May 11, 2008

Stuff

I haven’t written one of those “random” entries lately so here goes! (although it could be argued that ALL my entries are random :)

1) Happy Mother’s Day to all those mothers out there! (especially mine!) I am one of those lucky people who has two wonderful parents and I couldn’t be more thankful for it. So thanks mom for all your love and support – it has made all the difference in my life!

2) This morning I ordered a cookbook! Yes, strange I know. Not really much of a cook here. But I couldn’t pass this one up.

This is the cookbook I ordered - The Runner's Cookbook - written by Alison Wade (who happens to be the very nice person who hosts the running-blogs.com website among many, many, many other things!).

As you can see, 100% of the proceeds of the cookbook go to the Jenny Crain "Make It Happen" Fund and to the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund so not only will you be getting tons of great receipes from the country's (and world's) best runners, but you will also be helping to raise money for 2 great causes.

3) Two great workouts today! First, a ride this morning in some mid 40 degree temps. I have to admit, when the alarm went off at 6 am and I saw it was pretty chilly I REALLY wanted to save my ride for this afternoon AFTER church. But I'm glad I didn't wait because the rain started around 11 am and hasn't stopped since. :) Then this afternoon a good hard swim.

Meanwhile, O was busy with his own hard workouts! He also swam with me this afternoon but while I was riding this morning he was getting down to business on the track with some hard 800 repeats. But I guess I should let him tell you about all this himself since he does have his own blog. :)

4) The Penguins are currently tied with the Flyers in the 2nd game of the Eastern Conference Finals right now. The Pens won the first game. To say that Pittsburgh is a little hockey crazy right now is a bit of an understatement!

5) O and I just watched Evan Almighty and I really liked it! If you have seen the movie, my favorite part is when God is talking to Evan's wife in the resturant and explains to her that if you pray for courage, God doesn't all of a sudden make you courageous but rather gives you the opportunity to display the courage that you already have inside. Of if you pray for patience, you are placed in a situation where you need patience and can therefore learn it. Pretty cool if you ask me.

And here we are with the start to another week! Hope everyone has a great one.

Posted by beth at 8:33 PM | Comments (1)

May 10, 2008

Merry Berry Month of May

There is a chain of resturants in the Pittsburgh area called Eat'n Park that several years back had a little jingle called "The Merry Berry Month of May". It sung the praises of strawberry pies and cake and shakes. It was quite catchy. And O LOVED it. Mostly because O loves strawberry pie. But he knew all the words to the jingle which is quite a feat because song lyrics aren't usually something he's too good with.

ANYWAY - O and I still call May the "Merry Berry Month of May" and every year I get him a strawberry pie from Eat'n Park. This year I picked the pie up on Tuesday while he was at a track meet. When he discovered it in the refrigerator that night you would have thought he struck gold. He danced around and did a little jig and then proceeded (as he does each year) to cut the pie into 4 pieces. Yep, a huge pie cut into 4 HUGE pieces, one piece each night for 4 nights. I don't like strawberry pie so it's all his. Never have to worry about the pie going bad, that's for sure! ;)

I was thinking about all this this morning while I was eating THE best strawberries in the world. Wow - May really is the merry berry month!

But apparently it's also a very rainy month. I think the past 10 times I've run it's been in the rain, including this morning. My running shoes don't have any hope whatsoever of drying. Ever. But you will be happy to know that my cycling shoes did dry from last Saturday. Now they just stink. :) Oh well, it was bound to happen since I never wear socks when I wear my cycling shoes. That makes for one seriously stanky pair of shoes. They should get together with my racing flats who also seriously stank. Imagine opening up the suitcase after those two have been snuggling up next to each other in the hot cargo compartment of a plane. Or after sitting in a hot car trunk for hours. Okay...I'm starting to gross myself out!! :)

ANYWAY, my run was good this morning regardless of the rain. It was one of those days when you actually have to RUN a little to get the heart rate up. I love those days! Usually I'm holding myself back but today I got to RUN. I looked down at my watch at one point and it told me I was running 6:57 pace (and my HR was still in it's low aerobic zone). I did a double take. "This dumb thing has to be broken", I thought! (and no, smarty pants, I wasn't running downhill :) So yes, it was one of those good days. Of course for every one of these days I have one of those days when I'm running slow and my HR is high and I look at my watch and think "this dumb thing has to be broken!" :)

