Really something along the lines of "ask and ye shall receive" would have been a more appropriate title for this week's post - I don't think I've cursed/insulted anyone and am now getting my comeuppance, anyway - but I like the phrase too much to not use it. I mean, the ominous connotations are just so at odds with the image used (also, fun fact for the curious: a variation on the phrase goes back at least as far as Chaucer. Check out the Parson's Tale, lines 620-622).
So, you might recall that last week I was wondering - and coming awfully close to complaining, almost - that there hasn't been enough pain in my training schedule. Well, that was obviously just tempting the fates, and this week I got what was coming to me. Early Thursday morning I set a water glass on a cutting board on the counter. Said cutting board is not really the best - it's made of hard plastic, and it's curved so that instead of resting securely on the counter it balances on its center, free to spin if there isn't enough to weigh it down. And clearly a water glass was not enough to weigh it down, because I accidentally bumped into it, sending the board spinning and the glass crashing to the floor. Thus far, all well and good. It's not like I was particularly attached to that glass, after all. However, in the process of sweeping up the pieces I somehow managed to step on a lovely little assortment of shards and splinters.
Well, after hopping up and down in surprise for a few seconds and subsequently making a bloody mess of my kitchen floor, I finished cleaning the remaining bits of glass off of the floor and then sat down to try to get the glass slivers out of my foot, and then went about the rest of my day. Unfortunately, I didn't get every last piece out, so at the end of the day when my foot still hurt really more than I thought it ought to I hobbled over to the health center to have a doctor pull the one remaining chip out. And you know what? "Clear glass is really hard to see when it's underneath the skin, so I'm going to have to just dig around in there and try to find any last pieces by feel" has now officially been added to my list of phrases I don't want to hear when I visit the doctor.
Moral of the story: I'm still not sure, so feel free to submit your opinions. "Never complain about a lack of pain", maybe? "Don't be so clumsy"? Good advice, but not really "moral of the story" material, I think. "Invest in a pair of slippers"? Feels a bit too specific, but it's got potential. Or perhaps just "get a better cutting board"? Prosaic, but possible...
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Monday:22.5 minutes on the erg...One and a half more minutes than last week, but a full extra kilometer of distance covered. A good, solid workout.
Tuesday:6 x 1000 meters, progressively faster.
Wednesday: 1 slow, warm-up mile, 4 faster miles, and 1 slower cool-down mile.
Thursday: The day I finally let The Coach down. My scheduled gym time spent at the health center, getting bits of glass out pulled out of my foot. Fun fun.
On Friday my foot was still bleeding a bit, and the coach said rest anyway, so I took the day off.
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Well, entirely separate from all injury-related talk, I'm very excited to have participated and be about to indulge in what has to be a particularly American form of excess. Tangentially, of course, I'm talking about the Superbowl party that I'll start heading over to in an hour or so. But specifically, I'm talking about the fact that I (along with one of my friends) just made a turducken!
I mean, first of all, I had been pretty sure that all earlier mentions of attempting this for today were jokes, but I was clearly wrong about that. Second, I had never de-boned poultry before, but one Julia Child's cookbook instructional page, several YouTube videos, a turkey, a duck, and a chicken later I've now had more than my fill of it. Between three different birds - which don't necessarily complement each other - and three different stuffings layered between or inside of each bird - which also don't necessarily complement each other - I have no real reason to expect this contrived, semi-mythological beast of a dish to actually taste good. But I feel like by taking part in the creation of it I've done something worthy, if also terribly excessive. As if, had ancient Greeks conceived of this dish, surely there would be a tradition of Homeric epics about their creation that I was now taking my place in.
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Saturday: 63 minutes on the stationary bike. My current plan is to guess how long a given day's run would take me, and then cross-train for one and a half times as long.
Sunday: 1 hour on the stationary bike, followed by 48 minutes on the elliptical. So, so very mind-numbingly boring. Seriously, if I'm still stuck cross-training instead of running a week from today, when under this scheme I'd have to cross train for almost 3 hours, I'll be very, very sad.
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Pair of kind of awesome things that happened to me this week: First, the professor for my Phase Transitions class explicitly referenced Ninja Cat while trying to explain some physics. Definitely not expecting that one. Second, on two separate and unconnected occasions in the last 7 days I had someone turn, look at me, and say "Mo' money mo' problems." One of them even did it with a straight face. I mean, if I've already said I wasn't expecting the Ninja Cat reference, I don't know how to even begin to explain how much this took me by surprise.
Current estimate of my odds of completing a marathon on May 1st: Well, I can't not decrease my odds after this week's happenings. Now, I still got some exercise in the last two days, so I'm not really the schedule yet. But I worry that if I'm stuck unable to run for more than a week or so my enthusiasm might start waning. So:74%
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Wow--the turducken is impressive! I have a moral for your story--but maybe just for me--
"your mom was right, even though she seemed like a crazy person, when she made everyone leave the room extremely carefully as soon as any glass was broken, checked their feet anyway, and came back and meticulously cleaned it up like hazardous waste before finally declaring the room safe again."
I really did think she was crazy until now, though, since I have never gotten cut by broken glass more than a paper cut type amount. Although, my sister did severely cut into her thumb in an incident involving glass, and I think her skin is still a bit uneven, but technically what cut her was the knife, and that is an other story.
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