MOVIN' RIGHT ALONG....

5.75 miles today, mostly walking, with some "25-breath" runs inserted. Run for 25 "in-2-out-2" counts (GPS showed 5.8-6.3mph) and then back to walking, 3.8-4.2mph. I ran the hills but no more than 25 "breaths."

I guess I "passed" my nuclear stress test Monday. I have to get the final report when I see my doc next week, but I ended up jogging 4.2mph at 14% grade with no pain in my tendons, chest, or anywhere. They had wanted to stop me at 3.5mph and 10% grade b/c my heart rate was around 138, and they calculated that 139 was 85% of my calculated max, but I told them I was still easily conversational, not stressed at all, and that if we stopped now I wouldn't feel confident to go out on my own and actually stress myself running up hills; I asked to proceed on perceived effort. The cardiologist shrugged, the tech said, "It's OK, we have another crew coming in at lunch time," and the nurse cranked up the pace and incline. I heard a lady, waiting for her test, ask nervously, "Am I going to have to do what that lady's doing? Because if I try that, you're going to be picking me up out of the gutter."

4.2mph isn't much, but 14% grade is, and I haven't been running all summer, so it wasn't a bad showing.

Tuesday I had my front tooth/crown/post extracted. When I was in my 20's, I had an infected wisdom tooth pulled. In my 30's, another one. I thought those were what extractions were like. Well.... compared to this, those were like pulling young weeds out of the garden. This was like uprooting a tree. I never expected it to be so hard to pull out. But it came out all in once piece, badly abscessed (looked like a raisin), and then I had some bone debridement where the infection was trying to spread, and some drilling that felt like boring into ice with an augur to make a hole for fishing, and then the insertion of the implant (he used a ratchet), and some sutures, and an Aleve tablet and a prescription for Tylenol #3, and then I was done.

An hour into the trip home, we stopped in a tiny town at a tiny drugstore where I was the only customer, got the Rx filled in 5 minutes, asked the pharmacist for a glass of water and gulped a pill right there. It didn't help much and I had crying spells the rest of the 3-hour drive home. After 800mg of ibuprofen I started to feel better, and amazingly, the next day (yesterday) I had no pain at all.

Except psychological.... I look like a jack-o-lantern. My employer said just tell people I'm from West Virginia but that won't work.... anyone can see that the rest of my teeth are good. (We're close to the WV state line and there's mutual firing of WV/VA jokes back and forth.) I'll just have to say "It's a work in progress," or, "I broke it and killed it, what's your excuse?" Or say nothing and keep smiling and wait till next Tuesday when I get my one-tooth partial plate.

Off for bath-house cleaning now. Then 5 hours this evening of caring for 2.5-yr-old Thomas, the son of the campground managers. I love Thomas. He's like another grandchild.