Happy Feet

For most of the last two weeks here in central PA it’s been ridiculously nice outside, especially for March. After such a snowy February, and a stretch of more than a week and a half straight of cloudy days in late February and the beginning of March, we got six straight days of brilliant sunshine to brighten our moods and melt the snow cover. That stretch of sunny days bled into the start of spring break here, so Monday and Tuesday last week I took off work early to go play some tennis with Ben, to test out my new Slazenger racket for only the second time (believe it or not, I was able to play a couple sets with Anders back on 23 January, the earliest in the year I’ve ever played tennis!). Part of the challenge for us was to find a court in town that 1) was snow-free and dry, 2) had the nets up, and 3) wasn’t occupied by people already playing, but we found a court over at Suburban Park. On the first day I lost 6-0, 6-0, 6-2, only the second time I’ve ever taken multiple games in a set vs Ben. I really played a whole lot better in that third set. The next day I lost all four sets 6-0, but there were several tight, multi-deuce games we had. I just couldn’t seal the deal in any of them, oh well. At any rate, after seven sets of tennis in two days (with a workout session in between), I was definitely pretty sore the next day! It felt good though.
And then you don’t always appreciate life’s simple, routine things like walking until it’s suddenly painful. Last Thursday I went to Health Services to have a couple warts on the bottom of my left foot frozen. I’d been meaning to do that for quite awhile (like a couple years), but finally decided to do it now before we got further into the nice-weather season, so that it wouldn’t interrupt running, tennis or other outdoor activities. But that afternoon and evening after having the procedure done, my foot hurt so badly that I had to ask Isaac for a ride home from campus; with how badly I was limping, walking home two miles wouldn’t have been the best plan. I worked from home last Friday too, because while it hurt a little less, I was still walking fairly gingerly. It was still uncomfortable for me to walk (and I was still kind of limping a bit) through Tuesday this week, and I was starting to wonder how long the pain would last. Finally on Wednesday the pain really started to subside noticeably, and by yesterday I was walking completely normally again. It felt great not to be all gimpy and everything! This evening I even played another few sets of tennis with Ben (unfortunately my right wrist suddenly started hurting late in the third set, hopefully that won’t become something serious or chronic). And hopefully I won’t have to go back for another wart treatment, hopefully that one freezing got rid of them.
Now that the weather seems to have turned the corner to spring, I’m hoping to get back to running a couple times per week (while still lifting weights twice a week too). That’d probably require a little more re-dedication to going to bed and waking up early, something I’ve started to slack off on lately. I haven’t gone running since I did my 5-mile leg of the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK race in October, and I want to be able to get to the point where I can run 5-7 miles fairly comfortably, occasionally maybe doing up to 8-10 miles. Last fall was the first time I’d really started running routinely since high school, and I started late enough that I only ran as much as 5 miles exactly twice: once with Alex when he came here to visit the weekend of my birthday (5.5 miles), and once the following weekend for the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK (5.1 miles). I’d definitely like to improve my conditioning more.
Now it’s time to take it easy the rest of the evening and watch the last bit of the first round games of the NCAA tournament! My bracket’s hurting a bit (not a great record in first round games as usual, and I’ve already lost Georgetown, Temple & Siena from my Sweet 16), but this has been a really entertaining first round so far, so that makes up for it!