Small Victory

     So Sunday morning the dogs decided we had slept in enough and woke us up around 9:30am.  Yes that is early to us when we get a chance to sleep in!  We let the dogs out (woof woof woof) to do their business and I noticed how nice it was out, so I asked Mandy if she wanted to go for a walk.  I have been jonesing to do something active, but the fear of getting out to soon and re-injuring this damn knee has kept me from doing anything.  Luckily Mandy said yes and so we got ready and headed out on the bike path.  It was just a short 30min walk but while we were out Mandy pushed me to jog a little.  To tell you the truth I was a little apprehensive but decided to give it a shot.  I went a little bit more than 100 yards and slowed to a walk and stop to wait for Mandy who decided to jog up to where I was.  Mandy doesn’t run so I was so proud of her for doing it.  We continued on our walk and we both jogged two more times at 100 yards each time.  In total it wasn’t much, but it felt like a victory to me and was enough pain free running to get my confidence up.

     When we got back to the house we got ready and hopped on the Harley and headed to a small car show and motorcycle swap meet going on during Ohio Bike Week in Sandusky, Ohio.  After running into a few people I knew there that didn’t recognize me due to my weight loss, which felt really good, we headed out on the bike for a little while taking the long way home. 

     After we got home we relaxed for a couple hours before I made some BBQ chicken on the grill.  We had free tickets to a Toledo Mud Hens baseball game and we wanted to minimize spending to much money on food at the game so we sat down and ate about 20 minutes before we left.  It had gotten a little warmer out but it was so nice we decided to stick with the bike to take downtown instead of the car.  We got to the park picked up our tickets from the box office and headed in.  Free tickets usually means bad seats but it turned out we had decent seats, about 5 rows up down the 3^rd base line.  The picture doesn't do it justice, it felt a lot closer than it looks.

     Mandy got a beer, I got water and of course we got the must have at any ball game, stadium peanuts.  Unfortunately it wasn’t a great game, it was kind of dragging on but there was two times when each team had the bases loaded and the play got a little exciting.  We decided to head out early which was fine because the hens ended up getting their butts kicked 7-1.

     After we got home we popped in a movie and chilled out till bed.  I told Mandy I decided to try a run in the morning.  She though it was a good idea and I chose to do a short 2 mile out and back on the trail at a super slow pace.  Fast forward to 5:30am, still a little dark out so I put on my headlamp and red strobe butt lamp and headed out.  I kept the pace nice and easy around 11 min per mile avg.  When I got to the last tenth of the first mile I slowed to a walk and made my U-turn to head back.  I slowly picked up the pace back to that 11 min mile avg.  I was concentrating so hard on my knee just waiting for it to start to hurt.  A couple of times I thought my knee was going to start giving me issues and I just kept saying, please no pain please no pain, over and over but the pain never came.  I reached the finish and was so happy that I made it without any pain, now I just hope that trend continues.  

     As of now my next attempt will probably be Wednesday or Thursday morning, that all depends on the weather.  We have plans Wednesday morning but if the rain washes that out then a run it is.