Adding to "The Wall" in 2013

This is our medal wall with plenty of room to grow. In general, only half marathons, full marathons, and speciality races, such as The Warrior Dash, provide finisher medals. Not all of our races have medals (smaller half marathons tend to offer inexpensive entry fees, but this also means no medals), so the number of medals do not reflect the total sum of our half's. It's fun to watch this wall develop, and with 5 half marathons slotted for 2013, we should come to the end of another hanging rod, while adding two more multiple-picture holding frames. This means I'll have to carefully select race outfits, cause one would not want to be seen in the exact same clothing in more than one picture :) I know, I know, only OCD me would think of such a thing.

Winter running forces one to be flexible with the running schedule, if one is wanting to avoid the treadmill for the great outdoors (so instead of running, we've filled the house with the scent of homemade cinnamon buns, bread & pizza dough). A dry shimmery snow has lightly coated previously iced sidewalks, making it too slick for today's long run. Abhorring long runs on a treadmill, we'll try again tomorrow. For me, it's probably a good thing to delay the long run by a day. Eight days ago, my left Tibialis Anterior tendon was inexplicably deeply bruised (perhaps by Angie Man Hands, as I'd seen her just 12 hours earlier) and immediately painful when I began an easy 3-miler on the treadmill. I took 2 days off, practiced RICE, and went for a 7-miler last week Sunday. Halfway into that run, my tendon started acting up, and by the time I got home it was swollen with a lump. Wearing running socks or running shoes that even slightly pressed on the tendon smarted. Since then, I've crossed trained for 6 days, while diligently ice massaging (this is more effective than using a cold pak) the tendon every chance I had. The lump has subsided, but the bruise runs deep and remains tender. It's annoying to have this happen at the end of the year, when I was on course for a record number of miles, but forced down time is a good thing. Running guru's always recommend taking 1 week to 1 month off from running each year to let the body fully restore itself. Since I don't have the faith in stopping running on my own, this time-out could be a blessing in disguise.

Crossing my fingers that my tendon is happy to do it's job tomorrow!

2012 Book Recommendations

In 2010, I began the year end tradition of blogging my 5-star book recommendations. This is based on my subjective 1-5 star system, and may not translate into your utter enjoyment the way it did for me. In past years, I could list 8-10 books that received this highest designation, but I seem to have less and less time for reading, as evidenced by only tackling 24 books this year (in days of yore, I somehow read up to 65!). I can offer you 5 recommendations, and if I stretch it a bit, I could throw in a couple 4.5 star ratings too. In no particular order:

1. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese 658 pgs.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles--and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

 

2. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffmann 501 pgs.

Nearly two thousand years ago, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman’s novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path. Yael’s mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death. Revka, a village baker’s wife, watched the murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers; she brings to Masada her young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed. Aziza is a warrior’s daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier. Shirah, born in Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power. The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege. All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets—about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them, and whom they love.

3. Bed by David Whitehouse 247 pgs.
Mal Ede, a child of untamed manners and unbounded curiosity, is the eccentric eldest son of an otherwise typical middle-class family. But as the wonders of childhood fade into the responsibilities of adulthood, Mal’s spirits fade too. On his twenty-fifth birthday, disillusioned, Mal goes to bed—back to his childhood bed—and never emerges again. Over the course of two decades, immobility and a gargantuan appetite combine to make Mal the fattest man in the world. Despite his seclusion, Mal’s condition earns him worldwide notoriety and a cult of followers convinced he is making an important statement about modern life. But his actions will also change the lives of his haunted parents, his brother and the woman they both love, Lou.

4. One Day by David Nicholls 435 pgs.

It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.

 

5. Wild by Cheryl Strayed 336 pgs.

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

 

And the 4.5 star list as a bonus:

1. Holy Ghosts or How a (Not so) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night by Gary Jansen 204 pgs.

The extraordinary true story of a Long Island household haunting that forced a respected writer to confront the truth about life, death, his childhood home, and his town's past.

