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I just got back from my physical therapist checkup.  I’ve been running a few days a week, but still getting some calf tightness.  The PT staff asked me how my legs were feeling and then placed me back in the foot pressure sensors and had me perform some walking.  I’m still not where they would like to be from a pressure distribution standpoint.  Mark, the main PT recommended that I should get orthotics since we weren’t getting rid of my problems with exercises alone (definitely some improvement, but apparently not enough).  To create a mold for the orthotics, he pushed my feet into what looked like a shoe box filled with a blue dense foam.  I go back in about two weeks to get the orthotics.  Hopefully they will reduce my injuries and get me back to running full-time.

I spent most of today helping support my friend Jon as he ran in the “Blues Cruise 50k” trail ultra-marathon today.  I took about 500 pictures and have started uploading them to smugmug.  It will probably take until tomorrow to get them all uploaded.  You can view the gallery here.

The race was really well managed and the weather was fantastic .  Jon cut 35 minutes off his time from last year.   Way to go Jon!

I’m happy to report I’ve been running four out of the last five days.  Nothing crazy, all the runs have been between 2.5 and 3.5 miles at a very easy pace.  I’m still feeling a slight amount of tightness in my left calf, so I am making sure to pay attention to stretching.  I go back to my PT on Monday morning for a checkup.

Saturday morning Nate and I are heading to the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail to do a biking loop.

At the crack of dawn on Sunday I’m heading up to Blue Marsh Lake near Reading to help support my friend Jon, who is running the “Blues Cruise 50k” (31.1 miles for the metric impaired), a trail race around the lake.   He ran this last year and I really enjoyed watching the race.  Despite the very long distances that get covered ultra-marathons definitely have a much more laid back vibe and a lot more comraderie than most of the shorter races.

I went over to PennDOT today and ran 3.5 miles in about 32 minutes.  My legs felt fine during the run, but I could definitely tell my heart was working fairly hard to run 9 minute miles. I’ll definitely back off the pace a bit on Tuesday, the next time I am running.  I think some of the work I did at the PT is paying off, I could feel I was pushing off the toes/ball of my feet more than I remembered in the past.

Later  in the afternoon I drove over to the Conewago trail to get a moderate bike ride in.  I went out to the 8 mile mark and turned around, riding for about an hour and fifeteen minutes in total.  I plan on incorporating a lot of biking into my fitness routine which will hopefully allow me to ramp back up quicker than just running alone.

I just read a column where Suze Orman answered readers’ questions on the Freakonomics blog.  I think her advice in general is pretty solid (although I admit I don’t really like to watch her TV show because of some of her mannerisms).

I finished my 12th visit at the physical therapist’s office this morning.   I am cleared to run on my own now and will just go back in two weeks for a check-up visit.  I’ve ran 3 of the last 4 days in a row (2.75 miles on my own in New Jersey on Tues and then 2.5 and 2.75 at the PT on Thurs/Fri).  I’m definitely going to be taking it slow on my buildup.

At the physical therapist’s office today they had me run 2 miles on the treadmill after my usual set of exercises and walking drills.  That combined with my 1.5 mile runs on Mon and Wed give me my first 5 mile week in a month.  I felt pretty good and they said my form looked the best it has been.  They also put the pressure sensors in my shoes and had me do some walking.  While my pressure distribution patterns are nowhere near perfect, they are much better than when I first came into the PT office a month ago.  I’m also going to be away on vacation for part of next week and I’m finally cleared to run a mile and half or two on my own every other day for now.  After about 2000 leg drills it is really nice to see some tangible benefits!

I got a Wii Fit on Tuesday and it has been a lot of fun.  I am mostly interested in using it to help work on my (relatively poor) balance.  So far I’ve used it for about 90 minutes, usually 10-20 minutes at a time.

The package consists of a board (looks kind of like a low aerobic step) that contains pressure sensors and a wireless transmitter that can talk to your Wii and a Wii Fitness CD.

The Wii Fit offers games and exercises that focus on the following areas:

• Strength
• Yoga
• Balance
• Aerobic

Having the sensors in the balance board that provide real-time feedback on how you are distributing your weight is pretty cool.  I really liked doing exercises like balancing on one leg and being able to view how stable I am on each side, or finding out that in my normal standing pose my weight is distributed 45%/55% (definitely something to work on).  The main thing I don’t like is the corny antics that your Mii goes through after a challenge (such as hanging the head in shame or bursting with joy after a poor or great performance). Also, the information screens that pop-up before a game or exercise are useful the first time or two, but after that it came seem a bit tedious to have to click through the same messages each time you play something.  Besides the nitpicks,  I think the Wii Fit is a worthwhile purchase if you are looking for something to add a little variety into your workouts.

If you are interested, you can watch some videos on how most of the exercises and games are played on the Wii Fit website.

Update: If you are looking for the results, they are posted on the timing company’s website.

I went out to watch the Harrisburg Half-Marathon this morning.  Up until last night I was thinking about volunteering, but my stomach was feeling a bit wonky so I thought it would be safer just to be a spectator.  I ended up taking about 240 pictures, which I tried posting on Flickr, but ran into the limits on their free accounts.  I have now purchased an account on a photo site called Smug Mug, you can see all my Harrisburg Half pictures here.  I was able to upload all the full-sized images, so you should be able to access them directly.  If you find any photos you like, feel free to save them (or you can order prints from Smug Mug, I didn’t set any price so you just have to cover Smug Mug’s costs).

I would appreciate a blog comment or email of your name and bib number if you find yourself in any photos, it is nice to be able to associate a person with their picture at future races.

I really enjoyed the race atmosphere and cheering people on, I’m hoping I’ll be in a position to run the race next year.

Marcus and Dave around mile 5

Extra google bait: Harrisburg Half Marathon halfmarathon race pictures photographs pics

Had another PT visit this morning.  I still have a small amount of a knot in my calf which was worked on (it doesn’t hurt unless I do place enough of a workload on my calf to stress a lot of the muscle fibers). After doing my usual set of exercises, they had me run a mile on the treadmill (I self-selected an 8:34/mile pace), and I didn’t have any pain (but was definitely breathing heavy).  In general my form looked pretty good, although I still need to concentrate some on reducing my leg cross-over while running.I was feeling good enough that I asked to run another half mile and since I was holding together ok, they let me do it.

If I continue to improve next week I’m hoping I’ll be able to start running on my own.