Running
The Modesto Half was a big deal to me. It was a PR, I had beaten my first half marathon time by 13 whole minutes, a minute faster per mile. It seemed logical that I just needed to keep training and I would keep improving.
And at first this seem to be the case.
I took it easy the week following the half by running only easy paces all week long. The following week I ran an 8'4" mile while running intervals, beating my previous fastest mile by 15 seconds, definitely the right direction.
Outside of running; my wife and I had quit our gym and bought a weight machine, and a treadmill. With our large home and paucity of children, we thought it would be best to start leveraging our space to reduce our monthly income expenditures. We didn't want to pay the gym to store our exercise equipment, and (gulp) repair it. I just hope I don't regret the letting go of the latter service. However, a new weight machine meant learning new exercises to work out the same muscle groups. This is how I hurt my lower back.
My lower back had been good since I had started running, in fact it had improved. When it started acting up, I would run, and that seemed to put it back into alignment. It also served as an anti-inflammatory, or at least redirected the inflammation from my back and to my legs.
This wasn't just my back acting up. I had really done some damage this time. It didn't seem like it at first. I tried running the next day to make it better. I barely was able to run 5 miles, and couldn't run faster than 11'36", 13 minute average. I also didn't feel much better after the run. I took two days off after this. My long run which had been averaging 16.5 miles in less then 2 hours and 30 minutes became 13.3 miles in over 2 hours and 35 minutes. I thought I could pretty much kissed goodbye any hope of improving my pace in time for the Capitola half-marathon.
I started taking NSAIDs and applying a methyl salicylate rub. I began running only every other day. The pains seemed to move around, and my calves got sore for the first time in months. I think I must have been running differently, putting more stress on my calves to take it off my back. "No run Monday" became "No run Monday & Tuesday." I began to get slowly better and thought that maybe I could put in a good show for the Mother's day 10k.
Culinary
I bought a thermal gun:
To get more accurate temperature readings on my pizza stone:
To avoid burning the bottom of my pizza:
And bread:
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