Hooray for running again

First run tonight in over a month. Took to the streets, and ran 3 miles (per Garmin) in 21:59. But it was tough, far harder than it should have been, even if I account for the near-freezing temp and the headwind. I've lost a lot more than I thought in the last month. Hopefully it comes back fairly quickly.

It never rains but it pours

No posting for the last couple of days because I have been tackling a recurring problem - our basement is flooding. Not huge, build an Ark kind of flooding, but there are areas of standing water when the snow is melting or the rain pours for a day or so. So, I have to move everything around, waterproof as much as I can, repaint as much as I can, etc. And, since I don't want to empty the basement first, I have to do the whole project in sections. This takes extra time.

Anyway, I lost a lot of time today, because this morning, our TV gave up the ghost, and completely lost picture. We went shopping for a replacement, and went with an upgrade. Bigger screen, not nearly as deep, and I no longer have to do that whole "Unplug the DVD player inputs to plug in the Wii" routine. Expensive, but nice.

Sick and tired of being sick

The lung crud is mostly gone, now I have to deal with some sinus infection. Blerg. The son is also sick - I kept him home from preschool today, and he basically slept all afternoon. Daughter is a little sick too, but she is mostly over it, I think.

Someday soon I get to start running again. I hope.

One of those nights

Or, technically, mornings. The daughter has some sort of stomach flu, the son has been getting up early, like before 6 am. So, last night, she had to be changed at midnight (normally, she gets through the night okay, without any worry of diaper leakage). Get her taken care of, and the son comes out of his room to get a drink and demonstrate his latest potty-related skill. (He's a boy, and fond of waterfalls. You figure it out.) He does this twice in a 20 minute period. Then, about 2 am, he comes to our room, with a nosebleed. My wife helps get him cleaned up, while I change his bed, check all the toys etc for blood, and calm him down. I let her go back to sleep, then stay up with him for the better part of an hour until he falls back to sleep. At 5 am, the daughter wakes up, needing fluids and a new diaper.

Nothing in over a month

And I am almost referring to my running. I managed a couple of runs during this last month, but I spent a lot of time simply trying to expel my lungs from my body. I'm finally getting better, thanks to some intense antibiotics and some wonderful codeine-based elixir, but I probably won't be running for another couple of days.

But, that's not a big deal, since my next race got canceled. Yep, the Trailbreaker Marathon got cancelled, which is kind of a shame. So, I am revisiting my schedule, and considering trying to run the Lake Geneva Marathon about a month before the Sunburst. Lake Geneva is supposed to be tough, and the remarks on MarathonGuide seem to bear it out:

On race day there was not one indication of where the start line was! There was NO spectators. I felt like I was running a neighborhood 5k. The course was nice for the first 5 miles, but out in the middle of nowhere for the rest of the race. NO miles markers anywhere!!! The hills were killer. Over all very disappointed and won't run in again.

I realize I'm a bit touched in the head, but that actually sounds kind of fun. They have a course map available as a .pdf, so I might download it and enter the route onto gmaps pedometer or something, just to judge the hills.