Letting It Rip (sort of)

Well, I had what I consider a good effort during my run last Thursday. I planned on doing a 4 minute run with 1 minute walk but ended up doing a 4 minute pick up with a 1 minute recovery jog for a whole hour. Then on Saturday morning, on a scheduled 6 mile run in which only Cyndi and I showed up, things took a different turn. But first a warm up of about 1 ½ miles which was slow and easy averaging over 10 minutes per mile. If I only knew what was going to happen next, I would have done a few stride outs to prime my lungs for the effort that was to follow. We started out running at Cyndi’s jogging pace which was slightly faster than my warm up pace, so as you can imagine, I was already gasping for breath after the first mile and it was only a 9:50 pace. I could only hope to stabilize my breathing in the ensuing miles. I warned Cyndi that I was already at my 10K pace effort and she offered to slow down. I told her that I was going to try to hang on as long as I can. By the third mile my breathing had stabilized and the pace picked up ever so slightly. In the last two miles I was breathing hard but at a steady state and I told Cyndi that it felt good to be able to run that hard again, i.e. slightly short of breathe but not quite into oxygen debt. By the time we hit the finish at 6 miles our total average pace was down to 9:14 per mile, so we must have ran the last 2 miles below 9 minutes per mile. That was as close to letting it rip for me as it possibly can at this point in my running life, and it felt really, really good. The pace for the whole run felt like the 4 minute pickups I did last Thursday, only it lasted almost an hour.

What changes did I make in the past week that enabled me to run harder than usual? I don’t know how much this contributed to it but I wore a pair of shoes which had thinner soles but still with motion control properties. That may have worked for the time being but remains to be seen on subsequent runs. What the thinner soles forced me to do was try to lighten my foot strike by shuffling more and increasing my leg turnover rate. It seemed to have helped a lot in decreasing the impact forces on my ankles. So like I said, it worked…for now.

So today, I am thankful for and will continue to savor the feeling of being able to run the way I did last Saturday and look forward to more of it when my body allows me.

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Random Thoughts About Other People Running, PTTD, and Surf City

While driving to and from the grocery store early last Sunday morning and seeing people running, I was so tempted to do the same. My common sense got the better of me and the little voice in my head told me it would not be a good idea running two days in a row after Saturday’s two hour plus run (besides I hardly do two days in a row anymore because of my bad ankles). So I went back home and did the stationary bike for an hour and 20 minutes. In that amount of time, I almost finished reading the whole Sunday newspaper including the ads

Seeing all those runners made me stop and think. Why are these people running? Are they training for a race? Are they just running for recreation and exercise? What are their running goals and aspirations? Myself, I just run for exercise and to get the endorphin fix. Funny thing is that the endorphins I generate during a run helps anesthetize the pain in my ankles but it’s the run itself that caused the pain in the first place. At least the pain is blunted for a couple of hours post run if I don’t overstretch the tendons during the run. When I do overstretch the tendon, this is how it feels: it pulls at the seams as if it’s being torn apart. I don’t know how much pain a woman goes through while having a baby, but my pain might be pretty close at its worst.

I’ve been finding out more and more about PTTD (posterior tibialis tendon dysfunction) from the internet over the past year. Eventually aside from tendon damage you also get ligament damage in that area of the foot. So that’s something not to look forward to in the near future. I’ve also learned that PTTD ankle braces are not meant for running, but just to stabilize the ankles for walking and not even for fast walking. I’m finding use for my Aircast PTTD brace though (I blogged about it here: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2009/08/aircast-pttd-brace.html). I wear it after icing my ankle to keep it stabilized and compressed while I putter around at home, and also use it at work for the right ankle plus a soft brace for the left ankle. They cut down the side to side motion of the ankles.

Another temptation arose Monday morning. Someone from AREC sent an email offering her Surf City Half Marathon bib number for sale because she couldn’t run it. I considered contacting her when I found out that I was actually off from work on race day. I had assumed all along that I had to work that weekend because in at least the past seven Super Bowl Sundays, I was always working. They must have moved the Super Bowl one week later this year. The feeling of being tempted has passed.

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Running Along a Bunch of Crap

Please excuse my language, I hope I'm not offending anybody.

