Monday:
This getting up at 4:30am is very annoying. And the worst part was that we didn't even get out the door at 5am like I planned. It was about 5:15 before we actually left. It didn’t help that I was trying to film for a vlog. Well sort of… Enzo had given me a bunch of instructions the night before on how and what to film. Of course I forgot about holding my phone sideways. It was so time consuming. I don't have time to film my life. One problem is we would say or do something and I would say, we should have been filming that. Or worse we would decide to recreate it and film it. I am starting to feel the pain of every reality TV show director out there. It’s time consuming to explain to Norm what to film and then run while he films. Also he does NOT have a career in vlog filming. People keep saying I need a vlog, but I am not sure I am cut out for this. And it totally messed up my run because I only got 8.5 miles done and not 10. Also, tomorrow we have to get up at 4:15am to try to leave on time. With temps around 108 every day this week, I will not be running in the afternoon. Since I am teaching at both places this week I don't have time to drive up north to run. Colorado can’t come soon enough.
Tuesday:
I only got 6 hours of sleep because I had to stay up working. Of course working was watching a movie that I am showing in my class tomorrow, but still that early alarm was painful. The run went well. Evidently so well that Norm wasn’t keeping up. I made a turn to go up a mountain that I thought he saw, but he didn’t. I was standing on top waiting when I saw a figure and thought, “that person runs like Norm. Oh shit! It is Norm!” I got some impromptu speed work in trying to catch up to him. Luckily he was smart and went to the visitor’s center and stayed there.
Wednesday:
I didn’t write anything for today… I usually try to write the blog everyday because otherwise I won’t remember what happened. Thanks to Strava I know I ran 8 miles, but other than that no clue. I think I only got 6 hours of sleep again and was really tired.
Thursday:
This 5 to 6 hours of sleep every night is starting to suck. I hit the snooze button, but then we got up and out the door. The run was going really well. I found a new way to get up to the 306 trail. I am always happy when I find a new trail. Especially a new trail that isn’t being used by everyone. I felt really good on the climbing today. I even beat my own time up chinscraper and it felt easy (sort of). Norm and I were running easy so we could chat on the way home when I caught my toe and went down hard. I managed to bang up both knees, hurt my big toe and my left arm. Not much in the way of blood or cuts, but my big toe hurt really bad for the rest of the day. And my knees? Any bending hurts pretty bad and there is some pain just during walking.
I won’t go into all the details, but after the fall it was like everything was going wrong. And of course Norm and I got into a fight. And I cried all the way to work. In an act of totally unprofessionalism, I started crying in front of my class and asked them to leave and come back in 20 minutes. I pulled it together, put a smile on my face a taught two classes. When I finished at the college it was time for my last day at the Cheder. I handed out awards and some little gifts. Thank you to Brandi to shopping and putting together gift bags for me in the morning! I just felt exhausted all day. The personal stuff that is going on right now just reached the breaking point. You can only turn something over in your mind some many times before it just eats away at you too much. I had a little too much wine and went to bed early.
Friday:
I slept for 11 hours, but with terrible nightmares so lots of sleep, just not great sleep. I knew when I went to bed that my odds of running today were pretty low. I made an effort to run through the house and that was pretty painful. My knee is swollen. Not so bad that you would notice it unless I pointed it out. I also know there is no way I will be racing on Saturday. I might be able to run a bit, but there is no way I am going to get 34 miles out of my knee. And I know that it is probably better to wait it out. It’s just not helping this mood that has settled on me.
Saturday:
Norm is gone to Flagstaff to work at Big Pine. Is my knee better? I think so, but I decided to give it one more day just in case. At this point my mileage and climbing for the week are disaster so one more day of resting the knee isn’t going to make a big difference. Because of my teaching schedule and the 108 temps, I leave the bulk of my mileage and climbing for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The problem with that is when something goes wrong there is no time to recover and make adjustments. This is the second week that this schedule has screwed me over because something happened beyond my control. I got up early to finish report cards. Nice to have those done. Now I have the rest of the day to work on the college papers and lessons. Maybe I can free up some time to be travel in the afternoons next week to get some running done.
