Dave

Like doug I'd never heard of this flyby thing either. Checked it out and found a runner and a biker that I crossed paths with on Saturday. Interesting. How did you go from a flyby to making friends? I feel like it might be sort of creepy. Maybe people are less suspicious in CA?

Maybe.

There are few places as peaceful as a peaceful Lake Michigan beach. Glad to hear that hip is recovering.

Over two weeks since my last entry. No excuses. I at first supposed that my mind was simply on other things, but if I'm being honest, I think it's because my personal motivation just isn't here right now. I never raced much, but for the last ten years I've at least had a marathon or two out there that I was working on. Truth is, as the audience here has dwindled and the interaction with it, I miss the buss of having people comment and ask questions and voice opinions on what I've written. Having someone tell me it's OK when I struggle through a bad run helped me get out on the road again the next day. Multiply that by what used to be several - sometimes dozens - back in the Loop's heyday, and I was constantly lifted up. It's harder when you feel alone. Still out there, though, regardless. It's what I do. What I am. Not going to lie, though - I miss the kudos. I'm at the stage of my post-covid comeback where it feels like things aren't happening the way I want. Just impatience, I'm sure, like it usually is. Tinkbot posted during the week that she ran the same number of miles that she got sleep the night before. She's got two littles now and sleep is a precious and rare commodity for a young mother. The 4.5 miles pushing the stroller were no doubt tougher for her than the 7.5 I struggled with yesterday in my effort to matched her sleep/miles adventure. I've done a couple of Saturdays in a row at 6 miles and was thinking 7 or 8 this week anyway, which is about what I sleep every night, so it wasn't going to be any extra effort, really. I have developed the nasty habit of needing to take a dump sometime during what seems like every single one of my morning runs. So I woke up, took my time eating breakfast, visiting the bathroom a few times (with mostly disappointing results), and finally left when it felt like nothing was going to happen again. First miles lately have been extra slow. Part of it's normal for mile 1 to warm up, part of it's the morning which my right knee doesn't seem to like anymore for about a quarter mile. But after that things loosen up and it's just a matter of getting where I plan to go that day. Even though Michigan is mostly opened up, traffic remains lighter than in the past, and even if I miss a light I can often go through on the red, since there aren't any cars, especially at 7 am on a Saturday morning. When I was young and fast I'd think nothing of darting in and out of traffic whenever. Now I'm a much more sane, relaxed, conscientious and law-abiding runner. And slower, don't forget slower. There was a woman I passed in mile 1 that I passed in the other direction coming back in mile 6. That doesn't happen every day. No telling how far she went in the one direction before coming south to the street I was returning on. Waved both times, which was nice. Of course I had a Code Abby about half way. Lucky for me, there was a park, not much used now because, you know. And there was a honey bucket shack put there by the city every summer. Suppose it's cheaper than building and maintaining an actual bathroom. Despite the fact that it's not guaranteed to be sanitized, I used it. I know the science isn't complete about how much immunity I might have at this point, I feel pretty good about my chances since I had no plans to be licking my butt afterwards, and there was little contact with my hands that would have been able to travel to my mouth/nose. The danger from e-coli is likely much greater from a POP than covid. Anyway, so much for the extra time I spent at home before running. Ran out of gas somewhere in mile 5 and struggled the rest of the way in. It was warm and humid like it's been all summer, but I had hoped to be able to push just one more measly mile than I did the previous two Saturdays. So kind of disappointed. Both the girls were working yesterday, so I spent my time cleaning windows and toilets, and watching some movies on Amazon, since the Tigers-Reds game was rained out. Today we're going to church for the first time in 4 months. Only 25 people will be there, as the congregation rotates through the alphabet with groups of 25 attending one of four services held every week. At that rate, we'll be there once a month. The other times, they have a Zoom broadcast of one of them that we can call in for. Hardly the same, but better than nothing, although we try to have a weekly family devotional scheduled around work schedules. Crazy all the things we used to take for granted as normal until a few months ago. Reminds me that we're not really in charge of things on this tiny little planet like we often think we are. Man has done some amazing things, but we're actually a pretty fragile species. Life is fragile. So many things we think are so very important aren't so much, really. Seems to me we'd be better off if we remembered that.

Zero book matches this month. Think I mentioned that my view on PRs is the same as yours also. And really, unless you're in an official, competitive group that tracks these things, I'm not sure it really makes any difference. If you say your PR is ##, what business is it of mine to say whether it's legit? You worked hard and ran hard and have some numbers you feel good about. Everybody wins. Not that I'm planning on any PRs again, unless I asterisk them all with AGs.

