Four Day Weekends Are FUN!

Where to start when wanting to recount the activities of a four day weekend? First up, a painful truth: Even four day weekends are eventually coming to an end. Good news, I will get a little break in tomorrow, since I will be off and actually there won't be another full working week for me in 2009 anymore. Sweet... Mmmmmh? ;-) We are not allowed to carry any vacation or comp time over to next year and since I am kinda running out of year, I have to take care of it. (It's a tough job, but someone has to do it!)

So what was going on over the weekend? It can be compiled in these handy categories sorted descending by the time spend on the matter: rest, food, training, health issues and shopping.

REST

It may seem to some people that I am getting older or less fun, but my highest priority for this long weekend was certainly to get as much rest in as possible. I averaged around 9 hours of solid sleep each night from Wednesday night to Sunday night. Not counting the nap I got in Friday on our way up to Charlotte to drive the course for Terry's marathon in two weeks. Also not counting the time I was dozing or relaxing in the bed or on the couch. Do I feel much better today for all the rest that I was getting in? Not really, but I sure would feel much worse if I hadn't kept a low profile over the weekend. More about the in the health issue section of this blog post.

FOOD

Hey, it was Thanksgiving weekend, so of course we have to talk about food! Over my handy Google Reader I am subscribed to all kind of health blogs, runner blogs etc and a quite a lot of the blog posts leading up Thanksgiving have been about advice not to undo a whole year of training over one day and NOT TO GO OVERBOARD with the food. I threw in my two cents about this last week too. I think I did fairly good considering all the circumstances. We had Thanksgiving lunch at Terry's sister and the food was deeeeeeeelicious. I can't remember how much I ate, but I do remember that I actually had leftovers for dinner again... I really didn't expect to even feel appetite that soon again. For the remainders of the weekend, I was fairly alright, but I think at one point, there was a McFlurry involved as a desert. Shame on me... Or what the heck... Live a little. Today, I was sabotaged once more my an endless supply of German chocolate in the office. Nobody else to blame but me, since no one is stuffing it into my mouth, I do that all my myself. At lunch, I got some really food into my stomach and that held of the chocolate rant for the remainders of the day... Kind of... At least a little.

TRAINING

Yesterday, I finished up my highest mileage running week in a long time... A little over 22 miles. I am feeling pretty good about how the running is coming along for the MB half. Even Terry said yesterday while we finished up a 5-miler, that if I keep running and improving like this, than I will actually give him a run for his money at the 2010 MTY Sprint Tri, which is the ultimate baseline between the two of us... He is already adding up where he needs to save the minutes in 2010 so he won't be defeated again! ;-) Honestly, I have no doubt in my mind, that he won't let me repeat my victory from 2009, but I am determined on making it as close as possible! Between Thursday and Sunday I had on tap: a run and a lower body workout, a trainer ride (it was sunny outside, but cold, so I chicked out) and another two runs. Not bad at all.

HEALTH ISSUES

A lot of my resting, eating and training was worked around my current sinus infection and a surprise-backstabbing-ankle-pain-attack. I have mentioned before that I am fighting with a head cold these days. By linking my previous blog post to this one, I just noticed that I am dealing with this mess for over two weeks now. Fortunately, it's still all in the head and not on the lungs which leads me to believe that I can train fairly normally. It just a constant cycle of headaches, sore throat and runny nose. It doesn't seem to be a full blown sinus infection, but it also doesn't go away. Since I am not a person that starts taking pills right away, I basically left the whole thing untreated... I mean, what can you do about a cold anyways. But over the weekend I broke down and got me a family pack of Emergen-C and Ricolas and pop and drink as much as I can get into my system. The extensive rest over the weekend sure helped to not make things worse, but unfortunately didn't make things much better either. This ongoing sinus stuff also leads me to the attitude right now, that I eat whatever I want because my body is fighting off an infection. I kinda doubt that German chocolate is a big help, I think I need to choose healthier foods in order to be able to justify this behavior reasonably! ;-)

A little surprising was the ankle pain. I was talking all the time about how happy I am that my knees and hips and back and everything else handles the mileage increase so good this time. I noticed that I had some pain in the inside of my right ankle, but just when touching it... It was just like some nerves were a little sensitive. Then I looked at my ankle Saturday night and it's all swollen up. What the heck?? I didn't have any pain in it that day, but I displayed that nice cankle. The next morning everything looked fine again, but in the early afternoon the swelling had returned. I ran my 5-miler and felt fine for the most part, only the last mile or so was a little painful. I put my ankle brace on over night and this morning it was back to normal, but the swelling came back over the day. We'll see how this little bugger is developing.

SHOPPING

I really didn't feel like participating in the Black Friday shopping frenzy, but my mom gave me a looooong shopping list and I kinda needed Christmas gifts, too. And there were tons of deals out there, but I sure didn't get up early early. We actually spend Black Friday on the couch, on the bike trainer (I did, while Terry was out for a run), in the car on the Charlotte marathon course and on our way back we stopped in Gaffney for dinner and some shopping. I am happy to report that I was able to get pretty much all the Christmas shopping out of the way over the weekend. Most of it Friday night and then we did another short trip yesterday and I thought I was all set until I got on the phone with my brother... Oh well, I am off tomorrow.

On another note... I really start getting excited about the trip to Germany now. Just another 17 days and we are OFF! ;-)