Sunday:
My knee is mostly okay. Since we week of running was already shot I decided to use the day to explore some new trails I had been wanting to check out. It didn’t start out so well. We tried to go the opposite direction on a trail we take all the time and ended up completely off trail. I was so pissed that we were trying to avoid cactus and off trail. How could we be so lost and the trail be right there? This is how people end up calling SAR. And we were wasting time, which is the number 1 way to piss me off. I hate feeling like I am wasting time! Anyways, I finally found the trail and we were able to find our way to a ridgeline trail. (Trail 44 ) We also saw what looked like some very old trail markers. When took a very normal route over to a trail I wanted to try. Up and up we went. It was amazing. We went up and up and on all fours up. It was so beautiful. We decided to do a little “it’s not really a trail, but kinda there is trail.” I was convinced that we would get to the saddle and there would be another trail. Sadly, I was wrong. We looked up and saw these people at the tippy top of a tall peak. They were waving their arms around like they were trying t fly. We weren’t sure if we should be concerned or amazed. And I have no idea how they got there! We had to decide if we would make our own way down with no trail or go back the way we came. I was leaning towards making our own way, but Norm wanted to come back the way we came. There was a bit of ass sliding, but we made our way back to the runnable trail. We made our way over to Dreamy Draw to refill our water. I tried to take it easy on Norm because he said he felt like he didn't have any energy. We managed to get in 2400 feet of climbing in 13 miles. Not too bad. I would like to run it again with more focus and not so much standing around time. And leaving out the sketchy part. The knee was iffy. The downs were a little painful. When we were running and hiking it was better. When we started running continuously the knee was not so happy. It feels a lot better walking around this afternoon so I hope that tomorrow is going to be better.
I ended the week with 47.7 miles and a little over 7,000 feet of climbing. Not the goal, but I am happy with it. I didn't expect to get that much climbing done and I just wanted to get to 50 miles and I was close. Starting tomorrow I just have to get back on track. 6 weeks until taper.
This getting up at 4:30am is very annoying. And the worst part was that we didn't even get out the door at 5am like I planned. It was about 5:15 before we actually left. It didn’t help that I was trying to film for a vlog. Well sort of… Enzo had given me a bunch of instructions the night before on how and what to film. Of course I forgot about holding my phone sideways. It was so time consuming. I don't have time to film my life. One problem is we would say or do something and I would say, we should have been filming that. Or worse we would decide to recreate it and film it. I am starting to feel the pain of every reality TV show director out there. It’s time consuming to explain to Norm what to film and then run while he films. Also he does NOT have a career in vlog filming. People keep saying I need a vlog, but I am not sure I am cut out for this. And it totally messed up my run because I only got 8.5 miles done and not 10. Also, tomorrow we have to get up at 4:15am to try to leave on time. With temps around 108 every day this week, I will not be running in the afternoon. Since I am teaching at both places this week I don't have time to drive up north to run. Colorado can’t come soon enough.
Tuesday:
I only got 6 hours of sleep because I had to stay up working. Of course working was watching a movie that I am showing in my class tomorrow, but still that early alarm was painful. The run went well. Evidently so well that Norm wasn’t keeping up. I made a turn to go up a mountain that I thought he saw, but he didn’t. I was standing on top waiting when I saw a figure and thought, “that person runs like Norm. Oh shit! It is Norm!” I got some impromptu speed work in trying to catch up to him. Luckily he was smart and went to the visitor’s center and stayed there.
Wednesday:
I didn’t write anything for today… I usually try to write the blog everyday because otherwise I won’t remember what happened. Thanks to Strava I know I ran 8 miles, but other than that no clue. I think I only got 6 hours of sleep again and was really tired.