Interesting how the body adapts to whatever we give it. Fingers crossed for an actual race to happen. Utahns are as divided as the rest of the country on covid, so there's no guarantees.

My goal is to go through a whole day without giving myself whiplash from shaking my head at how dumb people are. This is a good start, thank you.

And I didn't even get out to see most of it. Just the views from Denver and Franktown. But it was a great long weekend anyway. T-Rex got to see her boy, we met his parents, and we spent a little time with some old friends. Not working for 5 days was good, too. Got a couple of runs in on Friday and Saturday. Friday was in Franktown. That's a half hour south of Denver, if you were wondering. There's not much there, which is fine. Lots of big houses, spread out over lots of area. Our friends live at the top of a hill with spectacular views both near and far. I was going to keep it short on Friday since we'd traveled the day before, not to mention that I haven't done any hills in forever and it was at 6,500 feet above sea level. Not what I'm used to. Fortunately, the first day or two the blood still has oxygen from where you came from, so the only thing that kicked my butt was the actual climbing. I've run here once before and remember how steep that last mile-long hill back to the house is. Yikes! Anyways, I eyeballed the map on my phone and figured I could do a loop out to the highway, then down to the turn off where we drove up the night before. I knew that last piece was a mile, and it sort of looked like a mile to the highway, then another to the turn off. 3 miles. They told me they've had a couple of cougar sightings in the area but I wasn't worried about that. There's also a bear that's been rummaging through people's garbage cans. Wasn't too excited about that prospect, although it didn't seem like a good idea to discuss that with Mrs. Dave until maybe after we got home. Saw four deer at the first intersection, then another two just before the highway. My plan was to cross and run on the south side of the road against traffic, but noticed a single track that paralleled the highway about 15 yards from the traffic (what traffic there was, which wasn't much), so I ran on that. This is also about where I began to see that my 3 miles was actually going to be more like 4. But this was mostly downhill, so I felt OK and was in no hurry. Turns out it was 4 miles to the turn off, so this was a 5-miler. That was fine with me, but I wondered if Mrs. Dave would be worried when I was 15 minutes later than I told her I was going to be. She slept through most of it, so it was fine. As expected, that last climb was a killer, but I only walked at little for the steepest part. Saturday's run was a 3 mile out and back from a hotel. We figured to save the drive time that day so didn't go back to Franktown that night. The hotel was just a mile or so from the first house we had in Denver back in 1987, so it was a little nostalgia tour. Ran past a golf course where I'd lost a pitching wedge one day. A mile and a half out comes really quickly. I felt like going farther, but this wasn't a run-cation, so I headed back. Most of our time was spent getting to know this kid that T-Rex is all gaga over. We went to a couple of escape rooms and decided we really like them, even though we felt pretty stupid most of the time. Denver has some really nice min-golf courses and we played a couple of those, too. It was at or near 100o the whole weekend, but 100o in Denver feels like 80o in Detroit, so we didn't mind so much. And we ate too much. Never had any trouble with the altitude until the airport on the way home yesterday, when I had to navigate a broken escalator carrying our one checked bag that only weighed 35 pounds. Holy moly, I was sucking serious wind before getting to the top. Good thing I didn't run that day. Back at home and nothing's changed here. Still working at the dining room table and expect to be here for the rest of the year. Sometime soon they'll approve a date for me to go to the office and clear out whatever person stuff I left there. I may never go back at least for my current client/contract. I last filled my gas tank in mid-March. After the drive to and from the airport, I still have a quarter of a tank. Crazy world.

I was doing calculations in my head about my paces and was relieved when I saw the bit about easy pace being relative to your race pace. Mine is a fair bit slower than it used to be, so I'm glad I don't have to slow my slow runs so much. Much slower and I'll be walking.

Very impressed with those boxes - nice work. There's nothing like running.

