I run (and walk)! In EPCOT!

More details later, but for now…here’s some pictures of me going zoom! Or, click here for all of the pictures from this trip.

Registered and Ready to Run!

Protected: Today’s Ralk

Great Urban Race: Chicago!

Pictures and a little bit about the clues can be found here!

We had a great time. Team WeeM beat the rest of us by about an hour. Team Cake or Death (my team) came in second, of our group, with Team Twomey coming in close behind. Official results will be up on the GUR website by Tuesday, we’re told. None of us were fast enough to win anything cool.

Scott & I did some estimating using the GMap pedometer, and we figure that Team Cake or Death ended up walking 4.5 to 5 miles. Team WeeM probably walked/ran about 7-8 miles. Team Cake or Death would have been in a half hour earlier, but they got stuck waiting on an uptown bus to finish the last 1.8 miles. (Team WeeM walked/ran that bit.) The multiple closures and re-routes of the loop trains made the trains mostly unreliable and useless for us suburbanites, so we did much more bussing than we should have.

Anyways, it was really fun, and I’m looking forward to next year!

To camp or not to camp

Our plans were to go camping this weekend with our gamer friends, as we did last year. However, the weather was not looking so great as of this time yesterday. Even though it’s only saying 50% chance of thunderstorms, that’s a good bit of rain if you’re outside, not to mention that the ground is wet from it raining today and yesterday.

We have cancelled. It sucks because I was really looking forward to hanging out with our friends, and knowing how these things go, the weather will probably be beautiful despite the reports. Still, we’re not uber-campers by any means. We have a relatively small tent, and neither of us really like being outside for that long…we just do it because it’s a fun weekend with friends. We suspect it would be less fun in the rain. One of our friends said it’s still fun in the rain, because they (who are uber-campers) set up tarps over the tables and fire and stuff so that we can still cook and play games.

I’m having non-buyer’s remorse, I guess. This is one of those situations where no matter what choice I make, I’m going to feel like I made the wrong one.

Unexpected adventures!

We went to Winnetka to play bridge today, for a Swiss team with B* and one of his frequent partners. We ended up doing not so great at bridge, despite me bidding (and making) a bold and decisive slam at one point. (Oh and blowing a doubled contract two matches later, lest you think I’m full of the bridge awesome.) But, on our way to bridge, we saw signs for a kayak demo as well as bike rentals. We didn’t have anything to do, and it was a beautiful day. We decided to stop by the park, see if the kayak demo was still happening, and, if it was, we’d demo some kayaks, and if it wasn’t, we’d rent bikes and ride through the park.

After pulling up to the boat launch, we saw one truck with kayaks on it, but the kayaks looked like rentals more than demos. My DH talked to the truck’s owner and found out that the demo was over, but that she was about to take a group on a kayak tour. We decided to go along, especially since the tour guide filled my sunblock need. (I hadn’t planned on being outside.) So, a short while later, I was adjusted in a kayak and in the water. My birks rode along in the kayak’s storage bin, and Scott’s tennis shoes and socks kept them company. We paddled around in circles near the dock while waiting on the rest of the group (a small family from Elk Grove) to get in the water. I really wish I remembered the brand of my kayak, because it was short and light and pretty easygoing.

Anyways, we did a 2 hour kayak tour, really easy paddling and fun. We saw lots of birds and lots of bugs. I saw a few turtles. Scott saw a deer. For a spontaneous adventure, it turned out awesome. My arms are tired, but I really enjoyed it. It’s a good kind of movement for me, I think. My left knee (the problem knee) was really stiff and sore when I got out of the kayak, but I think I could have fixed that if I’d brought the footpegs closer to me. I think I’d like kayaking better if I sat indian style, too (meaning, in the style of sitting known as indian style, not kneeling as native americans once did in kayaks and canoes). But, if you use the foot pegs, you need your feet out front.

