Some days I hate my job.

And other days, companies mail me free praline samples.

I love this: bakery-grade bread pans

Sometimes it's nice to buy really good, really expensive kitchen equipment if you are going to use it a lot. I bake my own bread, so I shelled out $15 apiece for heavy steel bread pans that create an unparalleled crust. I could have gotten glass pans for less than half the price, but these space-saving stackable bakery pans are easier to store and just make better bread.

I saved my old glass pan so that I can still bake quick breads like banana bread and pumpkin loaf (I'd rather not develop a crust on sweet breads), but having a total of four pans means I can bake in bulk without having to hand-shape loaves on a cookie sheet.

Right now my freezer is full of whole wheat and oatmeal molasses bread, and this afternoon I'll make a crusty white sandwich loaf. Worth the $45 for nice pans, I think!

Sitting and sipping

I'm sitting here waiting for an MRI. I can't do anything that elicits discomfort (the word my doctor is using to replace "pain" for my small confused brain), but I'm not sure my doctor understands how much that limits me. I can't even go down stairs without feeling nagging pain, and walking still makes me wince.

So I'm doing a lot of sitting. Tonight I'm sitting at my computer watching "Alfred Hitchcock presents" and having a tasty cocktail. Life could be worse, right?

See ya after the MRI!

I have no ability to sense pain

It's official, I can't sense pain.
Two seconds into my doctor's appointment yesterday Dr. McNulty said, "You have a stress fracture." I laughed it off. I have a strained hamstring! I have a swollen knee! I ran two 10ks in two weeks! I said.
I see stress fractures every day of my life. I'm a sports medicine doctor, he said.
He made me get an X-ray.
I have a stress fracture.
Sadly, I've had it since November and that means healing it could be arduous. It also means there is almost certainly soft tissue damage, too (probably an avulsion, but I hope not) and I have to get an MRI.

My doctor told me that I am his worst patient because I do not have a normal response to pain. My pain sensation is very poor, and even when I feel pain (like I do now) it's hard for me to quantify or localize it. So I don't go to the doctor for 5 months.

In my defense, the location of the fracture is highly unusual for a stress fracture: distal femur, about 2 or 3 inches above the knee. The MRI should show if there is anything else going on and I'm sure there is; this whole time I've been treating soft tissue! Surely there is some soft tissue damage! Argh! Frustrating!

On the good news front, we checked out my Xrays for bone edema and sclerosis at the pubic joint from my ongoing osteitis pubis and it is actually looking pretty good: one side is markedly improved (yay!) and the other is the same or a little better compared to last summer.

I have no idea what's next, but maybe the MRI can help drive treatment. For now, no running, which is fine since I have no races coming up anytime.
Back to the gym. Boo. Wish I'd caught this back in November!

AND back to the doctor!

First order of business: I found out that The Advocate ran a picture that includes me in their Crescent City Classic coverage. I found this out when another runner (unknown to me) called it out to me in the park as we passed! Funny. Small world. I love my "park friends" - runners I don't know, but recognize from our morning routines.

That girl in gray beat me :(

Second order of business: Going back to the doctor today. A hamstring tear/strain shouldn't be hurting five months out. Time to fork out serious cash for an MRI or something! So excited. But really, this crap needs to go away.

C'mon, leg, haven't you ever heard of a race calendar?

Rubbing shoulders with the elites

One of the things I love about running is that you - and I, little ol' Gracie - can race the elites. You won't ever see a high school wrestler in the ring with an Olympian, or a 75 year old retired guy indulging his hobby by playing basketball against Lebron James. But last Saturday I raced a Kenyan who ran a 27:32 10k.

And then I met him, got his autograph on my bib, and Facebook friended him. Boom. 

Crescent City Classic 10k

This year David and I changed our minds and decided to run the biggest road race in New Orleans, the internationally acclaimed Crescent City Classic. We never used to run this race, but we changed our minds because:
1. Small course changes made records possible, drawing a deep elite field.
2. Since the race is always Easter Saturday, this year's early holiday meant possibly cooler weather than usual (too many races have been in the 80's in years past!)
3. The race is under new management and FINALLY featured seeded corrals. The last few times I've run the Classic I did so as a jogger/occasional racer (actually I think the last time I ran it I was in full Cowgirl regalia, denim included) and even then, I was slowed and frustrated by the huge crowds of walkers and moms pushing strollers in front of me. This year was a big change: Runners under 45 minutes (proof required) were seeded in 3 front corrals, with additional corrals set up by self-reported time. There was a large walkers corral and even a stroller corral!

After racing last week, I felt confident that I could PR at this race. The 10k last week felt easy at 6:40 pace, so I thought I could take between 30 and 60 seconds off that time today. Well, things don't always go quite as planned.
Varsity Sports invited 30 of their most loyal members to ride in vans from the finish to the start (it is a point-to-point). After the first van left, David and I waited with some other runners for almost half an hour: no van. By now it was 7:20, we were 6.2 miles from the start, and the race started at 8:00! Another runner offered us rides, and we accepted. Luckily traffic was light and we parked 1/2 a mile from the start, but we barely made it to the corrals in time. I did not get a real warm up OR a bathroom break. As it turns out, I could have run to the potty: the race started a full 15 minutes late. But once I was in the corral it was too late - how could I know it would be delayed?

One of the Varsity runners sat this race out and took some great pictures of the group and many of the elites.

Then the race started, and I didn't race this one well. I forgot all about the 10-minute segment trick I used last race, my Garmin had terrible spotty reception (always happens downtown!), my ipod never worked at all, and I was on vomit-alert the whole time. I really wanted to throw up within the first minute and the feeling never went away.
But hey, that's racing. I had some too-fast miles and some too-slow miles, including one in which I was in the middle of a log-jam of runners colliding when someone in front stopped abruptly to puke (I very nearly joined him). The weather was low 70's, high humidity, sunny - not bad. I didn't have any idea what my pace was when I crossed the finish in 40:58 - a painful PR and not really what I wanted. Ok, but not great. This is the first race that I really had to mentally force myself to finish, I was so nauseated.  I don't know if it was my late meal last night or the stress getting to the start, but pushing through discomfort is always good training, so I will take it.

The CCC has a great tradition of offering event posters to the top 500 finishers each year. This year is the first time I've gotten a poster - the cut-off time was right at 43 minutes (about 20,000 runners participate in this race, but it is overall a slow field with lots of costumes and walkers). Now that I have a CCC poster I feel like a real New Orleans runner! David said it makes him nostalgic for his childhood: a neighbor he thought was "so weird" for being the only guy in on the street out running always had the most recent poster in his kitchen.

Loose end tie-up:
- Van driver Andrew Lilly had an "elite runner crisis" and sent out a message that it was every man for himself...to a bunch of people who did not have phones with them.
- Nausea, like it does, went away when I stopped running. Stupid. I hate that so much. I didn't throw up and my stomach settled once I ate some rice at the finish.
- David ran a 47:03!!! This man ran over an hour in a 10k last year!
- My ipod may finally be history. This is the ipod nano 3 we resurrected last year but now it keep failing me.
- I have a much, much better post-race story than race recap, but this is getting long - so I'll post that later!