerdy scientific sort of way. Really not cool in an athletic sort of way. But, I guess that can happen when you play soccer all your life, including D-1 college. So, we ended up calling it quits at mile 8. Michelle's knee hurt and last week I had a terrible shin splint flare up so I didn't want to over do it. I felt a little guilty about this but I think it was for the best.

Tuesday was scheduled to be 4 miles. We decided to do 5 because of our lack of running on Sunday. One mile doesn't really make up for it, but hey, it helps. We set off from our office and ran north along the river, into the "north loop" area, or the warehouse district for those of you familiar with the Minneapolis area. There is a slight problem with this route however and that problem blew up in my face on Tuesday. You see, the "running" path is concrete and meanders into the woods and drops down close to the river, while the biking path is asphalt and stays close to the road. As you can imagine, for the sake of my joints and for the sake of my safety, I run on the bike path. Most runners do. In fact at any given time, you'll see more runners on the bike path than the "running" path. Well, Michelle and I were about a mile into our run when suddenly she veers off into the grass on the left and in about 2 seconds time, I hear a bike come up behind me and someone yelling, "Bike Path!" before taking out my right leg. WHAT THE F**K? Who doesn't give the standard, "On your left" warning AND passes on the right? Moron. So, he hit me then crashed himself. He got up all huffy and blaming me for running on the bike path and not giving a damn about my safety or being injury free. When I told him that the asphalt is better for runner's joints he actually said, "Well crashing on my joints isn't good for me either!" At this point I'm pretty pissed off because I'd asked him 3 times if he was ok, and I apologized. NEVER did he ask me if I was ok, despite the fact that I had tire marks up my right leg. I lost it. I got angry. I threw it down. He's lucky my fist didn't meet his face, but I yelled, "You know what? WE may have been on the biking path but YOU didn't give verbal warning, YOU passed on the right and YOU ran into me. So, this is YOUR fault!" He didn't like that. He just kept saying, "There's a running path over there." So, he went limping away (he scraped his knee, poor baby) and Michelle and I stopped to use the bathroom. He ended up passing us again and giving us some snide remark to which Michelle replied, "There are 50 other runners on this path. Are you going to run them all over?" Heh, nice.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'll admit that I was partially in the wrong for being on the bike path but I was completely out of the way, and following the rules of the paths. I consider the roads to be largely the car's domain, with a few cyclists scattered in and you don't see me plowing down the cyclists just because they're there. And trust me, they are much less courteous than the runners on the bike paths. So, when I got home, my leg looked like this:

Kind of painful. Notice it's not only on the thigh but on the calf as well. It's all scabby now. Looks great. :/ Hurt to sleep because the covers touched it. The good thing about the incident is that it must have sent our adrenaline going because we finished these 5 miles in 50 minutes flat and that included the time we were stopped for me getting hit and for Michelle to go to the bathroom and some time taken to walk because my leg was stinging from the sweat going into the wound. That is speedy for us!

Well, after that drama, we went for a run yesterday. 8 miles were on the docket. We set out to run around the chain of lakes again. This time it would be Calhoun and Harriet. We parked on the west side of Calhoun and took off. After about 1.5 miles, I decided that my shins were still in pretty bad shape. Probably because of the speed we'd done Tuesday. We turned around and walked back. Upon return to the car, we found that someone had broken in and stolen Michelle's purse as well as a baby shower gift (weird). Well, let's just say that Michelle's whole life was in that purse. 3 credit cards, her debit card, ID, social security card, planner (which she was REALLY upset about) and other things. Her ID is still from Ohio because she's in the process of changing everything. So now she's stuck in weird limbo between ID's. Minnesota won't issue one without her Ohio ID unless she wants to take the whole driving test. Ohio will issue her one but she'll either have to go back and do it in person or it will take 60-90 days. So, she has to wait 60-90 days. That's not even close to the worst of it. In the past 24 hours she's found out that her AmEx card had $9,000 charged to it and another card was maxed out. In addition, her checking account got overdrawn by $6,000. HOLY CRAP! She's now meeting with a Minneapolis police sergeant because the amount of money is on a felony level. I hope the F---ers get caught. They were dumb enough to make online purchases so it's possible to trace it through IP's and the shipping address.

