Feels like forever

Hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend....

The 6th annual Lansing Turkeyman Trot 5K was held on Thursday morning. I didn't run (obviously) but my buddy Greg did, so I went out to watch him. Little did I know, there were a couple other guys participating in the race whom I had no idea were planning on running it, so it was good to see them too. It was an almost perfect morning for racing - the skies were clear and there was barely any wind, but the temps were right about 30 degrees. Hell, I'll take that over last year's race....last Thanksgiving, it was 15 degrees with a wind chill of 0 and there were 4 inches of snow on the ground that fell overnight. The picture is proof. Half of the course is on a trail that follows the river, and nobody thought to plow the trail for the runners, so everybody had to run in a single file line in order to keep from slipping. And if you got caught behind someone going too slow for your liking, you spent a LOT more energy trying to pass them. Personal experience!

The most hardcore person in the race was an older guy who ran barefoot, and I noticed he finished around 20th place. I looked at the results later and found that 20th place was good for 18:07....imagine running that fast in bare feet!

As for me, the knee and foot are slowly but surely improving. This weekend was great for me because I didn't have to move around or have anywhere to be, so I rested my leg as much as I could. I did some more research on how to treat IT Band Syndrome, and I found one website that explicity told me NOT to massage where it hurts because that will just aggravate the friction of the band against the bones. Oops....my bad! So I stopped doing that, and my knee feels a lot better today. I'm not saying that's the main reason why the knee has still been hurting, but it could be. I've also been doing some lightweight leg strengthening exercises, mostly for my hip flexors/abductors/adductors, so I think I'll be coming back quick. Today was the first day I can remember in the past 4 weeks where I could go up and down stairs repeatedly without anything hurting.

Wow....4 weeks. It's hard to believe it's only been 4 weeks since I ran the marathon, or done any running for that matter. It feels like forever, and I'm sure all you runners out there understand that. I've been going stir crazy, so to speak, because it's been so warm here since Thursday. Today the temp got up to 60, which is 20 degrees above normal. Plus, it's been sunny for the most part. It's all apparently gonna stay til Thursday, when the bottom drops out and we stay in the low 30's with snow. Grrrreat. Oh well. If anything, I'm intrigued by the fact that I'm feeling much better. We'll see how things progress this week.

"I'm wearing, uh....actually, you'll find me, you'll see my fat ass." --Greg, on the phone with me before the race