The Case of the Disappearing Snail

In an earlier post, I talked about my new hobby, playing around with an aquarium. This has been coming along very nicely. I had about 7 fish, 2 frogs (that don't need to breathe air??), and 2 snails.

The snails were rather large - one was white and one was blue. At one point, the blue snail starting hitching a ride on top of the white snail. Now what kind of behavior was that - exactly the kind you think. Obviously, the white snail was a female and the blue snail was a male. He turned out to be quite a horny bastard - constantly hitching a ride. The white snail laid eggs several times. Since I really didn't want any baby snails, I always cleaned the eggs out of the tank. Snails actually lay the eggs outside of the water, so they would be on the inside top of the cover.

Did you know there is a whole community of message boards that discusses aquarium behavior and what not??? Trust me, after reading some of the posts, I'm convinced these people do not have a life. But, to confirm what I thought, I searched through a message board to find out that indeed the snails were mating. I actually started to find this very annoying and gave my blue snail away to a friend of mine - yes, a home for wayward aquarium life!

So, now I'm down to one snail - the white one. This is a very active snail and is constantly moving around the tank keeping it clean. I really liked that snail alot. One day I came home from work and the snail was missing. This snail was about 1.5 to 2 inches wide - you can't miss it in the tank and there is no where for it to hide - although I looked everywhere. Well, perhaps the snail floated out of the top of the tank as it would crawl all the way to the top on many occasions. So I searched all around the floor and behind any furniture - no snail....

I have some girls who come to clean my house every other week (and trust me, I totally realize how fortunate I am to be able to do this). My best guess is that the snail did float out of the tank and perhaps it went up the vacuum or they picked it up and failed to tell me they threw it away. At any rate, I felt like they would think I was nuts if I questioned them about it. Like, hey, what did you do with my snail???

So, it will forever be a mystery unless some day it turns up all rotted somewhere in my house. The case of the missing snail....

A Very Good Day

Today is a good day to be positive. I went for an awesome 44 mile bike ride in a lovely part of Illinois called St. Libory - never heard of it, it was a long drive, but it was worth it. The day started out with rain predicted, but fortunately, we never saw it until we were on our way back home - in the car. I had one part of the bike ride around mile 20 where my back started hurting a lot. Luckily, there was a rest stop at mile 23 and I stretched out pretty good. After that, I was good to go.

Post ride, I went for a 20 minute+ run - running 2 miles. It didn't feel too bad and post-run, I have some pain in my hip, but it's not terrible.

Tomorrow I go to an ortho doc to check on why I'm not really improving the way I'd like. I reflect on my running capabilities prior to my injury and I would really like to return to that - maybe a little pain just because I'm old, but for the most part, I can just run until I'm too tired. I never appreciated that fact until now and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get back to that. I'm so impatient and tired of not being able to just go and workout as hard as I'd like. But we'll see what he has to say - I'm a little scared that I'm going to be told to halt all activity and that will be extremely difficult and depressing.

But for today, it was a very good day and I will revel in that.

Turning the Corner

Injury update - still not running, BUT, and this is a big one - I think my injury is finally going away. AND I blame the reason I wasn't healing on the shoes I was wearing to work - they had heels. This must be a very bad thing for hip muscles.

So, I'm very excited at the prospect that I might be back in the game. However, not to get too ahead of myself. I'm literally going to walk before I run. That is my plan for the next 7 days - doing a few walks to see if I can walk without any pain. If there is pain - there will be no running and back to the dr for more treatment.

Now onto better things. I did my first bike time trial Wednesday night. And did I say it was hard? Yes, the wind was 15 mph steady with gusts up to 30 mph. The route was hampered by crosswinds so you really had to hold onto your bike. But I did it - a 15k time trial and being that I was the only 50+ woman to sign up - I get to win!! And since it's a series of 5 weeks - I get the first place and only points for that night in my class. Hopefully, I can hang in there and podium each week and do well in the series. My bike was awesome - did I tell you that I love my bike. I really love my bike.

Checking In

I vowed to blog my progress every day and already I've fallen behind. Hey, I'm busy - busy trying to get myself healed so I can run again. So if I'm not running, what am I doing? Why don't I have time to catch up on my blog? I do not know and do not have any good excuse.

