Jenny and I (along with our friend Jill) ran our second half-marathon last month. It was the Chicago Rock and Roll Half.  I finished it in 2:08:14, and Jenny did it in 2:24:16. Jenny felt is was important to note that I beat Jake from The Bachelor, and she only lost to him by one minute.  We were relieved to also know that we both beat Al Roker by an hour. Whew!

My first reaction was to panic. I hid for a bit too. I contemplated just staying in the house until Jenny came home Sunday, and then have Lauren in the Tub at that time. You are probably thinking why stay in the house though? Jenny has spies. That is all I am saying for fear of retribution.

I then experienced denial, thinking it was no big deal, until Lauren said, “my hair is all messy.” Crap.

So, I went for it. I used a comb, brush, hair dryer, hair spray, measuring tape, glue, rubber band, hair bow, and a tiny piece of duct tape. Here is the result.

Even though Lauren looks so cute, and this is clearly an exact replica of the original hair style Lauren had when Jenny left, I’ll bet anyone $10 that when Jenny see’s Lauren, her first comment will be “oh my, she looks like  a homeless child!”

Of course, we responded with our unconditional parental love and protection “What? No way. Orchestra is great. Just wait and see how much better it keeps getting.”

Emma, “oh really? Then whey does the band get to play songs from Queen, and Star Wars, while we have to play music called ‘Ready, Set, Bow.’”

Ouch. Good point Emma. You might want to downplay the orchestra thing for a while.

That night, we signed up for the Chicago Rock N Roll Half-Marathon for August 1st…3 months away. I think we might have roped Cory (Jenny’s sister-in-law) and Andrea (Jenny’s brother’s girlfriend) into running it too. Interesting how the brothers aren’t stepping up though.  Anyone else interested in training for it?  This is the plan that we followed to go from scratch to half-marathon: http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/ . Let us know!

Front:

The key comparison features on the front of the house are the bay window (including it’s base and roof), the front door, the hardscaping, and the window above the garage.  Oh, I have a new garage door, currently in boxes, waiting to be installed when I find the time, and find the expertise.  It might be a while.

Back: For the back of the house, the key comparison features are the twin french doors, the triple window in the kitchen (near the service door), and the hardscaping. Oh yeah, and the shed built to the right of the service door.  You can see from the before photo that there was just a big bush in that spot before.

If we waited until the trees had leaves, and the flowers were blooming, then the after photos would have a greater impact. But these were shot a month or so ago just at the beginning of spring.  If we get around to landscaping, then I’ll try to remember to put more pics up.

Jenny is so much in love with the book, that she said something crazy, “Brian, you should read this book.”  I know, that’s nuts. But she says those things anyway.  The details she has given me about the book are:  that the author is over 200 pounds, is training for a ultra-marathon, and has drawn the conclusion that running shoes are inherently bad, because they require you to heel strike. However, running barefoot requires you to land on the balls of your feet, which is apparently connected to our primal ancestors, and as a result causes less injury to our bodies.  And then a bunch of other blah blah blah.

So sure, I could have read the book, but instead I heard these key words: “heavy runner” “barefoot” “less injury.”

So, I woke up on Friday at 5:30, to do my 3m run on the treadmill, and I thought ‘why not?’  I got on in just my socks, and started running sans shoes.

It was very wierd and immediately reinforcing at the same time.  I have been having a lot of heel pain.  But when you run barefoot, you don’t land on your heels…just like Jenny said the author said. So there I am, running a bit slower than usual, pounding the treadmill, but on the balls of my feet.  I ran the first mile at 12min, to get the hang of it, but then jumped to 9min for mile two.  It was crazy.  My lungs weren’t tired, and that is a fast pace for me to sustain.  Jenny did mention that the book talked about runners either running too fast for their slow runs, and too slow during fast runs.  Right. Confusing to me too.  I believed it meant that I should run faster than usual.  So I pushed the pace, and did another half-mile at 7.5min pace, before I did a cool down.  I haven’t run that fast since starting this training.  Again, my lungs felt great.  The only immediate downside to running barefoot, was that I felt very uncoordinated, and a couple times I felt like I was going to fall off the treadmill.  One time I wobbled while trying to drink from a water bottle, but I caught the handrail.  That would not have been pretty.

