Sunday, August 10, 2008

Summer Time Catch Up


Wow, it has been a long time. So much has happened since my last post – some good, some bad. Let’s start with the good.

Vacation time! Yeah, summer is when we take our vacations. We spend a week in Northern Michigan with my wife’s family at a resort on Portage Lake in Onekama, MI. It is really a cool place. Our condo is on Portage Lake which is a smaller lake and therefore calmer (for water skiing, kayaking) and warmer (for swimming). It is separated from Lake Michigan by a strip of land about 100 yards wide. Lake Michigan has long, clean sandy shores and bigger waves that are fun to play in. It is the best of both worlds. And the sweet cherries are the greatest!

After Michigan, we head up to Lake Champlain in upstate NY for a reunion with my family. We boat, ski, swim, hike, kayak and catch up with family. Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains are about as close to heaven as I can get on this earth.

So things have been busy in a good way, but there was also bad news.

Shortly before vacation I came down with a sharp pain in my left knee. It got so bad I had to stop running. I took a week off and when I ran again it came back. This time I was smart enough to stop running and walk it in home. I then took almost three weeks off to let it rest. It felt like classic runner’s knee, an overuse injury which the only cure for is really rest.

I started back running 4 miles last Monday with no pain. I then ran Wednesday and Friday for 4 miles, and again no pain. I have been icing the knee and this weekend I bought a sleeve brace as a precaution. Tomorrow I try 5 miles, in the hope to gradually build the miles back up.

It is hard to believe how much fitness I lost during the layoff – it could have to do with not running, or the increased beer intake that happens on vacation. The funny thing is how fast it will come back. From Monday to Friday I dropped 30 seconds per mile. Still, I need to take it slow and build back up so that by October I can run the World Wide Half and by December starts the training for Boston.


So there is a little catch up. Promise to be better with my posts.