So much for the ramble - I thought I had eaten fairly well over the weekend and was completely surprised and upset when the scale clocked in at 162.6 - yikes! So knuckle under and get things back in check. Today was much better and I weighed in at 160.6 - maybe had some water weight or something hanging around.

Went to the pool and had a decent swim. Did a little bit of water running - wow, that's difficult and I'm not really certain it has any benefit. I don't get winded or anything, so there appears to be no cardio. I even tried to speed it up a little, but that's really hard to do in the water.

Tomorrow I'm planning a nice bike - weather should be good. I'm registered for a duathlon this weekend, but it's doubtful that I will participate - so that will now be two races that I've DNSd. I am not liking this trend one little bit.

Here's another reason why I have difficulty getting this written - my husband has the tv turned up really loud and then he tries to talk to me. Do you know how difficult it is to listen to a loud tv (because I'm trying to follow the baseball game), concentrate and think about what you are trying to write and focus on what your beloved husband is trying to communicate? Multi-tasking - not firing on all cylinders.

Nothing of any interest in this post. Stay tuned, maybe life will pick up tomorrow. I can hardly wait.

Boring - Read at your own Risk

Boring Day One: While my training friends got up early to go to the 1/2 marathon race, I got up early to go to church. Both are spiritual in nature - one takes a few hours, the other just shy of an hour. I prayed for my friends to do well and I prayed that I would heal soon and begin to join them again.

At home, I worked on putting new road-type tires on my mountain bike to make it more commuter-like. Then I cleaned that bike and my tri bike as well. Seems the Heed drink I use drips on my tri bike and is difficult to clean off - well, the cleaner I was using wouldn't get it, but plain ole water did. So I have clean bikes.

Then I planted some elephant ears in my garden and did a little weeding - got really dirty and muddy - add that to the bike grease and I'm one big mess.

Eating habits not too bad today - breakfast was a light english muffin with cheese, egg beaters, and turkey bacon. Also had some pink grapefruit. Lunch was two light hot dogs with bread, some light chips and some reduced fat chocolate chip cookies. I had a snack of mixed nuts and a banana in the afternoon and then fish, rice, salad and 1/2 ear corn for dinner. Dessert was some South Beach pudding - it's pretty good.

Here's something new I'm trying in my weight loss effort - Satiatrim - 50 calories and supposed to help you feel satisfied for 3-4 hours. It does taste pretty good - not sure that the appetitie suppression is all that good. But, I'll keep trying.

My friends had a decent race but neither got the time they were shooting for - the weather was outstanding here today. Actually saw one of my friends finish the race in a sports clip on the local news. I recorded it for her.

Today's workout - hopefully, some stretching and how about some upper body strength work? That's my plan.

Giving up the Ghost

Yesterday I volunteered at packet pick-up for the Go!St. Louis Marathon. You know, the race (1/2 marathon) that I was going to do this Sunday pre-injury. I picked up all my friends packets. And in my attempt to start thinking "green" I took our local mass transit - Metrolink. Not thinking, I went through the Expo picking up free samples of stuff for my friends bags (and mine too of course!). But then I realized, I would have to lug all this stuff back with me to the train. The station was only about 1/2 mile away - so it really wasn't all that bad.

Before I left though, it was important for me to turn in my chip - $30 fine if you didn't turn it in one way or the other. This however became the final moment, the moment at which the realization came that indeed there was no turning back, the race was not to be for me.

So that was it - with one toss, I threw the chip in the bin and the game was over. No race, no finisher's medal no finisher's hat - I really wanted that hat - no glory as I cross the finish line. Pretty dramatic stuff huh! Pretty stupid to whine about a very minor injury - after all, I can still ride my bike and swim. I can still do weights and yoga. I've gained two lbs sitting on my butt whining! This must stop!

So tomorrow while my friends are beginning their race, I will still be lying around in bed and then I will be getting my grip. I will try to run again either today or tomorrow because I don't feel too bad today. I didn't hurt too bad yesterday. I have an appointment on Monday again with the chiropractor - he really does wonders - and I don't even believe in chiropractors.

