Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Oh yeah, almost forgot...

Happy Fourth of July!:-)
Once again, it has been a while since I last posted. This is becoming a bad habit, not posting regularly. I'll try to get better. "Try" being the operative word here.

So, onto the obligatory "what I've been up to lately". After having issues with both feet, which forced me to stop training for the Dexter-Ann Arbor half marathon, I took some time off from running to let them heal. After a couple of months, I started going for hikes in Nichols Arboretum (a.k.a. "the Arb"), which caused some soreness at first, but the soreness gradually got less and less, and finally went away. Physical therapy through hiking on uneven ground, gotta love it! I then progressed to running at the Arb. Again, a little soreness at first, but it gradually went away. Now, I am once again in training for a half marathon, this time for the Detroit Free Press Half Marathon. Hopefully this time, things will go better.

This time around, I'm trying to play it smarter, starting earlier and joining a training group, the Running Fit 501 marathon and half marathon training group. Group runs/workouts twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, informational seminars, and other good stuff. So far, it's a lot of fun! I have had some soreness in the foot, but it tends not to last too long. I've also discovered the benefits of the ice bath, or in my case just cold water bath, which seems to help.

After a particularly tough workout, I run a bath with the water as cold as I can get from my tap, deep enough to submerge my legs, and sit in it for about 20 minutes. Last night I even added a couple of trays of ice cubes, not enough to make it a true "ice bath", but enough to drop the temperature a little more. So far, doing this seems to help my muscles, and my foot as well. Hopefully that will continue as the runs get longer. Fritz did something similar after his second marathon, and said it helped a lot, so that's a good sign that it will. I highly recommend it for other activities as well, including particularly tough hiking, biking, or climbing workouts.

I've also started a new job, which is, well, meh. Not liking it a whole lot, it's clerical, which is not my favorite thing in the world to do. I basically took it to stay within my company so I wouldn't lose my seniority. As soon as my six months are up, I can start looking for other positions within the company, and will definitely be keeping my eye out for positions within the fitness division for which I was previously working. I'm still doing personal training for them, which helps me keep my skills up and keep me happier, but business has gotten slow with the onset of summer. Most of my clients were either college students who are now gone for the summer, or faculty/staff of the university, who are now taking vacations and such. Things should pick up in the fall though.

One thing I do like about the clerical job, it's a five minute walk from the Arb, which is incredibly convenient. There's also a nice courtyard where I can eat lunch every day. And most of the people are nice. Other than that, it's rather dull, and so by-the-book, letter-of-the-law that it's quite stifling.

I also headed back to fencing practice this past weekend, after a six-month hiatus. It was SO much fun, and I wasn't nearly as rusty as I expected to be. In fact, mentally I felt much better, much more agressive, more confident. I actually got a few good-natured complaints that taking so much time off hadn't made me any easier to beat. That felt good, but I did still feel rusty in a lot of ways. But I intend to go more regularly from now on, and that should ease as I get more practice in.

That about concludes my update on my life the last couple of months. In case anyone's interested, I've added a badge that shows the books I'm currently reading, and will try to keep that updated as well.