Outside Magazine Is Pretty Freakin' Cool

Yo! My blogging efforts have recently been hijacked by Outside Magazine's blog. This week, I got to speak with my fifth grade teacher, who happens to be one of the world's most inspirational people, Erik Weihenmayer, 19-year old professional surfer, Sage Erickson, and one of the stars of a new surf movie, Chris Christenson.

It's been rad.

And when I'm not at Outside, I'm outside, training for the Tahoe-Sierra 100-mile mountain bike race, and Ironman Arizona--with 2 bum hamstrings and a pissed-off rotator cuff. I met a spiritual healer while searching for a place in Santa Fe, but thought she was a little off her rocker. Maybe I should give her a shot...IM will be hard to finish with no run or swim training...

The Mysterious Pain in the Butt and the Athletic Identity

I broke my butt in November. At least I thought I had.

Uh oh! I thought. This feels exactly like the hambutt episode that occurred in late August 2008 that turned me into an ultracyclist in early 2009 because I couldn't run. But a doctor thought differently.

It's piriformis syndrome! he said. Get thee to a physical therapist. That I did. And the thumb in the bum therapist didn't help.

So I went to another physical therapist. It's your sciatic nerve! he said. We must improve your posture and core strength. (Those two things would've been good to work on anyway.) But it didn't improve after 5 weeks of physical therapy.

And so, today, I saw another doctor. It's your hambutt! he said. (Well, hamstring, if we're being professional here.) Get thee an MRI.

And that's where it stops. I'd rather have a new bike. And for the price of an MRI, I probably could.

So far, I haven't run for over two months. I haven't been on my bike in an effort to not irritate my maybe/maybe not pissed off sciatic nerve. (Sit up straight! Don't arch your back!) I even stopped flip turning in the pool so I wouldn't curl up in the fetal position and put tension on the nerve.

But now I am confused. Maybe I have a pissed off hambutt AND a pissed off sciatic nerve. Throw in athletic disillusionment derived from this lethal combination and I have developed an athlete triad never before defined.

This all got me thinking about the athletic identity.

I'm just an amateur athlete. Nobody pays me to do this. But training structures my day, and gives me a steady stream of goals. Racing lets me show off what I've done in training--and keeps me on schedule. Even if I'm just attempting to kick the butts of other 25-29 year old female weekend warriors.

What about athletes who are paid to show us what they've got? They have a lot more riding on their physical form. What happens to them when they're knocked out for a season or more because of an injury? Do they have an identity crisis? Do they get sad? Can they see a bigger picture?

I'm currently working on an article about Chris O'Riordan, a former Stanford baseball payer who was drafted by the Texas Rangers organization in 2002. He had a knee surgery that sat him out two entire seasons (2004-2005), and that played a factor in his leaving professional baseball. He seems at peace with it all now, about 4 years after leaving, but I wonder what 23-year old Chris was feeling after surgery and during those two seasons off.

...damn nervy hambutt...

A Letter to My Sciatic Nerve

Dear Mr. Nerve,

I know I pissed you off.

Too much, too soon! you said.

For a month at you I scoffed

Believing you were hambutt, instead.

But that was three months ago

And still you are irritated

I can't even run slow

Without being berated

Can we please work this out

before the season starts?

That gives you one more week to shout

Then we must stop falling apart.

I've iced, and ibuprofened

but you still protest all motion

Even sitting makes you mad

and you make me very sad

You've even called upon immune

so you two can work in tune

to keep me from training at all

but still you won't hear my call

For all of us to work together

despite Stanford's crappy weather

To run, to play, to get my training on

so I can kick ass at collegiate triathlon.

This is the only year we can compete

so I'm begging you to be happy

and drop this mad rage that you're on

so we can race the Treeathlon!

Thank you, and I look forward to your positive response.

Best,

Erin

Hilly Stanford Run Directions (10+ Miles)

Once upon a time, when I could run freely without protest from my sciatic nerve, I used to do this run all of the time, throwing in multiple dish loops to make it take 2 hours. If you're ever around Stanford, you must at least do the dish loop part--it's a rite of passage. On a clear day, you can see from San Francisco, across the bay, and to the mountains south of San Jose. Pretty sweet stuff.

