Another running blog

Spent most of the past weekend at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition. Learned quite a bit about medicine and about the AAP. Also had a blast at all of the exhibits. Managed to get lots of free stuff plus allergy testing, PFTs, measurement of my exhaled NO and a massage. Not bad.

Continuing to slowly ramp up my running. The new shoes I got seem to really help. I’ve also been more conscientious about icing and stretching. AND, I finally get to start physical therapy tomorrow.

Here’s a brief summary of my running over the past few months since I started back:
Week of 8/18: 2, 2, 1.6 –> 5.6 total
Week of 8/25: 2.5, 2.5 –> 5 total
Week of 9/1: 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 –> 7.5 total
Week of 9/8: 2.5, 2.5, 2 –> 7 total
Week of 9/15: 1.5, 3 –> 4.5 total
Week of 9/22: 3, 3, 2.1 –> 8.1 total
Week of 9/29: 3, 3, 2.1 –> 8.1 total
Week of 10/6: 3.2, 3.2, 2.8 –> 9.2 total

Wasn’t that fascinating?

After 6 weeks of hell, I now have 4 week of a gloriously normal life. I have 1 month (that’s 4 weekends without working in a row!) of elective. Isn’t life fabulous? This is what it’s like to have a normal job. I love it.

Friday night Eddie and I went to Redbones to enjoy a special night of Rogue beers. We had the Imperial Porter, the Morimoto Imperial Pilsner and the Old Crustacean Barley Wine. Delicious. From there, we headed over to the Midwest Grill to stuff ourselves with Brazilian meats. That was quite enough to put me to sleep.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early (8 am is early for me when I’m not working) so I could cheer Eddie on while he ran the Samaritans 5K. This is a fabulous race. First of all, it’s for a great cause: the Samaritans provide a 24 hour hotline for those contemplating suicide. The race they organize every year is in celebration of the lives of those who have committed suicide. I feel very strongly that suicide is an underrecognized problem so I think this race is a great idea. I also like how they focus on the lives of those who have passed away rather than their deaths. On another note, this is also a fabuously organized race with plenty of delicious food and porta-potties, not to mention free massage. I highly recommend it. I ran it one year, but I seem to have been injured for the past few years so I go and cheer Eddie on. This year, he managed a PR of 20:58 which is fabulous because he’s been talking about running under 21 minutes for quite a while. Of course, now he wants to run under 20. Crazy.

After the excitement of the race, I needed my usual nap, but then I did manage to get up and go for a beautiful run. After that, I went for a desperately needed haircut. From there, we drove to our favorite apple picking place: Bolton Spring Farm. This place has the best donuts in the entire state. Seriously. They are warm and covered in cinnamon and sugar. We had 6 donuts, two hot ciders, and 1 apple crisp with vanilla ice cream. After all that eating, we were too full for apple picking so we just bought a half peck of Cortland and a half peck of Macouns. Talk about lazy.

After our eating binge the night before, we had planned to eat in, but we were walking down Mass Ave and smelled some delicous pizza at Stone Hearth and couldn’t resist. Eddie really wanted to rent Ironman (which he had the nerve to see when I was on call) but we couldn’t find it anywhere so we settled for Return of the Jedi which we have on DVD.

This morning, I woke up (again relatively early for me) at 8:30 am to fit in a run before our annual trip to Topsfield Fair. I’ve definitely posted about this before, but this year I don’t have any pictures. Suffice it to say that we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly…

A brief update on my running. I finally saw a podiatrist who recommended I get physical therapy. Now I’m going through the hassle of trying to schedule this. I’ve been running ~8 miles per week pretty consistently for the past month. My foot continues to bother me, but I also invested in some more suppportive work shoes which I think will help. Wish me luck.