Trying to stay inside as much as possible

Winter has finally arrived to Denver.  We got hit with a cold spell Tues night and we've been hoovering around 0 degrees (F) ever since.  Its beautiful with fresh snow and blue skies, but it is COLD.

To complicate my life, I whacked my right pinky toe on the coffee table Sunday night.  I didn't think I hit it that hard - it really didn't hurt that night.  But Monday morning when I was getting ready for swim practice, I put on my work shoes (as opposed to old running shoes) and couldn't take 3 steps.  Crapola.  Probably broken.  And I've got a 10k in a week (that I still need to register for) and ski season.  Right now, I can't fathom putting this toe in a ski boot.

toes are so ugly.  its hard to tell, but I had a DARK purple bruise.  Probably worse
than my CDA toe. also: you can still see my surgery scars

I ended up swapping my Tues and Thurs workouts around so I could put off my run until Thursday and give my toe a chance to de-swell.  I've also been wearing my bright pink Brooks PureFlows to work because they're the only shoes that have a wide enough toe box.  Not exactly classy with work clothes - or warm.  But it was either that or no shoes.

Yesterday my toe felt good enough to try running.  I ended up hitting the gym treadmill because it was maybe 5 degrees out and I didn't want to freeze-burn my lungs.  I ran last year in ~10 deg temps, and while it was AWESOME at the time, the next day I was hacking and wheezing like I was a lifetime smoker.  So this year, I'm going to try and be a bit smarter and run inside when its cold.  I also didn't think it was a good idea to run on slick surfaces with a potentially broken toe.  See, I'm trying to get smarter.

I am completely out of my routine for going to the gym for non swim practice type things.  I put my clothes on at home, grabbed a water bottle, got my gym ID out of my gym bag and headed out the door.  When I got to the gym, I realized I forgot my MP3 player at home and that my headband (to control hair whisps) was in my gym bag, which was also at home.  I didn't feel like driving home for these 2 important but non-essential things so I toughed it out and ran without them.

Fortunately, Thursday's run was intervals.  Intervals make the treadmill SO MUCH BETTER.  20 min warmup, 10 [ 2 min hard / 2 min easy], 10 min cool down.  Having something to do every 2 minutes made things so much better.

Surprisingly, my toe felt fine - like nothing was wrong.  This was only when I was running (weird, right?) and when I got off it was sore.  I hate icing body parts when its freezing out.  Sure, I'm inside on the couch, but mentally, I do not want to put ice of my foot in the winter.  Random aside: Zipper really likes bags of ice.  She'll lick the bag and I even caught her biting the thing.  Not cool because then ice cold water leaks out of the bag and onto me.  She's a weird cat.

Today, my toe was more sore than yesterday.  I went to swim practice, where my coach tried to drown us (9x100 with 6 underwater dolphin kicks off of each wall. that crap is HARD).  I had another 30 min run on my schedule today, so I just put my run stuff (this time with music and headband!) and ran right after swimming.  I knew that if I had to go back to the gym for a 30 min run in the afternoon, then I'd just skip the run.  So I got some mental toughness bonus points and got it done.  And my toe is a bit more sore, so I get to spend more time with an ice packet (and Zipper) today.

Running easy is pretty boring on the treadmill.  I try to make it a bit better by increasing the speed by 0.1 mph every 5 minutes.  Really, its just a trick to break the run up into 5 min increments instead of 30 life-sucking-minutes on a hamster wheel.

Sunday I've got a 1 hr run and I'm pretty sure it will have to be inside as well.  I am not very excited about it.