Meanwhile, O is out cutting the grass because it's approximately 5 feet tall. It grows so fast! And over the past week or so there hasn't been one dry day to cut it. So he's cutting wet grass right now because it's supposed to rain again tomorrow and if he doesn't cut it today, we will be baling hay instead (and we don't have a hay baler and furthermore, baling hay is really hard). I'm sure he is frustrated because our lawn mower gets upset with wet clumped up grass (but we can't complain because it's a hand-me-down from my grandparents and it was free!). I might need to buy another strawberry pie to comfort him... :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful day - in the merry berry month of May! (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

Posted by beth at 12:26 PM | Comments (3)

May 9, 2008

Ahh...Friday...

Great way to end the week. Two good workouts this morning (swim and run), busy but productive work day and then one fine bike ride after work. The storm clouds were rolling in but I finished the ride before the rain came. 90 minutes of pure joy.

And the Penguins are winning. Beating the Flyers nonetheless! Go Pens!

And it's Friday.

And I have another race coming up very soon.

And Roxy feels better (but is wilder than wild can be).

And life is good.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Posted by beth at 9:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 8, 2008

Uncanny

It truly is uncanny how much dogs become like their owners or vice versa. I know I've written about this theory before but it's never been as apparent to me as it has been the past couple days.

So the vet yesterday. Wow - what a fiasco! I don't even know if I have the strength to retell the whole story but let's just say, I don't like our vet, we won't be returning to his practice and that's 2 hours of my life I will never get back!

Basically he thinks there is something wrong with Roxy's ligament or tendon in her left hind "knee". I agree that this is likely the issue. We didn't see her do anything to her back leg but she is an extremely active dog and runs/jumps/does cartwheels/backflips/races/etc... around like no dog I've ever seen (except perhaps my sister and brother in law's crazy dog Luna). It's likely that she could have pulled or strained or slightly torn something while engaging in one of her crazy moves.

But the vet wanted to take an xray to make an appropriate diagnosis. Hmm...okay...sounds fair enough. I inquired if a ligament or tendon tear could be seen on xray (knowing full well that it couldn't be seen with anything but an MRI) to which the vet responded that possibly it could. He then informed me that to take this xray he would have to put Roxy under anesthesia, do blood work and also keep her over night until the anesthesia wore off. To which I responded, "umm...really?"

This was starting to sound a little fishy.

The anesthesia, he claimed, was so that Roxy would lay totally still for the xray. I asked him if it was possible if I could just put on an apron and hold her really still myself with no anesthesia (I was fairly certain I could keep her still for the 5 seconds it would take to do the film). He didn't go for that idea.

At which point I inquired of the cost of all this madness. Whoooooo man - let's just say - I didn't like the answer to that question!

After I decided (in about 3 seconds) that we could not afford the close to $600 bill for a stinking xray I inquired as to option #2. I mean really, $600 for an xray?! I was really surprised that he would even suggest that option given the fact that she is only slightly limping up stairs and while jumping and walks and runs normally. It was pretty apparent to me that her leg wasn't broken (no swelling, no heat, no nothing) so what exactly was this $600 xray going to tell us? And furthermore, where exactly do you think you are practicing your veternarian medicine, The Hamptons? I mean O and I do not live in a very affluent area of Pittsburgh and I find it really hard to believe anybody where we live would pay for this type of thing! It's one thing if I know for sure my dog needs surgery to live and it cost $600 - well than of course we'd find a way to make it work, but for an xray that likely isn't going to tell us much at all? I don't think so.

The charade continued on for a while. At one point I asked if I could just take her home as is and see if it got any better on it's own. That's when the vet laid the BIG guilt trip on me that I had to (AT THE VERY LEAST) let them do the blood work and give her the pain/anti-inflammatory medicine (which was $200) because we couldn't let her suffer like this.

