It's GARBAGE DAY in CRAPIDS.

I went for my first long run today in a couple weeks! The little issue with my legs cleared up and I emerged victorious from a bout of bronchitis, so I was ready to GOOOOO.

I didn't have a route in mind-- it was bee-you-tiful outside so I just let my legs carry me.
And carry me they did...

Through residential Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
City of Five Smells.
One of which, I discovered, is the sweet stench of garbage bins on the curbside, waiting patiently for the glorious dawn that will bring even stench-ier trucks to carry the refuse away to Mount Trashmore.

Now you know-- Thursday is garbage day around Mount Mercy and on down to the trail. And especially if it's warm, the stink rises up to your nostrils and sneaks down your throat and no matter how much you try to choke it away or cough it out, it will stay in your lungs until you are well away from any area of residence.

Also, the houses on O Ave are built into a hill, so the slope of the front yard is not conducive to upright garbage cans. Thus, the homeowners put them in the street, meaning I did a lot of weaving in and out of the street. Just a little PSA for those of you who prefer running in straight lines!

MapMyRun.com tells me that it was a 6-mile run! Sweet.

I think that means Thursday is the day for the Death Mountain run!

Saturday

I'll cut to the chase: I thought Saturday would be better than Friday. I was wrong.

Public Service Announcement: When the nice lady with the Nutri-Grain bar at BioLife tells you to wait to exercise for three hours after giving plasma, it's probably a good idea to wait at least an hour.

And probably not a good idea to drive straight to your grandmother's house to take the dog on a run.

Important detail: The dog's name is Bodey.

As in Bodacious Bodey.

And, historically speaking, I don't run the dog; the dog runs me.

So when I got out of the car and Bodey bounded over with the leash in his mouth, I knew I was in trouble. To make a long story short, my Saturday run was the longest three miles of my life.

To my Advanced Writing Workshop class: You would have loved any video footage I could have posted on this run.

That is all you need to know.

Friday

I biked north on the trail-- nothing too fancy-pants becuse I wanted to stop at the Coe baseball game on the way home. The most interesting part was biking out of Daniel's park through the grass instead of following the normal paved route.

First, the grass was long and Daniels Park is hilly. I was panting with the effort it took to simply pedal to the curb at the 16th st side of the park.

Second, 16th st is pretty busy at 5:22 pm on a Friday evening.

Third, because the park is so hilly, the curb separating the park from the road isn't so much a curb as a sheer mountain cliff dropping off into a bottomless abyss, which, if it does have a bottom, is definitely made of concrete.

These are the facts.

Have I mentioned the reason I swim?

No grace. No coordination. Also facts.

You know where this is going.

By the point I realized I was heading for disaster, I only had time to check for oncoming traffic. Clear. Maybe I wouldn't die. And with no witnesses, maybe I could preserve a shred of dignity.

Then I was airborne. It was glorious. If I had to guess at my hangtime, I'd say it was the sum of the time it takes to think "Well this isn't so bad," and "Oh no. That ground is getting awful close."

My world shook and a few of my brain cells screamed in agony as they bid me farewell. I actually have a bruise on my tushy from how hard I landed.

But I was alive and so was Shirley the Schwinn. I didn't even pop any tires with my little stunt. I was home free.

That's when I saw the hoodrats. For a second I thought maybe my bike moves were better than I hoped because they were cat-calling me like nobody's business. I flashed my shiniest smile and began pedalling Shirley off into the sunset.

That's when the whistles turned into snickers. That's when one of them had the decency to ask if I was okay. That's when I did the graceful thing and stuck my tongue out in response. That's when i realized I had not even a strand of dignity left.

Story of my life.

Easter Weekend Sum-Up

Saturday was nothing special in terms of food, but Sunday brought most of my favorites, in the form of carbs!

Actually, when people ask me my favorite food, I usually reply with carbs. That doesn't always go over too well, so I sometimes qualify my answer-- narrowing it down to pizza. You know-- to throw veggies and protein in there.

That isn't very well-received either, come to think of it, but I digress.

Easter dinner. We had asiago cheese rolls and potato casserole and there was a pasta dish and I made babovka and... oh. What's that you say? This isn't a food blog? Well shoot-- it seems this entire post has been a digression.

Why didn't you stop me 150 words ago? Oopsy.

Let's begin again. With a trio of workouts: Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Three beautiful days. Three beautiful, albeit strugglesome, workouts. Three beautiful anecdotes. Enjoy.

