A Double Whammy I'm Excited About!

Nobody likes Monday mornings. Nobody likes going to the doctor. Going to the doctor on a Monday morning is the worst of both worlds. Unless you’re a marathon runner and it’s the “moment of truth” session about your knee you’ve anxiously awaited for several weeks. I know I can handle the truth. It’s not going to prevent next year. It’ll just be an indicator of how difficult my road to next January will be.

Today’s Workout
Yeah, right. Too much work to do and I need my knee to be 100 percent. I haven’t run since last Wednesday and I’m getting pretty antsy. I just don’t have the time to run right now, which kills me, and I’m trying to get my knee better for next year. I have an appointment with a sports medicine specialist this morning, so I’ll finally get to the bottom of this and (hopefully) get better.

It’s almost certainly tendinitis, which is just an annoyance I need to go away. I’ve run a marathon and hundreds of miles since this flared up, so I’m almost certain there’s nothing torn. I made the decision last Wednesday night to shut down the running until I saw the doctor today. There just wasn’t enough for me to gain and too much to lose between Thursday morning and today. So, at 9 a.m. Pacific time today, I’ll get the verdict. If I can be in full swing by August, which I think is very likely, I’ll have four solid months to train. Even over the past two months while I’ve had struggles, I’ve had 75-mile weeks, so I know the legs are there. I’m not nervous, just anxious. And I’m tired of not running.

Talkin’ Jack
In case this is your first time here, or if you’ve never been to the rest of the site, I’m planning on running 60 marathons next year to raise awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. My son, Jack, is severely autistic and I want to do something to make a difference in his honor. In this spot in each blog, I’ll talk about Jack a little bit.

Jack had a decent weekend. Lots of playtime, not a lot of meltdowns. We have a little kiddie pool in the backyard he swam in both days and he seemed to be in a pretty good mood. He went on outings with Tiff and his therapist on Saturday and Sunday (yeah, he has 2 1/2-hour sessions daily, even on the weekends) and did pretty well. Saturday, he did well at the library, which amazed me. Yesterday, he went to the grocery store. On Saturday, he was hungry and wanted fruit snacks and went over to the pantry and said “froo nax”! Close enough in my book!

All-in-all, I’d call it a good weekend. He’s still way behind, but in general, he seems to be “with it” a little more lately than he has been. Today is Monday … we’ll see how this week goes.

Ice Cream Update
I hit 26 consecutive days eating ice cream or frozen yogurt last night with 1 1/2 bowls of butter pecan ice cream. As a marathoner, the 26 is great to hit. I wish there was some kind of way to hit .2 more days for that 26.2, but I’m on 26 and I’ll hit 27 if I have some tonight. I guess I’m into ultra territory? I like ice cream, and last summer I think I went on a run where I went 31 of 35 days or something like this. For whatever reason, though, I’m on this streak and it’s going to be tough to let it go. I’m weird like that.

Side Ice Cream Note: We were out of milk and creamer yesterday morning, so I thought it would be a brilliant idea to use butter pecan ice cream as creamer instead. The one thing about this brilliant idea: It wasn’t a brilliant idea. I used what I thought would be more than enough, but it didn’t do a thing to make the coffee creamy when it melted. I used the non-dairy creamer instead, which was much more effective.

What Genius Came Up With This Concept?
My wife bought me some new boxers. They came in a re-sealable bag. Huh?

Operation Jack Update
Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to focus a ton of attention on Operation Jack during the second half of July, because I have too many other obligations with deadlines that are about to kill me. However, I’m going to be ready to do all sorts of things starting in August to get things rolling. I’ll be communicating with team leaders to let them know what they can do to help and how they can reach out to non-runners. I’ll also be developing some more tools on the site and I’ll be able to help support you as you attempt to support Operation Jack.

If you haven’t already registered here at OperationJack.com, please do so! I’ll be sending out periodic email updates to keep in touch with you. There is no obligation if you register, your information is not going anywhere, and you’ll be able to unsubscribe from mailings at any time. Also, I just built a feature last night that will send an email notification to all registered users each time I post a new blog (don’t worry — there’s a link in every email to unsubscribe with a single click). So, if you haven’t already done so, please take 30 seconds and register now! You can also automatically register by posting a comment at the bottom of this blog.

ECHO, Echo, echo … Is There Anybody Out There?
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. If you have anything you’d like me to talk about, let me know. Give me a good idea and I won’t have to talk about my boxers again tomorrow!

TV Diet Of A Marathon Runner
Last night, after sneaking three minutes of SportsCenter while Tiff was in the kitchen, I hung out on the couch with her and watched Bridezillas, Kendra Wilkinson’s reality show and the Denise Richards reality show. Yeah, I’m owned. But fortunately, I have a laptop and I was able to get some work done.

If This Doesn’t Make You Teary-Eyed, You Don’t Have A Pulse
Just about everybody has seen this, but it’s good to watch it again every here and there. What an incredible story. Jack has my genetics, so he’s much more likely to do well at a cross-country meet than in a basketball game. But still, this is great to watch.

OK, See You Tomorrow!
That’s all I have today. As always, thanks for reading the blog. While I fight to finish up my project, this is my main way of having Operation Jack reach out to you. I PROMISE, I’ll do a better job starting in August. In the meantime, you can support Operation Jack with just a tiny bit of effort. All you need to do is send one email to one person and ask them to check out the site and the blog. That’s all I need for today. Thank you, and have a great Monday!