They lied. Everything is not bigger in Texas. For the last couple weeks I have been down in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, for a couple academic conferences and some research in a few archival repositories. Fun fun fun. And, rather than sit around bored in my hotel rooms at night when I didn’t have stuff planned with colleagues and friends, I went running. These were three of the sweatiest runs of my life. Wow. The humidity. Overall, it was…
With an official diagnosis of ankle problems, a fibula stress fracture, and a strong suspicion that running on pavement severely aggravates it, I decided to hit the dirt today and test out my theory. I started at the Farmington Pond, ran north on the BST to Shepherd Canyon, up to the Upper Terrace, and took that back to the car. Its a great loop. My left IT band hurt towards the end, but my ankle did not. Often the pain…
I got home from work and it was just too nice to not go out. My knee was a bit sore, and I knew I would regret it (I don’t) but I went anyways. I was planning on parking at Famrington Pond and running the BST/Farmington Upper Terrace loop, but when I arrived at the canyon I saw that the gates were open. Yeah! Up the canyon I went.I parked at the end of the pavement and ran up the…
A couple months ago, a member of the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers Facebook group posted that they needed a runner to add to their team for the Zion Ragnar Trail Relay. The fee was already paid, just come and run. My family was scheduled to be out of town on the race weekend, so I figured that I had nothing better to do and secured a spot on the team. I hadn’t done a Ragnar before and from what I knew,…
Over the past couple weeks I have been reading about active release massage and how it might be able to solve my ankle trouble. I have begun to suspect that the lasting pain on my peroneal tendon is from scar tissue that built up. Apparently, you can break up the scar tissue by massage it and so forth. So, along with rolling and stretching out the muscles that the tendons attach to, I have been doing it for…
Tonight I decided to give my ankle a try. I hadn’t run on it for 8 days. I started partway up 400 N in Bountiful and ran up past the LDS Bountiful Temple towards Mueller Blvd., then I turned around, and bombed back down 400 N. and a ways up 400 W. I clocked some of my fasts miles going down the hill. At about mile 2 my IT bands started hurting, but oddly enough, as I flew down the…
When I got back from Arizona, I decided that I would try to rehab my IT Bands. They hurt the worst going downhill, so I thought maybe staying flat – on the pavement trails around my house – would help. Over the course of a few weeks, I did 6 flat runs. I would do stretches on the trail every 1/2 -1 mile for 20-30 seconds on each side. It actually worked pretty well and by the 6th run I…
Ok, I have been seriously limping around AZ all week. That last run was a mistake. I should have taken it easy. But, I just could resist. Well…today was our last full day down here in the valley of the sun…so I thought I would throw caution to the wind and run again – suffer the consequences later. I had my wife drop me off at the Pyramid Trail TH with the plan to meet up with her, my kids,…
One positive to having family in Arizona is visiting there for the holidays. My word – 60s-70s feel glorious. I have a problem though – my right foot is still quite painful. So – do I take advantage of the warm weather and trails, or be a good boy? I opted for the trails. Today I started at my sister’s house (on the south side of Phoenix’s South Mountain in Ahwatukee) and accessed the trail system there. I took a…
A couple months ago I won a pair of Montrail Badrocks from Max King on facebook. They just arrived and I got them specifically for wet. snowy, or muddy conditions. So, I grabbed my neighbor Matt and we did an EARLY morning run up Farmington Canyon, which was snowpacked. It was my first run on the snow and the shoes did great. Unfortunately, my knees did not. I gave them an almost 2-week rest, but wasn’t very diligent at using…