View Xtreme Dish Run in a larger map

P.S. If you've ever beaten an unruly and genuinely pissed-off sciatic nerve, please let me know how, without actually beating it. Or ripping it out with your bare hands. I'm told it's a required body part, unlike an appendix.

Collegiate Triathlon Begins

This quarter marks the beginning of the collegiate triathlon season. I will be covering sports and outdoor adventures from the collegiate angle.

Get ready for some (mostly) non-varsity action, where athletes don't get scholarships to train like pros, but they do it anyway. Sort of.

Just like age-groupers.

Coming up: Injuries that survived the off-season despite great effort to heal, and what to do about them. The self-pity party can only last so long. Look! It's over!

The Original Pain in the Ass

"Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing," says the 5'6", 32-year old, short brown-haired dude who pulled my pants down and was jabbing his thumbs into my butt.

Let's back this up a bit.

I went to physical therapy every day before Christmas with one goal in mind: to fix the pain in my ass.

My left butt started hurting November 6th. By mid-December it still hurt, and stopped me from running the California International Marathon. I was not pleased. The pain in my ass was becoming a true pain in the ass. Something had to be done.

And so for four days straight, I walked over to PT to have my pants pulled down by a brown-haired, lawyer-wannabe-turned physical therapist/bar mitzvah DJ, then have my left bum manipulated, stretched, stimulated with tingly pads, and iced.

Merry Christmas to my butt.

In order to decrease the awkwardness of the situation that broken butt syndrome (aka piriformis syndrome) creates, I tried to chat up Dr. DJ. Maybe it would keep his eyes off of the, um, prize.

"What's the most common injury that you see here?" I asked.
"Oh, usually a lot of lower back pain."
"Do you get a lot of older people with that problem?" It seemed like a logical question. One that would conjure up images of his grandma and keep his eyes off of my left butt cheek.
"Well, this one woman came in when I was an intern."
"Uh huh." Good. Grandma stories. It's working.
"And she told me she was having intense back pain."
"Uh huh." Maybe she hurt it picking up the dog or something.
"So I had to ask her how she did it to get an idea of what I'd do to treat it."

"That makes sense."

"Then she blushed and got all embarrassed."

"Oh God!" I scream.

"You don't even know what happens next!"

"No! Freaking-A! That hurts!" He found the evil spot.

"Oh. Well, it's supposed to hurt."

"OK, continue."

"She tells me she did it having sex."

Holy Lord this is awkward.

"So I go to tell my attending, since I have to ask permission before doing anything since I'm just an intern. He says I have to get more detail so we know how to treat her."

He squeezes out more lotion and jabs his thumbs into my butt. Coachubby is gonna love this story.

"Uh huh."

"So I have her write it down on the treatment form. Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing."

"No way!" I start fiddling with my wedding ring.

"So after she left, we took her name off of the form, and framed it and put it up on the wall."

"Ha. That's...funny," I say.

Dr. DJ pulls my my pants back up over my left butt and begins to stretch my hamstring. That innocent stretch never seemed so awkward. It was a relief when he had his young, blond sidekick take me to the "stim machine", where he wiped my bum down with alcohol and stuck pads onto it.

Maybe it was all done in that order to make "bum stimulation" not seem as embarassing.

Either way, lesson learned: Do not injure your bum. Fixing it is awkward. And a pain in the ass.

Being a Girl Sucks Big Time Sometimes: Xterra Lake Tahoe, From the Beginning

A while back, I had thought of writing an article on athletes who, for some reason, were either forced into early retirement, forced to significantly reduce their training, or forced to cease training completely for a long period of time. What does it mean to pros and to amateurs, exactly, to be an athlete? How much do we let the fact that we are athletes (or specifically triathletes) define ourselves, and what do we do and feel when it's taken away from us? 

