Hmmm, do I dare start the thread, risking parallel universes? 6.75 slow and easy (ave 10:50) miles for me today in a muggy 70 degrees. What’s with the cement geese lawn ornaments? Is this just an Ohio phenomenon? People actually buy clothes for these things, matching dresses and bonnets, and park them on their porches. And another one, a 3-foot-high statue of a child, with the head missing, and people put flowers where the head should be. Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of sick? Happy Wednesday!

Glad you got another run in Holly...how was the pain level? I guess as long as you can run slower, it is a lot better than not being able to run at all . Nice easy 4 miles Dave...all I think about with geese is all the poop they leave all over running and cycling trails around here...never heard of statues and clothing them Hope you have a nice run Bob..and avoid the storms and lightning... Hey, I think I am rich as I got the Email yesterday at home: Dear Friend, Hope all is well with you and your family? I hope this mail meets you in a perfect condition. I am using this opportunity to thank you for your great effort to our unfinished transfer of fund into your account due to one reason or the other best known to you. But I want to inform you that I have successfully transferred the fund out of my bank to someone else account who was capable of assisting me in this greatventure. Due to your effort, sincerity, courage and trust worthiness you showed at the course of the transaction I want to compensate you and show my gratitude to you with the sum of $750.000.00 (Seven Hundred And Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) I have authorized the finance house where Ideposited my money to issue you international certified bank draft. The name and contact address of the Person with your Cheque is as follows: Name: Mr Nelson Paul Email:compesationsec.2008@googlemail.com At the moment, I m very busy here because of the investment projects which myself and my new partner are having at hand. Finally, remember that I have forwarded instruction to the finance house on your behalf to send the bank draft to you as soon as you contact them without delay. Please I will like you to accept this taken with good faith as this is from the bottom of my heart. Thanks and God bless you and yourfamily. Hope to hear from you soon. Best Regards, Mr Nelson Paul Brother, do some people actually fall for this stuff 4 easy recovery miles last night getting ready for my mid-week long run tonight with speed work on the track...I love track workout because it takes me back in time , when I ran track in High School. Hope everyone has good runs and a great Hump Day Tim

Hey Tim, don't fall for that email scam. I do have some property for sale down here just east of the beach. Beautiful views of the ocean. A steal (literally) at $250,000 per acre. I have many acres available. 6 slow and easy Magic Healing miles at 10:03 min/mile pace to step back from yesterday's Intervals. Warm at 81F and 81% at 5:30 AM. Bill

Good morning, all! Holly - I think the geese are a Midwest thing. I've seen them in Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, etc. I haven't seen the child statue you describe. Hey Mainerunnah - are there in trout in your Saco River??? No run for me today. I forgot to take a rest day last week, so I thought I'd better get one in this week. 70 minutes of core work and weights this morning. I had a nice "girls night out" last night - we went to the Connecticut Defenders doubleheader - drank beer and ate hot dogs and watched a little bit of the games between conversations. The front row seats behind home plate were probably wasted on us, but I wanted a ledge to perch my beer bottle ;-). I think I'm behind the times - when did they start putting beer in plastic bottles?!!! Good runs to all!

