Saturday, June 30, 2012

Yep - I've got a virus on my foot!


by Rachel

Ah... nature.
 


Being one with nature, feeling the breeze on your face, smelling the fresh air...

Hearing the waves crash, feeling sand between your toes, feeling the pain of plantar warts as you take a step...

Um, something here doesn't belong...

Seriously, who wants warts? Anyone? I don't even like saying the word, much less having the dang things on my foot...

Over the last 6 weeks, I have had a small area on my foot which at first I thought was a bruise from running in minimalist shoes on a rocky trail, or some kind of bruise/blister from running barefoot on the beach - but it never went away. So I finally went to the doctor this week and he diagnosed it - plantar warts.

Let me just say that I attribute this 100% to walking and/or running around barefoot. And while I will not stop walking/running barefoot just because of this, I WILL admit that being barefoot does run its risks. People can say all they want that we were meant to be barefoot and running barefoot is more natural; whatever reasons you may have for being outside barefoot, you can't deny that there are risks. I can certainly avoid rocks and glass, but how in the world am I going to avoid walking over a virus??

Like I said, this won't stop me from going barefoot in the future. I am 33 and it's the first time I've had plantar warts - I'd say that's not too shabby, really. I thought about whether to post about this, because - well, it's just kinda gross? But I think it's useful for people to know that being barefoot is not all wonderful, back to nature, awesomeness. 
 
What do you think - gross? weird? TMI? totally awesome?

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Tri Training Week 9/10

by Rachel

I've been wracking my brain to try and figure out what to say - how to justify to myself that it's OK to give up your training plan - how to feel good about "giving up" - and wrap it all in nice sentiments and pretty words...

After I was forced to take a break from my training plan due to my rib injury, I stopped. I stopped caring about my training plan, stopped caring about making sure to get in a lot of workouts, I stopped doing strength training completely, stopped swimming... I am now so far disconnected from my training plan that I have decided to stop working towards my training plan.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Tri Training Week 8


by Rachel

I have been splitting up my training into 4-week chunks. This is the last week of what I called Base 2 - which means a recovery week - 8.5 hours total. This was also the second week after I bruised my ribs - so I was slowly trying to get back into my workouts without pushing too hard. I did not do any Strength Training, Yoga, or Swimming - because I didn't want to aggravate my ribs, and I also just felt like taking it easy.

Come to find out, I still met my weekly goal!

On another note, this week I made it to 1000 miles on my bike!
I took it in to Performance Bike to get free adjustments - and they even cleaned up my chain for me!