Author Archives: besaroboy

Five pound run

Posted on by
2

What happens when you run for 11 miles with no water? Well if you are like me you lose five pounds. I am sure I’ll manage to drink it all back tonight but it is pretty amazing to see that on a scale. I guess boxers call that cutting weight but I’ll call it dumb on my part. I swear that is the last time I run that far without water, I’ll bring that water bottle next time!

The run felt great today. I was really slow just barely coming in under 11 min miles. It was sort of a new route for my long runs of late. I have done the route in the past, but not in a long while. Its actually a nice route, nearly three miles of it on the Springwater Corridor. The only frag about the route is the last four miles are essentially on hills as I climbed from the river front back to my home. I totalled about 10.75 miles which is a half mile more that my longest runs this winter. I’d like to keep adding miles to these runs in the future. I think that would be more beneficial than trying to do them faster. Not that I am training for anything at the moment, but that might change… Stay tuned!

This is the fourth Monday in a row that I have done a long run and the third in a row of over 10 miles. Last week I didn’t keep my overall miles up over 30 though, I had too much to do and weather getting in the way. I’d really like to return to the habit and keep my weekly miles over 30 for now. Running long on the first day of my running week is a nice boost. Makes the total not seem so insurmountable.

Oddly I have not run at all on Tuesdays after my long runs this month, well I guess it isn’t too odd, as I usually have a band practice on Tuesdays (this week and next I have it off so hopefully I will take advantage.) I really should be doing a recover run to keep my momentum going. Even a short run of 3-4 miles would be good and would reap benefits (plus I’d be that closer to my weekly goals!)

My Oregon Medical Insurance Pool will be ending soon once Obamacare takes over. I looked into my options coming up once it fully takes effect. Coverage for my wife and I will run about half of the OMIP plan. Here is one small business owner and job creator that will not be closing his doors! Yeah my situation is different than many being that my wife and I are the only two employees (actually just me, but I slide Ruthann money enough so that I can consider her on the dole.) but still, STFU Obamacare haters! I’ll add more on OC as I actually participate and I will be honest. If it sucks, I’ll let you know!

Proud and sad

Posted on by
Reply

I’m looking at my running journal for the past two weeks. My ego wins out as I have had it up for several hours and just now decided to leave it up longer. Almost 70 miles in two weeks, two straight weeks of 35 miles, well last week was just 34.1. The weeks were similar in more than just miles. I ran on the same days; Monday and Wednesday through Saturday. I had long runs on both Mondays. This weeks Monday going for 10.25 was the longest I have done in awhile. Many of the runs were extended 10k runs around 7-7.3 miles in must cases.

I feel really good in several ways. First off my feet have gotten through this really well! My discomfort (odd occasional numbing) seems to have subsided and the pain is quite a bit lessened. I suspect that much of this is the zero drop shoes. I think the gate adjustments needed to run flat have had a large part of that. I wonder if I should keep mixing it up by going back to regular running shoes. I think that idea has merit but I think I’ll keep going with the zero drops for now and wait until I have more discomfort issues.

One oddity I have noticed is that my plantar’s wart seems to have moved. Actually it seems to be another one, but the old wart I have had on the botom of my foot for years seems to be getting smaller. This I think really has a lot to do with the change in footwear.

I am feeling good about myself and my health, particularly my weight. I seem to have warded off a potential relapse into largeness. What I really need to do is stop the eating at night, that is my downfall. But I keep telling myself I want to have fat on my body to do the rebif injections. Good excuse for some extra flab.

So, that’s the proud. The sad we all have been feeling this week. One my run today I spied a kid on a bike stopped at the back entrance to reed looking into the air. I wondered what he was doing, he also appeared to be talking on his phone. I silently gave him props for stopping behind the white line and as I turned right into campus he said something to me. “Excuse me?” He repeated that there were bald eagles in the trees. I looked up and spied the first one, a big, huge bird! Twenty feet to the south at the top of another tree was the other one. My friend and I marveled at them as the one took off, wings spread. We both said wow and he looked at me and said “I just wanted to tell you about them.” to which I thanked him heartily and we parted ways.