I thought of Greg Welch, Chris O'Riordan, a Stanford walk-on baseball player who was drafted into the Major League, and was quickly forced to retire due to (I believe) a shoulder injury. I thought of the week when my doctor called me and told me not to move when he realized my heart skipped a beat. That news didn't help the situation. 

A few weeks ago, my beachy best friend, and ultracycling/endurance sports buddy in crime started having trouble breathing. I thought maybe she'd developed sports-induced asthma. On August 22nd, she had planned on running a torturous 50K in the Santa Monica Mountains. 

She began having trouble breathing on a steep, 4-mile climb named Bulldog in Malibu Creek State Park. She ran/walked the entire first loop. Race officials at the aid stations made her drink salt water, claiming it would relieve her symptoms. I can only guess they thought she was dehydrated...or that somehow, salt water would coat her lungs and calm them down...

When she came walking toward coachubby and me at the end of the 25K loop, she was upset and frustrated. She considered running again, but bowed out.

She went to see a doctor a few days later, who quickly diagnosed her with pleuritis, told her to take anti-inflammatory drugs and she'd be fine. 

So last Thursday (a week ago) she came spinning with me, believing it would all clear up eventually. She stayed through the entire class, even though she was struggling. At the end of class, after several minutes off of the bike, she was still having trouble catching her breath, and had a sharp pain in her left side. A school nurse in class told her she should get it checked out at an ER. I told her I'd pick her up in half an hour.

Off we went to Kaiser Permanente, where she was admitted immediately. They took a chest xray and blood. Both were completely normal--except for her d-dimer, an indicator of possible blood clots. Just to be safe, the doctor said, perhaps they should take a CT scan.

You might as well do it while we're here, I said. So we sat, watching her heart beat in a beautiful, uninterrupted (and slightly boring, I must say, particularly compared to mine) rhythm, for 2 hours. When they took her back for the scan, I went outside to continue hacking away at a ginormous history book.

An hour later, I got a text: "I have blood clots, will you come inside?"

Robyn was devastated. She had pulmonary embolisms on both sides. She would have to be started on blood thinners immediately, and most likely would be on them for an entire year, during which time riding a bike outside, and trail running are out of the question. All exercise, at least for the first 1-2 months is not allowed, except for a nice walk here and there. 

Just like that, she had gone from kicking my ass at everything I ever set out to do (double centuries, distance running) to being placed on a year long round of rat poison and enough pain killers to sedate a small army. 

Just like that, she had gone from being in shape enough to run a very difficult 50K in under 6 hours to having to rethink what role exercise is going to take in her life for a year.

Around 7:30pm, her boyfriend JZ arrived, and I left to shovel food down my face, and get ready to go to Tahoe the next morning with coachubby. I felt terrible leaving her like that. I could never understand how she felt upon hearing that news, but I like to think I can sympathize just a little from my week of sincerely believing my days as an endurance athlete were over. 

31 and totally healthy, Robyn had no reason to believe this could happen to her. And neither did anybody else--until they found out she'd started a birth control regimen in May. YAZ should officially change its name to NOZ and be taken off of the market. The mix of that drug and Robyn's chemistry proved almost fatal. And I had encouraged the use of birth control as a way to avoid unwanted visitors during race days and long training weekends.

Coachubby and I left on Friday to drive to Tahoe with heavy hearts, but excited to race for Robyn. After all, she had raced without full use of her lungs--it was the least we could do to push it at altitude!

How NOT To Start Your First Double Century Ultryacycling Ride

The term cluster f**k was invented to describe the horror that was Friday night--the night before coachubby, Robyn, and I were going to set off on our first double century ride in Irvine, CA.

Scenario:
I am PMSing.

I return from an attempted workout at 5:45pm at the two lane pool at my gym where old men hang out in the pool area to catch a glimpse of young ladies, many of whom are there to be seen in their bikinis, none of whom can swim a length of the pool, and thereby wind up floating about in the shallow end in my way.

I am not happy.

Coachubby is loading up the car outside of our place. When he sees me, he says, "Sparky won't start. There's no electricity."

Sparky is my car. The car for which I just paid a gagillion dollars to make sure he would be ok to drive to Phoenix on Tuesday. He worked fine before I brought him to my mechanic, I was just being cautious. Now he won't start?

