Category Archives: chi running

Hobble-Along Cassidy

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Against my better judgment I went for a run today. To make it a worse decision I went for a long run. While I will admit this is a dumb idea for the most part, I actually felt pretty good. While I totally advocate and practice rest when injured, I also feel there can be some benefit in stressing an injury. This might be the dumbest idea ever, but I think it can help build you back up stronger than ever because while you are stressing it you are aware of it and focused on it. Like I said, maybe this is bad advice, but it seems to work for me. The other aspect of this is that it is so hard to get back to exercising after an injury. You get in the pattern of not working out and resting yourself and it is really hard to get away from the luxury! As you heal it is often hard to know when you are healed enough to return. The slightest twinge will keep you from returning for fear of re-injury. I don’t think I would apply this to things like a broken bone or anything, but soft tissue damage (as long as it isn’t too severe) seems to be ok in moderation (the key!)

So my recently rolled ankle feels ok so far after I went for 7.5 miles today. The one sore area is the outer part of my right foot which I rolled in my stupid flip flops (the devil’s shoe!) It started to get sore with about a mile and a half to go. I focused on proper and balanced foot-strike and was careful not to hit any uneven spots (actually did through the entire run.) I did have to put up with a couple people passing me which I hate! But I guess I should get used to that, I’m getting older and slower or at least I am getting no younger and no faster (that sounds better.) One person came up to me in the canyon and touched my shoulder to let me know he was there, I have a feeling my radio (though it wasn’t that loud) was keeping me from hearing him. He was nice about it and I apologized for my lack of proper attention, I need to watch that. Scared the crap out of me thoguh when he did it.

Hot weather and twisted foot

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It has been two weeks since I ran last. The weather here has been too darn hot. Even in the early mornings it hasn’t been cool enough to get out for a run. I think a lot of it is that it is so hot during the day (107 was out high point) that I just get sapped of all energy, even after a night’s sleep (which also hasn’t been good) I just didn’t feel like getting up and hitting the roads. To top it off and seal the deal, it hasn’t really cooled down at night. Ok, enough heat excuses for now, besides I have another.

I have a pair of flip flops that I wear in the yard and office. They are moderately comfortable, but they have gotten really stretched out. Occasionally I have rolled my foot inside them. Nothing to do with the ankle, but actually rolling the foot. So I was climbing over our goose fence in our garden and was greeted by a flock of lettuce crazed geese. In trying to avoid them and their madness I rolled my foot. My small toe actually rolled under my foot. At first I thought I had broken something, it was really sore. But I didn’t have a black and blueness and putting pressure on the bones didn’t cause any pain. I think it was pretty much soft tissue damage. So heat and outside of my foot pain kept me preoccupied for the last two weeks. A couple of days a go I stubbed my little toe on my other foot so bad that it has turned black and blue. If anything is broken it is that toe. Gads.

So despite the foot issues I hit the roads today. It is so hard to get back into things after a layoff. You get used to being lazy. But it felt pretty good. My cardio fitness took a hit, but it will come back. The run went slow which was fine with me. There were a lot of people out running today. It looks like I wasn’t the only one to be inspired by the recently cooler weather. A little over half way I rolled my ankle (not my foot this time) and it still hurts. I probably should have headed home right there, but it still would have been a long walk. So after a couple of minutes I felt it was ok to continue. The rest of my run went pretty gingerly and I was really careful of any jumps off curbs or uneven trails. Now ice is in order as well as some ibuprofen.

Hot weather and twisted foot

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It has been two weeks since I ran last. The weather here has been too darn hot. Even in the early mornings it hasn’t been cool enough to get out for a run. I think a lot of it is that it is so hot during the day (107 was out high point) that I just get sapped of all energy, even after a night’s sleep (which also hasn’t been good) I just didn’t feel like getting up and hitting the roads. To top it off and seal the deal, it hasn’t really cooled down at night. Ok, enough heat excuses for now, besides I have another.