In short, Michelle and I are not allowed to run together for a while. We have bad luck. Let's hope that by our 16-miler on Sunday, the luck turns around.

They're baaa-aack!

Yes, the evil has returned. What evil might you ask? Shin splints. At least, I'm pretty sure it's shin splints. I had a minor panic attack at work yesterday when I thought I might have compartment syndrome. Here's why. The picture is pretty awful and that's what they have to do to fix it. But, I am about 99% positive I'm experiencing shin splints again. Now I understand why doctors hate the internet and people who self-diagnose. They, just like I did, tend to jump to the worst-case-scenario.

Thursday I had a 4-mile run scheduled. This is now ridiculously easy. That is unless your legs feel like they're going to explode. Mine felt like I stepped on a land mine with each stride. This happened right from the beginning, all the way up to the first mile, when I decided to stop and stretch out. It didn't help. I hobbled the mile back to my office. I probably looked like a giant loser. People probably thought I was a big tool walking along the river in my sports bra and running tights. Who goes for a leisurely stroll in clothes like that? I mean seriously! It took me under 10 minutes to run the mile but over 20 to walk back. Damn what a waste of time. I came home and iced the shins. They seemed to improve.

Now, I usually have something to blame the shin splints on. This time is no different but I'm not sure I'm actually addressing the underlying cause of the problem. I did push myself really hard to keep under a 10 minute-mile pace in my 7-mile run on Wednesday. It was quite hot that day. My legs started to feel a little off after that run, but they seemed fine. Thursday was the first day of the week that I got to wear normal clothes to work. We'd just wrapped up an event the week before and spent Monday through Wednesday unloading trucks in our warehouse. So, I popped on a pair of heels on Thursday. That is not happening ever again after a long-ish run. Ever. I don't think that helped at all with recovery.

I also stopped running on the dirt paths instead of the asphalt. That was moronic. I will say that the asphalt is easier to run on from a fatigue point of view because the dirt paths are uneven and sometimes sandy. But, my legs will appreciate it much more if I run on the dirt. Back to the dirt I go.

I'm a little nervous because tomorrow is a 15-mile run. Michelle and I are doing it together which is helpful. However, these legs might not hold out. Luckily she's prepared for me to collapse in a heap at some point during the run. I've given her fair warning. But, to keep that from happening, I'm doing this for 20 minutes, every 3 hours today:

DG's if you're reading this, that IS an Anchora on my coffee table, and book club members, that IS a half read copy of "State of Wonder." I'm splitting time between that and the book below it, "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."

Ice packs held on to my legs via plastic wrap. I'm reminded of the time I spent in the athletic training office after high school cross country work outs. Only they used straight up bags of ice and there was no barrier between skin and ice. Kind of dangerous now that I think about it, but it worked. I remember driving home with those bags of ice taped to my shins. It was especially fun because I drove a manual and slamming down on the clutch jostled the ice quite a bit.

Today, I'm taking it easy. There was supposed to be a trip to the lake planed for some tubing and wakeboarding, but I think that has gotten cancelled due to a high level of "festivity" at a friend's birthday party last night. I'm not sure my friends are even out of bed yet. So, instead of that, I might have a cupcake. Lately I've been a little obsessed and have been spending time coming up with new flavors. Last night for the party, I developed pink lemonade, and it looks a little something like this:

Pink lemonade cupcake with lemon buttercream frosting.

Last week it was margarita and looked like this:

Margarita cupcake with tequila-lime frosting.

I'm hoping these shin splints clear up this weekend. Wish me luck on 15 miles tomorrow. Maybe I can run with the ice packs on my legs...

$2.4 Million

You'll remember that about a week ago I was really having some problems with shin splints. I decided to spend the last week resting and not running. Now, I will be honest and say that what I did do was not exactly restful. This past weekend, the National MS Society, Minnesota Chapter put on the Bike MS: C.H. Robinson Worldwide MS 150 Ride 2011. Big name, even bigger event. About 3,400 cyclists mounted their saddles in Proctor, MN (near Duluth) for a 150 mile journey back to the Twin Cities. 75 miles on Saturday, 75 miles on Sunday. We have an overnight in Hinckley, MN at the Grand Casino. So far we have about $2 million turned in from participants. Our goal is $2.4 million. Participants have until about mid-July to get all of their money in. I think we'll make it!