I can't deal.

We load up and drive to Robyn's house--2 miles south of us. She follows in her car as we spend a good 30 minutes looking for the 405. Apparently, we're unable to find the only freaking freeway in the South Bay because we took off 2 miles off of our normal starting point. Most people can navigate fine within a 10 mile radius of their home. Not us. Not in LA.

We finally find the 405, and head to Irvine. We pick up our packets, which consist of a plastic baggie, a route map, and a card to get marked off at the aid stations to prove we were there. Simple. Low key. Nice. I like it.

Coachubby can't seem to find his way out of the parking lot, and I'm being a righteous beeotch, which isn't helping. His brain, I've decided, turns off when he gets in the car, and I let him know my theory.

Coachubby immediately rams the overhang of the hotel's entrance with his bike, forgetting it was on top of the car.

The bar warning people about the height of the overhang falls.

I am beyond pissed.

We drive to Irvine's Spectrum Center to get dinner at PF Changs.

Coachubby comes 1 inch from hitting the entrance of the parking garage before remembering his bike is still on top of the car. We jump out as everyone behind us honks obnoxiously. Coachubby stuffs the front-wheel-less bike in my hands and goes to park.

For 20 minutes, man after man walks by making the same totally unfunny joke, "Aren't you supposed to be riding that? Oh, well, looks like you can't. It's missing something."

You're almost as charming as the men in the 24 Hour Fitness pool area.

It's 8pm. The wait, the lady at PF Changs informs us, is 1 hour. So we zip on over to CPK, wait 10 minutes, then order right when we sit down.

At 9:15, we get our food.

I want to kill the waiter. On the bright side, our meal is free because the waiter and coachubby share the loss of cerebral function this evening.

Coachubby then gets lost on the 1 mile drive from the Spectrum Center to the hotel.

Finally getting to the hotel at 10 pm (there is no way I'm getting 8 hours of sleep tonight. On top of the no-sleep I got the two nights before because coachubby was snoring in my face.), coachubby goes to pull his bike out of the trunk, where it now resides.

PSHHHHHHHH!

Coachubby flats pulling his bike out of the car. How do you do that? I don't know. Leave it to coachubby to flat without having a tire touching the ground when I'm on the brink of a full-on mental breakdown.

Robyn witnesses the first petty, biotching fight coachubby and I have ever had. He knows now not to fight with me when I'm PMSing. Or when he has just displayed the inability to learn from mistakes made 20 minutes prior to another mistake.

I feel bad for Robyn.

We open the hotel room door and I jump straight into bed. Tooth decay be darned!

It's 11pm. I don't fall asleep immediately.

We wake up at 5am to get ready and drive to the beginning of the ride.

Will we make it? Will coachubby's seat break off and shove his stem up his bum since he whacked the bike on an overhang? Can a PMSing nutcase who normally requires 8 hours of sleep/night to function and hasn't slept in 3 nights finish a 200 mile bike ride?

Stay tuned...

Trips to the ER and the Triathlete

According to legend, there are two types of cyclists: those who have eaten pavement, and those who will. According to me, there are also two other types of cyclists: those who acknowledge their penchant for pavement eating, and those who believe it will never happen to them.

Coachancé falls into the first group. He chose his health insurance knowing he'd average about 3 trips to the ER per year. I'm more of the second kind. I acknowledge that I will hurt myself at some point, though I'd really really like to keep my skin on my body. Therefore, I ride with my hands gripped way too tight on my handlebars, and a laser-focused mission to avoid every little thing in the road. My health insurance only exists to help me should I have some kind of catastrophic crash, so it's not like I haven't thought about it.

Because coachancé had only gone to the ER once this year, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to get a call Monday evening that he hurt himself on his bike and was going to the ER. He did, after all, have 2 more trips there to fulfill in less than one month. This accident was different, however, than the last frightful, blood-gushing-from-head crash. When jumping a speed bump at work in his sneakers, his foot came of the pedal, and he came to a running stop. But the bike didn't stop. The big chain ring stopped in coachancé's leg, leaving a line of very deep puncture wounds that look like a shark bite. (See below.)