I appreciate all of you who so kindly asked for an update following my doctor visit yesterday. I am very encouraged about what I learned, although at first you might not think so. Here is the situation. I visited the cardiologist yesterday morning after asking if I could be squeezed in and not wait for the stress test on the 18th as I was very worried about this fatigue and light-headedness during my runs and other people besides you have been nagging me not to run and to get into the doctor. Thank you all for pushing me on this. The dr. looked at the recent EKG and blood work, and listened to my heart of course, and then reviewed last year's stress echo. He recommended I eliminate the HCTZ I was taking for BP. "I have many athletes as patients and I would never prescribe a diuretic for high BP to an athlete who is losing fluid." And he didn't think my recent BP was that bad. I have been tracking it and showed him the recent scores. And in his office where my past BP has been high, it was pretty low. I gave up caffeine last week, with many aches and pains through that, but I am trying to do the right things. He also said that he didn't need a stress/echo as he was pretty sure he knew what he wanted to look at, and asked me to come back after lunch for a standard echogram. This is the kind of test where they rub the greasy ball around on your skin and you can see your heart on the TV. My wife was with me on both these visits to remember what questions to ask and then remember the answers! The dr. came back in and ran the test results on a monitor so he could show me and teach me what I was looking at. It was very obvious to see: my aortic valve is almost completely closed due to thickening of the wall around it and calcification. It is so tight that the pressure it exerts squirts exiting blood at some very strong rate. Think of putting your finger over a garden hose and making the water go farther. He showed me the numbers on the screen and what baseline and danger numbers are and mine are very bad. No wonder I am not able to run without getting fatigued. He told me he will consult with his colleagues but I should have surgery right away or certainly this year. This would be open heart and they would replace the aortic valve with a new artificial (metal) or synthetic (organic, bovine material) one. The advantage to metal is that it lasts forever but I would have to take a blood thinner (Coumadin sp?) all the time. The synthetic one lasts quite some time but may have to be replaced at some point. I have to schedule this at a time when I can be out of work for 6 weeks and that is mid-November based on my work calendar, but next week I go in for a "left-right catheterization" so they can pinpoint the specifications and pressures more accurately. This is just a one-day procedure and I go home that day. As to asking him if I could run, I don't want to tell you his exact words, but he said that yes I could if I ran with a friend and a cell phone. That was enough for me. I have to say that when he drew the graphic on the screen with his pointer of the normal width specifications of the aortic valve next to my aortic valve it was only then that I realized there is something wrong with me. You should also know, before you advise me to do this, that after the cath procedure and we have all the data, my wife and I will tell the cardiologist that we will ask for another opinion, which I think is the right thing to do with a serious matter like this. It is funny about running over a period of years. I have always been a pretty decent runner and even now at 61 it is hard to remember that just a year ago my running buddy and I ran a fiveK under 21 minutes and I did that again at my club's "Hound Dog Hustle: in April of 07. I thought I was Superman. It must be a guy thing. But I can't hide from the facts. I have just not been able to run this year at any speed, slowly going from 9:30's, to 10 minutes a mile and then to 10:30's. I just couldn't figure it out and attributed it to heat or the mileage buildup. There is no reason to be down over this, as the doctor said to me, "There is nothing wrong with you other than this. You are a very healthy man. Your blood is good, you're in great shape, you don't have diabetes. You will sail through this procedure." So it's time to put running aside and think of my family now and do what is best. If I don't elect to have this taken care of, I risk having an episode when I least expect it, alone on the road in a hotel room or worse, and I can't do that to my family. So I will keep you posted and I will continue to go out to my club, but walking is the indicated exercise from this point forward. Thank you for supporting me during this worrisome period. At least now I can look forward to fixing this the right way and leading a normal and healthy life, which by the way, includes logging on here and making sure I keep everyone else on the up and up and the wimmin faithful to me. You know, thinking of the glass as half full, when I woke up this morning, I thought that if I had not been a runner, I might never have noticed these symptoms, because when you run, you always have performance benchmarks to measure. Others don't always have it as good as I do, and they often don't have caring friends like you. Spareribs

It was going to be an easy 5 miles today. But my TP (one of the nation's top female AG distance runners) decided otherwise. Given her racing success it is hard to argue with her views regarding what I should do pre-race so . . . Other than her potty break the mile splits were at a touch over 8:00 minutes each. For me and in this humidity that was not what I would call easy! Hopefully though it will help on Sunday! BTW if anybody wants a winning lottery ticket I have one for sale for just . . . oh never mind. What nonoruns wrote makes a lot of sense though. If you look at news reports of people who have fallen for these scams they are often elderly. Now, it could just be that older people are more willing to admit on TV they acted like idiots but it could be that they end up as the primary fall guys too. I am pretty busy today so for the moment I will just wish everybody a good day running. I saw the post by Spareribs after mine went up so I wanted to add: Spareribs best of luck going forward. I totally agree you should get a second opinion. Let me add that you should see if you can find a cardiologist that has had some experience with athletes (I obviously have no idea if your first one does). As my wife found out it can make a huge difference in the diagnosis and ultimate treatment that gets recommended. If you have the names of a few people I can help see if they have ever published anything in the area if you like. Given your overall shape I am sure you will come out of this just fine. Finally, I suspect that you are right about being an athlete helping in the detection of serious diseases. A friend of mine developed what is apparently known as a Grade IV brain cancer a few years ago. It was detected unbelievably early because he was skiing. As of now he may very well be the longest living survivor in the world with his particular form of this disease. Compare what has happened to him with somebody else I know who was diagnosed with the same disease and then passed away just six weeks later. All I can say is that being active helps our lives in more ways than we may ever know.

Spareribs, what an incredible post. You are an amazing guy in many ways. Just by posting this you have done a great service to this community. We'll be more knowledgeable should something similar occur to us. You're doing what is right and you will decide on the course of action that is right. If you post this on KR, I'll be watching for dtoce's response to it. Bill

Well Ribs - you got my hands sweating while reading that. But it's great you get to pick the time to get it done and not have it be an emergency procedure. Just another reason to get and stay in shape.