Saturday morning, I was faced with a dilemma. For sure I couldn’t run with Cyndi because she’s too fast and my ankles couldn’t take it, and not sure if Sonja was going to be there so I could do the run/walk intervals with her, or for that matter, if anyone else would show up because of the recent rainy days in the past week. Nevertheless I ventured into the cold, dark but thankfully dry Saturday morning and made my way to our usual meeting place. After doing about a 5 minute warm up jog and not feeling too badly, I thought I could try doing the whole 12 miles while running for 4 minutes and walking for 1 minute the whole way. I sat back inside my car to keep warm and wait for anyone to show up and thankfully, Sonja did (a couple of other people did a few minutes later). After waiting a few more minutes and for my GPS watch to connect, we started our jaunt just when the sun was starting to peek out of the clouds. With all the talking we did and the sounds of cars and other things around us, I could hardly hear my watch beep alerting me to stop running and start walking for one minute. I had to rely on Sonja’s better hearing to alert me. Without her, I might not have been too bold to attempt 12 miles due to my ankles, and without me, she might have been misdirected because she had never run part of the course before. So we were able to help each other in that manner. The reappearing sun warmed us up mid-run and I had to take my gloves off. In the meantime we talked about her profession and I also asked her about her familiarity with some exercise equipment which functions I only have a vague idea of. We deliberately set a slow pace because of my ankle problems and also because she had not covered 12 miles in a few months, but needed to put in the miles to get ready for the Surf City Half Marathon two weeks hence. When we reached about the 9 mile mark, I asked her if she had ever run on the boardwalk before and she said she hadn’t, so we took a slight turn on Ocean Boulevard and hit the boardwalk. There were sand berms raised on the beach to protect the seaside homes from the waves that were higher than usual during the storms. What I didn’t expect on the boardwalk was having to negotiate a minefield of dog poop along the way. You cannot believe how much poop we had to dodge and swerve from that morning, over just approximately 200 yards of walkway. I guess people didn’t pick up after their pets while walking in the rain, which I can understand. It’s more difficult to pick up wet poop with a plastic baggie than dry poop. Another thing I noticed was that more people were walking their dogs throughout the course than usual. Even dogs can get cabin fever. I hope they didn’t all poop at the boardwalk at the same time. Can I say that this run was a bunch of crap then? Well, we both made it to the end, me with my bad ankles and her with the lack of training miles. But we couldn’t complain that we felt crappy during the run, because we were happy for having accomplished our goals for that day. Well done and good luck to Sonja for the Surf City Half Marathon, and good luck to me for my ankle rehab.

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Trial On The Treadmill

The big attempt to restart running was made last Wednesday afternoon in the midst of several days of rain in the Southern California area. After taking 3 ½ days off from running due to ankle problems, it was time to make use of last summer’s big purchase for days like this. Make like a hamster and try to run on the treadmill.

First, a trial adjustment by swapping my three year old custom orthotics with a pair of Powerstep Inserts over the counter orthotics. I hopped on the treadmill and set it on the slowest pace possible in which I could shuffle my feet for a jog. Some minimal pain was felt, but I was more concerned about how the OTC orthotics felt too high on the arch and my Achilles tendon felt some strain. So I hopped off the treadmill after 15 minutes and switched to another over the counter orthotics called Superfeet. I got back on the treadmill and tried to get a feel for the orthotics. Superfeet has a lower arch compared to the Powerstep and also has a firmer feel which really stops overpronation, but from previous experience using both these OTC orthotics, they start to flex more when they get warmer after several miles of running. However, last Wednesday I managed an additional 20 minutes of a slow jog on the Superfeet for a total of 35 minutes between the two different orthotics. So far so good, at least I managed to run.

Last Thursday morning, another rainy day, I decided to try another treadmill run. I wouldn’t normally run two days in a row nowadays whether I’m in pain or not, but if I didn’t try to run last Thursday, my next run would have been Saturday and that would have been too long between runs. Besides I wanted to further test my ankles with the Superfeet orthotics. So I start running as slowly as possible as usual and every few minutes I would increase the treadmill speed. Believe me, the speed of the treadmill was nothing to boast about so I will leave it unmentioned here. My goal was to run more than the 35 minutes I managed the previous day, so 40 minutes would have been good. When I reached that time, I added 5 minutes more, then another, then another until I reached one hour. All the while I kept thinking “am I overdoing it?”, because I could feel twinges of pain during the duration of the run. Thinking about just running 5 more minutes at a time really helped but even though I felt good, I dismounted the treadmill after an hour. Besides I didn’t want my downstairs neighbor to complain to the homeowner’s association about the noise I was creating with my heavy stride on the treadmill.

