Goodbye, 2013!

And, from the running side of things, good riddance.
Running in 2013:

Crescent City Classic 10k

- Started out with a misdiagnosed stress fracture.
- Skipped Louisiana marathon, but David ran his first.
- Pathetic half marathon at RnR NOLA on injured legs.
- Ran two 10ks, a team effort and my PR, 40:59 I think?
- Got diagnosed with stress fracture and took a lot of time off
- Came back and did silly things: two four-mile races, a few track meets (with mile PR of 5:46), some summer 2 milers (with 2 mile PR of 12:19), and the evil midnight marathon that started me back on the injury train.
- OUCH for all fall.
- Slowly inching back this winter
- Approximately 1000 miles this year.
On a scale of 1-10, running this year was a 4. It would be a 2, but I had those PRs. 





In the rest of my life, 2013 was pretty cool:

Holding my niece for the first time

- Visited Sonoma
- Managed a pretty darn good year at work, despite huge barriers (like losing contract for employees' insurance in the hospital where I work) and got an impressive bonus
- We added a nephew (David's side) and a niece (my side)
- David changed jobs
- We drove to Louisville to visit my brother
- Joined our church.
- I got intersection syndrome, but avoided surgery.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'll give life in 2013 a 9. I'm tempted to give it a 10, since I'm just generally happy with everything, but it gets a 9 because David's job transition wasn't exactly smooth. 

Your turn! Rate 2013! And have fun tonight!

A rainy weekend

Every single weekend and day off I've had for weeks has been rainy! I'm all for a cozy book by the space heater, but geez. Give me a break. I have big plans for visiting Avery Island and a few plantations, and the weather is not complying.
I was shut-in again this Saturday. The dark skies let me sleep in a little, so I didn't get out for a run until 8:30. By the time I got back and stretched and showered, it was past 10 - so we got a late start.
I filled my day with indoor activities:
- cleaned the stupid house, boo
- did an iTunes U class
- read a book (the whole thing) at a new coffee shop with David. It's not actually a new coffee shop, just one we haven't been to since right after Katrina. It feels new to us, since we usually stick to the PJ's coffee house a few blocks from our house.
- wore my new scarf (Christmas gift from my tech) and new clogs (from David - I am obsessed with clogs.

In retrospect, wooden shoes were not a fabulous choice for a rainy day

- made all my salads for lunch the next week
- made salad dressing:
1/3 C white wine vinegar, 1/3 C olive oil, 1 tsp sugar, 1 clove garlic (minced), salt and pepper to taste, pinch of xantham gum for thickening.
- watched some Olympic trials. I love speed skating - and I kind of want to do it.
- caught up on emails
- mapped some 14-mile runs in preparation for New Years...I'm thinking about having people over for a midnight run-in-the-new-year!
- learned a new card game and had an hours-long game night with David, in which I trounced him every time.
Yesterday's forgotten gift 20 questions: Is it edible? No!
:-)
How was your weekend?

Twenty questions: forgotten Christmas gift edition!

Earlier in December, David bought me this for Christmas:

Runner powered by coffee

I know he bought it, because we were placing an order for several items at the same time, and he's not very discreet. But then he forgot all about it.
I didn't, and I'm making him play "20 questions" until he guesses what he bought me and forgot about.
Question #1: Is it running related? Yes!

The hardest thing I've ever done at work

I worked this Christmas, volunteering for an afternoon shift at a 24-hour pharmacy. It really wasn't bad. I got the whole morning to celebrate Christmas with David, then had a very quiet, easy afternoon and evening at the pharmacy. I only had one irate customer, and just as he finished screaming at me a sweet teenager handed me this:

Cookies and a $5 bill! She said her family's service project was to hand out cookies to the people who had to work in the pharmacy on Christmas day. I gave me tech the $5 but I ate those cookies - they were chocolate with crushed candy cane bits.

I bought a bag of Christmas candy while I was there, and everyone's rx bag got a candy. I do this every time I work Christmas - it just cheers people up.

But working Christmas definitely wasn't the hardest thing I've done at work. The hardest thing happened today. I had to reprimand and write up an employee - who is my peer, another pharmacist - and get her in trouble with corporate and possibly the law.

While this pharmacist was working by herself, she committed an egregious policy breach, one that I can't go into for legal reasons, and then actually let it slip in conversation. It was the kind of thing that left me speechless, mouth hanging open, and nauseated with shock. For ethical reasons, I had to report the breach. I'm the Pharmacist-in-Charge at my store, and legally responsible, so I had no choice: but I was heartbroken to get this pharmacist into trouble, possibly causing her to lose her job. I worried about it all Christmas, and filed the report Thursday.
If you want to know how bad her action was, let's just say it was worse than the second incident, which was noticed on the video while we were reviewing the security tapes: the pharmacist allowed her non-employee spouse to COUNT MY REGISTER DRAWER at the end of the night. Yeah.
Luckily I got loss prevention to get the pharmacists' statement, but naturally it was still extremely uncomfortable for both of us for me to address the issue, reprimand her, and request she file a statement. We don't know the outcome yet (but it isn't termination, I did find that out), but for now I'm faced with two terrible situations:
1. My staff pharmacist now HATES me and thinks I am the meanest person ever. It will be horribly uncomfortable to work with her.
2. My staff pharmacist demonstrated astonishingly poor judgment and ethics. I've lost a lot of trust in her.

