Well, I started my work day off with mimosas & mini bundt cakes. My blood sugar does not know quite what to do with this. We had a sort of “send-off” meeting for those who are in the first wave of layoffs next week.
In other news, my DH jogged to the end of our block & back two days ago. This is a man who has not run in 30 years, as far as I know, so more power to him. I think he in incentivised by the suggestion of renewing our vows in the run-through wedding at the Las Vegas Rock&Roll HM in November - you have to make it to the 3-mile mark by a certain time period to participate. I thought it would mess with his back, but he’s only complaining about calves so far.
@C3Baker - Go for the tunnel! Two warnings: it is on a compacted gravel path and it is all downhill. And a third one: you will need a flashlight to run through that tunnel.
Dark tunnel and gravel make that a “no go” for me! Couldn’t do it. I think doing the Wineglass would be fun one year. After a mimosa and mini-Bundt, of course.
The tunnel doesn’t concern me. I’m not sure about the compacted gravel path. H is fine with that, he likes running on those kinds of trails. I don’t like it as much, but my time isn’t critical in this race as I’ve already qualified. The all downhill is a bit of an unknown, especially since there isn’t a lot around here to practice on. But I think we can work on quads at the gym also and that should help. So the biggest concern is probably that there is only 2 months to train for it. I found flights that we could get not using very many miles and we could stay with D, so it could be a very cheap trip. Hmmmm…
C3Baker, go for it! My friend ran it and found the gravel non-issue. She used her road shoes. Send me a note if you decide to run it, maybe we can meet!
Food tour in Toronto was amazing. We have done similar in NYC and Chicago, but were never served this much food before!
sabaray - I just bought Kathryn Budig’s book and her recipes call for a lot of the ingredients you mentioned. I am not familiar with some of them either.
Gertrude- so great that you are getting your H to run.
ohio- I’ve run in Toronto several times. There is a great path by the river. Easy to run down to the river from most of the downtown hotels. Not sure where you will be. I ran the Toronto Half Marathon (my first international race) in 2014.
Stuck in horrible stop-go-stop-go (etc.) traffic two days in a row and ended up just about screaming with pain by the end of an hour in the traffic–something about stop-go (etc.) sets off a specific muscle in my hip and no amount of changing the seat position helps. I made DH walk with me to a local restaurant for a light dinner when we got home, and now it feels fine. But… I have to get up early tomorrow morning to drive back to the same dog event I was at today and I’m already dreading the drive home. Another day like that and I might abandon my car and walk home.
I got up and ran just over a mile at 6 AM this morning with the dog before we went to the dog agility trial–a coyote crossed our path about thirty feet ahead just as we were finishing our run. I assume his den is somewhere in the park where I run every day, but I’ve actually never seen any signs of a coyote den, even though I’ve run just about every trail in the park.
dmd- try putting a small pillow in your car to use as a lumbar support or to put under the hip that is hurting when you drive. Cars are THE WORST for any sort of hip malfunction.
Checking in - did Pilates, then tried a new yoga class at a different studio (CorePower, but a location I’d never been at). It was a fun new class, but exhausting!
Sitting for long periods of time, particularly in a car, throws your hip flexors and extensors all out of whack (how’s that for anatomical and biomechanical sophistication ) due to the prolonged pelvic tilt that shortens your flexors and elongates your extensors. Some exercises that can really help: single leg/hip extensions laying prone on a stability ball, single leg heel touch squats standing on a step bench. The squats, in particular, are excellent. The single leg and step bench create a stability factor that forces you to really engage your glutes, hamstrings, quads, iliopsoas. You don’t need to go deep on the squats. While the goal is to ultimately progress to the point where you can touch your heel to the floor, even shallow squats will engage the anterior and posterior chains.
It is similar to this, but I recommend doing the exercise on the bottom step of your staircase (the box shown in the video is too high for folks who are in therapy). My PT made me do this for my wrecked knee:
@dmd77, I will see if I can find one. But what you do is stand on one leg on a step bench. You position yourself so that the other leg is hanging off the side of the bench. Then you do a squat while standing on the one leg. The goal is to get to the point where you can go deep enough into the squat so that you can touch the heel of the hanging leg to the ground. Because of the stability factor of doing it standing on one leg, you need to focus on stabilizing your hip by engaging your core, glutes, and hip flexors.
