catching up

a start at catching up; have been on the road a bunch the last several days and not on the computer.

yesterday is an easy day to cover. beth and i got up early and took a cab to the bus station and then on to heathrow airport for her flight back. i stayed there until she started through security and what ultimately turned into a delayed flight, and i headed back to oxford. got home and decided to do a nice little four mile loop up and over to the river and down the thames and home. wanted to get some golf practice in and also run a couple of errands if there was time. legs were still somewhat tired from what has been about 95 miles of running and walking this past 8 days. more on that later.

off to the range to hit what turned out to be 250 golf balls working on my "stuff". some of it was great and some horrible- very frustrating and i hope some of that was due to being tired and sleepy. what can i say? will keep plugging away and planned to go over what was going on a little later.

gail was giving a paper so i took some time to try and chip, but as noted before we have not received the lawnmower yet and the grass has now not been cut since last june. you know what that looks like and chipping was sort of like hitting out of the heather on a links course. except i have neighbors and fences and just cannot hack it back out to the fairway. what i could do however, was aim at the shed doors- bang, bang, bang, get the idea- a little loud and gave that up after a bit.

with gail still at school i went back to the range( still a 5 minute walk or so) and hit another 75 balls. was not tired surprisingly and the first balls went better and then good and bad and gave that up to just hit some nice 40 yard pitch shots and relax. more like play than practice at this point.

and then after a bit went to sleep. what can happen when you sleep huh? of course we still have the crying cat wandering around looking for his now deceased playmate and on top of that for whatever reason, my sciatica decided to keep me up with no actual way to stop the pain. one either has experienced a sciatica attack or hasn't. either way, no explanation is either needed or understood. dying seems like the only way to stop it.

but alas, not to be and i got up and stretched a bit and decided to try and run. sometimes exercise will soften it up and you still know the pain will come back, but so what?

out the door i went-gail had work to do and an interview to conduct so i headed slowly up the road. wasn't too bad actually and after a very slow mile i tried to focus on form and forget it. over to the river and down the Thames. went as far as the work crew would let me go and turned back north. worked out ok as the river was pretty and the trail soft and i ran l the way past the godstow nunnery and over to wolvercote village.

stopped at the local post office/general store and got some water and went off to the oxford canal. went up the canal a bit and turned and headed back south. sky was really dark at that point. down the trail to walton lane and over to port meadow. went over the grassy trail there about 4 feet away from or local horses and went down the river again. did some loops at the bottom of the trail and some short striders to test the back and leg. other than some tightness/pain at the start i hadn't felt it since about 6 miles in. at this point i was about 11 miles and went down to osney island and did a little loop two times that beth and i had walked and with a little over 13 miles called it a day and headed over to the store to get some bread and stuff.

all in all given the night time sleep it was ok. stretched like crazy when i got done, especially the calves and ITB. whoever knew what an iliotibial band was before they started running? and what distance runner doesn't know at some point? only the lucky ones.

decent run. and felt almost ok. can feel the right side as i type, but not too bad. wouldn't want to be sitting on a wallet right now though.

golf range went better today. i went back over my "j. stack" notes and last email and decided to really work on my set up, posture, grip pressure and alignment before each shot and then only think about keeping my right knee flexed and make a good turn keeping the club face towards the target as long as possible. did one thought for each 10 balls except the right knee. that was a permanent thought.

this went pretty well for awhile. i did all of my irons up to the 7iron and nothing longer. somewhere around the 80th ball i started to feel the right side saying not too much more and at the end of the bucket i stopped working on full swing. not everything had gone straight, but many were really good and the tape on the club face was in pretty good shape. the good ones were really good so there was room for some hope that i must say i didn't feel yesterday. ended by chipping (sneaking onto the grass) with my 8iron and lob wedge and some little pitch shots.

and then home and to the train station for atm/money and some info on train trips. throw in some laundry and a good dinner and it was a decent enough day.

next up is the last several days of visiting London and Woodstock and Blenheim palace, plus our walks around oxford. but not right now. more soon.