Step Away From the Cake

I'm getting notifications on my phone today since my boss is doing Kona and the age groupers are all in the water. How very exciting!!!!! I do hope the weather is better there than it is here!!!

Oh. My. God. For weeks now I thought my butt pain was due to my IT band, even though it felt very different from IT problems I've had in the past. On my last post Vickie said to check out piriformis and Oh. My. God. The symptoms they describe are exactly what I'm feeling. Deep butt pain. Gets worse when sitting. Oh. My. God. I was told years ago that I was one of the 15% of the population that has the sciatic nerve running through the muscle instead of under it. That explains why my lower back and IT hurt. Well, now I'm pretty sure what it is hopefully the doc will be able to prescribe PT since it seems rest and stretching is the treatment. Wow. Thanks Vickie!!!!

I have all this energy, both physical and mental, and end up doing lots of silly things. For about 6 years I've had a little computer desk. You know, the kind you build yourself and it has the hutch overhead for storing all your computer stuff. Well, it was falling apart, the bird had chewed some of it and the working area was way too small. In the new place I don't have any place to work but my desk and it just wasn't cutting it anymore. So for the last few days I've been haunting Craigslist and visiting the 2nd had stores looking for a desk. Wednesday I finally found it at Salvation Army. It's a large, flat top desk with 2 drawers on each side, just perfect. So I buy it and stuff it in my Escape and take it home. When I got it home I discover a) it's HUGE!!! and b) it's doesn't fit through the doorway to my computer room. Okay, after much struggling and finally ending up taking the sides off, I got it in. Once I set the computer up I realized that the

This pain in my hip is getting totally out of hand. I thought that by working out and stretching I could conquer it, and that worked for a while, but no longer. It's affecting my entire leg. My quad, calf, and plantar are all sore. So I broke down and have an appt Mon. That's with my primary care doc, I'm hoping she'll refer me to the sports medicince doc. I hate to admit defeat but my butt has won!! Until Monday I'll be resting, stretching, and taking ibuprofen, I need to get rid of this. Okay, it's really early here I'm off to get coffee and feed the animals.

Well, the recovery process goes on. Roads are being prepared, buildings are being inspected and life goes on. As you can imagine that's all anyone is talking about. My boss left yesterday for Kona and she said it's a ghost town. Lots of athletes arrive on the Monday before Ironman so they a week to acclimatize to the weather and conditions. Well yesterday afternoon there were still only a handful of athletes there, basically those who were there before Sunday. I'm sure they will all be getting there today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, back at the ranch. Things are going well with me. I have been focused on weight loss for 2 weeks now and am down just about 4 lbs. I must qualify that with stating that there was some water weight loss. But, I have been restricting my calories by about 1000 calories a day (through exercise and diet) so 2 lbs a week loss is conceivable. My hip pain is getting worse. I was just reading back through my blog and the first time I mention it is Sept. 9th.

Oh what a day!!!! The earthquake was nice enough to hit at 7 a.m. followed shortly by an island wide black out that lasted all day. To top it off it was raining pretty hard. So, there was nothing to do inside the house, there was nothing to do outside the house, there was nothing to do. All the stores were closed so there was really no where to go. I did get a lot of reading done :) Luckily there doesn't seem to be any real damage anywhere in the state. The Big Island appears to have suffered the most damage and that's mainly rock and mud slides, so everything should be okay. My boss leaves this morning for Kona (her 25th Ironman) and I was wondering last night how this would affect the race. Of course, I had absolutely no information, I was literally in the dark ;) Oh, an interesting thing, apparently the cell phone companies all went down too. Hubby and my phones didn't work (or only worked very sporadically) and I found out all the companies were not working. Hmmmm......