I have a pair of flip flops that I wear in the yard and office. They are moderately comfortable, but they have gotten really stretched out. Occasionally I have rolled my foot inside them. Nothing to do with the ankle, but actually rolling the foot. So I was climbing over our goose fence in our garden and was greeted by a flock of lettuce crazed geese. In trying to avoid them and their madness I rolled my foot. My small toe actually rolled under my foot. At first I thought I had broken something, it was really sore. But I didn’t have a black and blueness and putting pressure on the bones didn’t cause any pain. I think it was pretty much soft tissue damage. So heat and outside of my foot pain kept me preoccupied for the last two weeks. A couple of days a go I stubbed my little toe on my other foot so bad that it has turned black and blue. If anything is broken it is that toe. Gads.

So despite the foot issues I hit the roads today. It is so hard to get back into things after a layoff. You get used to being lazy. But it felt pretty good. My cardio fitness took a hit, but it will come back. The run went slow which was fine with me. There were a lot of people out running today. It looks like I wasn’t the only one to be inspired by the recently cooler weather. A little over half way I rolled my ankle (not my foot this time) and it still hurts. I probably should have headed home right there, but it still would have been a long walk. So after a couple of minutes I felt it was ok to continue. The rest of my run went pretty gingerly and I was really careful of any jumps off curbs or uneven trails. Now ice is in order as well as some ibuprofen.

Smelling good

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I finally broke down and purchased some special sports detergent, I couldn’t take the stink any longer. I am not sure what happens when you exercise as far as sweating goes, but apparently I excrete death. So, Sports Suds to the rescue. I am so far pretty impressed with the job this stuff does, my duds smell pretty much like new after one wash. I say pretty much as there was still a bit of a lingering odor, but for the most part the mildewyness is gone. Next up, my shoes.

I don’t wash my running shoes ever. I prefer the look of the grubby dirty shoe to the clean new shoe any day. It says I am a runner, not someone who just jumped into a pair of new shoes out for a doctor recommended run for the first time. New shoes look especially bad at the first of the year as now you take on the persona of the new year’s resolution runner destined to do it for a week and then retire the shoes to the back of the closet. So, give me the dirty shoes any day of the week. However, mine have reached the point where I want to do something. Its as if I am strapping on big smelly blocks of mud to my feet. Plus I want to try the Sports Suds on them and see how it works, especially when it comes to the odor elimination part. While I don’t keep my shoes inside the house, I do keep them in my office so smelling nice would be, well, nice.

Today I took my clean clothes out for the second 8+ mile run this week. If I can manage a couple more moderate runs I will be well over 30 miles for the week which is pretty much my goal mileage at the moment. I don’t want to go too far over that right now, but five runs a week of 6+ miles would be great, or three 6+ runs and a long run. Today felt pretty good, I was getting a bit tired near the end, but I finished strong with a faster than usual pace.

I just found a couple pieces of the wooden spoon I chipped up in the blender making my green drink. Gotta be more careful of that. Today’s recipe is not that good: apple, strawberries, two carrots, two kiwis and the requisite head of lettuce. It’s not sweet enough, and I think having a banana would have helped it a lot. I am also not sure if I really like the carrot, makes it a little too crunchy. The one I made before it wasn’t very good either, the mango I put in didn’t work very well and gave it sort of a yucky aftertaste. I want to try pineapple, I think that would be good. Another piece of advice that I took from Montel Williams is try different things in your drinks. He says the variety of ingredients not only provides interesting flavors but gives the body a bevy of vitamins and goodness. Maes sense, but then again a friend just told me a story about studies of people who don’t move from area to area and have consistent diets of only local fruits, veggies and meats all showed to have improved longevity and better health. Hmm.

Smelling good

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I finally broke down and purchased some special sports detergent, I couldn’t take the stink any longer. I am not sure what happens when you exercise as far as sweating goes, but apparently I excrete death. So, Sports Suds to the rescue. I am so far pretty impressed with the job this stuff does, my duds smell pretty much like new after one wash. I say pretty much as there was still a bit of a lingering odor, but for the most part the mildewyness is gone. Next up, my shoes.

