My Nipples Are Out of Shape

Even though I've always been too busy to post every few days, I still feel kinda guilty that this is my first post about my running in almost a month and a half.  To my credit, I did spend a fair amount of effort last month putting together an interview with a local running celebrity who ran in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

Part of my reason for not posting much had to do with me taking some time off from running thanks to a hip flexor injury that had me sidelined for the month of January. Like most running injuries, it can be attributed to too much intensity, not enough rest/recovery.

Starting last week, I eased back into running even though I can tell I'm not 100% healed. Just 3 miles last Monday as I wanted to see how the hip felt the rest of the day. I ran 6 miles on Tuesday, then 8 on Thursday. I had been keeping up on cardio so I didn't feel out of shape. However, it's impossible to stay in running shape when you're not running, so my muscles did get sore despite my workout's lack of distance or speed. Saturday I went to the gym where I ended up running 12 miles, and riding a stationary bike 22 miles. It was at this point where I looked at my shirt and saw my right nipple had been bleeding.  I can't remember the last time my nipple bled after only 12 miles (I don't think ever). Usually a 20 miler gives me a 50/50 shot at being blood free without Body Glide. I guess as my running goes, so do my nipples.

Another reason for being absent on the blog front lately is because I've been working on my blog behind the scenes. I won't go into too much detail at this point because I've still got a kink or two to work out; I'll dedicate a whole other post to it soon, but I have been developing a Running Blog Database (See the tab menu item). The easy part was getting it set up and programming the webpage for it. The time consuming part is populating it with as many running blogs as I can find. That might be a never ending task. I got the idea for it because sometimes I have difficulty remembering which blogger belongs to which blog when I try to look them up. Hopefully, other bloggers will find as many practical uses for it I I do and bookmark it.

Last but not least, Jill sponsored a popular Secret Santa gift exchange over the holidays and this is my first opportunity to blog about it.  Besides being 2 Slow 4 Boston, I'm also 2 slow to post about a Christmas exchange before January ends.  I wasn't sure beforehand if I was even going to post about the exchange, but turns out my Secret Santa really hooked me up and I felt it deserved mentioning.  Johann from across the pond in South Africa was my personal Santa. I found out that the South African mail system is about as screwed up as our political system, seeing as how it took the package almost a month to reach me. Johann sent me a Comrades Marathon hat, a South African edition of Runner's World, and a microfibre towel.

Gifts from Johann

One thing I found fascinating about reading a Runner's World from another continent was their different use of the English language, along with different units of measure.  Below I took a snapshot of one example where they used kilojoules to indicate how much energy is supplied.  I had to look it up but 1 calorie equals 4.1806 kilojules.

Excerpt out of Runner's World's South Africa edition.

Now that I've got a Comrades Marathon hat, I feel an urge to run the race.  It would be a good challenge.

Thanks Johann for the
Christmas presents!