Ankle Update

Last night I had an appointment with an acupuncture specialist. When Dr. Klein told me to go get acupuncture I have to admit in my head I laughed a little and when I told Rocky he also laughed and said NO WAY. I have always thought that acupuncture was a bit hokey and how can needles being shoved into my body work. I know someone who's tried it for weight loss and it did nothing. BUT at this rate I really am willing to try anything if it means I can run my marathon and be pain free. I was a bit nervous going in because I hate needles and I don't care if they are the size of horse hair, needles are needles and me no like :o( Acupuncture man explained what he was going to do and I guess the needles do not go into the location of pain but into the opposite location. So he inserted needles into my left ankle and left wrist. I looked sort of like this:

Although I didn't actually look. I was already super nervous and I think seeing needles stuck in me would have totally freaked me out. The process takes about 30-45 minutes and every so often he would ask me to move my foot around and to tell him where my pain level was. OMG, it worked, I was shocked. I could totally move my foot much more than I could at Kaiser on Wednesday when I was doing the range of motion stuff with Ms. PT lady. I also could tell that the pain had gone down significantly and today I also noticed that the swelling has gone done a bit. I am not going to jump the gun and get overly excited but WOW, I'm now a believer of acupuncture. I go back next Tuesday for my second visit and check in with Dr. Klein the week after that. We are cutting it very very very close to race day but I think this all might work without me doing anymore damage to the ankle. At least that what I'm really crossing my fingers for.

SUPER Whole Foods

Not much to update on. I had physical therapy with Dr. Klein on Tuesday, OUCHIE. I had physical therapy at Kaiser yesterday to start strength training the ankle again. I was okay while I was there but later, OUCHIE. My foot was not happy about all the stretches I made it to do with the band they had me buy. I have an appointment today for acupuncture to help with some of the pain. I'm sure my response will be, OUCHIE. :o( So ankle situation isn't good and race days are fast approaching. Nike in 11 days and NY in 24 days. I am having lots of anxiety and am beginning to get a bit worried :o(

So the other night I took a little drive over to the new Whole Foods in our neighborhood. Okay, not so much or neighborhood, it's about 15 minutes away :o( I needed to pick up a few things for dinner and lunch the next day. OMG, this Whole Foods was HUGE. It turned out very nice and it's like the SUPER version of Whole Foods. I'm excited to finally have one sort of close by although the parking is a bit chaotic but I'll deal with it. It's my favorite grocery store and I'm sure I'll be spending lots of time there.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY

ANDREW COLE REGAN!

This is a picture of Andrew eating his birthday cupcake at his bday party on Sunday.

TOO CUTE!

Bad Chicago Day :o(

I'm sure everyone is writing about this but Sunday was a strange day for running. In one case we have a great marathon in Portland. Our friend Amy finished in under 6 hours (that was her goal), she finished in 5:57 and our friend Rudy finished in 4:07...WOW! That's awesome. I haven't really gotten details from either of them but considering they both had good races I'm thinking the weather was good for them.

Then we go over to Chicago and people are literally dropping like flies. It was 88 degrees and 80 something % humidity....YUCK! 1 person died and some reports say more than 350 people were taken to hospitals although I'm not sure how accurate that is. It was a bad day though for the Chicago Marathon race. Before the race even started race officials had decided that they would cancel the race if it got really bad and they did. About 4 hours into the race they decided that they needed to cancel the race. Weather conditions were horrible and way too many people were sick. Some people chose to continue but they were told to take it easy and walk. It most have been pretty scary for them. 10,000 runners chose not to even do the race. I probably would have been right along side them.

Weekend was good for us although busy. Saturday went out and met the team at San Leandro Marina, I ran almost 5.5 miles for the first time since I fell. I felt good, had some achy feeling in the ankle but I got through it okay. I was just happy to be out there running. I am sore today though, I feel like I haven't run in months. Hopefully my body will get back up to speed soon since Nike is only a few weeks away. I see Dr. Klein tomorrow for some more torture, I mean therapy.