I don’t wash my running shoes ever. I prefer the look of the grubby dirty shoe to the clean new shoe any day. It says I am a runner, not someone who just jumped into a pair of new shoes out for a doctor recommended run for the first time. New shoes look especially bad at the first of the year as now you take on the persona of the new year’s resolution runner destined to do it for a week and then retire the shoes to the back of the closet. So, give me the dirty shoes any day of the week. However, mine have reached the point where I want to do something. Its as if I am strapping on big smelly blocks of mud to my feet. Plus I want to try the Sports Suds on them and see how it works, especially when it comes to the odor elimination part. While I don’t keep my shoes inside the house, I do keep them in my office so smelling nice would be, well, nice.

Today I took my clean clothes out for the second 8+ mile run this week. If I can manage a couple more moderate runs I will be well over 30 miles for the week which is pretty much my goal mileage at the moment. I don’t want to go too far over that right now, but five runs a week of 6+ miles would be great, or three 6+ runs and a long run. Today felt pretty good, I was getting a bit tired near the end, but I finished strong with a faster than usual pace.

I just found a couple pieces of the wooden spoon I chipped up in the blender making my green drink. Gotta be more careful of that. Today’s recipe is not that good: apple, strawberries, two carrots, two kiwis and the requisite head of lettuce. It’s not sweet enough, and I think having a banana would have helped it a lot. I am also not sure if I really like the carrot, makes it a little too crunchy. The one I made before it wasn’t very good either, the mango I put in didn’t work very well and gave it sort of a yucky aftertaste. I want to try pineapple, I think that would be good. Another piece of advice that I took from Montel Williams is try different things in your drinks. He says the variety of ingredients not only provides interesting flavors but gives the body a bevy of vitamins and goodness. Maes sense, but then again a friend just told me a story about studies of people who don’t move from area to area and have consistent diets of only local fruits, veggies and meats all showed to have improved longevity and better health. Hmm.

Seizure meds and today’s run

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In my quest to cut down and stop taking on my seizure medication (Dilantin) I am now down to taking one dose a day (down from 5 a day). Before I was diagnosed with ms, the symptom that really slapped me across the head and forced me (and those around me) to realize something was wrong was the periodic seizures (or spells as I liked to call them, it sounded so Victorian to call them that which somehow lessened my fear). These “spells” would come on randomly sometimes every 15 minutes, sometimes every two hours or so. They seemed to worsen when my body heat would pick up. With running I would have them every 10-15 minutes at first and I would have to slow down to a walk (or attempt to walk, I actually dragged my one foot along in an uncoordinated manner). These instances of uncoordinated walking were paired with slurred speech which was all sorts of humorous and annoying at the same time. I was a periodic drunk without the fun of being drunk.

After being diagnosed with ms, this was the first symptom we attacked. I started out with 3 100mg doses of dilantin (actually the generic phenytoin). This initially helped quite a bit but didn’t completely eradicate the issue of my spells. When I got a second opinion I asked a lot of questions about the spells as my main neurologist had told me they were a symptom she hadn’t often seen. The docs at OHSU said the seizures (they liked the more doctorly term) were a rare symptom, but a documented one, The good news they told me was that these often go away over time and I may no longer need the medication. The way to decide whether or not I needed it anymore was to gradually taper off and see how it went.

At first I wasn’t too concerned as the dilantin was working and my spells at first lessened adn then eventual stopped all together. I didn’t like taking the dilantin for a number of reasons. One, I was removing the gelatin based capsules and taking the pill inside and it tasted terrible. Two, it sometimes gave me heartburn for which I could not take an antacid for fear of weakening the absorption. Three, it made my pee smell terrible (oddly, throughout the process of coming to a balance my dilatin levels were always low in my body, but it seemed to me I was peeing out a large amount of it.)