Now that is the ultimate cyclist's scar! Some people get chain ring tattoos. That wasn't hardcore enough for the coachancé. Now I'm just praying his ER trips will fall below average this year, and this'll be the last of it!

Happy Biking to Work!

xoxo

TriDiva

The Mother of All Saddle Sores (Not for the faint of heart!)

After a 2 hour and 30 minute ride in the cold rain Wednesday morning, I felt like a rockstar. I hate being cold and wet, but I did it anyway, and felt pretty cool about it. Nothing will stop me and my training, darn it! I put my soaking clothes out to dry and congratulated myself for my accomplishment—one that anyone in, say, Seattle, would find truly unimpressive—with chocolate cake.

The next morning in spinning, I found sitting on the right side of my crotch felt a little uncomfortable, so I shifted and ignored it. Later on in the day, however, I discovered something truly horrifying: my crotch was swollen on the right side. The mythical creation one of my college comedy troupe costars wrote into a sketch—the vag-ball—truly existed and I was one of the infected! Oh my GOD! Then came the pain. Then came the revelation that I couldn’t ride my bike if I didn’t have someone kill this unwanted growth. Saturday is a big training day, I need my crotch in top form for some good hours on the bike! But no! I will not go to an ER with a doctor who only has general knowledge about all body parts. I want someone who is expressly trained in female parts and specifically female parts that have morphed overnight into hideous golf ball like shapes.

Coachance told me this had, unfortunately, happened to him before (only not in the vag-ball fashion). The remedy? A visit to the ER a, a big needle, a knife, and some antibiotics. OH MY GOODNESS! WHAT!?

I arrived at my female doctor’s office early this morning and told them I had a very personal emergency and needed to see the doctor. After an hour of torture in front of a TV playing Kelly Ripa and then “The View” I was ready to face any and all surgical implements. Good thing, because I had to.

“Get me the biggest needle we have,” I heard my doctor say to someone just outside the door. Hey! I heard that! Oh God.

One giant needle injection of numbing stuff, one nice incision, lots of sanitary towely things and some “blood clotting” ointment later, I was “fixed”. I suppose this is what it’s like when a dog goes in to be neutered. I waddled out of the office to be slammed with the price of ridding myself of the painful and unsightly vag-ball: the Louboutains I wanted to wear to my wedding.

Good thing I thought it was ludicrous to spend so much money on a beautiful pair of red-soled, silver shoes. I certainly didn’t ever think, however, that all that cash would be spent on my crotch instead.

I was about an hour late for work, and of course when I waddled in, people were wondering what happened. How to explain? Um, “bike-related injury”. (Thanks, coachance.)

So learn from my mistake. (Even though I can’t exactly pinpoint what caused this, what is technically called a “labial cyst”.) Change out of your bike shorts RIGHT when you’re done. Keep it dry and clean down there. If you bike to work, bring a change of underwear, and make sure to lube up with Chamois Butt’r or something similar before any and all rides to avoid the chaffing that could lead to your very own, very expensive vag-ball. (And a mandatory few days off of the bike and an antibiotic prescription.)

Happy Saddle-Sore Free Friday!

Found this on the internet. Thought it was pretty funny. Extra points if you can figure out what it's actually for!

Bike Crash Photo du Jour

At least it wasn't rocky...

Happy Summer Training!

Flexible Flat Feet? You MUST Read This!

Can you touch your thumb to your arm? You have flexible joints. Got no arch? You have flat feet. And while there are several athletes that stand as living proof that you can still pull off some awesome run times—and even win some races in the run—your fun flexible body might just have a few things hiding under its skin for you.

Flexible Fact #1: You’re probably a great swimmer, with feet that flippity flop like giant paddles.

Flexible Fact #2: You’re probably pretty fun between the sheets.

Flexible Fact #3: You might just have an extra bone in your foot.

That’s right, an “auxiliary bone”, if you will. This little sucker has up and taken your tibial tendon’s connection away from the strong navicular bone, and made this important tendon attach to it’s little bony self.