In Which I Execute A Solution to the Cramping Issue, or STRETCHING 101

I was beginning to get a little nervous that my shins were splinting in defiance of my refusal to consider shin splints the answer to my leg cramps. After Googling all kinds of things, I stumbled across this thread: Is shin tightness when running shin splints?

The answer? Not necessarily. The part that interested me was a response that indicated calf tightness could be the culprit in shin tightness. Sounds about right. Charlie Horse and I are best friends. There were some great stretches explained through the thread that I'll get to in a minute.

First, though, I had one more question. Why was I suddenly experiencing so much pain when I wasn't doing anything differently than when I ran during swim season?

DING DING! That's the problem. Of course. I should have known. Swimming is always the problem. It made perfect sense, and a few more clicks through Google yielded a thread that confirmed my suspicions.

'shin pain from breaststroke kick'

Essentially, as a breaststroker, I did experience the same kind of shin pain as the person who posted the question. However, the other aspects of swimming kept my muscles stretched and loose enough to run. When I stopped the swimming (a zero-impact sport) and focused solely on running (high-impact), I was no longer loosening up although I was exposing my muscles to more trauma.

So. I need to ice more and really stretch.

I was still a little iffy about running on a hard surface today, so I stuck to the elliptical and stretched forrrreverrrr.

Pre-workout I traced the ABCs with each foot, over and over. It's a little more challenging than you'd expect! I also did calf/toe raises.

Post-workout I did calf/toe raises and tried the rolling pin suggested in the thread- just with a soft medicine ball instead of a rolling pin! I also did the ABCs again and general stretching, making sure to get my quads too!

I don't want to count my chickens, but my legs felt great all day. They're a little tight now, but that's because I've been cooped up doing homework for too long! Tomorrow's definitely the day for an outdoor run!

Here are a couple more articles I discovered!

I was especially interested in the part about muscle tension and its effect on circulation--

Check it out!

Understanding Your Muscle Tension and How it Spreads

Muscle Tone Restoration

Rules of the Road: Bike Edition

I have this weird sleeping problem where I can't sleep, really. Sometimes I lay in bed until I fall back asleep, but when 6 am rolled around this morning, I was in the mood to GOOO.

I've been having super-issues with the cramping still, so I waded through some more internet fitness dogma and may have found a solution- more on that later. But because of the cramping, I decided to bike this morning instead!

City parks open at 6, so the timing was perfect!

The sun was already out and about, so the day was perfect!

It was pretty cool and the air was refreshing after the rain, so the weather was perfect!

Also, the birds were chirping so I didn't even need to bring my iPod, a definite bonus. I'm always sure that if I listen to music when I bike that I'm going to get hit by a car or a squirrel.

I hopped on the North section of the Cedar River Trail at J Ave and followed it up through Hiawatha, where it becomes the Cedar Valley Nature Trail. I'm planning on another bike ride later with my friend Amanda, so I only went out to County Home Road and headed back. I'll hazard a guess and say it was between 17 and 18 miles.

The bike out was pretty smooth- I saw only a couple people on the trail and my loaner bike seemed to be doing okay. When I crossed the railroad tracks in Hiawatha it started getting interesting though.

Let the record show that this is kind of an aged bike- one of the stickers on it is from 1984, in fact. It's a Schwinn road bike, and it's pretty solid, but it's a pain in the rear because all of the places that need adjusting are a nuts-and-bolts kind of deal instead of those things that just need an easy peasy Allen wrench. So I didn't have a wrench- I found a pair of pliers instead that did the job.

'The job,' referring, of course, to the habit the seat had of shifting so that it was angled up every time I went over a bump or crack or stick or small worm. The direction it chose to angle up was the direction that caused me to slide backward with the front part of the seat jabbing me really hard between the legs. Very uncomfortable and quite irritating!

So there was that. There was also a small incident involving a pile of dog 'doo' (if you know what I mean) that someone had oh-so graciously left in the middle of the trail. A) Basic childhood bike-riding experience should let everyone know that when you ride through something, it has a tendency to spray on you. B) That stuff SMELLS! C) It also sticks to your tires and leaves tracks. Everybody in Cedar Rapids could've followed my trail this morning!

I was annoyed about that, but when I turned around at the County Home Road parking lot, I looked at the 'Trail Rules,' and guys, maybe it was my own fault!

Get a load of this:

So the first rule, "Be courteous," seems pretty straightforward. If your dog takes a poo, clean it up! But the second part, "Be alert," well that's kind of on me. I was not paying attention. Maybe it's open to interpretation? The conditions of the trail were definitely not in my favor this morning!