Dobovedo's Journal of Journeys

Once again weeks have gone by without any blogs, but this time I have a good reason. I haven’t done anything. It’s not just that I haven’t done anything worth writing about: that never stopped me before. I really haven’t done much “training” at all. Over the past three to four weeks, I have found myself dealing with worse and worse plantar fasciitis, and this time it’s in both feet. First it was a twinge in the left arch, which was minor and I was trying to nip it in the bud early, but then it came on in the right heel, and with a vengeance. Over compensating for the left foot maybe? I don’t know, but the more I tried to fix it, the more both of them got worse.

I have since found out that trying to recover in both feet is about ten times harder than recovering from just one or the other.

Read more on Cycling = Good; Running = Stupid; SOS = DNS…

On Thursday a post went up on the WNC Cycling message board: ride to Waterrock Knob – noon Friday. The weather forecast was iffy at best, so there was a good chance it wouldn’t happen. Regardless… some of us have day jobs, no matter where they do them from, and I wasn’t free to do a Friday noon ride. So I posted a response saying that I was going to try the same thing on Saturday, also depending on the weather. The forecast late Friday night was for highs in the upper 40s and 50% chance of rain. I posted that if the radar looked good, I would be leaving from the bike shop at 1pm. Saturday morning the conditions hadn’t changed, and the radar showed a big green cell in eastern Tennessee, but I was stubborn and decided to give it a shot.

It should come as no surprise that nobody joined me.

Read more on So Maybe It’s Not Spring… Yet…

So I managed to go an entire winter of record cold temps and record snowfalls and I live only 25 miles from a ski slope and I never went once. I thought about it many times, but never actually managed to make the time. When the weather sucks, Cataloochee typically has to close because the road up to the place is steep and treacherous. When the weather doesn’t suck, well… I ride bikes and/or run. Or I headed into Asheville for one of dozens of various social activities. I was also too cheap to fork over even the relatively low price of $22 for a weekday night ski pass, since I usually don’t make too many runs when I ski. I’ve usually got my legs trashed just enough that I get sore and/or tired quickly and even though I can handle Intermediate and some Advanced slopes, I’m not willing to risk injuries by skiing on tired legs. So.. I’ve never been to Cataloochee, but when they offered a one day, super discounted 2010-2011 weekday/night pass for only $169, what did I do?

I bought one of course!

Read more on Spring Is Here; Time To… Ski?…

Not much to report training wise, but I did post some snowstorm photos taken over the past days to the gallery.

On Tuesday I woke up with the dreaded scratchy throat. It wasn’t all that dreaded at first, because I’ve been waking up with a scratchy throat on and off for weeks now. It’s a winter thing. Dry indoor air. Sinuses. Whatever. Only this time it didn’t go away after I’d been up for awhile. It stuck around all morning, in the same annoying barely-there condition. As the afternoon progressed though, I became convinced hat this was definitely the beginnings of a real cold.

Well it’s about damned time!

Read more on Squeezin’ One In Before The Sneezin’ Begin…

Every few weeks or so I come up with a new source of pain or discomfort. And shortly thereafter I come up with a host of theories as to the cause of said pains and discomforts. With running, it has a lot to do with shoes. Except it could be hills. But it could be the shoes.

Or is it the recliner?

Read more on It’s Not The Shoes, It’s The Recliner, Stupid…

I have always HATED it when I have to go into the office early for some reason. Not just because I am naturally a night owl, but because bad things always seem to happen that really have nothing to do with sleep schedules. This time in particular the bad thing happened on the way to lunch with coworkers. I was driving up the street from the office. Got to the end of the road and turned right. At the next intersection I had this anti-zen-like momentary-lapse-of-reason where I got thinking about turning left out of habit – the way I used to go home, and turning right which I intended – the way to the restaurant I was supposed to be going to.

In that briefest of moments I managed to roll into the middle of the intersection.

Read more on Early Mornings Suck…

To say I was a little bit nervous about today’s 14 mile Friday Night Runs would be a huge understatement. After last week’s horrible 8 miler and subsequent miserable walk through downtown Philly and subsequent abandonment of the Livestrong ride, I was beginning to think some seriously dark thoughts about Ironman.

Amazing what a change of shoes can do for your perspective – and pain level.

Read more on It’s The Shoes, Stupid…

Gonna combine multiple posts into a big long one. It’s been a truly hectic week, but I have managed to stay on top of my ‘training’. Training? Running is training – sorta. Swimming (when I do it) is training – definitely.

But, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t think of riding a bike as anything but fun for the sake of fun. Even when it hurts.

Read more on A Move & Training x3…

Hmm… is it a coincidence or a sign that the exact number of days that I ‘lived’ at Sawbuck Farm was 30. Like the song, 30 days in the hole. What’s that Spinal Tap song… [I'm livin' in a] “Hell Hole”. The biggest question I have, and will have for the rest of my life is…

What the hell was I thinking with that Sawbuck Farm nonsense?

Read more on 30 Days In The Hole…

Today I finally mananged to get up to Waynesville to check out the pool at the rec center. Quite the facility, for such a small town/county/region. For my purposes, only the pool is of real interest, and that is probably the best part. Basically it’s an 8 lane 25 yard pool, that is set up pretty much entirely for lap swimming. A second pool for recreation (meaning ‘kiddies’ is adjacent, and this is where all the people were. It’s really more of an indoor water park with fountains and jets and waterfalls, etc.

Which I have zero interest in, other than it meant I had a lane to myself. Three of them actually.

Read more on A Swim @ Waynesville Rec…

I’ve pretty much decided that I’m moving again. It’s not quite been a month yet, but it’s been long enough to realize that I didn’t quite land where I wanted to land.

I got close though.

Read more on It’s A Nice Place To Visit……