It's not Break Dancing!

You ever see one of those movies where the super hero runs into a car, or more often, the always present tractor trailer hauling a tanker full of NoWayThisWillEndWellAzine? The super hero lands in the road and the truck hits them head on. The front end bows around their body as the rest of the truck compacts in on itself with a beautiful explosion to follow. Oh yeah, and the back end always pops way up in the air as this all happens. Nice CG!

This would have made for a fun time had I been a typical super hero. Unfortunately, my super powers fall more into the super hero class of say, Mystery men. So how exactly did this week descend into sucktastickness for Captain AlwaysInjured? Let's find out...

Wednesday: It all started Wednesday. We got a couple of inches of snow plus some beloved ice. Enough to cancel training that night and force me into a horrifying experience. You guessed it, The TREADMILL!! A device designed by people who enjoy painful, mind numbing things such as anesthesia-free elective surgery, drowning, and opera music. I finished my 4 miler but certainly not without practicing my skills at reciting a plethora of vulgarities under my breath,

Thursday: Run on your own day. 4 miles. This had to happen after work in the dark. Just one of those things that happens in the absence of sunlight. I decide to run from Fleet Feet. My plan was to complete the run we didn't do on Wednesday. The roads were essentially clear but black ice worried me. Very hard stuff to spot at night. I decided the safer choice would be to find some clear sidewalks to run on (yeah, right) so I headed for Bardstown road. Yeah, um, no. The sidewalks were covered with hard chunky packed snow, ice and salt residue. Great for an ice cream maker. Not so great for running. I survived and the run was going pretty well (At this point you're expecting me to say (Because I always seem to) "and then it happened". Unfortunately, I shall not not disappoint.) and then it happened...

The car was making a right onto Bardstown road and was stopped at the stop sign. He had been paused there for a bit and I was confident he had seen my eleventeen billion lumen headlamp beaming right into his windshield but as they say "When you assume, you get planted on the ice by 3000 pounds of steel" or something like that. I began to cross the side street, in the crosswalk, and he decided to jam on the gas and turn right. I had a slightly different experience than the previous super hero. He ran over my foot as I bounced off the right front fender.

I was pretty sure I didn't die and go to heaven because there was no quality bourbon and naked women. I was also fairly confident I didn't go the other direction because there was no cheap bourbon either. So I hopped to me feet to discover, amazingly, I'm essentially still in one piece, with everything important still connected and functioning(of the parts conveniently tested while standing in the middle of the road on a busy street, freezing several of those parts off). With that, I spoke to the driver for several minutes. He was very concerned and remorseful. Admitted he never looked right and he clearly felt miserable over this. I told him I was alright and was going to get back to running (My temp was dropping fast!). So back to running I went. Actually nailed my best split for the last mile. Got indoors, checked myself out and all looks fine, although now my hand is hurting.

Can you guess which foot he got?

Friday: Hooray for no sleep!!! My right hand/wrist is throbbing!!. Short work day and REST, REST, Watch The Martian(good movie), REST.

Saturday: Long run day, YES! Ok, well, um, it didn't end up a long run. As usual, something went wrong. At about mile 6 my IT band on the right leg gave up. Insane pain on the outside of the right knee and game over. Had to duck into a pet shop and do the shiver of shame (quite cold yesterday)while waiting for a ride to come get me. The running theory(pun intended)  is that the uneven surfaces I've run on this week have exacerbated my mild IT Band Syndrome that's only thus far, bugged me after my long runs.

Sunday: Um, no running today. The knee hath spoken. Just ITB Rehab exercises. At least the hand is much improved.

The bar for next week has been set pretty low. Not so great if you're a Limbo competitor, but not so bad for a runner. Good things maybe? <shrug>....

Naked New Year and Global Warming

What better way to start the new year than with a naked run? I'm sorry if you're sad that I didn't announce it beforehand so you could watch. Private second showings are available to beautiful women with Ferraris. Just respond to me with your contact info and a picture of the Ferrari.

You may recall from reading a previous blog (why you would read one and keep reading, I've no clue) that running naked actually refers to running without the aid of modern electronics to feed you on the fly data. Truth be told, I didn't run entirely naked. I actually had my GPS watch on me, but simply refused to glance at it for the entire run(Still wanted the "After the fact" telemetry from my run). It was sort of like streaking but wearing plastic wrap over your junk. For all intents and purposes, you're still letting the boys fly

When the run was over, I looked at my watch and to my surprise, my pace was 9:30. I wanted to find out what my natural comfortable pace was and expected it to be a good bit slower than that. It is by no means fast but for a runner of just over a year who had a comfortable pace of 11:30 last January, I'll take it with a smile.

And with that, I'll leave you with my only New Years Resolution....... I resolve to always wear pants when I run from here on in (wait, what?).

Global Warming:

You hear about it all the time. It's destroying the planet and I can't help but wonder, is it us? 

We all know(those of us who run at least) that running causes certain internal functions to um, deviate from normal operation. Essentially the body goes into overdrive, with the engine running at peak performance which causes an increase in um, exhaust production. Sometimes this is a fairly steady exhaust pressure increase, while other times it's more of a backfire. It's something we all do, well, the guys at least. The women claim no knowledge of this situation(but science has proven that if they keep holding it in they will explode one day, probably). Are we the ones expelling the greenhouse gasses? Should we ban running? Hmmmmmm

*Dammit Leslie, I warned you!!

On a personal note, I've reached a point of indecision. Next Saturday I begin the Louisville Distance Project training with my local Fleet Feet.  I mostly chose to join this for social running, not so much the training. I had planned to run with the Half Marathoners with hopes of gaining benefit from the speed workouts for a nice PR at the KDF Half Marathon at the end of April. The problem is that group starts out at a very low mileage with a long run building on 4 miles. My weekly long run is up to 12. My thought process was to run with the Marathoners for the first few weeks until the Half group gets some distance on the Saturday run. I'm now torn as to what to do.....

• Should I keep running with the marathoners and just change my registration from the half to the full? 
• Is marathon training too intense of a program for me at this point?
• Am I risking injury?
• Should I stay with the original plan and be patient?
• Should I just give up running and go back to trying to become a poker player? (Yeah, f**k that. Poker is way cool though)

Decisions, decisions.....

* Leslie is fictitious. No women runners exploded during the making of this blog.