Rub Some Snow On It (also, any blog suggestions?)

In this week's News of the Lame, my stress fracture started hurting again Tuesday morning. Like, three-weeks-ago, kind-of-limping-again hurting. I was going to try to get a little treadmill time that day, but as soon as the pain started I obviously nixed that plan. I tried to stay off of it as much as possible, but the pain never entirely went away until Saturday. It had never hurt during or immediately after my little interval runs, and it hadn't hurt on Monday, so I was kind of at a loss as to the reason.

Fortunately, I had an appointment with my PT on Friday, & his opinion was that it was just muscle pain from my Sunday run, since bone pain would have been immediate, not two days later. His theory has always been that the stress fracture was caused by muscle issues to begin with, probably partly by tight muscles putting torsional forces on the bone and partly by those same tight muscles becoming so tight after a certain amount of exertion that they basically stop working, which means they don't absorb force, which means more force is redirected to the bone.

So, I am likely not aggravating the healing bone by running, but I probably am re-aggravating the underlying cause. In theory the way to stop the cycle is just to grind the scar tissue out of that part of my calf muscle and continue stretching it as often as possible. Which kind of sucks, because ten minutes with the lacrosse ball & my leg is sore for two days. I am allowed to run on it even if it's a little sore, though he did caution me to pay close attention to what kind of pain it is and how bad is, and to err on the cautious side of running less often if I'm not sure.

He also reminded me that there are lot of other fun ways to be active & sporty in the world, so I took his advice & went up to Tahoe (ie, where they have winter) with Don over the long weekend to get some skiing in, which was AWESOME considering that I haven't been on skis since our trip to Breckenridge last March.

Kirkwood ski area in South Lake Tahoe. Kirkwood is awesome because in spite of being a fantastic mountain for just about all levels, it never gets crowded because it's so far away from all the bigger more touristy resorts. On Sunday, I never waited more than a minute in a lift line, & on Monday I don't think we ever waited more than maybe three minutes (which the staff were calling "really crowded").

Top of Buckboard run at the end of the day

Back side of Kirkwood at sunrise

Don at the top of Buckboard

Up on the summit somewhere

It's pretty amazing what hurling your body down a few black diamonds will do for your morale.

A brief cry for help: Lately, my favorite blogs keep doing one of the following:

• Dropping off the face of the earth
• Basically dropping off the face of the earth (ie, every post begins with some sort of apology for not blogging in six months)
• Turning into a litany of sponsored posts / giveaways (FUN FACT: the more sponsored / ambassador'd / brand name dropping / giveaway posts a blogger does, the more likely I am to delete them from my feed. I know people have their reasons for doing that stuff & there are plenty of people who enjoy reading about it; I'm just not one of them. It makes me feel like I am spending my precious precious free time reading ads, which is lame.)

Recently I went through my NetVibes & deleted every blog that hadn't had a new post with actual content in like 6 months (with a couple of exceptions), and BOY is it slim pickins.

So my question is, what are you reading these days that is interesting, funny, informative, well-written, updates more than once month, easy on the giveaway/sponsored stuff, and doesn't have a scary diet vibe about it? Five out of seven & I'll give it a shot! (In the right margin I have a list of the blogs I usually read semi-regularly for your perusal.)

(This is also the part where it is completely appropriate to be like, "Hey, I have a blog and it is AWESOME!" and I will probably be like "NEAT, I will check it out!")

* * *

Grand Total: 65.85 miles

* 31.2 easy (bike)
* 8 speed (bike)
* 11.25 tempo (bike)
* 14.5 elliptical

Monday:

Afternoon bike, 13.8 easy / evening karate.

Tuesday:

Bike - 3.4 warm up, 4 x (5:00 @ 5K effort / 2:00 easy), 2.4 cool down = 14.4 speed.

Tuesday was not the greatest day for a few reasons. First, that was when my leg starting hurting again. Second, I was up too late on Monday night, so when my alarm went off at 5:45 the next morning, my reaction was a swift and decisive "Oh heeeellllll no." I don't feel bad about trading 45 minutes on the elliptical for an extra hour of sleep. (Though that also meant I got to drive to work in commuter traffic, which is utter balls. That, I did kind of regret.)

Wednesday:

a.m. strength work / afternoon 7.5 elliptical / p.m. karate.

THE GOOD: Fastest forty-five minutes of easy elliptical ever? I will take it! Sick new bo kata to start learning at karate? Hell yes!

THE BAD: Leg pain. Thankfully it didn't hurt on the elliptical, but pretty much every normal walking step I took on Wednesday still had some amount of pain right in the outside upper left calf. It felt more like muscle pain than bone, but since I couldn't tell for sure, I didn't risk the treadmill.

Happily, we spent most of karate destroying pads with boxing gloves, which pretty much involves just standing in one spot and not moving around a lot. Working on bo kata did involve some walking / stepping, but when you're just first learning the sequence, it's pretty chill, and that was only about twenty minutes anyway.

Thursday:

a.m. bike, 10 easy / p.m. 7 elliptical

Ugh. Straight out of bed, the leg was still not happy. Pain after many hours of rest usually indicates soft tissue and not bone, but then again when the stress fracture was at its worst around Christmas, it just hurt insanely bad at all times, so I skipped the treadmill again, just to be safe.

Friday:

Bike - 2.5 warm up, 32:00 @ marathon effort, 16:00 @ LT effort = 14.25 tempo = 14.25

PT in the morning, so no strength work. The bike could have been a longer workout, but I had friends to make Valentine's Day cocktails for, & you know where my priorities lie.

Cinnamon-infused bourbon, ginger liqueur, pomegranate juice / molasses, grenadine, blood oranges, Aphrodite bitters, & Thai chili bitters -- all clutch Valentine's Day cocktail ingredients.

Homemade grenadine = de rigeur.

Gin, Amaro Montenegro, Aperol, lemon juice,
grenadine, & egg white, with cinnamon for garnish.

Saturday: Rest / drive to Tahoe.

Sunday: Ski like a mad woman. (Okay, maybe like a mildly disturbed woman. Still. Skiing. Which has REALLY been needing to happen this year.)