Spring Training in DC

I tried to stay away from "Blog Land." I really did. When I signed off a month ago today, I thought: "That's it. I'm in recovery and things don't look good." Doing the London Marathon looked doubtful. Future events? Who knew. It would depend on whether I could run London, but frankly, I wasn't hopeful for my future athletic endeavors.

Well, recovery and training have gone better than expected. I've been able to slowly build up to 15 to 16 mile runs, and have slowly built up my weekend long rides up to the 45 mile range. There has not been any swelling of the knee after any of these runs or rides. Thus, I believe the slight tear in the medial meniscus of my right knee is healed. However, the MRI on my right knee also showed a lot of wear and tear of the cartilage in the right knee. After my long runs, I do feel slight knee pain in the front lower inside part of my knee. I'm wearing a knee brace on my long runs to give additional stability to the knee based on advice from my doctor. Whether this makes a difference is anyone's guess. Thus, I don't know how many more long events I will be able to do. I'll have to take it one event at at time. However, as long as I'm still in the game, it looks like I'm back to the occasional blog entry. Besides, blogging is a great repository of the stuff that kicks around in my head during long training runs and rides.

Last weekend was my son, Alex's spring break. We decided to visit our friends, Kate and Jim in Arlington, VA and hit the museums in DC. When we last visited the area 2 summer's back, we were only able to spend about an hour in the Museum of Natural History. Alex felt a bit jipped, so we spend most of a day in that museum. We also visited the National Building Museum, which currently has a display of famous buildings of the world made out of Legos. As Alex is a Lego fan, we had to see that exhibit. We also spent part of 2 days visiting the Newseum, a museum covering all aspects of journalism. They currently have exhibits of the coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hurricane Katrina, and coverage of cases solved by the FBI. My favorite part of this museum was looking at historic newspapers going back throughout American History and further back into European history as far back as newspapers were in existence. Cool stuff.

On Saturday, my wife Salome & I got in our long run by doing a 15 mile running tour of the monuments. We started out in Arlington, making a stop at the Iwo Jima Memorial. This brought back memories of my running the Marine Corp Marathon back in 2003. We ran by Arlington National Cemetery, crossed Memorial Bridge, stopped at the Lincoln Memorial, up to the Washington Monument, north around the White House, east up to Union Station, South by the Capital building and the Supreme Court, west over the soft paths of the national mall, then south for a loop around the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin, before heading back over Memorial Bridge back into Arlington. It was a cool morning in the lower 50s, but a little breezy. The cherry blossoms were budding, but only a couple of trees were in bloom. I imagine they will look spectacular in the next week or two.

We had a wonderful time with our friends Kate and Jim. I really enjoyed catching up with their boys, David and Sean. We've periodically visited these friends over the years and its interesting to see this bright young boys grow and get interested in a variety of sports and other interests. Kate and Jim wrapped up our visit with one of their famous night car tours of DC. The monuments at night look spectacular. All in all, a great trip.

So, things are looking up as far as training for London. This weekend will be my 20 miler. If all goes well, I should be able to complete the London Marathon. Don't know what kind of time I'll run, but this is one the will be for enjoying the views and the costumes of the charity runners. London has a reputation of runners either setting world records or dressing up for fun. I think I may have to reprise my "Wayne's World" costume from last year's Paris Marathon. Too bad Jacques "Garth" Watters is not signed up for this one. Then again, he did bandit Paris. "Hey Garth, you still got that AC/DC tee-shirt hanging around?"