My first effort was to go from taking 5 a day to taking 4 one day then 5 then next. I’d do that for a week and then go to 4 and 4 and so on. I made it all the way down to 3 and 2 when I noticed the seizures coming back all be it very slightly. Still I didn’t want a return to them so I went back to taking 4 and 4 which seemed to be a fine balance.

My second effort started about a month ago, but I decided to not do the complicated odd/even dose thing and instead did a full dose jump. As I dropped to 3 and 3 I started to feel very mild seizures at the end of my runs, but that soon dissipated. I stayed at 3 a day for a few weeks before dropping to 2 daily doses. A similar thing happened at this jump. I felt a bit seizuery (yes, not a word) after a few days as my levels settled. This only lasted for a couple days then went away for the most part. I still felt a little weird, hard to put my finger on just what I was experiencing. Just sort of fuzzy, but not that bad.

I have now dropped to one 100mg dose a day and experienced the same effects as my levels changed. I feel a little woozy, but nothing horrible. The heat has also been really bad these last couple of weeks, so I am sure that had an effect. I am going to stick with the one a day routine for awhile and see where it takes me. But I am really looking forward to stopping all together.

So running. I woe today with a slight hangover, nothing bad as I only had a few drinks last night with a friend. I was a bit sluggish at first, but about midway through I picked up my pace and kept it up. I really wanted to to to the track today, but it didn’t seem like the best time to take up speed workouts. Soon!

Seizure meds and today’s run

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In my quest to cut down and stop taking on my seizure medication (Dilantin) I am now down to taking one dose a day (down from 5 a day). Before I was diagnosed with ms, the symptom that really slapped me across the head and forced me (and those around me) to realize something was wrong was the periodic seizures (or spells as I liked to call them, it sounded so Victorian to call them that which somehow lessened my fear). These “spells” would come on randomly sometimes every 15 minutes, sometimes every two hours or so. They seemed to worsen when my body heat would pick up. With running I would have them every 10-15 minutes at first and I would have to slow down to a walk (or attempt to walk, I actually dragged my one foot along in an uncoordinated manner). These instances of uncoordinated walking were paired with slurred speech which was all sorts of humorous and annoying at the same time. I was a periodic drunk without the fun of being drunk.

After being diagnosed with ms, this was the first symptom we attacked. I started out with 3 100mg doses of dilantin (actually the generic phenytoin). This initially helped quite a bit but didn’t completely eradicate the issue of my spells. When I got a second opinion I asked a lot of questions about the spells as my main neurologist had told me they were a symptom she hadn’t often seen. The docs at OHSU said the seizures (they liked the more doctorly term) were a rare symptom, but a documented one, The good news they told me was that these often go away over time and I may no longer need the medication. The way to decide whether or not I needed it anymore was to gradually taper off and see how it went.

At first I wasn’t too concerned as the dilantin was working and my spells at first lessened adn then eventual stopped all together. I didn’t like taking the dilantin for a number of reasons. One, I was removing the gelatin based capsules and taking the pill inside and it tasted terrible. Two, it sometimes gave me heartburn for which I could not take an antacid for fear of weakening the absorption. Three, it made my pee smell terrible (oddly, throughout the process of coming to a balance my dilatin levels were always low in my body, but it seemed to me I was peeing out a large amount of it.)

My first effort was to go from taking 5 a day to taking 4 one day then 5 then next. I’d do that for a week and then go to 4 and 4 and so on. I made it all the way down to 3 and 2 when I noticed the seizures coming back all be it very slightly. Still I didn’t want a return to them so I went back to taking 4 and 4 which seemed to be a fine balance.

My second effort started about a month ago, but I decided to not do the complicated odd/even dose thing and instead did a full dose jump. As I dropped to 3 and 3 I started to feel very mild seizures at the end of my runs, but that soon dissipated. I stayed at 3 a day for a few weeks before dropping to 2 daily doses. A similar thing happened at this jump. I felt a bit seizuery (yes, not a word) after a few days as my levels settled. This only lasted for a couple days then went away for the most part. I still felt a little weird, hard to put my finger on just what I was experiencing. Just sort of fuzzy, but not that bad.

