Injury Update

"I bought my mom a car, and spent the rest on PCP"
-Chapelle Show

I finally have an appointment setup with the specialty doctor in Philly to take a look at my groin issue. I saw him over a year ago, but my insurance would not cover the operation for a year and I ended up dropping my insurance once they raised the price and I could no longer afford it. So now I am back to the beginning with an HMO this time around, so it will be interesting to see how that goes.
The appointment is for March 11th, but I have to meet with my PCP first in the Reston/Herndon area. More updates to come following the visit.

New Blog Out Now

I have done a couple posts on the non-running blog. I guess there is no better time than now to make it public since I am not doing too much running these days. If you would like to be added to the list of contributors, send me and email at allengcarr@gmail.com

Without further ado... New Blog

Retiring

At least until I get my injury taken care of. I am not a fan of the taking it easy, doing a workout that knocks me out and then taking it easy again. I am a fan of running and enjoying it. This is something that has not been happening since the road mile on new years. I have been having pain in my lower abs in addition to the on and off groin pain I have dealt with for almost two years now. I think it would just be exhausted mentally if I tried to keep at running hard and racing on top of trying to keep an injury under control. I would much rather just be young and enjoy myself through different means. I am in no way retiring from racing for good. I know there are some people who try and take little breaks and end up never getting that competitive spirit back. I can say I am the type of person who is going to be in his 60s hammering out runs. It is something that I cant shake, but I can fortunately temporarily shut it down. I will still be running in more social situations(group runs) and if the weather is really nice. There are no real plans for the next couple months other than to take of my injury first and put competition in the back of my mind. If I have any good running stories, I will make sure to post them, but the blog will probably be fairly dead until I get back after it. In the mean time, I am working on a more random blog that will be launched shortly.

Thanks for reading,

Allen

New Blog

This blog was getting a big scattered lately, so I decided to create a non-running blog. I am also looking for contributors for the new blog. So if you like to write or have some good stories to tell... email me at allengcarr@gmail.com and I can add you to the list of contributors.

The Plot Thickens

..or maybe it thins out. I am meeting up tonight with a new friend and her friends in Chinatown tonight. It turns out she was more confusing on the phone than she was on Friday night. So I am sure I will have some form of a story from tonight.

I feel like I am a lot like that rogue trader in France. I kind of know whats going to happen but I keep going full steam ahead when I have a great opportunity to pull out.

Videos

I tend to stumble across youtube videos on a daily basis and some our funnier than others.

Bad Bartender

Street Valium

John Stewart + CNN + Spongebob

Slow Day

I was probably only outside of my apartment for 2 minutes total today. It was cold outside and I wasnt really feeling like going anywhere today. I attempted a run, but the wind tunnel outside the front door persuaded me to skip it. I have kind of shut down my competitive spirit until I start to feel decent again on a daily basis. With that spirit taking a break, it is easier for me to take days off from running.
Without running and not leaving the house, what is left to do? I guess I could have titled this one Bored pt. 2. I finished up watching Lawrence of Arabia(which was good but not a movie that will relieve one of a bored state) and I also decided to use the Netflix feature where you can watch movies instantly and watched Grindhouse: Planet Terror (which actually was entertaining enough to wake me up). And recently I found some CD's in my closet. Most of the CDs were junk, but one was labeled Jack Johnson, onelinedrawing, Rilo Kiley, John Mayer. The Rilo Kiley songs are all from the first album and they are pretty damn good.
I am hoping to get a run in tomorrow. I am definitely taking it easy until the race and then taking it easy for some time after the race.

Bored

I am very bored at the moment. One big indication of that is the fact that I am actually writing this blog. The other is what I like to call double paging. Double paging is when you are getting ready to type in a website and you remember that you were just on that page no more than 5 minutes ago. I am not ashamed to admit that it was my double paging of facebook that brought me here tonight.

Tomorrow will be a big day for me. I ran until my groin caught fire and kept going. About a week and a half ago I did a tempo and the next days run was one was painful from the start to the finish. The next couple days walking around a corner was painful, so I didnt even think about running. The reason I am even hopeful about tomorrow is because the aforementioned tempo was also followed by a second run and a pretty good core workout. This mornings run/workout was not followed by either of the possible previous culprits.

