Trees and Quads and Training Ramblings...

Had a great first week of training last week. I got in all the runs I wanted, even if it meant doing it into the wee hours of the morning. My job and family keeps me pretty busy throughout the day time hours each day, so getting a run in at 12:30 am isn't out of the ordinary for me.

Yesterday (Sunday that is), I had a full day of family and friends. I'm working on a project with a friend of mine who just so happens to be the admin for BuckeyeOutdoors.com, which is an online site for tracking workouts and a LOT more. We are diligently working on creating a plug in for SportTracks that will allow users to sync their workouts and other information with his site. Believe it or not, we've gotten pretty far already, and it's looking like it's going to be a pretty successful plug in. For anybody that uses SportTracks, you may consider signing up for BuckeyeOutdoors.com if you don't already have an online training log. I like all of the blog sidebar options that the site has to offers and it's a very "team" oriented site that promotes running communities and so forth. It's just a very cool site, and I'm happy to now be a small part of it.

As I've mentioned before, I've been an avid user of online training logs. I use multiple computers through out each day, so having all of my training stuff on one machine just isn't an option for me; my logs have to be online. Not only that, but I want them to have lots of options. BuckeyeOutdoors is my final resting stop; I'll be here until Ben sells the site, or my legs fall off and I quit running. I have my full training log on there now (from CoolRunning and RunnersWorld). The feature list of BuckeyeOutdoors site exceeds that of the others. Not only that, but Ben (the admin) is a really smart guy and he doesn't let to many feature requests get past him without giving each of them some effort. It was great to brainstorm with him on my whiteboard about how this thing is going to work. The plan is to make it as transparent to the user as possible, and with my .NET knowledge and his knowledge of PERL, we're moving right and it's going a lot easier than I had originally thought. Look for the plug in to be finished sometime this summer...

So anyway, after Ben and his family left, I helped my two brother in laws cut down a tree on the older brother's property. This involved me climbing 30 feet up into a tree with my chainsaw and dangling like a monkey with my arms stretched out cutting limbs off. I found myself twisting and flexing my body out horizontally at times to cut limbs off that were almost out of reach. Not only was it fun, but it was a hell of a work out. Of course, once the tree was down, we had to cut it up into firewood and carry the remains to the burn pile. I knew it was going to wear me out, but I love doing this type of work. Plus, it was sunny, we were working by his pond, and it gave me a chance to climb around in a tree like a monkey.

After the tree climbing excursion, I went and put in a 6 mile run on the bike path. It was a great run and I really got to enjoy the weather. I've been couped up in my basement working on some work related stuff (my next post), so I hadn't really had a chance to get out and run outdoors much last week. This run was awesome and I vowed to myself, that I won't rely on my treadmill so much anymore (especially since summer is almost here). By the time I got back to my car, it was pushing 8:30pm, so I headed home and relaxed the rest of the night.

Today (or Monday), my quads were killing me all day and I couldn't figure out why. I didn't let them slow me down, but man they hurt. It reminded me of my post marathon pains (only not so severe). I tried to blame it on my 6 mile run, but... no! The only thing I could think that caused the muscle to strain this much was maybe from climbing around in that tree and flexing every-which way for almost an hour, then hauling firewood and brush for another hour or so. While I was doing the work, I didn't think it was so bad, but today made me rethink the whole job and I guess I'm not as invincible to tree service work as I used to be. My 3 miler today helped a bit, but I still feel the strain in my right quad as I type this.

So there you have it, 3+ hours of brain work, 2+ hours of intense core workout, and 6 miles of cardio. The moral of this post is... there is no moral to this post.