But overall, I was really psyched by the experience.  However as soon as I got off, I realized what I had done.  The bottoms of my feet were on fire…in multiple places.  Blisters were starting to form.  My calves were aching. Really aching.  I was hobbling to get to the stairs.  I couldn’t tell if it was from the burning in my feet or the burning in my calves.  I started up the stairs, but could hardly get from one step to the next.  After getting cleaned up, I tried to put on dress shoes, but couldn’t do it.  Jenny was up by this point, and in between laughing at me, she tracked down a package of moleskin from when we hiked on the Appalachian Trail in 1995.  It wasn’t quite sticky anymore, but I was desperate.  I covered the balls of my feet in it, got on my shoes, and proceeded in slow motion to my car.

At work later in the day, a coworker was walking behind me and said, “Brian…are you limping?  And…on…both legs?”  Yep.  I was walking with a really wide-gate-side-to-side-hobble-motion.”

So that was Friday morning. It is now Sat night, and I still need to use both handrails to get up any stairs. I don’t know if I tore both calves, or if they are just extremely sore like when you lift weights for the first time in years.  I’m supposed to do a long run tomorrow for the half-marathon, but that isn’t going to happen.  I guess I’ll rest until Tuesday, and see how it goes.

So that is the situation.  I guess if I can’t run for a while, I will now have time to read the book!

A character from the book, who is the guru of barefoot running: Barefoot Ted

The shoes that Barefoot Ted says I should have worn so I don’t get blisters.  Imagine the looks you’ll get in these: Vibram FiveFingers

UPDATE: 4/13/10 Ok, so maybe I exaggerated just a little when I said my calves were possibly torn.  Or, perhaps I am just a miraculous healer!  But I after taking 3 days off, I was able to run this morning. My calves still hurt a lot, but it is more just muscle soreness.  So if I want to have really developed calves, then I guess I should integrated barefoot running into my routine.

Happy Easter! 

I don’t think we missed sending out a holiday photo and card in the last 10 years.  This year, our plans were initially held up by my unwillingness to begin writing the letter before New Years.  But to complicate matters, we then struggled to find a photo from the past year that we wanted to use.  While on winter vacation, we took this photo below, on a little snowshoe hike in the woods.  I say a “little” hike because we are only about 5 feet from the cabin.  Olivia fell down.  Lauren was being pulled in a sled by Jenny, and was screaming because she wasn’t allowed to walk in the snow (it was 1-2 feet deep).  Jenny was crying because the sled was a pain to pull.  But boy can they all smile nice for the camera.

Anyhow, we thought htis would be a good photo for the holiday card. When we got back from vacation, a week or four went by, and we realized we were outside of the window to send a holiday card. We thought we should just send it instead for the next holiday coming up, and that way it would be unique.  But I’m not sure a picture in the snow works for Valentine’s day.  Well, before we knew it, St. Patricks day passed, and we still haven’t done it. 

So, I don’t think it is happening for 2009.  Better luck to us next year.  And don’t feel left out that you didn’t get a holiday card.  No one did.  Bah humbug.

It turned out however that the race was on Mother’s day weekend, and we wanted to be in town for that.  We decided to start the training plan anyway, and after keeping it up for two full days, we agreed to still give the plan a try, yet run a more local event. There is a half-marathon in Champaign, IL on May 1st.  It is only the second year of that event, but they are expecting about 17,000 participants between the different races.

We will get to stay over the night before with our friends Greg and Jill in Champaign.  Jill is a runner and will also be doing the half-marathon. I think Greg is undecided (if he is still a runner, and if he is doing this race).

Some of you have realized however that Jenny will no longer be able to run in this event with anonymity…which was an original condition of her accepting the challenge.  Now that we are running it closer to home (and on a college campus filled with coeds), Jenny stated it would be my responsibility to create a diversion so no one would look at her.  This race ends with a stadium finish at U of I, so I started looking into setting up a fireworks show for as soon as Jenny enter’s the stadium.  That way everyone will look up and she will have her privacy.  Upon hearing my solution, Jenny said something like, “no dummy, I don’t care about the finish… if I make it there, then everyone should cheer for me…I care about people staring at me during the 13 miles of the race itself.”  Hmm.  Ok.  If we fly a blimp over the course, directly over Jenny the entire time, then perhaps all spectators will be looking up?

I shared the blimp plan with a colleague, who pointed out that I just go to those ridiculous non-solutions so I can act like I care, make fun of Jenny, and at the same time don’t really try to solve the problem.  To which I say, “Duh.”  She continued to say however, that if I really cared, I would wear an insane costume and run about 20 feet behind Jenny, which was a realistic solution that could actually be implemented.   She’s right. I don’t really want to solve it.  Besides, if I did put on a costume (I’m thinking a clown wig and pink capri hot-pants, I would wear a t-shirt that says “I’m with her” and run next to Jenny the whole time.   It is just my way of showing that I care.