Then there was Friday night. I went out and met up with a good friend of mine at McFaddens as soon as I got off of work. Very early in the night I see this girl who I am pretty sure who was at the house I watched the Super Bowl at. She walks by a couple minutes later and it is her, so I do the whole introduction thing. She is on her way to another bar and so I get back to my group. Ten minutes later I get a call from the Super Bowl party host saying I need to call this number and that her friend is into me. Of course I call the number and end up heading to a bar in Dupont to meet up with this girl and her friends. So I am on the metro heading to Dupont and then I start thinking Dupont/Fuck/Maybe/Whatever. I arrive at the bar and finally find the girl. I would say that she was with a group of about 8 people and as the night went on I realized that they were all gay. I was intoxicated, it was loud, I was out of my element, and it was dark. As a result, I was unable to figure out who was the Friend or if there ever really was a Friend. Unfortunately(or maybe fortunately) there were no clear indications as to who was actually into me. There was a point in the night when she actually explained to me that "my friend, I, we" was the one who was into me; which was of course as confusing as everything else surrounding the situation. I would be happy to leave the night be as a good story, but I am actually somewhat interested in this girl. One thing I remember clearly is that she told me to call her so we could hang out. But that brings up the question of did she say that because she wanted to hang out or because she realized I wasnt gay and wanted to make the situation a little less weird. If there are any other updates on the situation, I will make sure to post about it. I would say next Sunday would be the time a post might appear.

Easy does it

I did an easy 8 this morning on a new route from the store. I ran down the Capital Crescent and hopped off just below the water treatment plant to make one of my first loop routes from the store. I guess in the last year I have done a lot of runs as out and back and not as many loops as I did back in college.
I felt okay on the run, but not great. As the day has gone I have some minor discomfort in my lower abs, but not nearly as bad as last week. I still am sure I would be struggling if I tried to get a workout in. As a result I might just run easy up until the first planned race of the season.

8

I ran an easy 8 today without a watch. I felt good for the first 3.5 miles and then my lower abs started to tighten up a little bit. The abs stayed under control for the rest of the run, but I could definitely tell it was liable to cause serious pain if I increased the intensity too much.

I would say that I am not at a point where I could go and put in a high intensity effort, but I will say that I am happy to just get outside and run easy. I will continue to run easy until the tightness is no longer a problem. I will let the 10k in a week and a half be an exception, as I will hop in that for the team and then take whatever recovery I need following that effort. After that, I am going to do whatever my body will let me do.

Minimal Pain!

I ran a little over 4 miles today with only a little discomfort. I have unfortunately not run since last Thursday due to a lot of pain with just everyday activities. Reading about running today and having the day off left me with no options but to give it a go.
I wouldnt say I felt 100%, but I felt a lot better than I did on Thursdays easy run. I am not sure what happens next, but I am going to be careful and take everything day to day.
I hope to hop into the 10k in a week and a half, but I am not sure if I will be able to workout before then. If not, then that race will serve as an indicator for whether or not I will be able to recover from high intensity efforts.

Striking

I have a somewhat funny store from this morning. It is probably one of those things that you would have to experience to really think that is was amusing.

It starts with me taking a tour of a gym nearby the store. I was being taken around by a woman whose name I cant remember, but I had met her a few times before in the store. At one point near the end of the tour I ended up talking to the manager who ended up hooking me up with a free membership. So the women who was giving the tour went to the front desk to go make the membership card while I was talking to the manager. I ended up going over to the front desk to get my card, and in addition to women who gave me the tour, there was now another woman who was at the front desk. In all honesty, I would have to say she was an 8 before I heard her talk. After I heard that she had a Russian accent, her rating shot up. This is important to the story.

So when I get up to the front desk, there is an older man there with a smile on his face. Both of the women are also smiling and the one who gave me the tour is repeating the word 'striking'. I have no idea what she is referring to, but I end up realizing that they are trying to figure out what the word means. I am getting ready to blurt out that its when you hit somebody, but she decides to look it up online.

Next comes my 'Ahh' moment... She reads the definition out loud and the guy looks at the Russian women and says "I mean it..."

Definition: attractive; impressive: a scene of striking beauty

"I mean it, you are striking" was his full sentence and he repeated the sentence again for good measure.

This leads me to question who is worse? The guy who said what was on my mind or me who just thought what the other guy said