Well, I survived those two trial treadmill runs without further debilitating myself and the next step was to try a 12 mile run/walk last Saturday. Tune in while I try to compose my thoughts about what happened during the Saturday run.

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The Beginning Of The End?

I wrote this last Wednesday morning (January 20) and I didn’t get a chance to post it thinking I had more to add at that time. Upon reading it today, I decided to keep it as it is.

So how can I handle this latest setback with my ankle injury? I run well for a few months then suddenly the tendon overstretches or tears again, and just when I start to run better. Each time my condition gets worse, I come back running slower than before and couldn’t return to my former aerobic capacity. The time I got a thigh injury which stopped my every day running three years ago, I was still capable of doing about 8:30 pace per mile. When I recovered from that, I slowed down to 8:45 per mile. All the while I already had the PTTD. Pre-PTTD, I could probably still do the short runs at 8:15 to 8:30 pace. After I tore the right posterior tibialis tendon in October 2008, my best pace had slowed down to about 9:20. It was last August when I aggravated that ankle again and upon returning to running, I began my run/walk experiment. Apparently it worked, because I was able to finish a marathon I hadn’t planned for. However, I came back hitting another low for pace per mile average for a non-stop run. I’m down to the 9:41 pace Cyndi and I hit last Saturday during a 10 miler, after which I made my right ankle worse again. In the last couple of months, my left ankle has been affected too. My aerobic capacity (VO2 Max) has slowly been on the decline because of my injuries. Whenever I try to run harder, my ankles suffer the consequences. I don’t mind the slowdown so much. It’s the injuries that frustrate me. Every time it happens, it scares me that I may not be able to run another step forever.

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Back to Non-running :(

Well I haven’t run since last Saturday and not because of the rain. My right ankle tendon still feels loose (as in overstretched) and painful when I bear weight on it. My left ankle feels a little better, thankfully. Remember, the right ankle is the one I tweaked while taking a step in my living room hours after having run 10 miles non-stop on Saturday. It felt good on Sunday but I got silly and did a few jumping jacks at work and that aggravated the problem. Maybe I’ll use the soft brace again when I go to work tonight.

I really wanted to run today since there was a break this morning between yesterday’s torrential rain and the next storm which is expected this afternoon (it’s afternoon now as I continue to add to and edit this blog, there was even a tornado a couple of hours ago), but upon waking up and taking a few tentative steps and feeling pain, I deep sixed the idea of running. The exercise equipment I have in my living room has been getting quite a workout the last few days even though it doesn’t feel like I am able to generate the same intensity I get from running. Maybe because I like to read while using them.

I’ve iced my right ankle three times today already but I’m not getting any relief. It’s going to be day to day and I don’t know when I can run again. I’ve dealt with this twice before so there might be hope that I can come back from this latest setback. It will have to be back to the run/walk whenever that happens, but first I need to have the pain subside first. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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The Run That Was, And The Aftermath

What can I tell you about the 10 mile run we did on Saturday morning? Well, it was good then it turned ugly several hours later. It was the first 10 miler I ran non-stop since last summer. I haven’t run more than 8 miles non-stop in recent months. Anything more than that, I did the 4 minute run/1 minute walk intervals. With the tempo pace effort I put in with Cyndi, my legs feel quite sore right now. Some people might consider that the 9:41 average pace per mile we netted over 10 miles to be pathetic , especially those speedier ones. Regardless, I still think we ran a decent pace that was slightly over our comfort level. How do I know? Well, it wasn’t exactly a pace that you can comfortably carry on a conversation. In fact in the second half of the course, we were hardly talking at all. There is one technique though, if your running partner is faster than you and you want him or her to slow down a bit so you can catch up. Ask him or her an open ended question so he has to give a long answer. That way, he has to increase his respiratory rate while talking and you can catch your own breathe.

One consequence of running non-stop for that long is that my ankles can’t tolerate it any more. They are pretty sore right now. To add insult to injury, I tweaked my right ankle again, not through running, but by getting up from a chair and making a bad step in the living room. Such is the nature of my PTTD, a single misstep is all it takes to aggravate it. This just goes to show you the fragility of my condition. My right ankle was hurting so much earlier that I had to wear a brace and my orthotics to work. I haven’t worn a brace since late 2008 and have done without orthotics at work for the last couple of weeks. Woe is me! The satisfaction of being able to run non-stop for 10 miles is more than offset by this latest setback. If only I didn’t have to work, I could at least elevate my foot for long periods of time at home. While at work, I have to stay upright with my feet at the lowest position for more than 12 hours.

