It's not working out

Sulu:  Sir, enemy vessels sighted at 7 o'clock.
Kirk:  Curse those fiends.  How could anyone stoop to such an early hour?
Sulu:  Sir, they have just installed a pull-up bar device.
Kirk:  Will they stop at nothing?!
*BOOM*
Kirk:  Damage report Mr. Scott!
Scott:  Sir, we've sustained a major blow to the pride!  We cannota take another blow like that, Sir!

     The ol' stretchy bands snapped on me a couple weeks ago so it was time I took some drastic measures for my physical therapy.  And I'm supposedly whole again but too afraid to go find out just how weak I really am now.  So I took an anti-climatically head-long dive into wall push-ups.  Yay.  It would actually be quite embarrassing to admit that I was getting somewhat of a workout from it if it weren't for the fact that it was an improvement for me at that point.  Fortunately I can proudly say that I'm at knee push-ups and going "strong".  Note: they will not be referred to as "girl push-ups" again until I've graduated to real push-ups.

     Actually, this morning I installed the pull-up bar.  Our apartment is pretty old and we've got a couple of very high door frames.  This works out perfectly because I hate trying to do pull-ups and only getting partway down before I am standing on the ground.  Bending my legs isn't an option for me because... it isn't.  That's about as logical of an argument as I can make about it.

     Pull-ups and chin-ups are a wonderful experience for me.  Were a wonderful experience for me.  Even back in elementary school, as weak as I was then, I could do pull-ups.  When I say "weak" I really mean it.  When all the other kids were doing 10 or some unconscionably large number of push-ups, catching hard, round flying objects out of the air with their hands, or many other herculean fetes of strength and skill I was in the back doing the Chubby Checker 'Twist' to try to make it to push-up number 4.  But somehow I could do pull-ups

     So now that I've graduated back to being able to do pull-ups I'm feeling humbled once again.  I managed to crank out a couple sets of 3.  3 pull-ups.  And they were the hardest 3 of my life.  I'm pretty sure I could hear bone-on-bone contact each time I went up, and rust breaking free and dissolving each time I let myself back down.

The best part about my state of muscle-building is how long it doesn't take me.  I felt ready to be done after about 15 minutes.  I'm sure this was entirely physical and not at all mental.

Running

Things that run: my wife's car, my wife, my nose for most of my life, our refrigerator (haha, get it? nevermind)
Things that don't run: most of my old vehicles, my nose now that I started sleeping 8 hours a night, my computer in a few months

I think I can finally add myself to the first list.  Sort of.  Today I just finished my first several mile race.  We were told it was a 15-mile loop, someone claimed 13.5, our splits and logic put it somewhere between the two so I'm just going to go with 14 miles.  Whatever it was, I finished it in under 3 hours.  Ya, compare it to marathoners and I've got myself a crappy time.  However, this was on a trail in the woods.

Things that make trail racing hard: mud, crossing streams up to your ankles, crossing streams up to your knees, crossing streams up to your ankles (yep, the repetition was intentional), single-track trails that won't let you pass slow people, single-track trail that won't let fast people pass you, roots, branches, berry bush thorns to the face, inclines, declines, around-clines, and back upclines, hunting for the right path because it wasn't marked, and most of all: about 2 dozen trees that have fallen onto the path.  Most of those trees were approximately a foot in diameter, which is actually a really tall hurdle once you're several miles of depleted calories into it.  However, there were no mosquitoes.  So it really wasn't that bad.  I hate mosquitoes.

I was actually training for a 10-miler.  It was a 30 mile fun run that was divided into 3 10.5 mile loops.  I was going to run just a single loop since I've only been running for 14 weeks now post-doctor's blessing.  I made it through an 8 mile training run a couple weeks ago in the Shenandoah National Forest, was tired but otherwise alright and figured this would be the right distance for me.  Well, we got to the turn-around point at 8.5 miles and since the actual loop (15ish miles) was only 4 extra miles beyond what I had planned and since I was feeling pretty decent we decided to push on.  It's an ultra (from here) and people walk.  If I got too sore or tired I would just walk the last couple miles out of the valley.

So I bonked at like mile 9.5.  I had been gradually getting more and more sore, but I had plenty of energy until this point.  It all just drained out of me.  I felt like I was in boot camp again.  Or back on one of my first 45-minute "death" runs with Trisha--she didn't call them that, I did.  The net effect is that I got really slow and ended up walking all the uphills and only slowly trotting everything else.  This is normal for ultra runners.  I, however, was not running an ultra marathon.  When we got to the last aid station Trisha made me eat some pretzels and things.  About a half mile or a mile later I very suddenly felt energized again and we blew past the guys who had passed us after I bonked.  It was no runner's high, but the effect was the same and had me laughing for the rest of my run.

Considering the terrain and bonking I was pretty happy to finish under 3 hours.  Trisha even made me finish the race at a run, rather than a walk.  Mind you, the last 1/4 mile was pretty much straight up.

Anyways, as we drove away I was telling the race to eat my shorts--I had done it!  I definitely didn't say it to the race's face.  No, no, not to its face.

Next up, we have a Halloween 30 miler.  We just have to figure out costumes.  I originally planned to do 20 miles of it, but I have to reevaluate now that I know I can run further, but also because I wore myself out on what was partially intended to be just a training run/race.