This week was another rocky week of training. I finally got myself to the doctor last Sunday and got some antibiotics for my cold-turned sinus infection. I’m pretty much better now, aside from a cough that gets really bad at night. In fact, it has kept me from getting much sleep at night this entire past week.

I’m trying to stay optimistic about Marine Corps, because the first 3/4ths of my training went really well. I had that awesome 16 miler that came at the end of a week of work, the way its supposed to. Things have not really gone according to plan since then. But just like weather on race day, you can’t control all of the variables in training. Despite still fighting this sinus infection all week (and week four of being sick, by the way!!) I was able to get in a handful of decent runs.

Monday- Rest. Still feeling pretty crummy.

Tuesday- I was feeling a bit better, aside from my cough, and decided to give a long run a try. After a full day of work I hopped on the treadmill and started running with no particular goal of how far I would go. I chose the treadmill since it was storming outside, and it would likely be dark by the end of my run. I had enough of running in the dark at Ragnar 🙂 Plus the treadmill gave me the option of stopping immediately if I suddenly started feeling worse.

As it would turn out, I got in a full 16 miler on the treadmill! It was a new personal distance record for treadmill running, and my legs felt really great the entire run (okay, they did get tired the final 3 miles). I watched two re-run episodes of 19 Kids and Counting and then watched most of the second Hunger Games movie while I ran.

Wednesday- Rest day (as scheduled, and I needed it due to lack of sleep).

Thursday- I had planned on getting up and running about 6 miles in the morning before work. We were heading out of town immediately after work, so this was the only time I could fit a run in. But I probably got a collective 2 hours of sleep Wednesday night, with the last hour happening from 6 – 7 am, when I was supposed to be running. So yea, that run didn’t happen.

Friday- I snuck in 10 miles in the morning before we had to be dressed and ready for a family friend’s wedding. We had driven up to my dad’s house the night before, so I did this run in the neighborhood and surrounding roads. My legs felt great the whole time and it really felt good to be out running. However, my chest felt like I had a 10 pound weight on it. I just could not catch my breath and no amount of air felt sufficient.

It also rained steadily during the second half of my run. An omen for what was to come on Sunday.

Saturday- Another rest day. It was pouring rain at my Dad’s, so a morning run was not going to happen. We had a 6 hour drive home, that included a stop in Blacksburg to pick up our race packets for Sunday’s race. By the time we got home around 6:30 PM a run was just not going to happen. I hope the Hansons don’t get on a plane in two weeks to steal my Marine Corps Marathon bib from me.

Sunday- Hokie Half Marathon race in Blacksburg! This was the second year for the race. The weather conditions were not ideal (50 degrees and pouring the entire time), but I had a solid run. I didn’t want to push it and wear myself out for Marine Corps, so I just ran at a comfortable pace and enjoyed the race.

You know the drill – full race recap coming Wednesday!

Total Miles: 39 miles* (with only 3 runs, I don’t think that’s so bad!)
*With this week I also broke 1,000 miles total for the year!

So this happened on Sunday:

If you’re not sure what type of animal typically lives in this type of set up, it’s one of these:

That’s right. Barry brought that little booger home from work with him on Sunday evening. But let me back up a bit.

On Thursday afternoon I received a text from Barry asking if I minded if he brought a calf home from work (he works on a dairy farm). Long story short, a cow calved that wasn’t supposed to be pregnant, and they don’t keep the calves from that particular group of cows. So it’s finders, keepers on the farm and Barry found her. He said he wanted to bring her home and wanted to know if that was okay. My reply: “Seriously? Where are we going to keep a calf!? I’m all for it, though. 🙂 ”

So he said he would figure things out. She was born last Thursday, but was roughly 1 1/2 months early. Barry waited a few days to make sure she was going to live, and then brought her home on Sunday when she was three days old.

She’s a tiny little thing, and only weighs in around 35 pounds.

We let her walk around the backyard for a bit and gave her a bottle because she was hungry. Like all calves, she’s on a milk diet right now. Barry has plans for her to be bottle-fed three times per day.

Once she had a full belly on Sunday evening, we got her settled into her new digs. She seemed to be a fan of her new neighbors (the chickens) and her new hutch.

