It’s been a long few months, but things are finally starting to look up again.  After training through a seemingly endless string of injuries over the past two years, my body (and frankly my mind as well) finally had enough and shut me down hard.  With my left foot on the verge of snapping in two, I finally stopped running for a while.  I had a hit-and-miss period of about a month, then 6 weeks off, then have been very slowly building back up over the last month.  So a grand total of 364 miles run since September 1st.

The foot is feeling a lot better, though still not 100%.  It was pretty bad – and I’m sure very close to cracking a metatarsal.  Thankfully, I didn’t need any boot time and have been able to ride my bikes – which I’ve been doing a fair amount of.  Not enough to offset the fistfuls of candy and gallons of soda I’ve been shoveling in, but it has at least kept my legs from withering away.

So, 14 pounds.  That’s the damage.  Ouch.  I really took some ‘liberty’ with my down time and now have some extra work to do.

The good news is my head is finally in a good spot again, and I’m feeling the spark.  My body is following close behind.  The time off had the benefit of finally allowing my problematic heel to get better.  Two years of limping hopefully behind me now.  The achilles and calf area are still a lot tighter than they should be, but the heel itself is doing much better.  I ran a hilly 10 miler today, and the only time I thought about my heel was at around mile 8.5 when I thought to myself – hey, I haven’t thought about my heel for this whole run so far…  That was it, no pain at all.  Quite a difference from flinching with every step all this time.

While I am fat and sucking wind, I feel really strong.  I’ve been doing a lot of long pushes on the bike (around an hour to 90 minutes) in a harder gear than I would normally ride so I end up averaging about 80 rpm.  It’s tough work, but I feel it’s much more effective than the normal spin-type rides I used to do, or just doing shorter intervals.

So, what else has been going on?

We spent an afternoon down at the lake throwing rocks into the water.  It was actually a lot of fun.  The ice was just starting to form along the edges of the inlet river and we would shove off these huge ice barges downstream and bomb them into oblivion with huge rocks.  None of us could move our throwing arms the next day.

Bombs away.

I got my picture in Trail Runner magazine.

About 30 seconds into a 28 hour day…

I have been working a fair number of nights and weekends, so I took a Friday off and rode my mountain bike 70 miles.  It was a great day (just a jersey and shorts in December!), but with the warm temps came the WIND.  HUGE WIND.  I think I had some hearing loss after the fact from it roaring in my ears for so long.

Mile High city from mile 40 of my ride.

Geese on the glassy ice.

Look Ma, no hands.

Messing around with the morning light at my back.

Had some fun editing this goose pic, the ice it was sitting on was like a mirror.

I got out for a nice 3 hour run from my house.  I took the opportunity to get up Goat Peak for the first time, something that took me way too long – after 12 years of living here.  I went on the day Waterton Canyon opened up for the first time since August, and there were tons of folks out and about.  They’ll be shutting it down at the end of January for the rest of 2011.  The run was great and my legs held up really well.  Although my quads were incredibly tender for 5 days after.

Goat Peak (center left)

We’ve been eating really well…

Malcolm’s mashed potato volcano.

Lindsey had a birthday.

14!

Jessica got new wheels.  She gets around really well with braces on her lower legs, and even goes without them around the house, but long distances are tough on her.  She’s too big for me to carry very far anymore, so we thought a wheelchair would be a good thing to look into.  It’ll be a big help in a few years in middle school and above where you need to pack your heavy books with you from class to class.  She’s really gotten the hang of it and is looking forward to playing some sports next year.

Super cool wheels.  Even came with an elf hat and a small stocking filled with candy!

I don’t know if I was a very good boy, but Santa made a stop at Backcountry.com and picked up a sweet set of snowshoes for my Christmas present.  Denver snowfall total so far for the 2010-2011 winter is <1 inch…  Time to head for the mountains!

MSR Ascents with removable tails + Back Diamond poles.