Thursday:
This 5 to 6 hours of sleep every night is starting to suck. I hit the snooze button, but then we got up and out the door. The run was going really well. I found a new way to get up to the 306 trail. I am always happy when I find a new trail. Especially a new trail that isn’t being used by everyone. I felt really good on the climbing today. I even beat my own time up chinscraper and it felt easy (sort of). Norm and I were running easy so we could chat on the way home when I caught my toe and went down hard. I managed to bang up both knees, hurt my big toe and my left arm. Not much in the way of blood or cuts, but my big toe hurt really bad for the rest of the day. And my knees? Any bending hurts pretty bad and there is some pain just during walking.
I won’t go into all the details, but after the fall it was like everything was going wrong. And of course Norm and I got into a fight. And I cried all the way to work. In an act of totally unprofessionalism, I started crying in front of my class and asked them to leave and come back in 20 minutes. I pulled it together, put a smile on my face a taught two classes. When I finished at the college it was time for my last day at the Cheder. I handed out awards and some little gifts. Thank you to Brandi to shopping and putting together gift bags for me in the morning! I just felt exhausted all day. The personal stuff that is going on right now just reached the breaking point. You can only turn something over in your mind some many times before it just eats away at you too much. I had a little too much wine and went to bed early.
Friday:
I slept for 11 hours, but with terrible nightmares so lots of sleep, just not great sleep. I knew when I went to bed that my odds of running today were pretty low. I made an effort to run through the house and that was pretty painful. My knee is swollen. Not so bad that you would notice it unless I pointed it out. I also know there is no way I will be racing on Saturday. I might be able to run a bit, but there is no way I am going to get 34 miles out of my knee. And I know that it is probably better to wait it out. It’s just not helping this mood that has settled on me.
Saturday:
Norm is gone to Flagstaff to work at Big Pine. Is my knee better? I think so, but I decided to give it one more day just in case. At this point my mileage and climbing for the week are disaster so one more day of resting the knee isn’t going to make a big difference. Because of my teaching schedule and the 108 temps, I leave the bulk of my mileage and climbing for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The problem with that is when something goes wrong there is no time to recover and make adjustments. This is the second week that this schedule has screwed me over because something happened beyond my control. I got up early to finish report cards. Nice to have those done. Now I have the rest of the day to work on the college papers and lessons. Maybe I can free up some time to be travel in the afternoons next week to get some running done.
Sunday:
My knee is mostly okay. Since we week of running was already shot I decided to use the day to explore some new trails I had been wanting to check out. It didn’t start out so well. We tried to go the opposite direction on a trail we take all the time and ended up completely off trail. I was so pissed that we were trying to avoid cactus and off trail. How could we be so lost and the trail be right there? This is how people end up calling SAR. And we were wasting time, which is the number 1 way to piss me off. I hate feeling like I am wasting time! Anyways, I finally found the trail and we were able to find our way to a ridgeline trail. (Trail 44 ) We also saw what looked like some very old trail markers. When took a very normal route over to a trail I wanted to try. Up and up we went. It was amazing. We went up and up and on all fours up. It was so beautiful. We decided to do a little “it’s not really a trail, but kinda there is trail.” I was convinced that we would get to the saddle and there would be another trail. Sadly, I was wrong. We looked up and saw these people at the tippy top of a tall peak. They were waving their arms around like they were trying t fly. We weren’t sure if we should be concerned or amazed. And I have no idea how they got there! We had to decide if we would make our own way down with no trail or go back the way we came. I was leaning towards making our own way, but Norm wanted to come back the way we came. There was a bit of ass sliding, but we made our way back to the runnable trail. We made our way over to Dreamy Draw to refill our water. I tried to take it easy on Norm because he said he felt like he didn't have any energy. We managed to get in 2400 feet of climbing in 13 miles. Not too bad. I would like to run it again with more focus and not so much standing around time. And leaving out the sketchy part. The knee was iffy. The downs were a little painful. When we were running and hiking it was better. When we started running continuously the knee was not so happy. It feels a lot better walking around this afternoon so I hope that tomorrow is going to be better.
I ended the week with 47.7 miles and a little over 7,000 feet of climbing. Not the goal, but I am happy with it. I didn't expect to get that much climbing done and I just wanted to get to 50 miles and I was close. Starting tomorrow I just have to get back on track. 6 weeks until taper.
