MichaelV

Love this report. And love that scenery and countryside. That's the kind of place I should be living. Big and wide open.

When I had Achilles Tendinitis, I went to a physical therapist. I ended up doing a bunch of stretches for 3 or 4 months, but few of them had anything to do with my calves. They had me work more on strengthening my hips and hip flexibility. It seems a lot of times the place you are having issues is actually just a symptom of a problem somewhere else. You can Google the Myrtl routine online to see a lot of the same stretches that I did. This was over two years ago and I haven't had a problem since. I tried to do the heel drops on my own prior to that, but it felt like I was doing more damage than help.

I agree with all of this 100% and this is what I do in my running. It's also so difficult no to say something when you see people calling a run an easy run when you know that for them they are going way too fast. I do my easy runs about 2 minutes slower than my 10k pace and I limit my HR to 140. Most of these runs end up with an average HR of about 135-138.

Looks like you ran the tangents well! 😁

Everyone I know who has done the Flying Pig loves it. But it's hilly, too, so.....

Great update. Sounds like you have some adventures in your future!

Hope you don't have to have surgery.

Impressive! And a good read.

I have now decided that life is too short to save my best running shirts. I'm going to wear the best one I have on my run today. Hope it doesn't chafe.

The best part is I tend to wear all the crappy ones over and over and save the "nice" ones. Not sure what I'm saving them for exactly. What would be a good example of a run worth saving a shirt for?

That's an awesome shirt! For shirts of shame, here are the closest I have: I have one or two shirts from races where I volunteered and didn't race. They are 5Ks, so I probably did at least 5K later that same day anyway That counts, right? Eventually, they started making separate shirts for volunteers that say "Race Team". I took 2 of them one year. But I didn't take one this year, so I guess I'm even. I have a shirt from a marathon where I was a pacer for the last 16 miles (there are reasons), so I didn't really run the full marathon. But there was a half marathon as well and it was the same shirt. But I didn't really run that course. I'm conflicted on this one???? Actually, I really don't care. Hardly anyone sees me when I'm doing endless loops of my small neighborhood and I wear more legit shirts on group runs.

I can't imagine playing a couple of hours of football. I would have been injured in the first few minutes. Hope the hamstring gets better soon. I've enjoyed the extra blogs lately as well. I don't believe this will really ever attract anyone new as it is set up now. It's too hidden and private. It would need to have it's own cause/purpose, shtick, relevancy, public social media accounts, etc. Clearly nobody has time for that, so it is what it is.

I'm so sorry you are going through this. I'm hoping for a break through.

Very good read. I agree with Dave. Sounds like two pretty good races even with the stomach issues. I've developed a love of trails kind of over the same time period as you. Well...I really knew I already loved them and just needed to make the extra effort to go run on them.

Why were you offered so many tissues? Were you crying?