A signal!!

Back in the land of the digitally connected! Hiya!!

We're presently driving out of bishop, ca and are on our way home. I'm anticipating being met with a cold house and 5 feet of snow in the driveway, followed by lots of unpacking. And laundry. And, oh, reality? Coming up fast!

Meanwhile, the brief report (further details, like a full-on race report and maybe some pics and things, will have to wait for a full-sized keyboard, and might just wait forever because I suck like that, but I have hopes!).

Death Valley Marathon!




Yay, what a great venue! Yay! Run, Bootchez, run! Uphill! Cool scenery! Chat with some people, Bootchez! At mile 5, oh yes, there's the knee. It's okay, though, but it dictates my pace in a funny way, ie there's only one speed I can run at that's comfortable. On track, though. Run! Eat! Ooh, it's very uphill, then, it's not.




Then it's 5,000 feet of elevation loss, yippie!

Then, oh my, 20 mile aid station and the wheels fall off. I'm fine when I stop, then when I start "running" again, ouch! knee! not good! Pace drops hugely, my leg's a-swinging, ooh I'm in pain. There's poop, too!!! Plenty of it! By the end of the race I've hooked up with three other crumbling runners, one with a torn Achilles (my diagnosis, anyway), one with a torn rotator cuff, one with no injury but wearing those vibram shoes so she just looked funny, and me, and we crossed the finish line together at 5:55 or so, all damaged and looking like the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, all super psyched to be done. I then liberally pass out painkillers to my fellow wrecks, and boogie on outa there. Loved the race, despite the knee breakdown. Had a grand time and got a neat medal and a cool Death Valley Marathon tshirt that looks all badass with a skull on it and everything!

I hope to write a full report because it really was an interesting race for me.

Carrying on, we went on to one of earth's more mysterious places and saw a LOT of this:

which deserves a post of its own, too. Then we continued on and did a bunch of this:





(4-wheeling, NOT the walking, he's just scouting), and miles of this:





to get here:

which makes my heart sing, because that's my Favorite Place on Earth for many reasons, not the least of which is this:





which is a great place to, among other things, a fine place to soak a wounded knee, which I do have. I've run twice since the marathon, an ok 6 miler and then a very aborted run that became about 1.5 miles of knee pain. Haven't run at all in the past 4 days or so (even though I had some AWESOME runs planned in that lovely venue) and think that's helped a bunch because my knee feels totally fine. I've decided to take a break from any kind of serious running (read: over 4-5 miles) for a week or maybe a few because a. Instinctually this seems like the best thing to do right now, knee-wise, b. I usually take about a month off every year, and haven't for the last 12 months, c. Remember when I used to do yoga? I want to be that person again! d. Remember what I said about all the snow in the driveway? That means 2 things: adverse running conditions and ... SKIING!! Great knee activity!

I'm really not too worried about the knee. I'm quite prone to tendonitis and think this is probably the problem. I'll try a little run maybe by the end of the week and go from there. It just seems to want a little rest. If it's still funky in a couple more weeks I might take it to the doctor, but for now I'm going with yoga, rest and skiing.

I'll try to flesh out the details if the past couple of weeks, especially the race, in a future post.

I've gotta spend the next 3 hours or so getting ready for the return of reality!