Well, I’ll just have to monitor the condition of my right ankle in the next few days and see if it stabilizes. I hope it’s not as bad as it feels at the moment.

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A Weighty Issue

Another discussion about weight came up at work. One woman said that you should only weigh yourself once a month. I countered that you should weigh yourself every day so that if you happened to veer away too much from your target weight range, you can make it up by doing more activities or adjusting your food intake. Her contention was that women’s weights vary due to their menstrual cycle and they could possibly weigh more on certain days during that cycle. I said that daily weighing regardless of the time of the month gives you more control over weight gain, loss, or maintenance, and that menstrual bloating shouldn’t be used as an excuse for excess weight. How much weight does a woman gain when they’re menstruating anyway? Besides, I found out that menstruation also increases the metabolism slightly so it can counteract the bloat in the long run. Well, as you know, I’m not a woman so I can’t really speak for that. In any case, it has been found out that people who weigh themselves every day manage their weight better than those who don’t.

By the way, the woman whom I was having this discussion with has been exercising consistently for the past couple of months and in spite of that, she appears to have gained weight. I was tempted to be impolite and ask her how that weighing once a month is working for her. Not only that, I couldn’t help but hear that she lost 8 pounds in her first week of working out, but has gained about 15 pounds since then. In fact I was surprised to see how much bigger she is now compared to before she started working out. That goes to show that exercising alone is not enough to lose or maintain ideal weight, you have to adjust your food intake too. One thing I can admire about this woman is that she has continued to exercise consistently. This I gather from my other co-workers.

Ever notice how overweight people offer the best solutions to problems regarding diet and exercise? Except that they have difficulty applying the solutions on themselves. If talking about it were an aerobic activity, they surely would have lost a lot of pounds already.

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Mysteries of Running

Ever have one of those days when you are running and your feet feel as heavy as bricks? Well, last Thursday was one of those days for me as I plodded through a 52 minute run that felt like the last 6 miles of a marathon, but without the cramps. Then all of a sudden, two days later, on Saturday morning, I felt so good and I don’t know why. After doing the 4 minute run/1 minute walk intervals with Sonja for about 4 miles (Sonja was doing 8 miles), I tried to catch up with Cyndi and Linda who were running non-stop for 12 miles, by intercepting them at a certain cross street. We ran together for about a mile but I began feeling a little frisky and started picking up the pace on my own. I still did the 4:1 intervals but a little bit differently. Instead of running and walking, I picked up the pace for 4 minutes and slowly jogged for 1 minute while I ran back to Cyndi and Linda. I was able to keep this up for the last 7 miles of the 12 mile run except for about 3 minutes it took to cover the distance on Bayshore Avenue from Ocean Boulevard to Second Street, where running single file is the norm. By running hard for 4 minutes and jogging back, I was able to complete 12 miles despite cutting the course to catch up with the two ladies. I could feel my right ankle tendon protesting at times but the pain was tolerable and didn’t get worse. Thank goodness for that!

Running, like life, can feel different from day to day, or as Forrest Gump said “Life (substitute "running" here) is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get”. I wish I could feel the way I did on Saturday all the time where the pace was hard but still felt controlled. Of course that’s not always possible because we all have bad days and good days. Savor the good days and get through the bad days, because even the bad ones feel so much better after you finish.

Postscript: The reason why I felt the need to run a little harder last Saturday was to burn off the excess calories I consumed during the two days I was showing my former classmate around town, as documented in my previous blog post: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/01/unblogged-weekend.html

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The Unblogged Weekend

I haven’t been able to blog too much in the past week because I’ve been busy with other things. It’s not like I have a deadline to catch or have a ton of readers waiting with bated breath for the next blog post. Hah!

A couple of days spent with my high school classmate plus a birthday party on day three didn’t leave me much time to enjoy my usual routine of doing nothing. Even though ideas come to my mind from time to time, if I don’t write them down, the feeling passes and I would have forgotten what the idea was. With the break in my routine due to entertaining and being entertained, I kinda lost control of my calorie intake which I’ve been trying to stabilize in the last couple of days.

