Ankled Again!

It sure seemed innocent enough. As our girls' XC race was nearing its conclusion, I was jogging/shuffling back to near the finish line. Somehow, I caught a patch of terrain that was like a "gutter" and my ankle flexed much like your wrist would when it's bent back too far. I kept on shuffling and it seemed a little sore, but seemed fine.

I wake up this morning and it was REALLY sore and stiff. Not another ankle! This time the right ankle. I tried it out for my run today, which was supposed to be 2 x 5 miles at marathon pace. Yeah. That didn't happen. After my first few strides, I thought about just turning around and going home. But, I hobbled on it up to my favorite place when I have sore body parts - the turf at our local high school's track/football stadium. I hobbled up a 9+ minute mile to the track then decided to try to break up and do some 1-mile intervals on the turf to see what the ankle could do.

Here's what it looked like as I wore a path in around the football field. According to the GPS, Coach A was right - 5 laps do equal just over a mile.

First one...7:29. Still kind of stiff on the ankle, but better than that 9:00 pace

Second one...7:25. Felt like I couldn't possible go any faster, but determined to try to pick it up on the next one

Third one...6:25. Finally started to feel a smoother stride. Decided to go for 6:00 on the next one...

Fourth one...5:39. Okay. The only thing limiting me was more muscle and lung fatigue.

The ankle's healed, right? Wrong. I go to jog home from the track and just the difference in the turf and the road made it agitated and I hobbled home in 9:25 pace. So, some icing, compression, and manipulating of the ankle in hopes of it being ready for Sunday's Great Race. This one doesn't seem as bad, though, considering it was more of a "jam" instead of a "roll" or "twist." We shall see over the next few days I suppose.

Cross Country is going well again. Both our boys and girls teams are ranked in the top 10 in the state. They need to keep up the great work and stay strong over the final 5 weeks.

In other news, the Pirates had an EPIC collapse over the last 6 weeks. I thought it may be entertaining to see, as of Friday, September 7th, which local sports team will accrue the most number of wins in the rest of 2012. Here's the current Standings:

1. Pirates - 4 wins (with 8 games to go)
2. Pitt - 2 wins (with 8 games to go)
t2. Penn State - 2 wins (with 8 games to go)...assuming no more wins get vacated
4. Steelers - 1 win (with 13 games to go)
5. Penguins - 0 wins (with what was SUPPOSED to be 38 games to go in 2012...but there's that whole lockout thing)

Can the Pirates hold off the other teams...

Raise the....

...White Flag on the Pirates' season (I wish I was saying Raise the Jolly Roger instead). I conceded the year after Sunday's defeat against the Cubs. They have gone on and lost four more in a row for good measure. The funny part is that they are still only 3 games out of a wild card spot. A little win streak would be them right back in it but that would be hard to believe at this point.

In other news, amazing athlete and all-around good guy Ben completed his first Ironman distance race in sub-10 hours. He was drafting it yesterday so it may be getting posted soon. Kim also had a great day there!

Cross country is off to a great start. In the first big invitational of the year, we racked up a couple of runner-up spots on the boys and girls. It's just a matter of keeping the effort and hard work as we work towards making it to the state meet. We did have some crazy horizontal rain just before the girls' JV race started. The winds were so fierce that it snapped our tents.

My training has been moving along. The ankle issue seems to have gone away. My mileage is back up in the 60's with last week hitting 72. I had a real good 25+ mile run on the Pittsburgh marathon course last Sunday. My pace was right around my "PR" of 3:14. It's amazing what a little cooler weather can do. The Great Race is coming up in a few weekend and then October 21st I'll be in Columbus.