Once she was settled, we let Hank and Scout into the backyard to meet the new resident. Hank spent his puppy years on the dairy farm and is very used to cows and calves. He’s excited about the new calf, but it’s nothing new to him. Scout, on the other hand, is not as experienced with cows or calves. She’s been around them a bit, but every time the calf moved Scout would hide behind Barry or me.

So what’s the plan? I’m not sure. Initially we thought we would just raise her for meat, which means I made a conscious decision not to name her. But the second I saw her in our driveway, the name Annabelle popped into my head. So now there’s that.

Barry mentioned raising her and then breeding her and having more calves. I guess we will just play it by ear and see where we end up!

Have you ever raised or bottle-fed a calf?
What’s the strangest animal you’ve ever seen someone keep either in their yard or as a pet? My roommate in college had a pet hedgehog, which was definitely not the norm but was really cool!

I’ve got another update for you on how our injured chicken, Lady, is doing. She hurt her left leg back at the end of July and had to be removed from the flock. Initially she couldn’t walk at all and the other chickens were attacking her. We put her in a dog crate with food and water in the garage, and later moved that crate to the chicken coop. Chickens do better when they’re in a group. Even though she has to be separate for her own safety, we still wanted Lady to be around the other chickens.

When I last did an update, Lady was starting to put some weight back on and was able to walk a bit in the yard. However, it was more like stumbling and she would often step on her own feet (as if she couldn’t feel her left leg). Since then she has had a lot of improvement. She is back to a healthy weight and can now walk normally in the yard. We continue to let her out nearly every day so that she can get some exercise and build some strength.

In fact, she has been getting around so well that she found her way into our garage one evening! I went out to get her after she had spent some time in the yard exercising. As soon as I stepped into the garage, I could hear her somewhere in there. I found her behind the bikes, and she proceeded to walk around like she owned the place.

Since I lasted posted about Lady, we have also put a roosting pole in her crate so she can practice getting up on one and balancing on it. Currently, she won’t get up there on her own. But when we put her up there she has no problem staying on it and will often sleep there.

She looks like she’s posing for me in the above picture, but really she was yelling at me for taking her picture at night. I guess it was kind of rude of me to take pictures of her as she was nodding off to sleep.

The other great news is that she has started laying eggs again! Typically, she is laying an egg about every other day. When she first hurt her leg, she went about a month without laying an egg. This shows that she is definitely on the mend, since she is able to handle producing eggs again.

The last hurdles we have are getting her to where she will get up on the regular roosting poles and reintroducing her into the flock. The roosting poles in the coop are pretty high in the air, because this is what the chickens prefer (it makes them feel safe at night). We need to make sure she is strong enough to get up to the roosting poles, and down, without hurting herself.

As far as reintroducing her to the flock, it’s going to be tricky. The best strategy looks to be spraying all of the chickens with vinegar water, including Lady, and placing her on the roosting poles at night with them (it will have to be a warm night so I don’t freeze them!). The vinegar water will help mask individual smells, so they can’t tell one chicken from the other as well. They are also more accepting/calmer at night, so there is a better chance of them allowing her to assimilate back into the group. I’ll let you know how that goes.

This week was peak week of training!! Let me tell you – peak week is a bad time to be on week 3 of a never-ending cold. But that’s exactly what I was going through all week. Y’all are probably wondering why I hadn’t gone to the doctor, after being sick for so long. Even though I’d been pretty miserable at times, none of my symptoms seem like anything other than a nasty, common cold. At the end of the week I found out otherwise.

Monday- Rest day. I was supposed to do an easy 7 miler, but I was feeling awful. After suffering through 5 hours of work I threw in the towel, went home, and slept on and off the rest of the day. This would have been a good time to visit the doctor….

Tuesday- I was feeling better from Monday and ready to get back at it, aside from a throbbing headache. I planned to do 2 x 3 miles with a 1 mile recovery for 10 miles total and that’s what I did. However, I had not planned on doing this workout on the treadmill. I ended up working late and was forced to run with Sven, though, since I had my fill of running alone in the dark during Ragnar.