After the run, Rocky, Olivia and I headed back to the house to clean up and then drive to Sonoma. The winery we are members of had a party for their members. They had food, entertainment and lots and lots of wine. We were starving though on our way up there and were suppose to stop at Taco Bell for a snack but somehow we all ate full meals. The only thing we had room for in our belly's was the YUMMY pumpkin cheesecake. I did have a few baby pickles too :o) I love pickles. We left before the party was over so we wouldn't get stuck in the chaos of everyone trying to get out of the parking lot at once. We decided to head to the Plaza in Sonoma and walk around. Did some wine tasting there and then did some shopping. We needed to buy presents for Emma & Andrew and we accomplished our mission there in the little shops. Afterwards we hit Mary's Pizza Shack for some dinner. By the time we got home it was 8:30 and we were pooped. It was a fun day.

Sunday morning Rocky taught Kali as usual and I stayed home relaxing. When he got home we ready and then headed over to Vallejo to Brandy's house for Emma and Andrews birthday party. We had a good time hanging out with our friends and watching the kids and BIG kids jump in the jumpy Brandy rented. Rocky and I headed home via Walnut Creek, we had to stop at the doggie store there and we decided to just grab dinner there. We had a nice evening out and then headed home to watch our Sunday night shows. Now it's back to work for another busy week.

Foto Friday

Getting ready for halloween, we've got one costume down and one to go :o)

CRAZINESS

I am working in one of our other offices, they needed help badly. One person on vacation, one quit and one new person...NOT GOOD!

Anywho, just wanted to jump on here to wish MS. AMY & MR. RUDY....GOOD LUCK IN PORTLAND! They are both running the Portland Marathon this weekend.

I may not have time to update the rest of the week so I shall update next week.

ONE MONTH

In exactly one month I will be on a plane to NY, woohooo. I can't believe it's almost time to go run this marathon, or walk it :o( but no matter how I get through it it's going to be a lot of fun. Shoot we've only been planning this since January :o)

Things are going so so with the ankle. I thought it was much better although the swelling is still there, that's no fun. I am walking on it and it doesn't hurt to move it side to side or up and down anymore. I even thought that when Rocky was massaging it that the pain was far less. I was WRONG. I was told by Dr. Klein today that I'm not stretching/massaging it enough or hard enough :o( and oh boy was she right. When she did it IT HURT LIKE HELL :o( which means it's still icky in there and I HAVE to do what she says and how she does it or it's not going to get better. You could tell how much more flexible my left ankle is than my right. It's pretty stiff when she tries to move it around. Dr. Klein said even if I have to scream into a pillow I need to have Rocky really get in there and work on it. Anyway, so we've got a lot of work to do especially if I'm gonna put on my running shoes this weekend and try to run. Or at least my hubby has a lot of work to do :o) hee, hee. Although he's been under the weather lately :o( today he's at home sickie laying under the covers with our doggies.

I've got the Nike Half in a few weeks and I think I may just walk the race to save my ankle for the big race. This is my 4th time doing Nike so I know what to expect and I'm not worried about how well or not well I do. This race always seems to fall at a weird time for me, either before or after a full marathon so I never do all that great. I'm just looking forward to being out there with our team and running in memory of Mrs. Brenda and of course watching Ms. Brandy finish her first full marathon in honor of Colie :o) It's goin to be a great day.

I also realized yesterday that I met Rocky 4 Nike Marathons ago :o) WOW how time flies. Thanks to Mama Lisa's match making, we started dating about 3 months later but this race is where we were first introduced, pretty cool :o)

THANK YOU to everyone who's donated money towards my fundraising. I really appreciate it. My fundraising deadline is this Friday so if you are still interested in donating it's not too late. You can click on the link to the left to get to my fundraising page :o)

THANK YOU...KAREN, PETRA, MARK, TOM S., AARON, OLIVIA, CHARLIE, ONWEENA, KORINA, DEBBIE, TOM B., KATHY, KEN, BETTY & BRUCE...for your generous donations

The weekend was very mellow for us, which we both needed. Rocky is now sickie so I think it was good we stayed home for the most part. We took the doggies to Pt. Isabel on Saturay afteroon and gave them a bath before heading back home. They loved their walk but hated the bath part. The nice part for us was that they were pooped when we got home so the slept the rest of the day :O).

Sunday I had a nice afternoon with Olivia and Lindsay. We met for lunch at Il Fornaio and then walked around Walnut Creek checking out all the booths at the Art Festival downtown. It was a nice mellow afternoon and then I went home to meet Rocky so we could head to Daly City to have dinner with his parents. They ended up having to cancel so we just hung out at home and I got to get some knitting in which made me happy. I had been missing it.