I enjoyed spending time with my former classmate who is currently visiting the U.S. We were in school together from kindergarten through high school then lost touch after that. The last time I saw him was in 1989 when I was on vacation in the Philippines and got in touch with him, after which he took me out to lunch. I don’t even remember the details of that day almost 21 years ago. This time, it was my turn to show him around. First I wanted to give him something he hasn’t experienced in the Philippines before, something authentically American. So I took him and his aunt to a restaurant called Johnny Rebs’ Southern Roadhouse, for a taste of the South. While he ordered a sirloin steak (not too southern, I thought), his aunt ordered pork chops (getting closer to the south), and I had the blackened catfish (now that’s more like it!). The ambience of the place was unlike the usual eatery. At the entrance, I could hear a cat meowing, but didn’t see a cat. Upon entering, you immediately notice the peanut shells strewn all over the floor (I already read about this so it was not unexpected). When I used their bathroom, I heard a rooster or hen crowing and cackling and noticed there were chicken figurines perched near the ceiling with a recording of them doing the chicken noises. I came to the conclusion that the meowing I heard at the front door was also a recording. Funny stuff!

I was supposed to take them to downtown Long Beach afterwards to show them the Pike, Shoreline Village and the other sights of Long Beach, but after taking them to my condo, we got hung up searching for some of his relatives on the internet, then upon getting back to his aunt’s house, a couple our townmates came to visit and we just ended up reminiscing about our small town in the Philippines. It was not until the next day that I was able to take my classmate on a tour of downtown Long Beach, but not before we had lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant and had pho. At least I was able to get him to experience two different types of cuisine he has never had before. See how one can lose control of the calories in just a couple of days? Anyhow, we walked around the Long Beach Convention Center, the Pike, Shoreline Village, Aquarium of the Pacific, and the lighthouse (Parker’s and the other taller one), and took a bunch of pictures which are currently posted on Facebook. Upon returning home, his aunt had her grandkids home and we were off to Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant to entertain the kids. While the kids played games, we sat around and ate pizza. The kids were burning their calories while we were storing them.

The next day, I met with our AREC running group and did 12 miles (more on this later), then I went to a nephew’s birthday party, where my aunt cooked some Filipino goodies which I managed to partake of generously. Oh my goodness! Three consecutive days of engaging my body with all these good food. No wonder I lost control. By the time Sunday came, I was all but ready to decompress from the overindulgences of the past few days. I stayed home, watched a few movies, tried to reboot my mind and body so I could be fresh and ready to go back to work the next day.

Please forgive any grammatical errors in this entry. If you find any, please let me know because I didn’t have time to proofread it very closely.

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Doing Without Orthotics and Logbooks

So there’s this experiment I’m doing with my new running shoes. In the past week and a half, I’ve tried running without my custom orthotics, with mixed results. The day after running 10 miles on December 27^th with orthotics in older shoes, I ran a second consecutive day (which rarely happens nowadays) on Monday with the new shoes, sans orthotics. It was only 36 minutes long and my ankles actually felt good afterwards for a couple of days. I tried doing it again last Thursday for 55 minutes and the result was not so good that time. Both my ankles hurt like crazy including my left knee. I guesstimate that the pain started around 40 minutes. So it was back to the orthotics during the 14 mile run last Saturday. On Tuesday, January 5^th, I did an hour run (4 minute run/1 minute walk intervals) without the orthotics again and I didn’t seem to suffer any adverse effects. I’m beginning to ponder whether it is possible to have too much support by wearing orthotics inside a motion control shoe. So far the results have been mixed so I will be experimenting further without orthotics during the shorter runs to find out if my ankles can develop a tolerance to the pain without aggravating my ankle tendonitis.

One thing I didn’t have to do this New Year’s Day was rush out to the mall to buy a running logbook from a bookstore. They usually cut the price in half on New Year’s Day like they do with other calendars, but the store is usually out of them by the time I get there. Who knew that running logbooks would be so popular? Or maybe, the bookstores just don’t order a lot of them because they are not very popular. Starting last year, I stopped buying the logbook and made up a rudimentary one of my own, based on a template I found on the internet, which is in Microsoft Word format. It works just as well in digital form and I can print it out if I want to.

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Lost in L.A.

