Hello everyone, I really miss you gals and guys (been underwater for a long time at work) {{{RIBS and The Saint}}} I ran two ORTHOTIC FREE miles yesterday as an experiment because I think I have outgrown the need for them (thanks to lots of XT and strength training). It is such a joy to feel this good (no twinges, no twangs!). Another bonus: I was 20 seconds faster per mile and I was just trying to be careful! No wrestling with my gait, either (gait-wrestling?) I will run 4 more ORTHO-FREE miles today and continue this experiment in liberating myself from these pieces of plastic. Someday I might get bold enough to go barefoot ....

Still nursing the sore hamstring Ran easy for 45 minutes & it was 4.5 miles. Don't get me started on the trooper & lawyer jokes I'm not a trooper but I'm an accident investigator & radar / laser instructor so I've have spent many days at the highway patrol academy. dromedary I hope that orthotic free works out for you, I've tried it a couple of times through the years and I have gone back to the orthotics every time. Currently I have a pair that are rubber like, very flexible except for the arch support.

Got a beautiful day today, sort of a surprise actually! Nice sunny day, 65F, 42% humidity, scattered clouds... ahhh. 6 mile progression-type tempo kinda run today. Started out easy and even going up hill the first 3 miles (very gradual), I felt good enough to crank out 8:26, 8:21, 8:09, 7:41, 7:18 (weee!), and 8:09 for the final mile with some uphill back to the office. After my sproinky hilly run home yesterday, I wasn't planning on this type of run today, but that's what I got and it's all good. Dinner tonight at our favorite restaurant... food and wine pairings for visiting winemaker from Rodney Strong. Yummmm.

Okay, here is a more complete update, but before I get there, let me say thank you once again for all your kind wishes and posts here today and over the past few days. The original plan was to insert two stents, but neither was inserted and I am home. The catheter procedure I had done last week with the iodine ink shows the areas of blockage, but there are two issues here. First is that these arterial vessels aren't in a straight line. One area looks like the crook of a large tree and splits off. They had to go see it to know a stent couldn't be placed there. The other area of occlusion is farther along on that path. They cannot get the catheter past the first area to the second. For those of you interested in the language, they used an intravascular ultrasound procedure to do this exploration. The doctor explained the difficulty as "trying to lug a king-sized mattress up a small staircase. The vessels are called the LAD (left anterior descending) and the circumflex. The witty doctors refer to one of these as the "widow maker," I am not sure which. After this exploration they told me immediately no stent today and wheeled me into recovery, where the doctor talked to my wife at the need to deal with at least these two areas, possibly more, through bypass surgery. This is open heart and they take veins from your leg or someplace where you have a mess of them, and simply bypass the shut arteries, like when you see a traffic jam on a highway you might find the adjacent service road moves faster. The highway is still open but the bypass gets the job done. And the further logic of it is that once they go into the heart, there is no point in waiting on the aortic valve. They will replace it at that time, "while they are under the hood." (They have many witticisms like this.) We spoke to the surgeon today about the procedure (after endorsing over several recent checks from Tim and Bruce). He would like to do it next week. But we will talk with another cardiologist in Dallas on Monday, bringing with us the film from the catheter procedure. The surgeon has offered to speak to the cardiologist of course and supports this further exploration. The Baylor Hospital system in Texas is a fine organization and have performed this and similar procedures many times successfully. My hardest phone call will be to the client who engaged me from August to mid-November to tell them I need to push our project back about 8 weeks. I am confident they will understand and wait for me. So thanks for your well wishes, and I will keep you posted. S.

Breger said it best and we have been thinking of you and The Saint all day. Your clients will wait for you and so will we. We are with you every step of the way. Karin

ribs - Baylor is supposed to be good, maybe too good so make sure to tell them not to make you faster than you already are. dromelina - the runningbarefoot.org gang has a number of previously sidelined runnners who became so frustrated with orthotics and/or not running that, against their doctor's advice, they tried runningbarefoot as a last resort, . . . and have been running ever since. don't know how it would be for your feet but even a little barefooting will usually help strengthen foot/ankle/calf/knees, . . . and prevent heel landings that are the source of many running injuries even when done with thickly-cushioned running shoes supposed to prevent the same. http://runningahead.com/groups/MastRun/Forum/c8bf1c3eacc74cb3a800b370c5387c88

thanks for the update Spareribs -- i haven't been posting much, but catching up when i can and thinking of you as you go through this process so here's another sleep in the car story -- i was having a tough time driving home this morning so pulled off the highway and into a mall parking lot -- much sooner on my journey home than normal -- slept 20 minutes and thought i was ok -- drove another 5 and realized i just couldn't do it -- i was so tired -- so went to a park i know of and parked on the side street -- woke up an HOUR later -- looked up and saw 2 older gentlemen sitting on their front porch eyeing me -- probably trying to figure out if i was alive or not!! oh well!! made it home and slept a couple more hours after that!! was hoping to run outside this afternoon, but it was like a steam room outside -- and just as it looked like the sky was trying to clear the drizzle then the downpours would start again -- so i wimped out and hit the gym - 6.5 miles on the treadmill -- did 8 sets of 1/4 mile intervals at an 8:20 pace -- most of my run was at a 9:20-9:30 pace but played around with increasing speeds and incline the last 2 miles -- then stretched and did some abwork tonight had a dinner date with dh -- even though we are not in the most peaceful moments of our marriage, we did celebrate our 26th anniversary today have a wonderful weekend RA friends - i'm heading up to OOB, Maine tomorrow and internet access in the campgroung is sketchy!!

Ribs - your customer, of course, will be fine. I'm glad you'll be able to take care of this quickly.