Suffer? Just 2 hours earlier I had watched her dart across our yard faster than a lightening bolt to try to catch a bunny.

He told me that "just because they can't talk doesn't mean they aren't in pain." I wanted to slap him. So I agreed - blood work and pain/anti-inflammatory medicine for 2 weeks with very minimal activity and if the limp still exists or returns, it's back to the vet. Of course it won't be the same vet - it will be a different one - but back to the vet regardless. :)

So last night Roxy got an IV injection of the medicine and now today she started on oral medicine for the next two weeks.

And guess who is feeling better?

I came home today from work to find an absolute WILD dog. Unlike the past two days where she was pretty sedate, didn't jump around much and only occasionaly tried to run, today she was doing her regular mad-dog impression, racing around, jumping up, doing her crazy circles around the dining room table... Oh man. This is part of the reason why I didn't want the pain medication right away because now that she doesn't feel her pain it's going to be nearly impossible to keep her activity level low. Pain isn't always a bad thing if you know what I mean.

Which brings us to the uncanny similarities between Roxy and I. O was remarking this morning how much Roxy is just like I am when I'm injured! She was totally depressed this morning because she didn't get her usual walk and she absolutely HATES when either O or I carry her up and down the steps and up and down off the bed. I told her I know how she feels! I hate being injured too and when people tell me not to do this or that - no running or racing - well I get sad and depressed just like her! And then it starts to feel just a bit better (likely due to the medicine) and we are both all about getting back into things! I lectured her tonight about waiting until it was totally healed before starting back up again, a lecture I've heard myself about 10,000 times. There was sulking and she also scratched up her blanket leaving purple fuzz all over the house. Been there, done that myself (okay, I never scratched up a blanket but I'm sure I've done similar things while injured... :).

Truly uncanny.

So wish us luck in trying to keep her relatively tame (without the help of a cage) over the next couple of weeks while she heals. If she really is like me, there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the days to come.

Posted by beth at 8:00 PM | Comments (5)

May 7, 2008

The Scoop

Roxy says thanks to all those nice people who wished her a speedy recovery! Actually, she's a dog, so she didn't really say anything but mostly just begged for treats and to play ball. But you know what I mean. :)

She is still a little on the gimpy side. Doesn't look too bad when she walks around but getting up the steps and up onto the bed is not an easy task. So we are going to the vet today. Although I had planned to wait it out until Saturday, I have the day off work today so I think we might as well just get things taken care of now! Her appointment is later this afternoon.

Anyway, I 'm not sure why, but I haven't talked about my workouts lately. I've been doing a bunch of them and they have all been going well! Today was a three workout day (only 2 workouts completed thus far), all of which were relatively short but had some intensity in them.

First up was a track workout this morning. It was a beautiful, sunny morning and actually a little on the warm side! I was glad to see I had the track to myself. Because I didn't start until after 7:30 I was afraid I was going to show up and see a whole bunch of middle school kids playing soccer during their gym class. And let it be known that I am NOT a fan of doing workouts in front of any human between the ages of 13-18 years! But it was just me and the track and some gut-busting intervals. :)

I went home and ate breakfast and then didn't wait long enough before I went to the pool for my swim. I don't know why I think that cereal can be digested within 45 minutes but this morning was a reminder that it CANNOT! I survived my 100 repeats though keeping them all between 1:13 and 1:17 (they had varying rests, hence the big difference in time) and was pleased with the effort.

That of course leaves a bike workout which I am about to start after this blog entry and some ironing (I just ate lunch so I'm trying not to repeat the breakfast mistake and give it a little more time...). Although it's still beautiful outside I think I'm going to do the workout on the trainer. Of course I would always prefer to ride outside if possible but I sometimes think the trainer is great for interval workouts. You can really focus and push hard on the trainer which is difficult to do outside when you are dealing with traffic and stop signs, etc... And lately I've done all my bike interval sessions outside so it's time for a good tough one inside.

