Dear Santa,

Do you think you could bring me sone running socks?

Love, Grace

Gingerbread masterpieces

Almost just "pieces". Our house is still clinging together, but I feel it's not long for this world. It's just so hard to make gingerbread in this humidity!

I decorated the front.

David decorated the back.

Of course, my friend had Pinterest pulled up on her phone while we were decorating, much to my chagrin. Obviously our creations look nothing like the Pinterest versions! Next time I plan to play a slideshow of New Orleans blight to make us feel better while we decorate.

Building gingerbread houses

My friend and I get together every December for a gingerbread house party. This year I faced the challenge of 70-80F temps all week plus insane humidity; today it's going to rain all day. Not exactly great weather for cookie wall integrity. My houses look like they feature Chinese drywall.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve: the first is to put them on a cardboard base. I cover the base in foil, but remove it inside the house so the cardboard is exposed. Anyone who's ever worked in receiving or retail can tell you that cardboard is extremely drying!

And the second trick is to swipe some desiccants out of pill bottles at work and throw them in the center of the houses to suck up some moisture.

Not food safe. Not planning on eating my house anyway.

(Before I removed the foil inside the house)

So far it's working. My houses were built last night, ready for decoration this evening, and they haven't collapsed yet!

It's December?

Yesterday's forecast was 70's with humidity reaching 97%.

That was just the forecast, though. In reality? It hit 80 yesterday!

It looks like almost no wind was forecast, but at 8 am it was breezy in the park. In this warm and gusty weather, I decided to chance a little speed. I've been running very slowly since coming back, with the exception of the Turkey Day race (which, although not blazing fast, was fast for me). Of course, I haven't been wearing a Garmin or watch, so I'm sure there were days when I was a little more peppy thanks to nice weather or something. But overall, quite slow.
Yesterday I thought I'd try some easy speed and see what happened to my leg. So I decided to do my regular slow 3 miles, but throw in two half-mile repeats of whatever fast felt like.
Naturally, when mile one beeped and I sped up, I was facing right into the wind, so it started out rough. But I managed to do two half-miles with a minute standing rest for a total of 6:38 running time (I didn't record the half-mile splits). And it felt hard.
Then I jogged home, stretched, rolled, and babied my leg. I feel good today, so next week I'll add a little more.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go turn the AC on.

Travel tree

Every year I theme my tree. This year, it's travel: all the ornaments we've picked up on trips and vacations.

 We *try* to buy an ornament for each place we travel, but we failed miserably in Paris (too many tacky souvenirs!) and ended up making a photo ornament with one of the pictures we took, but usually we managed to get an ornament at some point during the trip. Here are a few we've picked up through the years:

Near where I lived as a child (Middleway, WV)

I can't remember where we got this one

Sonoma: drunk nutcracker

A covered bridge!

One of our Boston trips...

Merry Christmas season!

Myrtles: the exercises with the funny name that are keeping me out of a nursing home.

Perhaps I should let you all know that I've been diagnosed with both I-don't-know-what's-wrong-with-you and there's-nothing-wrong-with-you, two conditions common in the medical world (contrary to every episode of House).

In short form, here's what's up: Really unusual complete stress fracture of distal femur in late 2012; very long healing course; too-soon return to running; re-injury summer 2013; since then edema in femur and constant pain.

Two doctors have cleared me as totally healthy (both tell me that the bone, although it has a 2" area of cortical thickening, should be totally fine and painless). 

Yet my left leg still hurts. Luckily I, with the help of my PT, was able to dig a little deeper. 

I have some serious adductor issues! My adductors are very tight all the time, and paired with weak abductors, they're pulling on both insertion points (groin and femur). This causes a throbbing bone pain and probably caused last year's stress fracture. When the pain is in the groin, it doesn't bother me at all. I don't even notice it. When it's in the leg, though, I do - and it wakes me up at night.

To the rescue: Myrtles. This funny little clip has the perfect, easy-to-complete, short routine for hip strengthening. Coupled with adductor and hamstring stretches, it's doing the trick. Now, I do this routine every morning and every night, doing double on the left side, where most of the weakness is. I also printed out the list of exercises for ease.

I've noticed a big difference already! In fact, just 48 hours after first starting, the pain subsided and I was able to go for a (ten minute) run. I really couldn't believe it.
Dr. Jordan Metzl (of the Iron Strength workout) teaches that you can control pain with strength. and it's certainly working here. Hurray for therapy that works!

Turkey Day race 2013: I discovered I have a pride problem

Even though I hadn't quite worked up to five miles yet, I decided to run this year's Thanksgiving Day race, a 5-mile tradition for over 100 years. I knew I could just take it slow, and I offered to pace David to a PR. He turned me down. I insisted. He told me he was out of shape. I pressured!
He still told me no, but I planned on doing it anyway. There's no better way to start Thanksgiving day than yelling at your spouse for 40 minutes, right?!

So, with that in mind, I got to the start of the race and pinned on my bib. But I left my D-tag in the car. David noticed it was missing. "You forgot your chip! You really have been out of running for awhile!" I hemmed and hawed. "Oh, it's too far to go back to the car," I said. But really I was too proud to put my tag on. I knew I'd be slower than usual and I kind of didn't want that time recorded. As I stood in the bathroom line a few minutes later, I realized what I was doing. I mean, how silly! I was proudly refusing to record a slower time.

But that's how I run now.
That's what I'm capable of now.
And we all have fast days, slow days, injury days, and healthy days.

If I left off my tag, I'd be pretending I was "really" faster than my speed today. I'm not. This is as fast as I am right now!

So, humbled, I went back to the car and put my chip on.

Post-race proof!

And humbled I should be. I was slow. I didn't pace David: we started together, and I ran 7:30s like a stopwatch (which is fantastic, since I didn't wear a watch or Garmin) for the first two miles. Then I turned around and realized David was gone, like long gone, and who knows how far back he'd left me??
I'd purposefully started well back from the fast people at the start, even though I usually try to get up front at NOTC races since they are chipped, but not chip timed (they only have a timing mat at the finish, so your chip records gun time. Weird, I know.). But this time, I wanted to avoid the pressure of faster people at the start. The result was that I spent the last three miles either passing people or all alone. And then I was done. 35:55. Yes, I cringed. Yes, I'm kind of sort of a little cringing to type it now! But my time really doesn't matter. For one thing, I bet you don't even care! And for another thing, I didn't get HURT running the race. That's for more important to me. And from that perspective, I'm happy with the race.