So tomorrow - it is a new day. I will begin again on my journey to lose 5 stubborn lbs (plus two more that I gained sitting around at my pity party). I will begin my journey to adapt my workouts until by old body is ready to run again.

Here's the other bummer that I'm having to deal with. There is another athlete in my age group that I've been trying to beat. I was hoping to get her last year at the Lake St. Louis triathlon (she beat me the year before), but she didn't race! She is, however, signed up to race the duathlon that I will be doing, hopefully, next Sunday. I would really like to beat her, but she is a much better runner than me and I think she might be better than me on the bike. So, without my normal running legs, I doubt I will even get close to her - which drives me crazy! But you never know, I will go out to try the best that I can with what I have - which on a good day, isn't very much.

Ok - so back to the weight loss issue. I'm going to use this journal, I am pledging to myself to use this journal to get focused again on losing some weight. I will write my progress up every day no matter how boring - anyone who stumbles upon this journal will just have to deal with it or bypass it.

I can do this if I really want to, so come on Terri, do it this time!

Today I Get to Run

April 2,2008
Yeah - a successful visit to the chiropractor and he says today I should try to run. I've been feeling pretty good and have been anxious to try it. The weather was awesome - just slightly under 60 and my training plan called for a 45 minute easy bike followed by an easy 15 minute run. Perfect! My bike ride was great - a little windy and a little cold on my face, but I couldn't wait to try running.

Post bike - change my shoes and walk down a long hill in preparation for a flat smooth trail run. I start off running and it's not bad but as I continue on, it feels like I have a bowling ball inside my leg - heavy and knotty feeling. But I keep running - I ran for twenty minutes and although it wasn't painful, it also wasn't pain free -- it was pained. My question is - is this OK? Will I need to run through a certain amount of pain before I'm back to normal - OR is is wrong to run with any pain.

Being that I'm almost 55, pretty much everything I do causes some sort of discomfort followed by some pain later and the next day -but it's that good kind of pain that says, I worked those muscles pretty good today.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME. After I got home, I put an ice pack inside my bike shorts for 10 minutes. It was so cold that it felt like it was burning - you know what, I think it was burning!! Here's a helpful hint - don't put one of those freezer packs on your bare skin. I ate dinner and didn't really feel too bad - so that was sounding good. After sitting around working on my laptop, I stood up and the pain was just as bad as it had ever been. I had difficulty sleeping because everytime I turned - no matter which direction - it hurt!

April 3, 2008
I limped around all day today - this is not good. I think I'm back to where I was with the original injury and only ran 20 minutes! There's no way I could do a half marathon this Sunday - glad I decided that I wouldn't do it - I would've been severely disappointed.

Later in the evening, the pain has begun to dissipate somewhat - maybe it's not as bad as it originally was - maybe I'm a little better - we'll see. I really hate this!

And the Pain Goes On, the Pain Goes On

Eight days later and really no improvement. Saw the wizard chiropractor who says he can get me "fixed" for the 1/2 marathon this Sunday - that would now be 5 days away. He said I could run, he said it would probably hurt, he said I might not finish - but I could try. At first, I was elated with this news but as I reflected last night and pondered and worried, I decided that I needed to make a decision (can you decide to decide?). But I couldn't get beyond the pondering on my own, so I emailed my coach. I hardly ever have questions, but lately, I've been pretty annoying. So I asked him his opinion and he said not to risk it.

So, probably for the first time this year, I'm listening to my coach and have decided not to run this Sunday. Done - decision made - no turning back on this one. Rationalization - coach says no, don't want to risk the entire season on one "C" priority race, there will be other races.

So you know what, now I feel better. Maybe releasing the stress of trying to figure out how I would pull off this 1/2 marathon in my current condition, was actually making it worse.

I still don't know how I would deal with a lingering injury or one where your activity would be really limited - at least I can still bike and swim for now. The worse part is, I'm such a whiner about it. There are people who are in way worse shape than I am and yet I'm just concerned with me. I should be happy that I'm not severely impacted - and so I will be. Happy that I've made a decision to heal for a little while longer and be thankful that I should heal fairly soon.