My goal for the 3 mile repeats was 30:24 and I split 30:29 on the first one (figuring out what speed to set the treadmill) and 30:24 on the second (got things figured out). Aside from my pounding headache, everything else felt good. Although I was surprised to find a bloody toe when I took off my running shoes after my run. Turns out I didn’t quite cut one of my toenails right on Sunday afternoon and there was a sharp edge. Oops.

Wednesday- Rest day. I was going to make up my Monday run, and just make Monday my one rest day for the week. But my cold was still hanging on, and I had a cough and pounding headache all day. So when I got home from work I decided to just take the rest day as scheduled and just let Monday be a lost day of training.

Let it go and move on. The goal was to complete my Thursday tempo run and my 16 mile long run on Sunday.

Thursday- 10 mile run, with 8 miles at tempo (marathon pace). I probably shouldn’t have done this run, but I didn’t want to miss it. I was still feeling pretty bad, and was coughing more than ever. This run felt so tough. My chest was very tight during the run, and I often couldn’t catch my breath due to the coughing. At times it felt like I was trying to breathe through a straw.

So probably not smart that I ran anyway, but I was hopeful that this cold that had lasted for three weeks must be on its way out. Even though running felt tough, I still managed to average 10:14/mile for my tempo miles (my goal pace is 10:18/mile). I really hope I’m not sick come marathon morning!

Friday- 6 mile easy run on the treadmill. I still wasn’t feeling better, I still ran. My cough was a lot better from Thursday, but in it’s place came an incredibly stuffy nose and aches all over. No fun.

Saturday- To my dismay, I found that I was still sick when I woke up. I took it easy in the morning and even surfed WebMD (always dangerous). It turns out when you have a cold for longer than 10 days it typically means you have a sinus infection. It’s recommended that you go to the doctor and get antibiotics. That probably would have been a good thing to figure out on Monday…

I had myself convinced that if I rested all day Saturday, and skipped my easy 6 miler, I would totally be able to gut it out for 16 miles on Sunday. Clearly I had moved out of Virginia and into the state of Delusion.

Sunday- This was supposed to be my third 16 miler (the Hansons version of a 20 miler during marathon training). ICYMI: My first 16 miler was awesome, and I missed the second due to right shin pain.

I’m probably surprising no one when I tell you that I did not run yesterday. Instead, I was up at 4:30 AM because I was just too uncomfortable to sleep anymore. I let Kim know that I wouldn’t be able to join her. She suggested I go to the urgent care. For some reason that hadn’t dawned on me! I was thinking my only option was to wait until the work week, and figure out how to squeeze a doctor visit into a very busy week.

Instead, I was able to go to the doctor late Sunday morning and guess what – I have sinusitis. Again, probably surprising no one but myself at this point. They prescribed some antibiotics and I should be feeling better in a few days. Had I gone to the doctor on Monday I may not have missed this key final long run in training. Lesson learned. Also fyi- be careful if you ever decide to be stupid like me and run through an untreated sinus infection. I was working my way down a dangerous path that ultimately would lead to pneumonia.

Total Miles: 26 miles
September Total: 156.08 miles

As a runner, I have a lot of strange habits and odd things I do. Some of it is probably just inherent to running itself, while others are most likely a product of my personality.

1. I like running all of my runs with my Garmin so that I can see how far I ran down to the hundredth of a mile. When it comes to the distance of my run, I always have to finish at the even mile or a little after it. But I can never stop my run if I am nearing the end of a mile.

2. If there’s a stop sign, mile post, etc. at my turnaround point during my run I have to hit it as a I loop around

3. I always put my left sock on first when I’m putting on my running socks. But with other socks it doesn’t matter and I alternate. It also doesn’t matter with my shoes (running, or otherwise), just my running socks.

4. When I’m training for a race and following a specific training plan I like to print out the plan so I can cross off the days. I also designate a pen to be used for the crossing off, and I wont use it for any other purpose during training.

5. Whenever I see a porta potty it makes me happy. I don’t even have to be running at the time

What quirks do you have related to exercise? One of Barry’s quirks is that he almost always showers before a run or a race.