Slowly adding miles in. 5 yesterday that went pretty well. Switched to morning runs because it's been in the 90s. The catch with morning runs for me is the bowel processes that never seem to decide what they're going to do until half way through my runs. Code Abby! But, I'm running and except for the first mile that seems to take more of to get into the flow than it does in the afternoon, my normal paces have returned. Was even flirting with sub-8 yesterday before I had to stop abruptly to make sure there wasn't a mess to leave on the sidewalk. Ew. For the present, I'm content with just building up until I can do some double digits again. After that, we'll see what the landscape looks like for the new racing normal. I got an email for an Independence Day 5K that had a wide start window for everyone to distance. It was only $20, too. But it was also over an hour's drive and I'm not feeling up to racing yet anyway. I didn't feel the need for the admittedly minimal expense or the 2-plus hours in a car on Saturday morning. Instead, I decided (after my 5) to touch up the fence. There are a few pickets that could be replaced and maybe some fresh paint. Sadly, Home Depot had different sized pickets than they did when I built the fence. Hoping they were just out of them. So, I've been meaning to put something permanent around the peonies on the north side of the house. Peonies seem to have bloom too heavy for their stalks, so once they get near the flower stage, they fall over and look sickly. Every year I've just wrapped some twine around them and anchored it to the fence and that holds them up reasonably well. I had several pieces of the old pickets in the garage left over from original fence building (10 years ago). I cut a bunch of them down to 12 inches and made a matching mini fence for the flowers. This will both square off the area and support the plants. Since I used the same material as the main fence, from the street it will look like the flowers are sort of popping up from the middle of the fence. And when there flowers are gone, it will look like part of the fence. Cut the rest of the dead branches from the cherry tree in the back. I do this all by hand with a bow saw. It's basically the only cross training I ever do. Works up quite a sweat and my arms get really tired. I cut the larger pieces into firewood for an emergency. Normally, we never use our fireplace because I hate cleaning up after. But you never know when the power might go out some cold winter. Anyway, I was down to the last few pieces - the largest - when my neighbor asked if I wanted to borrow his sawzall. At first I begged off because of my cross training regimen, then accepted and turned what was going to be another hour of sweat into 5 minutes of noise. Headed to Denver this coming weekend for a mini vaca. T-Rex wants to see her BF and we just want to get away. The kids haven't seen each other in person since Christmas because school's been closed. I'll try to get a couple of runs in.

Mrs. Dave (cardiac nurse) had all kinds of questions about this. Mostly, you need to get through the testing phase to see what's really happening. Best of luck.

Your dad's hair! We all know I'm the worst at XT, so when I come back, it's a always a long, slow process. You're the best at it, obviously. An eliptigo around here would be a dangerous idea, but they look sort of fun. My only experience with beets was with a pickled variety that my mom made when I was about 8 years old. I seriously gagged because they were horrible. My dad (old school military) tried to force me to finish them, but I couldn't do it. Even today the trauma makes me refuse to even try again.

I could also title this "I seem so slow." Coming back from a layoff is painfully slow. On the plus side, this is not an injury layoff, so there are no phantom pains and the ever present fear of re-injury that comes with those. My hip - was that a twinge in my hip? Did my hamstring just pull again? I could keep this list going for a while. Happily, nope. None of that. Just slow, plodding, one foot in front of the other re-building the old leg and heart and lung muscles so I can call myself a runner again. So I can leave the thoughts of how to turn in my IRUN26.2 vanity license plate since I can't run marathons anymore. Double digits seem like a long ways out from where I sit today. And where do I sit today? At the dining room table, which is my office since the middle of March. My latest puzzle, a 2,000 piece of Van Gogh's Starry Night lays on the other side of my TV screen/computer monitor. I'll leave it there for a couple of days as a tribute to the 49 hours I spent putting it together over the last two weeks. Officially started running again two weeks ago, on the 12th of June. That was a 2-1/4 mile, 9 and a half minute pace struggle. But better than the run before that, when I was still a walking covid-19 case. (2 miles at 10 and a half). Nice to breathe normally for the first time in a couple of months. Since then, I've kept it to 2 miles except for last Saturday and Monday, when I did 3. Have to remember how long it takes to get back everything I've lost. I'm encouraged by how the paces are improving, getting back into the neighborhood where 9 minutes is an easy run. Monday's 3 featured two good splits - 8:40 and 8:30. I've done a few morning runs, thanks to the short mileage and my old man's inability to sleep much past 5:00 am, in addition to my daily work commute being the 12 feet from the kitchen to the dining room. More than enough time to do a couple of miles, cool off and shower before heading to the office. The advice to new runners is always to expect 6-8 weeks before you feel the benefits of running and things start to feel good. Same with runners who are just out of shape. I've done this many, many times and will likely do so again. I'm also fortunate that I hadn't signed up or even planned on any races this year, except the one marathon in May. The way things look around the country, fall will probably be a zero in the race calendar and next spring isn't a sure bet, either. I expect that virtual racing will be the norm for some time to come. What will that do for my 50-state quest? If all races become virtual, do I register for one in each of my states and run from home? I think I need to actually run IN the state for it to count. So then do I register, travel to anywhere in that state and count it? For example, would I sign up for Chicago and run a virtual marathon in Joliet? I imagine someone (several someone's) will find a way to survive and thrive in the marathon making business even with the realities of the post-covid world. Stay healthy, my friends.

