MikeE gives a brief holiday homestead recap including Flyin Ryan . Don't forget Christmas in July.

Coastwalker not only ignores rule number one, he flaunts his defiance in the face of rain for 9 point soggy 6 miles.

Runr-Nut beats the cold front with 6.8.

TwoCat is getting a little squirrelly of rodents in the bird feeder. Why am I picturing updated versions of Road Runner cartoons?

BioGuy gets his mind out of the gutter long enough to squeeze in 10 miles.

Jlynne knocks out two eggs and bacon fueled miles.

Fatozzig is in search of the mute button on DH and shares some pastoral wisdom.

Holly's foot subsided enough for her to get 8 miles in.

Rochrunner picks up the pace for 4 miles. YES!!!

RunnerKSA gets in 5.2 feel good miles.

Joe618 runs Friday's 20 get er done miles. Take care of the IT.He knocks 5 out of the pack on Sunday.

Dave59 has an hour out and back.

Tramps has an educational 38 miles on his bike. I over dressed for a cycle-mute. I was suffering..I pulled my water proof mitten off with my teeth and my hand froze too the bike frame.

Deez4boyz spins out at the gym. She gets 1.2 on the treadmill and shops with GFs and MIL.

Spacityrunner gets out with the dogs. The run in the neighborhood has her blown away.

Falconfixer has a speedy 9 before tackling a pressing situation.

Wildchild treats us to low cal eye candy, gets in 4.5 miles and shares the vegan delights from DD & SIL.

Mariposai gets in 12 and looking to enhance the quads.

The ever loving Tetsujin209 tears up the track with nearly an hour off of last years 26.2 Seattle Marathon! HOLY WOW!

Evanflein has a very frozen 20.2 miles. Talk about dedication!

I had zero for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was horrible for marital bliss. The mother of DW's BIL told her she'll never forgive me for calling the cops on BIL. He stole three ATMs out of hotel lobbies and I recognized him from security cam footage from two heists. I told DW in don't blame the lady for being resentful,  I don't have a problem with it and BIL should be removed from the household. A nun advised me not to apologise for something I'd do again. DW isn't as fond of the flooring as she had hoped to be. I told her she has 60 years to get used to it. It's been a frosty couple of days.

Part way through laying the click together vinyl tiles a high school friend got a hold of me on Saturday. His 85 YO dad is in rough shape. I laid tiles while Godzilla movies in the back ground. Japanese military scientists took the DNA from a trilobite/horseshoe crab hybrid, a robot (how a robot has DNA is beyond me) and from Godzilla himself. They made a weapon and then gave it free will. Then the same people wondered what went wrong.

I'm over 90% done with the flooring. I'll take my time and do my best to get it done right the first time. I'm Satisfied with the caliber of our efforts.   All we have left are the technical cuts.  My knees were barking so I put Arbonne muscle cream on them before bed Sunday. I got up three times to wash them because the stuff burns like a "B".

Mornin' everyone.

Thanks for the good-as-always start, Steve. Sorry about the rough days at home, and about your barking knees and your friend's dad. You got good advice from the nun, and the BIL is the problem, not you.

Good job of keeping the HR low, KSA. Doesn't watching the news raise your HR?

Great photos of Ryan and Tammy yesterday. It's always good to see smiling runners.

It was DW with whom I had breakfast on Saturday - she was incognito...

I put the new bandsaw blade on yesterday and spent most of the afternoon slicing wine corks. Our first cork wall filled one side of a corner, and this time we're doing the other side. I hope we like it when it's done. We have our wrap-up luncheon for our 5K today. This is when the new RD officially takes over - YAY!

After 2 days of rainwalking, I decided to abide by Rule #1 today and skipped the outdoor shower. Besides, my right ankle was achy enough to wake me up a couple of times last night, so a rest day seemed to be in order for multiple reasons.

Have a greta Monday!

Jay

SteveP - Do you wear kneepads when you are laying the floor?  I just bought a pair to wear while scrubbing bathroom floors.  First I tried to talk anyone else in the house to do it.    Did your BIL get any jail time?  Maybe your call stopped him from escalating into more serious crime.