What does this mean? If you twist your ankle—or even just run a lot—you can tear / aggravate the ligaments that are holding your “bonus bone” to your navicular. What does THAT mean? Your arch will feel like it’s on fire and determine for you that you must stop running. You may even have to get a cast put on to take the pressure off of this area and allow it to heal.

What does that mean? Pool running. But how can you pool run with a cast that can’t get wet stuck to your foot? You must buy a big ugly blue boot with a pump that will literally vacuum seal your foot inside of it, and also make you the nerdiest, strangest looking Smurf-person at your aquatic center.

On the positive side, should this become a chronic problem and a little bit of time off just doesn’t do the trick, you can get your evil little “accessory bone” removed, and have your tendon reattached to the navicular bone like a normal person.

On a more positive side, maybe a week in a cast with an ugly blue bootie will calm your little bone down. It got the attention it was asking for. Maybe now it’ll shut up.

So if you’re having arch pain, and have flat feet, and can put your feet behind your head, perhaps a little extra bone is to blame for your pain. Have it checked out before you do any more damage!

Happy Pool Running!

The Cursed Ankle

I want to run

But you are no fun

You don’t even want to swim

I thought we were one

And that you were done

If only I could cut off my limb

But oh ankle how much fun we’ve had

Think of the times when you weren’t bad

And we took off on explorative runs

I just know

That you want to go

Outside to play in the sun

So I’ll work with you

If you work with me

So we may once again live

In harmony

I will ice and you will feel great

And we shall once again dominate

My awesome ankle, are you with me!?

5 Things to Get You Excited About Pool Running

So you’ve twited an ankle, have tendonitis or your body has otherwise decided to make you stop running for a while. Instead of overdoing your cycling and swimming workouts to make up for missed runs—RUN! In the pool. That’s right, it’s not just for old ladies in exercise classes any more. Instead of dreading extra time spent with pruny fingers, think about these 5 reasons why pool running kicks butt.

1. You get to use the “aquajogger”—that purple floaty things you laugh at grandmas when they use it to aquacize. Only you look cool in it. And you’re doing a real workout.

2. Because you’re upright, you can carry on a conversation with the cute lifeguard (he’ll talk, even if he’s not supposed to.)

3. You can analyze and critique the strokes of all of the lap swimmers and possibly gain insight as to why people (like TriDiva) don’t go anywhere when they use their arms.

4. You can tack the workout on to your swim, giving you less transition time, less time to think about going out, and more time to read Cozmo…I mean Triathlete Magazine…with your breakfast.

5. Should you choose to tack your pool run onto your swim, you’ll have that much more time to get rid of your googlie-eyes before you are seen in public. (And in TriDiva’s case, this is much needed and appreciated!)

Happy recovering!

Xtreme Fri-Tri Photo

This can't have ended well either:

Happy Off-Road Training!

Injured? Don't Do This!

When injury strikes, we stubborn triathletes tend to ignore the pain--or we freak out about it. No matter which end of the spectrum you're on, these mantras should help you jump on a sane road to recovery:

1. I will allow my body to heal.

2. I will not overtrain another sport to make up for time not running/swimming/biking.

3. I will not freak out that I will become fat in my new state of lower volume training.

4. I will religiously put frozen peas on my injury, and take Advil.

5. I shall not whine to my friends about my injury, lest they ban me from future training sessions with them. Or from all social activity.

Chill! The worst thing you could possibly do is to train through your injury. Doing this will never let it fully heal, and you'll only to have to take loads of time off later when it leads to something bigger and more evil.

Happy Injury-Free Training!

Xtreme Tri Photo of the Day

This could not have ended well:

I have nothing else to say. Ouch. Nice photography.

Happy training!

Skin Cancer and the Triathlete--The Smiley Face

Triathlon has you out and about every day. Out in the sun, enjoying all the beautiful scenery nature has to offer. Because of this, your coworkers are envious of your permanently sun-kissed skin--your year-round healthy glow. But all of that sun-exposure, while making you look cool and athletic (and setting you up for wrinkles later on...but you look good now!) puts you at a higher risk of skin cancer than your buddies who don't spend their Saturdays on 7 hour bike rides.