Moments later I switched from a comercial to the Ducks basketball game set to start in a few minutes. The had a moment of silence for the shootings. I kept my hat off for the National Anthem which quickly followed. It was a pretty amazing and uplifting moment. I really felt like the country was untied in some sort of way. Even if it was just to be in misery, I felt an embrace of the lands and people around me in America. It felt very important.

Sadly some of this evaporated when the jerk in the white car almost hit me. But I live. MF Lives!

Winter sluggishness

Posted on by
Reply

Well actually my winter sluggishness has been more about my blog than my actual running. Though to be honest I have been somewhat sluggish with running as well. A little improvement in the running and blogging categories would do me much good. Part of the running slowdown has had to do with my schedule and me not wanting to over do it. I think this is a good thing (not over doing it) until it becomes an impediment to actually getting a decent amount of running in. Tough balance. The schedule thing has been more of an issue. I don’t really like running on the days when I pay music as I get too tired to really be able to focus on the music. I am finding that I can run on days when I have rehearsals though it is hard (especially the Brownish Black rehearsal nights as I have a long bus ride home.) But it seems doable so I think I have checked off one of my excuses for not running (in theory anyway, now on to practice…)

Today I ran for the first time in 9 days (other excuses of cold rain have been in effect this week.) It felt good to get out there and move. I ran pretty slowly, but I had pretty solid energy for most of the run and kept adding more and more on. I ended up doing 7.5 miles and felt strong afterwards. We’ll see how I am doing later in the evening when the soreness sets in. I am sure I have some stretching in my future.

Running this time of year is good for strengthening the ankles as I keep finding myself having to adjust my footwork to avoid puddles and wet leaves. This makes for an interesting sort of random dance step routine!

Another break and back.

Posted on by
Reply

I ran today after another break, this one two weeks long. The first week I had lots of music to play and last week I was in Winslow and for some reason I didn’t run there at all despite bringing shoes and gear. I did a newish route for six miles at 10:30 pace, slow and easy. Not only was this my first run back from break, but it was my first rainy run too. The Altra shoes did really well, no slipping. I am glad I tried the zero-drop shoes, I like them. And they have a lot of room in the toe box for my feet. My gate seems to have changed a bit, landing more toward the toe. But I am still shooting for a mid-strike.

My new route took me south on my usual run through Woodstock and East Moreland. Then I continues past the golf course and came up the windy and hilly Bybee. The through reed and home. I did a lot of stretching last night and I think that helped to make this run more enjoyable. Even the rain was nice, steady but lite. I was going to rake leaves after finishing, but a warm shower won out. Tomorrow I am hoping to get a short one in.

Third 20ish mile week in a row

Posted on by
Reply

I have been getting a lot of running in recently and today finished up a third 20ish mile week in a row. This week was closer to 24 miles and I am feeling the improvement. My feet are pretty sore still, nothing changing there. I still have hopes that I’ll be able to get used to extra miles. Today I did a short 4 mile run. I was tired from the last two runs but I wanted to keep up with my running and not take too many days off. Earlier this week I really exhausted myself on a fast and hot 8 mile run. Then followed that up with a solid base run before todays 3-day in a row 4 miler. Today just getting out on the streets was more important than how far I went.

Two base runs in a row

Posted on by
Reply

I shouldn’t have been running as the air quality has been awful due to firs in Sisters, OR. But I ran both runs in a light haze. Tomorrow is the start of the clear out, but more than likely still bad. But I’ll probably throw caution to the coming winds and run anyway (I hope). So the last two days have both been my 10k base runs. I ran them both slowly and my feet are feeling the recent increase in miles of late.

The foot discomfort really has been making the long mile runs a thing of the past. It seems to be mostly in the balls of my feet and feels as if my shoes are too small. Often I get a slight numbing as well. I do like the zero-drop shoes and how my feet have felt these last two weeks. I have to say that overall I like the flat approach to shoe design. and I love the extra room in the fronts of my Altra Instincts. I have been concentrating on my feet spreading out and flattening on the roads. That seems to help a little. Maybe it is just an acceptance of the discomfort.