Erika - nice 20-miler in the cold.  I suppose it's a good thing I did not sign up for the Delaware marathon, because with this foot thing I would not have been ready to run it.

4.2 miles for me on the TM this morning.  It is super windy out, with freezing rain/snow/colder temps moving in.

Okay, just one more picture of Rudy.  We are giving Rosie supervised playtime with him, and she seems to be getting more accustomed to him, but I crated her in the kitchen when I left the house.  We have him in a play yard (circle of fencing) on the kitchen floor when we are at work, but I don't want to take a chance that Rosie can get under it when no one is home.  I think she still thinks he is some sort of rodent....

Forgot to congratulate you, tet!  Good job.

 

Rudy is adorable and perfect size (unlike Henry's DD who has an elephant-sized puppy)

 

 

When we went to cut our Christmas tree, we met a lovely 9-week-old golden retriever puppy.  I was thinking, though, that Rudy will be at least 4 months old before he reaches that size.

.......tet TRAINING???????.......maybe he was talking about riding a train.....

Excellent Racing tho'

=========

....26-degrees with WindChill and spitting flurries....not pleasant......

(I was inside,

but

it still wasn't pleasant)

,...,40-min PoolRunning/shoes.....

Tet, I'll add my congrats for your marathon!  Who says you get slower as you get older?

I met two dirt diva running friends for a 6 miler this morning.  Most of the trail was dry but there were some sections of death ice.  Fortunately none of us fell down, but our overall pace was pretty slow.

Forgot to praise the great pics yesterday (and Rudy again today). Nice.

Steve--not sure what a "cycle-mute" is but that was funny.

Jay--I missed the origin of the cork wall...soundproofing, wine collecting, or just an interesting visual look? Either way, sounds interesting.

Alas, Twitter (once called "microblogging") and then Facebook supplanted blogs, which are now largely irrelevant.

I'd have to disagree there. Plenty of great blogs out there. Given the mess Facebook is in, I'd love to see a revival of more independent blogs.

Had a consult with an orthopedic surgeon today to discuss my knee situation. Useful, I think.

• Confirmed that I'm not a candidate for any type of "repair" surgery; the tears are too complex and are due to simple degeneration due to age, not trauma. (He suspects my other knee is in similar condition, even though it hasn't bothered me yet.) I could get scoped in the future if the pain gets more severe or it starts locking up; but that is short-term pain alleviation, not a fix, and that kind of surgery exacerbates osteoarthritis later on.  Ten or fifteen years ago, he said, there were more surgeons pushing more surgery but with long-term studies showing the negative effects the norm today is to avoid the surgery if you can.
• He thought I was "pushing it" with 5-mile runs and recommended cutting back some to 3-milers to see if that would help ease discomfort or, as my sports doc had recommended, stop running entirely and replace it with cycling or swimming. Essentially he subscribes to the theory that your knees wear from the impact. Pile on more impact (e.g. more miles running) and they wear more quickly; cut back on the impact (less running or switching to exercise with less impact) and you can typically expect to lengthen the life of your knees. Sort of a "use it and lose it" understanding.
• That led to an interesting discussion of "runner bias"--the idea that injured runners drop out of running groups, online communities, etc, so these places become populated only by older runners who (1) start running relatively late in life and haven't experienced the damage yet, or (2) have extremely good genetics. Either way they tend to forget that running marathons in your 50s, 60s, and beyond is the exception, not the norm and that for most people running does have a downside, though of course it's better than a sedentary lifestyle.
• He's also involved with PRP (platelet rich plasma) treatments. He's seen some good pain reduction using it with patients but he made clear it is still experimental, without sufficient research on long-term effects, who's most likely to benefit, etc. 

So there's no "fix" for this, only pain management. Surgery is not in the immediate future. I'm not being totally stupid in continuing to run some but, clearly, more and more of my exercise will need to come from non-running activity. Nothing earth-shattering but useful to get confirmation of essentially what I was thinking.