The most common places to get skin cancer are on your face, neck, and ears. And your forearms and the backs of your hands. No problem, you say, I wear a helmet that covers my face, a visor when I run, and gloves when I bike.

But there's one little place that frequently gets missed while you're paying all of that attention to your pretty face and hands. Your lower back. And after hours of biking in the sun, the space between your jersey and your shorts can cause a rather funny looking tan that TriDiva likes to call the "Smiley Face", because it looks like you've got a big red grin on your back. (And if you really get into it, you can pretend your shoulder blades are the eyes.)

So this is just a little reminder to pay attention to this big chunk of skin that so often gets overlooked. When you're sunscreening up for the day--or reapplying--DON'T forget to show your lower back some love. Or else you could wind up with a vindictive smiley face with cancer between his teeth.

Happy Training!

The Triathlete vs. The Dog

Typically, people who own large dogs are active people. Because those dogs have to go to the toilet a lot, and their owners would rather not have it happen in their homes. And because they have enough stamina to complete a significant run with you. And because they love you unconditionally, etc...

But what if someone else's dog decides to go on a run with you? Like a big playful lab who is so excited to meet you, he can't contain himself or run in a straight line? If he's outside, his owner must not be far away, right?

You could check his tags to see if he might have run far away, but who has time for that in the middle of an interval? "Cute dog," you think, "but I wish it would go away because it's messing up my workout!" Then...BAM! Cute dog does a 90 degree turn straight into you, swiping your feet out from under you and jumping happily as you eat asphalt in front of an unsuspecting school mom in a minivan who visibly freaks out, but doesn't stop her car.

Now your hip hurts, your knee hurts, you have worse road rash than your friend who legitimately got it from crashing his bike last weekend in the rain, blood running down your shin, and the dog has magically disappeared.



What to do? Well, if you checked his tags and have a photographic memory, you could go to his owner and shove your beautifully bloodied leg in his/her face and tell her her lovely Foofie did that and she/he should keep him on a leash.

Or you could see if you can find the dog, then swipe his legs out from under him and see how he likes it. Only in this situation, it's almost certain that any school mom in a minivan watching you would probably get out of her car and make a death threat against you for committing crimes against precious animals. (Yes, it's twisted. But drivers don't care about people who exercise, remember? Dogs who exercise, on the other hand, are safe.)

Or you could continue on with your run, hoping the pain will go away, and thinking to yourself that next time, you'll tie the dog to a fire hydrant or something before you continue your interval, just for peace of mind.

What would you do?

Sick Sucks--When to Train Through or Take it Easy

Being sick sucks. Chances are, if you've got a big race coming up, you won't let sickness stand in your way of your scheduled work-outs. But when is working out just wearing you down, and when is it still going to be beneficial?

Here are a few completely non medical guidelines to help you decide if your 4:30am ride in the rain is going to kill you or make you stronger:

Symptoms you could train through and still benefit from the workout:

• a runny nose (perfect for snot rocket practice)


• a small cough (small like when Derek Zoolander claimed he might be getting the "black lung" and coughed like a baby)


• feeling a little tired (don't you always from training so hard?)

Symptoms telling you to cut it out and rest!

• your throat is swollen to the size of a grapefruit


• walking to the bathroom makes you tired


• you have a fever


• your lungs hurt


• you're achy all over...and it's not because you lifted yesterday

So there you have it. If you're sick, your body is trying to tell you something. Like BACK OFF. So leave those intense interval sessions for another day. If you still feel good enough to move, do something easy. Like spin easy for an hour.

It'd be much worse to work out hard now feeling poopy and miss key workouts in the future than to take a few days off and return healthy, fresh, and invigorated.

And for gosh sakes, if you've been sick for ever, go to the doctor! And make sure to finish your antibiotics. You don't want some super strain of grapefruit-throat inducing virus to hit you harder later!

For further reading with the advice of real doctors, check out this article from CNN.