Sort of a magic trick, I guess. Last blog post was April 28, reporting on Dave's Double Dog Dare Distance Covid-19.3 Challenge. That was a tough couple of races. Hamstring in the early miles of the 10K, then a wall smack late in the pikermi the next day. I took three days off, then figured to run another month of good miles before doing a triple for the May Covid-19 races. On Wednesday, I ran tried to run an easy 4 miles up to the Home Depot. It was a pretty crappy run, despite the near perfect weather. Normally on the back half of the HD route I run 30-60 seconds faster than the first part. That day it was barely even and I felt AWFUL. So, I supposed the weekend took more out of me than I thought. This made no sense to me, because through April I'd kept up pretty close to my original marathon training plan, thinking at the time that my late May race might still happen. But, fine, I'll take another couple of days and then do some easy runs. Saturday, I got a mile out at 10:30 pace and walked home. Rested Sunday, then went for a couple on Monday. Better, finishing over 2 miles at 9-ish, but this was not what I was used to, even on a bad day. More rest? I ran another few days, a couple of miles each at the same pace. And felt no better. Took a week and a half off. For the May Covid-19 races, I did a 5K and felt pretty accomplished to finish under 30 (28:47). This included a MONSTER kick at 8:50 pace. Of course you're thinking the same thing I'd been thinking for most of this time. Did I have Covid-19? Mrs. Dave had tested positive for C-19 antibodies, so she had had it at one point (her only symptom was loss of taste and smell). Obviously, she had brought some of the little menaces home from the hospital at least once since the whole mess started back in March. Surely I'd been exposed. But testing was still on a "need to know" basis, and my symptoms were pretty mild compared to many. Mild headache all day, every single day, and I rarely have headaches. A little tightness in the chest. I wouldn't say I had breathing difficulty, but my short little runs would have me sucking wind more than normal, despite the slow pace. And there was this lethargy, a deadness in my legs (only) when I tried to run. No fever. I FaceTimed with my doc after those first two weeks, asking if I should get tested. He said it was up to me, but he didn't think so. I had something, but it probably wasn't C-19. I'd be fine in a couple of weeks. So, I stayed home even more than the Governor (and my new girlfriend), Big Gretch, advised. And waited for the 2-3 weeks that this thing (if that's what it was) was supposed to need to take its course when I'd be as good as new, well-rested and ready to start putting in some miles again. Except 2-3 weeks stretched into 4, then 5. They finally extended testing to anyone who wanted, and I went last Sunday. Just in case, I isolated from the girls until the results came in, which they did last night. Negative. Did I have it early and now it's no longer active? Possible, but why then am I still having these symptoms? My last run was on the 30th. A slow, difficult 2 miles. Still the headache. Still the tightness in my chest. Planning to go for serology this afternoon to see if I have developed antibodies. Between that and my upcoming doc visit, I'm 2 weeks out from knowing anything more. EDIT - Visit to urgent care yesterday for serology. So that's in process. But, as I was reviewing my symptoms (granted, I was playing it up a little bit to make sure they approved my request for serology), the "tightness in my chest" phrase was a trigger. The NP immediately ordered a chest x-ray while she asked me a bunch more questions that pointed to heart trouble. The heart attack line didn't go anywhere, but the x-ray showed the real problem (still to be confirmed by a radiologist) - pneumonia. Well, well, well. Light at the end of the tunnel now, anyway. In the past I've always kept writing even when I wasn't running, but this time I haven't felt like it much. Fixed the kitchen and dining room chairs. Most of them had legs or spindles that had loosened or broken over time. I have done some good puzzles in the last few weeks. I like a challenge, so I do 2000 piece ones. That's about as large as my dining room table has space for and takes 40+ hours of work to complete. Lately, that's only about a week's worth, since I'm not running or going anywhere. Good hobby for the Time of Covid.