 

2. Tigerlily's Orchid by Ruth Rendell 257 pgs.

Is it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors? When Stuart Font throws a housewarming party, he invites all the residents of his new building—among them, three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death. He definitely does not want his girlfriend, Claudia, in attendance, as he would also have to invite her lawyer husband. But careful planning can only get a person so far. As it turns out, this party will be one everyone remembers. Meanwhile, living in a town house opposite Stuart’s building, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman known as Tigerlily. As though from some strange urban fairy tale, she emerges infrequently to exert a terrible spell. 

Guns-n-Mental Health

So I just have to say a word or two here about the frenzy that's been stirred up since the Sandy Hook School shooting. I've grown sick and weary this past week of hearing people say things like, "This ain't about gun control, it's about mental health care. We need more mental health services!" While I won't argue that more money for better mental health care services would be great, access to mental health care is not the solution people think it is. #1 Mental health services are out there, BUT a person has to want mental health services. The only way someone can be legally forced into mental health treatment is if they do something to harm themselves or others. And even at that, this is a blurry line. Threatening to hurt yourself or others doesn't always result in a court commitment to treatment - sometimes a dangerous act has to occur before anyone can intervene. #2 Even if someone is court ordered to mental health treatment, there is no magic bullet to fix someone. Yes, medications, therapy and wraparound community services can greatly help mentally ill individuals, but cannot necessarily prevent dangerous acts. #3 Just because someone does something unfathomably terrible, such as massacring 26 people in a grade school, it does not mean they have a mental illness. This may be the hardest truth for people to accept. People act out of desperation, anger, and angst that may have nothing to do with mental illness. People do bad things without explanation. There are not always warning signs. And often times, there is nothing that can prevent these tragedies from occurring. There is talk in the media about having a data base of the mentally ill so they can't get guns. This is the dumbest thing I've heard outside of the idea that teachers should be packing heat in classrooms. To have such a data base would further stigmatize the mentally ill, leading to a new level of discrimination (the current level is already damaging), and it opens up a can of worms as to how we define mental illness. Do we mean only those with Schizophrenia? Or how 'bout those with anxiety, a fear of spiders (phobias), or autism? Those are diagnostic mental illnesses too. This gun control matter is sticky and complicated to be sure, but I think we need to begin with the question of why anyone would need to buy a semi-automatic before we start pointing fingers at the mental health care system.

4 Years Later ...

It's December 15th, and Wisconsin has now gone 285 days without measurable snow - another record in a year of record breaking weather. Instead of snow, we've had moderate to heavy rain today, rain that would equal nearly a foot of snow if it was just 10° colder. Rain, driven by a steady wind in 40° weather, though preferable to navigating through snow, is not a fun condition to run in. I love running in light rain, but today's wind created a battle of wills. I muscled through the cold, slanted precip on an uninspired 8-miler, BUT I hit 1,005 miles! This makes the pruned hands and feet, and lingering chilled-to-the-bone shivers worth it. This mileage accomplishment also celebrates the 4-year milestone of my herniated disc saga. It was during this week in 2008 that I was literally floored with back and leg pain. Two epidurals alleviated the pain, but resulted in nerve damage that left me with a numbish left rear thigh and a prickly numb left foot from the third toe to the outside of the foot, and along the underside of my foot as well. Surgery was a real threat, I walked with a cane for a month, my calf muscle atrophied (from lack of nerve innervation) and my hamstring wouldn't fire. After three months of rehab, acupuncture, massage and chiropracty, I avoided surgery, but was still advised to never run again. Well, to mirror the sentiment in the picture above, I could not wait for the perfect physical conditions to coalesce - I was going to run again. And run I have, completing more than 30 races, accumulating more than 4,000 miles in my Asics, and still doing so with a numb hamstring (it did figure out how to fire again), numb foot and puny calf (compared to my monster right calf!). If we wait for anything in our life to be just right before we take risks or pursue our dreams, nothing will ever happen.