I have now dropped to one 100mg dose a day and experienced the same effects as my levels changed. I feel a little woozy, but nothing horrible. The heat has also been really bad these last couple of weeks, so I am sure that had an effect. I am going to stick with the one a day routine for awhile and see where it takes me. But I am really looking forward to stopping all together.

So running. I woe today with a slight hangover, nothing bad as I only had a few drinks last night with a friend. I was a bit sluggish at first, but about midway through I picked up my pace and kept it up. I really wanted to to to the track today, but it didn’t seem like the best time to take up speed workouts. Soon!

Hot and fast run

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And not only that, but a hot fast run without water. I started out at 6:30 and the temperature was already in the mid 60’s. Maybe that doesn’t sound too hot, but it is for me and Portland! Plus running in any sun makes it seem hotter. Ok, enough justification for my designation of “hot”.

I wore my Asics Gel Kayanos this morn which are a lighter shoe than my Mizunos with the inserts. Despite being a bit more uncomfortable in the fore foot, they do seem to allow me to run faster (or maybe it is all psychological?). I didn’t intend to run fast especially since I didn’t have water with me but I found myself comfortably keeping up a fast pace. About 2/3s of the way through my six miles I seemed to have forgotten all about the fast pace and I slowed down to a plod for a mile or so, but I kicked it into gear at the end. In the end I broke a 9 minute mile pace for the 6.3 miles. not too bad.

I am thinking I want to start doing some speed work, more out of enjoying the workouts than a need to increase my speed (but a good side benefit). I’ll probably head to the track and do some straight and curves here soon (sprint the straights and rest job the curves for a couple miles).

Today I tried a new recipe for my newly found green drink. I call this one Green Chocolate. Two oranges, one banana, one peach, 2 scoops of chocolate whey protein powder and a head of lettuce. It was really good. I bought some yogurt to try mixing into my drinks in the future. I am really like these.

Hot and fast run

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And not only that, but a hot fast run without water. I started out at 6:30 and the temperature was already in the mid 60’s. Maybe that doesn’t sound too hot, but it is for me and Portland! Plus running in any sun makes it seem hotter. Ok, enough justification for my designation of “hot”.

I wore my Asics Gel Kayanos this morn which are a lighter shoe than my Mizunos with the inserts. Despite being a bit more uncomfortable in the fore foot, they do seem to allow me to run faster (or maybe it is all psychological?). I didn’t intend to run fast especially since I didn’t have water with me but I found myself comfortably keeping up a fast pace. About 2/3s of the way through my six miles I seemed to have forgotten all about the fast pace and I slowed down to a plod for a mile or so, but I kicked it into gear at the end. In the end I broke a 9 minute mile pace for the 6.3 miles. not too bad.

I am thinking I want to start doing some speed work, more out of enjoying the workouts than a need to increase my speed (but a good side benefit). I’ll probably head to the track and do some straight and curves here soon (sprint the straights and rest job the curves for a couple miles).

Today I tried a new recipe for my newly found green drink. I call this one Green Chocolate. Two oranges, one banana, one peach, 2 scoops of chocolate whey protein powder and a head of lettuce. It was really good. I bought some yogurt to try mixing into my drinks in the future. I am really like these.

Green drink

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I think I mentioned that I was reading one of Montel Williams’ books. The book was a little too much for me, a bit too rah-rah for my taste and need. But the fellow mser had some good things to say in it. The one thing in particular that I took from it was his goal of incorporating more fruits and veggies into my diet, something I have been trying to do myself. He makes these fruit and veggie smoothies every day which he claims actually give him an energy boost after he drinks one. And he is right! I totally notice the difference after downing one. Here is his basic recipe: an apple, an orange, a banana and a head of lettuce all blended together. It is thick, green and gooey, but totally good. I added a peach and strawberries to mine. A full blender makes 2-3 drinks that you can keep refrigerated for a couple of days. This morning I had my first second round after mt run and it was awesome.

Today’s run went well, 6.5 miles. Nothing too exciting.