We got through the day, with a lot of tears and unprofessional mutterings, and hopefully she can cool off during the weekend. But I'm not looking forward to future work days like this. Hardest day of work ever!

Commander's Palace Christmas tradition

Every year, David and I do a Christmas lunch at Commander's Palace. It's such a festive time of year: holiday parties and families gather in the bustling dining room while carolers sing amongst the tables.

I can't handle martini glasses, because I'm a klutz, so I get mine in an old fashioned glass.

This year, we both took off work on Friday, and enjoyed our dinner along with our $0.25 martinis (I love that the menu says, "because three is enough"!).

Our food was delicious (as always). I had the strawberry salad with pickled fennel and the open-faced oyster poboy, which was interesting and delicious. It is surrounded by a brown butter romaine sauce!

David showing off his festive bell and traditional turtle soup with sherry

Not your average poboy!

After lunch, we walked around a bit, including snooping around the "teddy bear house". It wasn't open for tours (which, by the way, are $12 a person! I don't think I'd actually pay $24 to wander around this guy's house!), but we looked in the windows. Apparently the owner collects teddy bears and creates Christmas displays each year ("With over 12,000 bears!" as his sign proclaims).

Squinting in the sun

We finished our holiday by baking Christmas cookies. I have a really good roll-out sugar cookie recipe, and we used our Star Wars cookie cutters just to make David happy. They were cute until he destroyed them by his pathetic frosting skills. 

I love the one where the icing just sadly trails off...

And in case you want the recipe, here it is!

Cream together:

1/4 C butter

3/4 C sugar. 

Mix in: 

About 2 TBS orange zest (or 1 tsp vanilla, but I like the orange zest much more)

1 egg

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 2/3 C flour

Form a dough. You can add a tsp or two of milk if absolutely necessary. Wrap in plastic wrap to chill a little. Roll out a little less than 1/4 inch thick; cut cookies; bake on greased sheet at 350F for 12 minutes. 

When cool frost with royal icing:

Beat 1 egg white, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, 2 C powdered sugar, and three good dashes orange bitters until thick. 

Merry Christmas! 

Thank you, Coeur Sports!

I'm happy that Coeur Sports was kind enough to include me as a 2014 ambassador!

That was pretty cool of them: especially considering this year's injury cycle. I'd be questioning my ability for sure!

This is the first time I've done anything like this - besides wearing singlets for Varsity and NOTC when they paid my race fees - so I'm pretty excited. I'm really excited to actually get some Coeur clothes on... see, I applied for an ambassadorship on strength of reputation only. I've never worn their clothes. But someone I know in the running circles told me about them, and said they have sports bras with pockets. As a girl who sews her own pockets into running clothes, I really liked that design...I mean, that would save me about 20 minutes of sewing and a hideously botched pocket. Plus, even though I really don't care what I look like when I run, I'm getting kind of tired of neon everything. Coeur has some nice, subtle blues and grays instead of highlighter everything.

So, yay me and all the other girls! And you can read Coeur's blog here or shop here. In a few days they'll be posting blogs of the ambassadors, and that'll be good reading.

The injury puzzle

I stumbled on a link to a Competitor Group article that I actually liked (I know! And usually I'm rolling my eyes with a "Thanks, Captain Obvious, I'll be sure not to eat chili peppers cooked in Metamucil the morning of my marathon."). Of course, it helps that the author is the respected Matt Fitzgerald. I really liked his advice.
He outlines four steps that helped him overcome his chronic knee injury. I could identify with a lot of his experiences, and a lot of the solutions, too.
1. Targeted stretching: This should be obvious for me: I keep having bone injuries related to serious tightness in the hamstrings and adductors. I need to focus on stretching these muscles daily to counteract whatever it is about my running that tightens them up. I've been doing yoga, dynamic and static stretches, and rolling.

Tools of the trade...

I've been doing some of the Iron Strength workouts

2. Corrective strength training: I have weak hips, so my adductors do all the work. Then they tighten up after being overworked. Then I make them work hard again - and the tight muscle tugs the bone, leading to injury. Strengthening my hips and glutes will relieve the adductors of some of the work.
3. Gait retraining. Agh. I haven't attempted this. I do heel strike, but I don't straighten my leg when I do (my knee's bent and my leg is nearly under my body). I guess I should consider better form at some point, but it's a big undertaking.
4. High-tech nutrition. For me, this is loads of calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D. But it also means remembering to take my levothyroxine every day, and adding in calcitonin periodically to rebuild bone. Neither levothyroxine or calcitonin are supplements, but they are natural products!

Have you had to employ any of these steps? Have you considered them as injury prevention rather than treatment? I've been really trying to think about my running in terms of prevention - being proactive, not reactive!