Running is therapy

Got up early yesterday morning and headed over to New Cumberland PA for the SMT 5K Turkey Trot.

It was a much bigger event than I at first supposed. As I made my way to the start, it looked to me as though there were about 500 people lined up to run. If I ever find results online I will know for sure just how many people there actually were.

People were not lined up according to ability, and at 500 people that can be a pain. However I was in no shape to PR yesterday so I was happy to be passed and pass others at a easy pace.

My hip moaned and complained the whole time, but I was still in a pretty good mood. The 5K is usually such a frantic distance that you don’t have time (or breath) to talk to others, but when you are fun running it, you can make idle conversation, look around at things and generally enjoy the type of run that is normally reserved for the longer distances.

I don’t have stats because I forgot to turn off the garmin when the race was over, and I can’t find results online. I looked at the clock around the time I crossed the finish line and it said 27:17 (or something), which would be 8:46 m/m pace.

My hip is not good. I am officially taking some time off. Hopefully not too long, but as of right now I have no idea when I will run again. The night before the race I had iced my hip to a place that I thought was pretty good, only to have it kill in the morning. I can see that running easier and ice and advil aren’t going to be enough. It’s RAID time (Rest, Advil, Ice, Drinking…those RICE people don’t know what they are talking about), a few days of that ought to fix it right up ;) I plan to rest until, at least, Sunday. Although I think it will/could be as long as a week. If by the middle of next week there is no change, then I will call my doctor.

See you ’round the PT ward.

The nice part about working at a company were there are a lot of runners? No one bats an eye when you pull ice out of the freezer and shove it down your pants.

I have been icing my hip all day and it’s actually feeling GREAT. The pain is still there, and had I done this days ago instead of running on it it would likely be all better by now.

Here is the plan. Continue as I have been for the last 3 days taking ibuprofen (600 mg every 4 hours (I am not a doctor, and I am not telling you what to do)). Continue icing the rest of the today. Finally, stick to my plan to _run_ not _race_ the Turkey Trot tomorrow. In fact if I hadn’t already paid, I wouldn’t be going. But that t-shirt is mine! Mine I tell you! And I can’t wear a t-shirt for a race I didn’t finish.

Yesterday I felt terrible. I laid on the sofa all day waiting to feel better and go for my run. Finally at 7 pm, I decided to bag it. That’s right. I took a day off when I had intended to run.

Of course along with missing the first day of the running week, I also have a nice case of runners guilt. This is why, today, with my hip hurting in the cold and rain, I went running anyway.

I forgot my Garmin so I just went out and ran for 40 minutes around Lancaster. Running for time doesn’t bother me as much as I would have thought. Just getting out there for 40 minutes makes me feel better. I am sure I went farther than 4 miles and less than 5. The pace felt like 9:something.

This brings up the hip problems though. Will running through the pain make it stronger, or make it worse? I was supposed to be taking ibuprofen, but of course kept forgetting. This morning I am back on it, I need to take it on this schedule for several days.

Here is my current plan. I will run tomorrow 4 miles/easy pace. Take off Wednesday. Run (not race) the Turkey Trot on Thursday and then take a long look at where I am. I think running easy and taking medication as well as some icing should do the trick. We shall see.

Seriously, diners of the world. Listen up. Colonial Park Diner gives you a carafe of coffee when you order coffee. This is clutch. I don’t like to have people pouring coffee in my cup when it’s half full. They have messed up the delicate balance of cream and sugar that I hand crafted. I am then forced to recreate the taste but with some cream and sugar already in the cup. With the carafe, I don’t have to worry about that. I can finish my cup, and then, and ONLY then, do I pour more coffee.

They also do the smooth move of giving tea drinkers a pot of tea.

Colonial Park Diner, King of Diners.

I took off the Thursday and Friday because my hip was still hurting. I tried to remember to take ibuprofen every 4 hours but I kept forgetting and then I ran out. When I woke up this morning (after being out till 3 am at the Ani show) my hip was still painful. I picked up some ibuprofen and took one 600 mg dose and after waiting a couple of hours for it to kick in, I went for a SLOW run around the barracks.

After half a mile the pain was a low roar and I was able to get 4 miles in without altering my gait too much. Even though I only took off two days, and one of them would have been an off day anyway, I was still giddy to be running.

My current plan is to continue to take the ibuprofen every 4 hours for the rest of today, sleep in a little tomorrow and then take a dose when I wake up. Then I will go out and run a 4 mile minimum and possibly 6-8 depending on how it feels.

1 Mile Splits: 9:16, 9:14, 8:58, 8:50 (I must have been feeling better as I went).

Some stats:
Distance: 4.01 Miles
Time: 36:19 (pace: 9:03)
Average Heart Rate: 146 bpm
Calories Burned: 582

After my previous post about the older versions of Safari no longer working I tried Safari 3 again. When I got to the upload page it said that a new version of Garmin Communicator had been released. Make sure you look carefully at that page. The GIANT button that says Download on it is a link to the Windows version. About half way down the page is a link for the Mac version.

The Communicator Plugin is much cooler as it lets you upload from Firefox. After I installed that, and restarted Firefox I was ready to go.

As of right now I have no use for Safari.

After updating Leopard to 10.5.1, you can no longer get the older Safari versions before version 3 to work.

My Garmin was ready to die today when I went for my run. Not sure how that is possible when it was full yesterday and presumably turned off all night. Need to figure that out.

Luckily Marcus was heading out and could be talked into running 5 miles with me. He ran great, you’d never know he just finished a marathon 3 days ago. I on the other hand have been having some hip pain. And today it hurt pretty good. We did 9 minute miles for all 5.

It took a couple of miles before it was loose enough to not be really painful. As soon as I was done the pain came right back and was worse. I took a hot shower and some advil, that seems to have helped somewhat. I may let it rest tomorrow and just shoot for 21 miles this week instead of 26. We’ll see.

I think I need new shoes as well.

I will consider the internet accessible when the following searches in google turn up the everyday item/ popular use and not a computer related item:

Boot Camp
Putty
Steam
Squid

If you are anything like me, 6′2″ and surprisingly handsome…you tried to install XP in Leopard’s Boot Camp and choose the option to let the FAT32 partition remain. That didn’t work. I had to select the Format NTFS option to get it to install.