It has been a while-Can you stand an update?

Good evening to all. Yes, it has been almost a week since my last post. Of course there are some of you who have gone a lot longer than that so don't crucify me yet!

Let me see . . . . what have I been doing over the last week?

After I finished lame on my last run, I decided to take a day or two of rest. I was heading to Vidalia, GA for work so as usual, I packed my running clothes. Before heading to Vidalia, I contacted Amy (her blog is linked to the right) and told her that I would be passing through Macon. She said that she'd love to get together so we arranged it on my return back to B'ham.

I traveled to Vidalia on Thursday. My buddy Larry Turner went with me. This is always fun, though not necessarilly a good thing. You see, Larry can be a bad influence on the FATMAN. On the way to Vidalia, we stopped off in McDonough, GA and played golf. I have not played in over a month and I have played terrible the last year or so. I mean REALLY terrible . . . mid 90s would be a great score. Anyway, we teed them up and before I knew it, I was striking the ball like a madman. I was hitting long drives . . . three of them over 300 yards. My irons were crisp but just a tad errant, and my putting was unbelievable-it seemed that the hole was the size of a garbage can. Bottom line was that I shot a 43-38 for an 81. Wow . . . I won't do that again for a long time!

Worked all day Friday and was wanting to run but after a full day at the plant on my feet in safety shoes on the concrete, it felt good just to go back to the hotel, have a beverage and take my boots off. Of course my buddy Larry encouraged me to run for about 2 minutes. After that, he was encouraging the beverages! It was good to just be a slug and sit around and complain about work, bosses, life, etc.

We worked Saturday for a half day. We had to go into the plant to go into some areas that are normally inaccessible during full power (Nuclear facility) but the dose rates go down during a down power (like this weekend). So we took advantage of it to go look at some things we needed to see. We picked up a few zoomies but not too bad and we were done by lunchtime. Of course, I needed to run but guess what? Larry wanted a rematch on the golf course since I had beaten him SO BADLY on Thursday. So we went to the golf course and met a friend of ours that lives down there. He's pipefitter foreman named Joby Toole and he's a decent golfer. We had a great time on Saturday afternoon just banging the ball around and stinking up the golf course. I AM NOT telling my score for that day!

Sunday we got up and started rolling toward Macon around 8 ish. I had spoken with Amy a couple of times while in Vidalia and we fine tuned our meeting. We were to meet with her and Troy at Cracker Barrel in Macon at 9:30 for breakfast. Needless to say, I was not sure what to expect but she was fun enough to talk to on the phone so I figured we could have breakfast. I had told her to bring Troy and we'd have a good time. Larry and I got to Cracker Barrel first and were sitting in the rockers, watching every couple come in, wondering if that was going to be them. However, I knew them in an instant. Strange . . . other than a picture I had nothing to go other than our blogs and emails but they felt like old friends. We went inside, ordered breakfast and chatted up a storm. An hour passed before we knew it and they were needing to head to church and we were needing to head to B'ham. I have to say that they are a very cute couple . . . high energy and they really seemed to get along great. I have invited them to come to B'ham as my guest to run in the Mercedes half-marathon Feb. 11. I hope you guys can make it! It was a great pleasure to finally meet you and I look forward to visiting with you whenever I come back through Macon!

Sometime Sunday night, I managed to screw up my back. Not the normal pain down low but up in between my shoulder blades near my neck. I could not turn my head or bend my neck forward or backward so I skipped my run on Monday.

Tonight I decided to run, regardless. First run since last Wednesday. Man do I feel like a fatty! I strapped on the MP3 player, put on the wind vest and took off. It felt good to be out there-at least for the first mile. Then my left calf started hurting. Not enough to make me quit running but enough to make me notice it and alter my stride. WHAT IS THE DEAL?!!! Anyway, I ran into Shelly and decided that I'd just run easy and try to run through or around the pain. It hurt but not enough to make me stop. Shelly and I ran together for about 3 1/2 miles. It was fun to catch up with her since we haven't spoken for a couple of weeks. We shared stories about the holidays and of course she's curious about how things are going with Susan and me. Basically, we "girl talked" for around 30 minutes which was fine with me. It is always fun and interesting to run with Shelly. She and Keith have about the same age difference as Susan and I, and I like to get her perspective on things sometimes. We still have not gotten together as couples but we want to and we're planning on something over the next few weeks.

I hope that this hasn't been to blabby or girlie but I just didn't have that much running going on. I hope that I get the calf thing figured out soon. I am going to concentrate more on my stretching. I am also going to ice and use Blue Emu.

BTW . . . Susan appreciates the encouragement and it is making her run more! Good job Susan!