Team Cargill leads off the start of Bike MS: C.H. Robinson Worldwide MS 150 Ride 2011. Team Cargill has raised almost $233,000 as a team this year!

When we break for the night in Hinckley, all of the bikes get loaded into a bike corral where they are guarded by a security guard all night. 

This is about half of the bikes in our bike corral. The numbered rows go up to 50. At least I made signs for up to 50. It's possible that we had to hand write more. That's a lot of bikes!

So, with this big of an event going on, you can imagine that I wouldn't actually get to rest much. We load 8 26-foot trucks the week prior to the event. Then, we kick it off on Friday by loading all of those bikes onto 21 semi trucks, and the participants on chartered buses to take them up to the Duluth area. Saturday morning I was up at 3:30 a.m. to see the riders off and get them on the route by 6:30 a.m. A mere 3 years ago, I would have been going to bed at this time. That evening we had our grand party in Hinckley, complete with a catered meal from Buca di Beppo. They were great and gave us the meal at cost. Mmmmmm...Buca. Sunday the riders returned to Century College in White Bear lake for a grand finish. 

Needless to say, I had little sleep and was on my feet for pretty much all of the weekend. However, it was totally worth it to help these riders making this journey to help end MS. 

Today, I had a kickball game. Yes, I play on a kickball team. Nothing better than adults playing a game meant for a playground. It was the first time I'd done any sort of running since Tuesday and I have to say it was awesome. Despite the rough week and weekend, I had nearly zero leg pain. I'm pretty stoked to go on my short 3-mile run tomorrow and see how quickly I can complete it. The temps are supposed to be great but the forecast calls for scattered storms in the afternoon. Hopefully I there is a 25-30 minute window without storms to fit in this run. 

Lately, because of my extensive leg pain, it's been taking me about 28 minutes to run 3 miles. Pretty sad and lame. Tomorrow I'm shooting for closer to 26. I'd really like to drop that time down to about 24 minutes by August. I'll be running in the grass from here on to see if that helps soften the impact. Wish me luck!

Who turned up the heat?

I'm definitely not complaining. Bring it on! Today's high in Minneapolis was 102 degrees. Booyah. It's about time we had some real summer weather. Yesterday it was in the upper 90's and today, this. Granted, I spent my days in our warehouse, loading trucks for our MS 150 coming up this weekend, but it wasn't so bad. I am a little more tired than usual now that I'm home and sitting down. Although, that could be due to the fact that I got up early to run today.

Now, if you know me at all, you know I don't like mornings. Though, I will say I'm getting better with age. I got up around 5:45 today to get out and bet the heat for a short 3-mile run. I'm sad to say my leg pain is back. Blast! Give me a break already! I think I have medial tibial stress syndrome. In layman's terms, shin splints. Hooray. :( On Sunday they didn't bother me and I think it's do to the fact that I had my brand new shoes, ran on asphalt instead of concrete, rested for 2 days prior and I ran on flat surfaces. That wasn't really the case today.

Unfortunately for me, I think that means I'm going to have to take the remainder of the week off from running. Fortunately, I'd already had it built into my training plan to repeat this week due to our MS 150. I will also be investing in ice packs and a large amount of ibuprofen to see if those help at all. I remember back in high school when I used to drive home from cross country practice with ice taped to my shins. I'm thinking of doing something similar to that again.

Now, hopefully the week off will help. If it doesn't, I'm not quite sure what I'll do. I might have to take an extra rest day each week or something. Not cool. I will say though that the biggest recommendation by healthcare professionals is to rest and ice. So, if you find yourself with shin splints, I highly encourage you to rest up and don't continue with your training until it is no longer painful to do so.

All this being said, you probably won't hear from me in a while. I won't have much to report on since I won't be running. Maybe now is the time to do an entry on stretching...