Courtenay Brown

Yay! Today was my longest run since August 23rd! I did four whole miles… it took me 32 minutes and 8 seconds, but my heart rate was high enough that I would have expected it to take 24 minutes and 8 seconds. But it was awesome. I think I can fairly safely say that the microtear in my achilles is healed. I can also safely say that I am really out of shape.

I wound up taking two months completely off from running on land, I was really diligent about aquajogging until late September, when I realized that there was no hope of being sufficiently healed to race again in 2009 - after that, I didn’t do any running, land or sea, until the end of October. Then I started off on the track, one mile plus running drills for three consecutive days, then a day off, then one mile plus drills for three consecutive days, etc. until my achilles stopped feeling irritated and weak. Then I bumped it up to a mile and a half, and then I moved off the track and onto trails, gradually building up from 10 minutes of running to 15, 18, 20, and then today my “long” run . I had a few extra days off in there thanks to the piggy flu, but it didn’t interfere with my running comeback too much.

My pool work has felt really similar to my running: slow and out of breath! I took 5 weeks off from swimming starting in late September, and then at the end of October I got back in the pool to work exclusively on technique. The past month has been super slow, with a lot of floating and snorkel-work and 25’s and a LOT of help from Ben. He says I finally look sort of good. This is helped by the fact that I’m swimming in super-pro Swedish goggles, I found some and put them on as a joke but they fit really well so I am still using them! So, on the plus side, I look like I can swim decently now. On the minus side, swimming much more than 50 yards at a time feels crazy-long. I might try to do a real workout tomorrow, with a possibly ambitious goal of 2,000 yards.

As for the bike… I feel like Macbeth (sort of), tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow maybe I will get on my bike! I have to stop waiting for the weather to not suck, because it’s Seattle and it’s November so obviously it’s not going to not suck, and I have to stop waiting until I finish my applications, because I will finish them, it just might not be tomorrow, which is fine, I do have until January.

It’s OK to be out of shape. My body really needed the break, and now I can be really conscious of doing everything right as I get rolling towards 2010.

Tonight we had Thanksgiving here at Ben’s house. It was pretty delicious, and we’re pretty full. But then Ben decided to wipe whipped cream all over his mustache and then all over my face, which was gross, especially like an hour later when his mustache started to smell really gross, and it kept getting grosser like sour milk. (here is a photo from after dinner, after the mustache-cream incident). This is a big reason to not have a mustache. He says he will let the biggest donor to his Movember campaign decide the fate of his mustache. I’m saving up.