To follow up on my previous post, my exhaustion experiment was a moderate success. After the shorter run I hit practice up and it went ok. I was a little tired and had some moderate focussing issues, but it wasn’t too bad. Part of that could have been due to the band working on some new and difficult pieces, but I do think the run had its affect. I am going to attempt this again and see if I notice some patterns (well more patterns than I already see).

On other notes I am having an issue with my Altras and am exchanging them. First about two weeks ago the logo pealed off. I didn’t really care as it was just a decal that floated on the middle of the side, I actually applauded the logo falling off, but hoped it wasn’t an indication of some sort of glueing defect. Everything else seemed fine and properly attached. Then today on the same side of the same shoe another part started peeling off and this seemed more structural than decoration. So I will try another pair and see how that goes. I hope it will be ok as I really like this model.

This week I have been battling a cold I brought back with me from our Reno trip, mostly a head cold and a bit in the lungs. On Monday I went for my first run in two weeks after the trip and the cold. I chugged along but it felt pretty good. About halfway through I was getting warm so I stripped off my jacket. I usually don’t stop to unzip it and just pull it over my head on the go, which I did again. All of a sudden I felt a sharp pinch/cramp in my upper back. I stopped and walked for a bit hoping it was more of a stitch and would go away, but it didn’t in fact it just got worse. Figures I was at the halfway point of my run, quite possibly as far away as I could be on this route and I slowly made my way home. That night I took a anti-inflamatory that I had laying around and smoked some indica, a strain meant for pain relief and threw in some icing. I think both helped tremendously as I felt a bit better the next day, so I repeated my relief the next night as well. I was really worried that I was going to have a longer recovery, but my se;f prescribed methods seemed to do the trick and I was able to run today. I also kept active after I did whatever I did and went on a couple longer slow walks.

Today’s run went well, somewhat slow (10 min miles exactly), actually probably a bit faster, but my first 1.25 miles didn’t register as I had turned off my watch instead of disabling the watch bevel (it was raining a bit and leaving the watch face active tends to cause trouble in the rain, my jacket sleeve sometimes causes issues too.) So I had to edit my run on Garmin.com and I just went with the same speed as the rest of the run. The run itself was a good one and I felt strong throughout. I was not so happy with the rain and cold (it was warm for the last couple of days when my back was out, grrr) but it wasn’t too bad.I took a short walk at one point, but jumped back into normal pace pretty quickly up a hill that I could have easily walked. Good run.

Garmin issues. Since I switched over to the new Garmin Connect system I have had nothing but trouble with the watch syncing with the computer. It is supposed to immediately sync once you are within range, and that is how the old system worked. But with Connect I seem to be a run behind and often it won’t let me re-sync to get today’s run into the system. I have tried to massage the settings on the watch and thought I had it figured out, but apparently not. Still I was able to manually sync today and get the system to acknowledge that I ran today (as well as my last run which wasn’t showing up either). I do like the watch a lot and would probably get another when this one finally dies, but I am starting to get a bit frustrated with it.