If its not one thing, it's another

Last week was one hell of a ride. After my mysterious knee problem, to then clearing up and running a less than stellar race, I then developed pain in my right achilles on Tuesday. I went out for my workout and noticed an odd sensation on the back of my right heel. I figured it was nothing but maybe my heel rubbing on my shoe weird, maybe due to my socks and kept going. It sorted itself out after my warm up and I thought nothing of it.

That same sensation was there on Wednesday when I started my warm up, but once again disappearing not long after; however, trying to wear shoes at work later that night was a nuisance and not the most comfortable feeling. The same thing happened on Thursday, with the shoes aggravating my heel at work. I iced whenever I could, but not as much as I would have preferred due to working.

By Friday, training changed as it was decided that if it was an achilles issue, I needed to get off of it sooner rather than later. With my main race still to come, it wasn't worth the risk to pushing through it now, especially since it likely was achilles related. Thankfully the change in training happened on Friday, which turned out to be quite a nasty day weather wise.

That morning the power went out at about 8am. There was supposed to be a trail race out at Westwood called the Fletchers Challenge in remembrance of Gavin Fletcher, a local sports news reporter that died in a car accident a few years ago. I wasn't sure if the race was still going to take place considering it was a trail race and the wind was howling and rain was falling hard; however, I had no power to confirm so I headed up the lake to watch. When I got there and saw a pretty empty parking lot (it was about 10 minutes before the race was supposed to start) and people at the entrance stopping cars, I figured it was called off. Smart move by the race organizers as it definitely wouldn't have been safe to run the trails (as is many trees and branches did end up coming down over the race course).

Driving home I took some photos of the many little branches over the road. These are actually minor compared to some spots. Sorry for the quality of some of the photos as I was trying to drive and snap a photo (yeah I know totally illegal and unsafe)

Tree on the cable lines and then over the road when driving towards Cedar. This tree stayed like this from Friday until they FINALLY removed it last night around 8pm.



Further down the road, a cable (no idea what it was for) was lying directly over the road with cars driving over it (including me).

I came home and relaxed, still no power. Finally I decided to get my ride over with (indoor trainer of course). I set up my laptop with New Moon and saw that since my laptop didn't turn off right away, I only had 30 minutes power left. Darn, I was to ride longer than that, but I started it anyways and went on my way. About 10 minutes into the ride, the power came back on so I took a brief rest to grab my power cable and plugged in the laptop before continuing.

That was only the first time the power went out. Living in Cedar, which is the outskirts/farm area of Nanaimo, we often lose power and generally are not a priority to turn it back on. The weather continued to be nasty all day calming in the evening. We lost power sometime throughout the night briefly early Saturday morning, then after I came home from coaching the high school crew on Saturday morning I once again found no power. This time it was out from about 9:30am until 1:30pm or so. I think we lost it one other time since then, but I wasn't home so I can't verify for how long. I am getting sick of resetting the clocks on the stove and microwave so at the moment they are still flashing from the latest power outage last night.

The storm knocked down 3 sections of our fence as well. This was taken on Saturday after the storm had passed.

Back to the achilles, after the ride Friday I took Saturday completely off and was very antsy. Especially with no power when I came back from coaching and not to mention it was a sunny day. I just wanted to get out and run, but I couldn't. Instead I iced and then gave the house a good clean. No power, I had to keep myself busy somehow so I could distract myself.

I ended up doing a test run yesterday and it appears to have gone well. Minor nagging aches that disappeared, but I was able to wear shoes last night. I was in the hot tub for an extended time last night due to being at a friends part 1 of a bachelorette party so when I got home, the shoes were aggravating me a bit so I made sure to ice before bed. I have yet to try shoes again today, but fingers crossed it feels okay.

Needless to say, it has been a very frustrating week for me running wise and I have been struggling mentally with my thoughts and motivation. I know I must stay positive though and take care of my injury and everything will work out. 2010 thus far has been disappointing running wise. Training has been well for the most part, but the races just aren't matching. Not to mention the weird and nagging injuries. On a positive note, my abdominal pain seems to be almost nonexistent which is good! Stay tuned regarding the injuries.