Another break, but today four in a row

Posted on by
Reply

As my writing here slows, so usually does my running. About 2 weeks ago my work and music life got a lot busier, both good but time consuming. All it takes is about a week of not running to start me obsessing about my weight as well as a reduction in the fitness benefits I am amassing in regards to treating ms. The weight thing has been building all summer and I have put on 10 or so pounds since winter, the exact oposite of what my usual seasonal patterns have been. I have enjoyed the extra fat for injections though. So while I can’t really say I have stopped my running malaise this year, today I did the fourth run in four days which I have always felt is a good restart. I think if gives me a sense of pattern acceptance in my workouts. I’ve also been pretty successful with not eating at night. So in general I feel pretty good with the exception of my tingly feet.

Sp today’s run was not only the fourth in a row, but I ended with a quality long slow distance run. It’s the first one in quite a while. It feels good to be exhausted. And I have been refueling/rehydrating pretty well this evening, and more food on the way! It was one of those runs where I had no real plan. But as I kept making route decisions leading me further along, I knew what it would be a good day for an lsd run. Actually I didn’t keep my heart rate low enough to be a good lsd run, more of a base run pace. I had several points where I started to fade and then pushed hard through them. I thought that was a good success, almost as good as getting home. It felt really good to finish.

The other three runs were two back-to-back base 10k runs and a short recovery run. I ran the two base runs pretty fast, I think the break was probably good for me. They were pretty boring but one weird thing did happen. I ran into the same dreadlocked reed student running in the canyon at exactly the same spot along the north trail. The recovery run felt good, really more of a slowish 5 miles than recovery. But I think the effects were pretty similar considering how well today’s long run went.

Reflections on injections

Posted on by
Reply

For the second year in a row I went into my yearly neurologist appt with the thought of switching to the oral meds on my mind. I was really gung ho last year, this year I had read quite a bit about heart issues with gilenya and I was pretty sure I would stick with the rebif. After talking to the doc I decided I would indeed stick to it another year at least. But I really don’t like the shots.

One of my biggest issues with the injections is occasionally I will experience significant pain. Other times nothing at all. When I first started I was told to ice my injection location beforehand. This didn’t work for me at all. I talked to a nurse at the pharmacy and she suggested a warm compress. This worked a lot better, but still I would occasionally experience discomfort. Sometimes a stinging feeling as the meds injected, other times it would feel like the stings would travel through my groin and down into my legs. Weird! Nobody had an answer for me.

So yesterday I had my yearly physical with my GP and he suggested I get a tetnus shot since it had been ages since I had gotten one. I thought what the heck, just another shot. The nurse came in and swabbed the area and before she injected me she made a big production about fanning the area. I asked her about it and she said sometimes the alcohol will travel into the body with the needle and will sting like lava. I thought, wait a minute, that sounds familiar. Could that be the cause of my injection pain? So today I tried that, day one of pain-free injection alcohol drying experiment was a success! We’ll see what happens down the road…

Zero-Drop shoe thoughts

Posted on by
Reply

I have been thinking of buying a pair of zero-drop running shoes in lieu of doing the barefoot running thing. Not only have I been worried about running on society’s surface (heat, glass, screws, who knows what else…) but my right leg is about a half-inch shorter than the left and to correct this I have worn a lift most of my life. Can’t hold a lift on under your without something to wear. So this is why the zero-drop shoes that are basically flat (the heal is the same thickness as the ball of the footbed) has been appealing to me. Supposedly with barefoot running the leg and hip corrects for distance imperfections as you land on the balls of your foot. Being that I am more of a mid-striker this isn’t necessarily the case with me.

