After such a long break of not writing, my new blog resolution is to be more committed to posting and also to start adding a translated segment in Italian…. eventually.
The following is my time-line of running and life events since November in New Mexico to Today in Italia:

COLD COLD WINTER:  Gradually increased training through the dry cold winter of New Mexico.  Temperatures reached record lows of -20 degrees F in Los Alamos and around -17 in Santa Fe in January,  and of course on one of these not so normal winter days I forgot to take my ear warmer to work and also decided it was a good idea to run outside where I got a nice dose of frostbite on my right ear.  The next day I ran on the treadmill at the gym, which ended up being one of the two days of treadmill running this winter.

Once the tights got pushed to the back of my closet and the shorts and tank-tops got promoted to their rightful place the real running started happening.  As spring arrived I reached my peak mileage in April with 80 and then 82 miles run in consecutive weeks.  I felt great and was happy to be hitting high mileage and feeling super fit.

THE CALF:  Only shortly after reaching my high mileage weeks for training I felt some muscles in my lower right calf feeling a bit strange.  When it first started, it just a sensation as though I had rolled my ankle (which I hadn’t) and the muscles were a bit tweeked and needed stretching.  I thought this feeling would go away, but it didn’t and ended up getting worse, where my calf and certain muscles became uncomfortably tight and running was do-able but only with a certain amount of discomfort in the first couple minutes of running till muscles got warmed up.

ITALIA:  As I had planned my arrival in Italy (of May 6th) around a race on May 15th in order to take advantage of the altitude training (which only lasts about 2 weeks), running became a matter of getting in the work and staying fit without making the injury worse. 

THE RACE:  Went alright, no spectacular time or even what I had wanted to hit (17:36), but finished knowing I could go faster.  In the first couple laps I stayed relaxed and didn’t go with the first group which ended up only being about 20m ahead of me for the rest of the race, while I was stuck in no-mans-land with a lone battle against the wind.  Furthermore, it didn’t help that with 3-4 laps to go my shoe came untied and I couldn’t really kick in without risking more damage to my right calf which was already in shambles.

RECOVERY:  The couple weeks following the race I tried various things to make my leg better, including rolling, icing, couple days of rest, biking, with no success.  Finally I was able to go to a physical therapist/trainer (last week of May) that the team I registered with shortly after arriving suggested.  She said my shin bone was quite weak (from too much running of course) and the muscles were trying to compensate for the pounding force of running and thus becoming strained.  She had me take 8 days off, with only biking (which I was not so sad about since I have found new passion in biking here in Italy).  On the 9th day I did a trial jog/run and had no pain.  After that she had me do every other day of light running and biking on the off days. 

THE FALL: Since the month of May in northern Italy ended up being a rainy monsoon (which unfortunately was not the case in New Mexico… fires), I was either stuck inside on the stationary bike, or being soaked by some down pore on my ride.  As a result of one of these wet rainy rides (Wed, June 8th to be exact) I was going too fast on a downhill turn and my bike lost traction and I ended up sliding about 10m before stopping in some grass.  The fall didn’t hurt, but I got a nice large spot of roadburn on my left hip and a cut on my calf.  In the following days treating the “burn” with the limited medical supplies I have here and odd creams and gells family members told me to use became the most annoying/painful part of the incident. 

THE QUAD: On the Saturday following the fall I had a trial easy “workout” of 4 x 10min med-hard pace to test my fitness and get some work in.  In the second repeat I felt my left quad muscles twitching and wanting to tighten up, then at 3 min. into the third the muscle actually started tightening and I stopped the workout then and there.  After some ice and stretching it didn’t feel so bad and biking on Sunday felt pretty good.  Monday however was brutal.  I went to the track and attempted to do an easy 35 min only to stop after 13 min with a completely tightened up quad.  I stretched as much as I could without making it worse, and then got home and iced every hour or so for the rest of the day.  The next couple days were spent with no running, or biking or activity at all, just rest, ice and little stretching.  By Thursday (June 16th) I was able to bike lightly with no pain or tightness.  From there I gradually built back into light jogging and biking to where I am today… on the track (haha, YES) to getting back into activity and running normally again.