My little running partner

Kona and I had a great run together today. Just a short one, about two miles around the trails between campus and the community center. She was such a trooper and stayed right by my left leg the whole way. Well...except when one couple on the trail scared the living daylights out of her. It's interested to have a dog tethered around one's waist when the dog just stops dead. No idea what scared her so much, but that was our only incident! Good little Konagirl...

Found time!

Every Monday morning, I supervise exercise sessions at work from 8-9 and 10-12. Today on my way to the 8:00 class, I realized that no one would be attending the class. Bah - I could have slept in! My original plan was to run one lap of the XC trail during my free hour at 9. That would give me plenty of time to change into my running clothes, run, and get myself cleaned up before the 10:00 class.

Well, with the found time I decided to run two laps of the trail instead - six miles instead of three. It was damn cold. It took two miles for my muscles to really feel warmed up, and even then I was still cold. The first lap was pretty good, after five miles my left IT band quit. Half the time it seems like no matter what I do, that IT band issue is always going to be around. Sometimes I'm cool with that, other times not so much. Today I'm cool with it, even though it meant taking the elevator all day because going downstairs hurt too much.

Running like that, before work, feels good. It's good to go supervise that exercise class, knowing I've already done my exercise for the day.

The last few months...

Here's an update, since it has been forever since I last wrote anything.

First - the stress fracture that wasn't. That's right, it wasn't. After five weeks on crutches, I finally got in for a MRI. A MRI that came back completely clean. Imagine the frustration! Eventually I rationalized that, had I continued running, I might have wound up with a fracture anyway...but wow, five weeks. During that time off I missed the Nittany Valley Half Marathon, which I've since heard is an excellent race. As sad as I am to have missed it, I think I'm going to mark it off the list for this year, too. No more road races for me. At least, no more long road races.

Second - new job! I don't want to post too much about work on here, but I just have to say that I'm a million times happier now than I was two months ago. The new job started at the beginning of January, and one month into it, I'm sure I made the right decision. This job allows me a great deal more autonomy and I don't have a boss constantly looking over my shoulder. Despite my previous supervisor's attempts to convince me that I would absolutely fail in this type of position, things are going great. I do my work, and if a problem comes up I go to either a study coordinator or the big boss and take care of it. No problem. Sorry, former boss lady, looks like I can survive without you.

Third - Kona girl. For some reason I haven't posted about my darling little girl before this! The horror! Kona is a 9 month old border collie/pointer mix who joined our little family back in July, at a mere 10 weeks of age. She has grown like a weed from approximately 10-15lbs when she joined us to right around 50lbs now. Her socialization has gone really well as we have really made an effort to expose her to people, and now that she is old enough, other dogs at the dog park. We make a trip to the dog park at least 4 times per week allowing her to run and play to her heart's content; and when we get home, she passes out on the couch, all played out. There are so many other things I could say about the girl, but I'll leave it at this for now.