Day 2

Not Running was easy today. Staying Awake, more difficult. Man, I was sleepy all day. I finally gave in at lunchtime. Brian was home, so I slunked up to bed and slept for 2 solid hours. I probably could have slept more, but enough was enough. I think my body is shutting down. This healing process is exhausting!

I took Eddie for a 3-mile walk on mostly flat ground. (Hills give me trouble.) My ankle and shin were a little achy at the end and remained achy for most of the day. I iced it quite a bit and tried to keep stretching my calf.

I went grocery shopping in the Saturday crowds with all three kids. Pushing a loaded cart with one boy hanging off the side, another boy riding underneath and a girl tossing stuff in is an endurance event all by itself!

I looked in my book The Lore of Running by Tim Noakes.


He says that complete rest is not necessarily a good thing. His logic: any injury that heals during complete rest is likely to recur once you resume running, because your newly healed injury is not used to the stress of running. I can see his point. He recommends running to the point of discomfort and then stopping. I may try this in a couple of days. Run around and around the block until the first glimmer of pain. See how it goes.

But first I do think I need to stop everything for a while, get all the kinks out of my leg. Every muscle along the outside of my right leg from ankle to hip is knotty and tight. Not good.

I am trying to strengthen my core. Today I did a bunch of sit ups and push ups (hard to do with a four-year-old hanging on for the ride) and tried to do some pull ups. I can't even do one. Pathetic. When I was a kid I could do 50. Ten years ago I could do 3. Now I can barely pull myself half way up to the bar. So I pull myself up as far as I can and try to hold it for 10 seconds. This is tough.

One....two....three.....four..five..six.seven.eightnineten!

We have a chin up bar hanging above the basement steps. I'm going to keep at it until I can do 3 again. Brian says my arms are getting soft. Not flabby, he says, but soft. He never says stuff like that. (He knows which side his bead is buttered on!) Hmmmmm. I may have to go to the Y tomorrow and try some weights. This is a radical step for me. I hate lifting. All those lunky meatheads grunting and slamming scare me silly. We'll see.

Late in the afternoon we headed to East Beach in Watch Hill, RI, which is about 20 minutes from our house. We are not beach people, unfortunately. We are more mountain people. I had a long talk with Brian about moving to the mountains last night. We are going to start looking into it. We need a cool town with good schools for Brian (and possibly me) to teach in.

Burlington, VT anyone?

But we did go to the beach last evening because Hurricane Bob out in the Atlantic is kicking up some killer surf. (I had the good camera with me, so click on the photos to see them Really Big.)


We were greeted by an ominous No Swimming sign, but the lifeguard was letting people hang out in waist-high water. The waves were not Hawaii big, but they were incredibly strong and unrelenting. One after the other: Boom, Boom, BOOM. The undertow was fierce. You can see all of the foam in these pictures. This is not normal.

Brian is a big, strong guy and it was all he could do to stay upright in some of this surf.


Nell and Simon had a blast getting tossed and rolled in the shallow water. They want to go back again tonight.




Ben was content to stay by the surf's edge and play in the sand, even though castle after castle got washed away. I have never seen the tide come in as fast as it did during the hour-and-a-half we were there.