So yesterday I purchased a pair of Altra Instincts from my local shoe store Pace Setter. This is the first time I have purchased shoes from a running store in forever. Its a really good thing, expert help, shopping local, etc. But I have been corrupted by cheaper online prices and since I have known what I wanted I don’t really need to try new pairs on. But I figured if I was going to go the zero-drop route I should at least get one pair at a store (even though the online price above was $25 less than what I paid, it was still worth it.)

This morning I headed out for my inaugural run. First off they were super comfortable and feature a much wider toe box. The shoes almost look like duck feet, but that is ok with me. I found my normal mid-strike to feel almost flat footed and eventually felt myself leaning more towards a sprinters landing on the balls of my feet (which is what they say I should do anyway). I am glad I got to that point naturally rather than setting out to run on the balls of my feet. My foot strikes were basically mid-strikes, but it felt like I was landing more on the fronts of my feet. Anyway, that portion of the run was a total success IMHO. The problem I found today is that I kept tripping over the tips of my feet. The Altras have a hard rubber front of the shoe that was catching rather than gliding over things in my path. Also I think I have developed an extremely low-profile foot positioning with the thinking being that the less I lift my legs the more energy I’ll have down the road. This approach doesn’t really seem to work with these shoes at least to start as my feet point down a bit which I guess is because I am used to having that larger heel. Anyway, it took less than a half-mile before I was down on the pavement having tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. I landed on the same spot on my elbow as I did a couple days ago. As the blood beaded on my elbow I thought, well at least I have my trip and roll technique down! I am sure I’ll be able to adjust to these shoes eventually. Today, later in the run I was concentrating on lifting my feet a bit more but it felt like I was coming down too hard on them. I am sure I can find a compromise that will work better.

I started the run planning to go a shorter distance, maybe 3-4 miles, hoping to allow myself to break in the shoes a bit. But last night I wore them around the house and felt like I was able to break them in a bit. So today’s run ended up getting extended a couple of times and all in all came out just under 6 miles. In addition to my new shoes, I also sported a new water bottle by Nathan that has no BPA. Worked just fine! It was slightly smaller than my old bottle so it was a little loose in my belt, but I was able to tighten the water bottle part up a little and it worked just fine (well it held it in at least).

Long hill run to the volcano

Posted on by
Reply

Once again I find myself struggling to break out of a string of rest days, but once again I did it. Another week off but two runs in the last two days with today’s being a quality LSD/hill run up Mt. Tabor. Couple of things were weird on today’s run. As I silently cursed my neighbor for parking on the right of way (we have no sidewalks in my neighborhood) and causing me to run into the street (no traffic, but their could have been, jerks!) my water bottle fell out of my recently loosened running belt. The stupid spout broke and a piece popped out, so when I stuck in back in I kept squirting water onto my back (not totally objectionable…) so I emptied out my worthless bottle and stuck it back in. I would like to blame my inconsiderate law breaking neighbors for making me vere into the street causing the bottle to break, but reality says it was probably that I loosened it (much more comfortable). I thought at the time either that or its karma for my general irritation with my neighbors.

The second thing that happened occurred after I asked a dog whose owner had him off leash if the dog had in fact “lost his leash.” Not 10 seconds later a woman with another dog off leash appeared. I moved to the side of the trail to avoid her my irritation at “off leash dogs beginning to boil. Suddenly I was air borne having tripped over this large rock and landing solidly on my hip and elbow. Again, karma? She did ask if I was ok (and I was). We chatted a bit and I headed off dusty and bloodied. I really do think I was being told to relax and get in a better mood. It was a beautiful day, I had new good music on my iPhone (Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears), hot but shady, what more should I ask for? So I decided to change my tude.

Other than the karma altert the run today was pretty hard. I took a few walks, but ended pretty strongly. I think more water would have helped quite a bit, the water fountains I found while numerous were still inadequate. I did ok with what I had (probably 5-6 water breaks) but still not enough. Can’t say it more, must drink water.

Tomorrow is supposed to get into the 90s, but I still really want to get a short recovery run in. I am pretty sure I will be going to bed early. Ruthann and I had a great meal at Dove Vivi and I think I have replenished ALL my calories. Good sleep is on the way.