Off Season

This blog heavily features updates on our training and racing. It's been over a month now since I've spoken about running, primarily because there is little to report - it's our off season. This year, that means that from mid-November through mid-February, we can sustain a solid base, but don't need to train extensively. It's an opportune time to let the body recover from the hard hitting pace of the May-October racing season. During this period we keep our weekly distance between 18-22 miles on average. Our weekend long runs cyclicly range from 6-8 miles (the cycle is 6, 7, 8, 7, 6 and repeat), and we try to keep the terrain varied - one weekend at Lapham Peak, another weekend on all streets, and yet another weekend will be a mix of both streets and parks - typically Minooka or Fox River. When the snow begins to fly, we'll be forced to do our running on the streets, as the parks groom the trails for skiers, banishing runners and hikers from their usual haunts :( 

We continue to do weekly speed work (if you don't build and use those fast twitch muscles you lose them really fast) and of course, we never stop strength training - that's a year round activity. As the year is drawing to a close, we're watching our mileage totals and projecting the final number. I will end with approximately 1,030 miles run, and Joe should top out at 870 miles. Next year we have 5 half marathons planned. The first will be the South Shore Half Marathon along Milwaukee's lakefront the first weekend in April. We'll begin official training in mid-late February.

Itchy Boy

Joe frequently says, in relation to any number of things, “It can never be easy”. This aptly applies to my Chaco-Bean. For the past 6 months, Chaco has experienced allergies. Of course we didn’t know this 6 months ago, but in hindsight, we can see that what we assumed were the results of wrestling matches with Denali - missing pieces of fur or little red sores in the ears or by the eyes – were actually indicators of an allergy.

One early September morning Chaco’s eye looked awfully pink and swollen. I took him to see Dr. Jackie, and she determined he was having an allergic reaction to something. When a young healthy cat scratches his face excessively, to the point of losing fur or getting sores, it’s almost always a food allergy. After being on a certain food regime for a period of time, the body’s immune system, for whatever reason, goes into overdrive, creating inflammation (this causes the itchiness). This is often connected to the protein and/or carbohydrate source. So, like his papa (Joe), Chaco has a problem with his immune system!

I left that visit with ointment for conjunctivitis, an oral steroid (Dexamethasone) to use short-term for the inflammation, Hill’s Prescription Z/D Hypoallergenic food for cats that can only be bought with a prescription (and most often from the vet) at an exorbitant price (I spent about $110 for a 6-week supply) and a game plan. The standard protocol in these cases is to wean the cat off their old food by introducing the new food for about a week until they are completely switched over. 10-12 weeks of the hypoallergenic food is the average amount of time to see changes. No treats, human food or miscellany should be ingested during this period or the hypoallergenic food trial won’t be pure. As we got deeper into the new food, we were to titrate his steroid from twice daily, to daily, to every other day, etc. However, every time we’ve tried to go to an every other day dosing, the scratching and inflammation returns.  As with humans, long-term use of steroids, especially in a young cat, is contraindicated as it can lead to other health problems, such as diabetes and organ diseases.

We’ve reached the 12 week mark and the itching persists without the steroid, BUT the food trial has been impure (arrrggghhhhh). Chaco and Denali are talented pilferers – licking the butter knife left lying on the counter, scavenging a plate with toast crumbs on it (we now keep a kettle lid handy to cover plates we’re not done using), stealing a Ritz cracker from a package that’s been twisted shut, snagging a piece of spinach from a salad momentarily left unattended, etc. So, we’re back to square one with the 12-week food trial, but we can’t keep using the steroid. Soon, we’ll switch him to a cyclosporine drug called Atopica that has a better long-term use profile, but of course, I don’t want to have him on meds forever. Once we finish another totally pure food trial, if the itching persists, then we’ll need to do dermatological testing to try finding the source of his allergies – while it’s likely food, it could also be something in his environment. We have ruled out parasites and fungus.

The past twelve weeks have entailed weekly calls with Dr. Jackie, two trips to see Dr. Jackie (much to Chaco's duress), lotsa money and guilty feelings when Chaco’s big amber eyes plead for a dollop of peanut butter. Now on to the next 12 weeks ….