Quick update

So the hand feels pretty good. I'm off the painkillers so if anyone wants to buy some lets talk :) j/k of course...

All the more environmentally conscious people may be happy to know that I traded the gas sucking Explorer for a much more reasonable Civic. Yes, someone will still be sucking the oil fields dry until that truck dies, but I'm trying to not be the cuplrit. Nothing like doubling your mileage all in one move. Still gotta pick up a new roof rack for the new ride, but (un)fortunately I have no need to transport a bike for a while so I've got time.

As far as Tour de Test Tubes commentary, I'll just say this: To answer the question of "If everyone's doing it is it still cheating?" my response is "Hell yah it is!" It's cheating all the rest of us. I think the appropriate response to those still getting caught is Here's your sign.

Have a good weekend all.

Bringin home the hardware

3 screws in the hand today. No pictures till next week. Supposedly no general anesthesia, but damn if they didn't turn the valium (or whatever it is) drip to high because I don't remember jack. More later... need meds.

The hand saga

So while a second medical opinion can be good, you sometimes run into the situation where they disagree and leave you in the middle. My ortho (yes I'm hurt enough to have one guy that I go to) had the initial reaction that my hand would be fine without surgery. I was skeptical based on the pictures so I asked to see a surgeon and also asked him to consult the other guys in his practice. The surgeon also thought it was ok, but scheduled a follow up for 10 days later and put me in a splint that he said I could take off to shower. The other guy from the ortho practice thought I definitely needed surgery. When I went back to the first ortho for my 1 week follow up, his initial reaction to the new xrays was that it was worse than he remembered. So if you're counting I'm up to 3 doctors and 4 opinions. Then I noticed yesterday morning that my little finger doesn't bend quite straight which is a sign that you need surgery. I called the first ortho to ask if he thought I should call the surgeon and he flipped when he found out I had been taking the splint off. Great, more disagreement. So today I talk to the surgeon's office and he says he should see it asap, but he's only available until like 2 today and not at all tomorrow. I was in Boston and on my way to Tewksbury when I found this out so asap is going to be Monday. The worry now is that it will have been 2 weeks of healing so if they do something now, they probably have to rebreak it to fix it. Argh. I'll be happy when this is cleared up.

More later... my 7 fingers are tired.

Quick update

Still on vaca from work and I'm typing with 1.5 hands so there'll be a lot of short ones for a while... 3 ortho/surgeon visits in 8 days and it's still not certain that I don't need surgery to set the break. If it doesn't shift at all for 1 more week I'm in the clear. Vaca was good but tiring. Class all this week and then back to the real world next week. Haven't run or biked since the latest incident. I'm going to get back on the trainer tomorrow night. Still holding out hope for a full cross season so we'll see.

The short story

Winsted MTB race, 3 min into warmup lap I slid my rear wheel into a washout and sorta fell over. Wouldn't have even counted it as a crash. Knuckle of my little finger on the left hand hit the ground and sorta crunch in towards my thumb. First thought was "I think I just broke my hand".

Rode the 4+ mile warmup loop anyways (denial) and lined up for the race. Was never in it and bailed after one of 2 laps. Got my 8 miles or so of riding in anyways and basically all of it was with one hand.

Appt in 30 min to find out the prognosis.

OK, fine, I can take a hint

Stupid biking. I'm going back to running.

One more...

Just a quick one of the race report variety... Today was the Colonial Road Runner's Club Marathon Challenge. It was basically a 26 x 1 mile (plus one lap) relay race down in Marshfield. I got sucked into this with the GFRC crew way back before I shredded my groin so then I was put on the possible list. Once running started going ok again, I said I'd do it with the expectation that just covering the 4 laps moderately fast would do. Now I'll note that I've run a total of 6 or 7 times total since The Crash. It's been longer than I can remember since I did a timed mile. I ran the leadoff leg and my goals were to not put us in dead last and to go out the first 2 laps in 6 minute pace then see what happened from there. I hit the first 200 in 38 so there went plan A. Plan B was to not die or re-shred my groin. Somehow I managed to run pretty even splits the whole way and made the handoff at 5:16. I got a little extra kick at the end by lapping a team. Apparently having some extra strength from biking and countless memories of running mid distance events on the track burned into my brain works.

Aw yah, bring on the ridiculously long cross sand pits, mud bogs, and unrideable hills...

Catch up before the dark days

Lots to catch up on before I check out for vaca. I'm definitely going to be unplugged for at least a week and the second week is debateable. It's been a crazy week so here's the high and lowlights:

Tuesday I'm riding home from work and making my way along the bike path down by Hahvid. There's this one intersection which is always packed with runners, bikers, walkers, cars, ducks, small furry animals, hippies, and anything else that strolls through. I'm rolling towards the intersection on the sidewalk/bikepath and there's this older guy running over towards the right of the sidewalk. I headed well to the left of him (again, going really slow) because the light hadn't changed in my favor yet. I get maybe 10 feet before the intersection and this guy suddenly bangs a hard left without looking and is headed right into me. I called out "heads up" and swerved but ended up just bumping shoulders with the guy. I know I said sorry because that would have just been my gut reaction and the guy angrily says "I think you need a bell on that thing!" So now I'm annoyed and I loudly, but calmly just said to him "Don't weave" and proceeded across the street (now had the light). Well he heads across the bridge, now on the other side of the street from me and screams back "Don't pass without warning ASSHOLE!". So now I'm just really amused at how angry he was and called back "Have a nice fourth." That didn't sit well and he kept on screaming something, but I was getting too far away to hear now. The whole thing amused me because 1) I consider myself to be a courteous bike path user, 2) as both a running and biking user of that path, I know what you should and shouldn't do when you're on the path in either mode, and 3) I think it's fair to say that while people have a responsibility to pass safely and give warning, people also have a responsibility to travel in a straight line and not change directions without warning or checking if it's safe. Ah well, I found the whole thing funny so I hope I did ruin the guy's night since he was a dick.

