The Last Weekend in February

I know that I said in my last post that I wouldn’t write another one in February and all, but you know what? I lied. Yeah, I can do that if I want to so there! Actually I just figured that there was enough stuff that went down last week to merit a blog post...and my last post could have been interpreted as a little negative, and I don't want to end the month on a negative note…so with that said…

The weekend started off with a bang on Saturday morning as Michaela was planning to get back out on the trails after a few weeks of rehab while I was scheduled to knock out a tough 25 miles in beautiful (and hilly) Cool, CA. Michaela ended up meeting a few of our friends and getting in a solid 8 miles without pain, which is a huge step in the right direction for her and makes me want to pump my fist in triumph as she’s really been battling that knee these past few months…now that she’s well on her way to recovery, I’m sure she’s got all kinds of gnarly runs planned to get her body ready for Western States 100 in June.

My run was enjoyable for the first 20 miles, excruciating for one mile, and a little “loopy” for the last few miles. It started off well enough as the weather was beautiful, not too cold (which is a rarity up there this time of year) and I had some good company as I was running with my Fleet Feet Ultra Training Group. I ended up running the first half with our good friends Kirk and Jenny…at one point early on I was running with Kirk and we were just BS’ing…apparently I wasn’t paying attention since I caught a toe on something and immediately went down face first…luckily I managed to tuck myself before hitting the ground and sort of did a graceful roll (at least I tell myself it was graceful, I probably looked like a damn fool). Anyhow, I stood up, dusted myself off, and realized I had no real injuries from the fall (score one for me)…Kirk and I looked around as we were on a flat section of the trail and he asked “what the hell did you trip on?”…to which I replied “I literally have no idea, there’s absolutely nothing I can see that should have tripped me” (minus one for me). After that little bit of excitement, I somehow managed to catch my toes on rocks and roots WAY more often than normal and ended up cursing out my shoes by the end of the run (while it probably had everything to do with my tired legs and nothing to do with the shoes, I got it in my head that the shoes were the ultimate cause for all of my discomfort)….luckily only fell the one time early on though.

Anyhow…the miles cruised right along until I got to Goat Hill, which is a super steep section of the race course. This hill always gives me fits and Saturday was no different. The hill is so steep that you can’t really find a flat spot for your feet so your calf muscles get really worked and often times cramp up (as mine did)….truth be told, I didn’t do the best job of eating prior to the hill and have already worked that out for my race day…but it was good practice and also showed me that even though I was feeling a little “loopy” with 4 miles to go, I still managed to put on the speed a few times when I wanted t(although not the entire time as I witnessed Jenny come flying by me at one point).

All in all, it was a good training run and gave me the confidence I needed going into Way Too Cool a week from Saturday. I was worried about my conditioning level since I had pneumonia recently, but I think I’ll be ok…and if not, I’ll just blame it on the pneumonia!

This past week we also had a parent-teacher conference at Landon’s school. He moved into the 4-year old’s class a few weeks back and this was our first real chance to talk to the teacher about his transition. Unfortunately there’s no real way I can talk about what went down without coming across as bragging so screw it, I’m going to brag! His teacher said that Landon is doing an exceptional job in his new class, he is extremely helpful for her and he catches on to things very quickly. They do rhyming games and games where they’ll have flash cards with letters and the child has to pick a letter and then pick the picture of the object that starts with the letter. From what his teacher said, Landon does very well at these types of games and will actually help out the other children that may be having difficulties. Even more promising, it sounds like he’s starting to engage when they do Arts and Crafts, whereas he used to not want to participate at all.

A funny side note, we picked up his “art book” from school recently…this was about a year’s worth of drawings that he made. As Michaela and I flipped through the book we couldn’t help but roll around laughing, as every page was filled with orange scribbled lines, all labeled “Buzz Lightyear”. Apparently that’s all he wanted to draw for a year! His teacher said that he really did think out his drawings though and would tell her where Buzz’ arms were, his head, legs, etc. (even though to us it looks like scribbles). Further, she told him that this year it’d be fun to draw something else other than Buzz for a change, to which he responded with “Ok, I’ll draw Woody!”….wow. If it was any other subject I think my warning siren would start sounding, but I was never much of the artistic type either and if he wants to draw Woody and Buzz every day, that’s fine by me.

As Michaela has been working on Sundays, Landon and I have been having a lot of quality time in the afternoons to hang out and have some fun. The past couple of weeks we’ve taken advantage of the nice weather and met Landon’s buddy Anthony at the park. This time I actually managed to remember to bring my camera and I snapped some pics of the boys as they rode their bikes and wreaked havoc on the slides. This was the first time Landon attempted to slide down the fireman’s pole and after I showed him how to wrap his legs around it, he couldn’t get enough….I was really impressed with how quickly he learned how to do it and how fearless he was. Of course it was bound to happen that one or two times he didn’t hold on tight enough and landed a little harder that he should have on the bark, but there was no permanent damage done and it served its lesson as a learning experience.

I think Anthony’s parents and I are going to continue to figure out ways to get the boys together on Sundays as it gives us a chance to catch up and run the boys ragged so they actually sleep in the evenings!

All things considered, it was a fun and productive week for us. I still have nothing new to report about my Mom’s condition other than that she is her normal self when she’s sitting down (but still not back to normal standing up and still can’t go to work). I will let you know if they ever get it completely figured out.

I can’t believe that March is already here. Between the upcoming races, Landon’s birthday, and everything else that we have coming up, I’m sure this month will fly by as well.

Cheers!