Map of our Kayak Route (3.66 miles, by estimation)

Protected: Biking

Knee Update

I had a doc appointment today to go over the results of my MRI. The good news is that I do not have a torn meniscus. My meniscus looks fine. The better news is that my ligaments in general look to be in great shape, that everything is sitting where it should, etc. He even said that some of the arthritis that he saw in the X-ray doesn’t seem to be present in the MRI, meaning it could have just been compression due to my positioning for the X-ray. The MRI did show some inflammation in the region of my pain but there was no cause for it being shown. So, the bad news is that I really am back to having no idea why my knee hurts in that one particular spot or is so sensitive to any pressure in that one spot, nor does my doctor. He said it could just be some general inflammation from an irritated muscle. He said it could be triggered by any of a number of things (weather, activity, shoes, sitting, standing…anything really), but that with this kind of general inflammation, the best thing for me to do is physical therapy to strengthen the muscles and further define the source of the pain, and also for me to be on alert for what seems to make it worse and to guide my activity accordingly. He said that they can also do things in the therapy like ultrasound to help soothe the inflamed muscle, and that the therapy along with the NSAIDs should help this go away with time.

I have been doing the stretches that they gave me at the last appointment, and they really do seem to help. Particularly, my knee seems to get worse while I’m at work. This could be from sitting for a long period or because my sitting position isn’t good, but what I’ve started doing is setting an Outlook reminder to myself twice a day to get up and stretch using the prescribed exercises.

I don’t like not knowing what is wrong, but I do like that surgery is off the table (ha! pun not originally intended). PT is going to be expensive and time-consuming, but I’d rather do it and have a defined outcome (good or bad) than not do it and wonder what could have been.

The doc also gave me a different NSAID (Celebrex) to try. I’d been having stomach issues with the last one (Naprosyn). Naprosyn is basically Aleve, although the ones I got were super-strength and in an enteric coating to make them slowly act over 24 hours. He gave me some samples of Celebrex to try, with the thought that it might not be as hard on my stomach and a scrip to use if the samples seem to work for me. So, I took some of it after lunch today, and we’ll see how it goes. Either way, his view on the NSAIDs is to just basically take them when I need them, particularly if I’m going to be doing a strenuous activity. Regarding biking, he said it was very likely that biking would make the knee ache more, particularly if I was biking on a high gear or going uphill. He recommended flat biking only (not hard to respect that around here) and making sure to put my seat up as high as I can tolerate (which I’d done already this past summer for knee pain reasons), and he also basically said to use cautious judgment with biking…that if it hurts, don’t do it as often…and he said it’d be worthwhile for me to try finding another activity to use in its place, particularly if the NSAIDs don’t help with it and the pain is getting worse when I do it. That makes me sad, because I was really enjoying biking. It also makes me sad because I really can’t put the seat on my bike up any higher and still be able to manage the handlebars…it’s just the type of bike it is and the size of the frame…and I really can’t justify a new bike if I’m not even sure that I can continue biking. Pooh.

Improvement

I did a quick calculation or two with my biking stats. In biking speed, I’ve gone from 4mph on average to 7mph on average. Admittedly, I don’t think I have significant data yet. I made a note to myself to make up a spreadsheet when I have a chance that will help me maintain stats, including notes on things like leisurely riding versus goal-oriented (e.g., to get to the store and back) versus athletic riding. The 4mph stat does include a couple of trips that I’d categorize as leisurely.

It also seems like my heart rate is not getting as high as it used to, which is another sign of good things. Whereas I used to spend at least a third of the ride in a “high” heart rate, I’m now spending most of the ride in target or low, with only a few minutes in the high range.

Biking Report

Calories burned: 294
Minutes of riding: 43:46
Minutes in target heart rate: 23:50
Average heart rate: 108bpm
Distance traveled: 7.2 miles (plus a little? My G-maps track is a bit off.)

(As usual, I’ll post an f-locked post with my actual route for those that are curious. Today, we found a better way to get over to the Rollins Savanna.)