So Wednesday, we head up to bring the boys to a 1 mile fun run so they can get some energy out and have some fun. We get there a little on the late side and were parked far away, so me and the older 2 head over to register while my wife and the 2 year old lag behind. The 3 of us get all the way across this big field at the school and I hear something behind me so I turn to see my wife on the ground holding her rebuilt knee. Crap. We sprint back over there to find out she was walking down this little embankment on the side of the field, her good leg slipped out and all her weight forced her "bad" knee to bend all the way. Now bending your knee completely so you kick yourself in the butt doesn't sound that bad except that she hadn't regained full motion so that was about 15 degrees further than her knee had gone in a year. She heard some crackling and it just didn't feel right. Now the amazing thing is that from the moment it happened and throughout the ordeal, the 2 year old who can't sit still just parked himself next to mommy and played with the grass. It was like he knew that that's what he had to do right then. Anywho... so she's trying to assess how hurt her knee is and she didn't look good so I told her to lay down. She did for a second and then said she was more comfortable if she sat up. She sat up and I was asking her some questions when suddenly she falls back, out cold. Now we're in full freakout mode as the oldest is crying, the middle one was dancing or something, and the baby is sitting there while I've got an unconscious wife with an unknown knee injury... are we having fun yet? Fortunately some guy saw the whole thing and ran to get the ambulance crew from the race. After maybe 30 seconds, she snapped out of it instantly and tries to get up. I told her to stay down and that she passed out and she starts arguing with me that she didn't. She did that for maybe a minute and then goes out again. Yes, the fun meter is pegged now. She came out of it quicker this time and now the EMT's were there. The suited her up with the full neck brace and backboard outfit and loaded her into the "funny truck" (was trying to skip the word ambulance to keep the boys calm). Fortunately, I got my sister-in-law to meet us at the ER and take the boys while she got checked out. In the end, she just ended up with a sprained knee and no damage to anything that was fixed before. The passing out was likely just a reaction to the shock of what happened. Amazing how your brain can just say "F this" and check out for a minute when it goes on overload. I spent the rest of the day telling her never to do that to me again :)

OK... gotta get the ship in shape here before I disappear on everyone. Enjoy the sunshine. Keep the rubber side down. Be kind to Gewillis.

Bike tech question

Ok, one for the biker number geeks out there...

I currently ride 175mm Shimano cranks on all my bikes. Shimano don't make no longer and I've never made the Campy switch (remember, I'm new at this). I'm starting to prep for the new cross bike so I took a gander at Zinn's custom cranks as an option. If I do his math based on my inseam length that was measured for the frame, it says I should be on 215mm cranks. Yowza!

So option 1 is to go with the math and probably feel like I'm riding a clown bike for a while. Option 2 is to be more conservative and go with a 200mm crank (split the difference). Option 3 is to go with Campy and get 180mm cranks (still an improvement, but not nearly enough). I've never experimented with anything over 175 so I can only take his word for it that it's a HUGE difference.

Any thoughts out there? G, how bout some linkage love to get the short guys to throw their opinions in for us freakishly tall folk?

I think I need more coffee (like I really need to question that).

5 more minutes...

So I rode in Friday, then got a ride home. Saturday I went running. Sunday I did nothing athletic per-se. Ran again yesterday. This morning when I rode in I knew it was going to be a crap shoot on how I felt and it ended up just being weird. I was definitely rested from a biking perspective, but overall, my legs felt, well, not really awake. The best analogy I could think of was trying to get a teenager out of bed for school. You go in and tell them they've got to go now and the response is "5 more minutes..." Yup, that's what it was like... c'mon boys let's go... eh, maybe in 5 more minutes. Oh well... I kinda gave up hope of setting the roads on fire quickly and just enjoyed the ride.

By the way... can someone bring me a new calendar because I think mine's broken. Mine says July, but I was in long sleeves and knee warmers this morning. Now I'm all for cool nights and warm sunny days, but usually in September. Oh well... it could have been 92 at 6 a.m. so I guess I'll take it.

Since it probably is really July and that's the tentative date I got from Mike for my cross frame, I decided to start ordering parts. I haven't gone nuts yet, but I scored a couple deals so stuff should be on it's way soon. Mmmmm, frog legs...

No real plans for the 4th for us, but if the weather cooperates we may bring the gang to a local road race so they can do the 1 mile fun run. Both of the older two can do it easily and I'm almost curious how fast the oldest can do it. I may have the next great over-tall white guy runner in the works there, but running is something I definitely wouldn't push at too young an age. I'm completely willing to let him do as much of it as he wants (within reason), but I won't be suggesting anything that resembles training. That said, he's declared that he wants to raise money to do the 5k Race for the Cure with mommy in the fall. I think he'll be able to finish and it was kinda cool that he thought the raising money part was a good thing to do.

Ok, omlette waiting...