My elementary and high school classmate from Jolo, Philippines is visiting the U.S. and is currently in Southern California after coming from Florida and New York. His aunt called me and said she was picking him up from a relative’s apartment in L.A. Since she doesn’t drive on the freeway, I looked up a route in Google Maps (both our cars were GPS-less). There were three options and I picked what I thought was the most direct one. Things were going well until we were only about a mile and a half from our destination. When we got to the hustle and bustle of downtown L.A., we somehow got misdirected between 4^th and 3^rd Streets. We had to stop and ask for directions thrice. The first two men we asked gave us incorrect directions, until we finally asked a woman who sent us to the correct location. What was supposed to be a 50 minute drive on surface streets ended up about an hour and a half. Even when we arrived at our destination, Google Maps gave directions to turn into a certain street which turned out to be a parking lot. Oh well, at least we found the place and were able to pick up my classmate and take him back to Long Beach. Going back, we were again misdirected but found our way much quicker. The place we were trying to find: White Memorial Hospital. Not exactly in the heart of L.A., but in the Boyle Heights area. Next time, I’ll just plug in the hospital’s name into Google Maps since the hospital’s address is on a major boulevard, instead of 1818 Michigan Street, which was the address of the apartment building.

When I told my friend’s aunt that we were going on an adventure when we left Long Beach, getting lost was something I did not expect. So I suppose the lesson we can learn from our misadventure is this: ask a woman for directions instead of a man.

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First Blog Post and First Long Run of 2010

With this first blog post for 2010, I offer a brief look back at a few good things that happened in 2009: reconnecting on Facebook with people I grew up with in a small but now troubled town in the Philippines, making new running friends, and finishing a marathon again after four years without running one.

And now to start the New Year with a long run with some of the runners I met over last summer and fall. Doing a long run of two hours (before GPS) was something I used to do on the first day of the year before I got permanently injured. It seemed like a good way to get the year started. This year, with the help of a group of running friends, I got to experience it again, albeit on the second day of the year.

I was planning on running 10 miles with the 7:30 group last Saturday morning until I started receiving emails that the people I usually run with at that time of the morning would not make it because they were extending their New Year’s Day festivities. I immediately contacted the early group whom I ran with the previous week, to find out what time they will be starting their 14 mile run and if I could join them. They were very welcoming but they were going to start at 6:30 A.M. Jeepers! I would have to get up earlier again for the second week in a row, but if I didn’t want to run by myself, I would have to muster up and be counted, and that I did.

We were going to do the 5 minute run/1 minute walk intervals and started well enough and I could feel that the pace was slightly faster than when we ran 10 miles the previous Sunday. Maybe it was just the early morning chill that made us go a little faster than usual. It was a similar out and back course as last week but instead of turning around after 5 miles, we extended it and turned around after 7 miles. On the way back, I felt that I had to use the bathroom and sprinted ahead of our pack to a building which I thought the bathroom was located. I was mistaken. It was the next building. In the meantime the pack had caught up with me and I had to sprint after them to catch up after I had relieved myself. Well, those two episodes of sprinting affected my comfortable stride and breathing so much that I never got my steady rhythm back. After about 10 miles I could feel that I was bonking and getting dehydrated and was using my arms a lot to propel me forward. At that point I had a feeling that I would be very sore the next day. My stride and breathing felt so ragged that I must have also lost my mind momentarily because I started waving to a couple of people whom I thought I knew. They must have wondered who let this crazy running man out of the asylum. As if that wasn’t bad enough, on the path near the Long Beach Yacht Club, water was leaking though the walls from the sea due to high tide and we had to wade through huge puddles and got my new shoes soaked. Without the group I was running with, I would have been tempted to walk the rest of the way from there. When we finished, I was so exhausted and felt drained the rest of the day, and still had to report to work that night. That’s the reason why I couldn’t write this blog until today. Needless to say, I had a rough night at work and struggled to stay awake, but I survived it. I felt that if I had to run a marathon last Saturday morning, I wouldn’t have made it to the finish line based on the way I felt after 10 miles. But then again, I don’t think I would have been sprinting towards a bathroom during a marathon.

Thank you, Michael, Nick, Rosie, and Tina, for carrying me the rest of the way when I was struggling. You helped me accomplish something I haven’t done in a long time. And Happy Birthday, Tam, Tina, and Rosie on your natal days in the first week of the new year.

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