And that's about it! I was looking at my schedule over the next couple weeks and was shocked to realize that my next race is already only 10 days away! This is the best part of racing season - less training and more RACING! :) My next race is the Columbia Triathlon which is a great race in Maryland. I did it last year and had one of my best races of the season (pre bike crash of course :) so I'll be excited to see if I can improve upon my splits from 2007. Luckily the swim is in a lake that has glass like water so there will be NO EXCUSES for not swimming fast! And then the bike and run are relatively hilly which isn't necessarily my favorite but definitely plays to my strengths given the kind of terrain I train on all the time. YIPPPEEEEE!!!

Posted by beth at 12:57 PM | Comments (3)

May 6, 2008

Injury Strikes!

Fortunately I'm not talking about myself but UNfortunately our little puppy (she's not really a puppy but that's what we call her) is injured!

Not really sure how or when it happened but all of a sudden O and I noticed that Roxy was favoring her left hind leg! She doesn't appear to limp when she is walking (or even running) but she has a good deal of trouble getting up the steps and jumping up into the bed. It's so sad to see her gimping around!! She ran with us on both Saturday and Sunday and was fine.

We did a thorough check of her whole entire body including her pads and paws, checked for any hot spots, cuts, ticks, or any particularly sore spots. We can press all over the leg she is favoring and she doesn't pull away or wimper but she is certainly not herself! She usually bounds up the steps in about 0.0055 seconds and last night (and still today) she is stalling out halfway because of that dang back leg.

So of course I did an extensive google search on the matter (what did we do before either (1) the internet or (2) google?) and found about 10,000 different things her limping could be from. The consensus, however, seemed to be that we should give it a day or two or three and if it is not improved at that point, go to the vet and see what's up.

I was hoping to come home from work today and see that she was miraculously better but this unfortunately wasn't the case. Still limping. In an effort to reduce any stress on the injured leg I've been carrying her up and down the steps but she's a bad patient and as soon as I carry her up the steps she runs back down. Dumb dog! :) Then, she was begging to go outside so against my better judgement I let her out. I was pleased to see that she had just chosen to lay down on the back porch and take in some sun. So I walked away for about 2 minutes and come back to find her racing across the yard to chase a bunny out of her yard! BAD dog! I gave her a little lecture on the fact that her injury will not heal if she doesn't take appropriate measures to reduce use of the injured appendage! So what does she do? She licked me and begged for a treat. I can see this is going to be a tough!

I read that dogs generally aren't intelligent enough to know to back off when they are hurt so it's important to limit their activity even if it requires caging them. I had to laugh a little because there have been MANY times when I too wasn't intelligent enough to know when to back off when I was hurt and caging me might have been quite the stellar idea. :)

Regardless, the plan is to give it a few days and go to the vet on Saturday if we haven't made any progress. Anybody with a similar limping dog problem in the past that might have any suggestions?

By the way, it's now official, I can never have children. I've been so worried about Roxy's leg and she is a dog and it's probably only a little strain! Imagine if I had a child that was seriously ill?! I would be non-functional! I don't know how you parents do it! :)

Posted by beth at 6:02 PM | Comments (6)

May 5, 2008

Not Much Going On

Well, the title about says it all!

I only had one workout today (a swim) which I did this morning and which went very well. That meant that after work today I had plenty of time to get some things done! I had a chiro appointment and then a massage and oh...how good they felt. They both actually sort of hurt while they are happening, but in the long run, make me feel much better.

I still managed to beat O home and have dinner ready and on the table when he arrived! How is that for amazing?! (I'm sure a lot of people do that every day but it rarely happens at our house as I'm usually in the midst of another workout when he gets home :)

I was also enjoying reading all the news about Shalane Flanagan's American record run in the 10K last night at Stanford. Simply amazing! They went through the 5K in 15:17 and she ended up running 30:34 thereby running exactly even splits! Pretty tough to do if you ask me!! My one claim to Shalane fame is the fact that I met her several years back when she actually came on a recruiting visit to Penn State. Of course she ended up at the Univesity of North Carolina where she was a multiple NCAA champ!

Regardless, I'm excited that I now have nothing else on the to-do list and am headed to bed very soon. I LOVE getting a lot of sleep! Good night all!

Posted by beth at 8:31 PM | Comments (0)