Our Yard. 9 Miles? Wildflowers. Podiatrist.

I missed my long run on Wednesday morning because our yard is currently being dug up to lay pipe for a new geothermal heating system. The work began on Tuesday afternoon, resumed on Wednesday at 7:30am and is still going strong Thursday afternoon at 3:30. Braman has designed the system, hired local big machine guys to do the digging and is laying the pipes in the 6-foot trenches himself, with some help from the digging guys.

Our yard used to be grass but here is what it looked like at various stages of digging yesterday:






Braman needed to do some preparatory work before the guys showed up on Wednesday morning and so was out of the house at 6:30am. Since this is when I'm usually exercising, I had to change my schedule. And since I can't really run after dinner very well since things are crazy with the kids then, Wednesday turned out to be a rest day.

But Braman didn't need to start with the guys right away this morning so I did my 9 miles today. I didn't want to run in the pitch black again so I started out on the elliptical machine and used it for an hour and 5 minutes (thank you, space shuttle landing, for dominating the news and sparing me from more violent and depressing stories.) I'm guessing that 65 minutes on that machine is about 6 miles worth of activity. Since it was light out by then, I split the workout and ran my usual three-mile course so I ended up "running" about 9 miles.

It was so refreshing to run outside, in the daylight, that I really enjoyed every slow step. Cars could see me! I could see things! It was fantastic.

Though most of the wildflowers I learned this summer have come and gone, there are two blooming together which make a stunning pair: tall, spiky goldenrod and a deep purple aster-esque flower. [I wanted to link to a picture of the goldenrod but it turns out that there are many different kinds (scroll down on this Connecticut Botanical Society's page to see 12 of them) and I'm not sure which one I'm seeing on the roads around here. It's kind of like this but it might also be this, or even something else. The Connecticut Botanical Society people wrote a short article on goldenrod identification which I will read when I have time.] The purple flower may be New England Aster or maybe New York Ironweed or maybe something different. I'll see if I can take a picture of the two together this afternoon and make a more confident identification.

Oh, I saw a podiatrist this morning about my toenails. Turns out the three toenails that I've been going on about are just going to fall out one day. The purple one is going to fall out soon and the others may take a while. Since they don't hurt, he said just to leave them alone and let nature take its course. The second smallest toe on my right foot, though, which was red, swollen and sore after the half-marathon, turned out to be infected. He said the toenail was just floating on top of some goo so he cut off the top of the nail, released the goo, and put a bandaid on it. If it's still red and sore in a week, I should go back and he'll pull the nail out. Otherwise it should be fine and will eventually just fall out on its own. This makes a total of four toenails that I'm going to lose.

If I can manage it, I'll do five miles tomorrow before Braman goes to work. Then there'll be the 14-mile group run on Saturday. The Marathon's a month from tomorrow!