'The Boot'

I mentioned in a few posts back - about the Hot Dash 10 Mile - that I hurt my calf two days before that race, so I couldn't run....I did drive Sarah and Pam down and cheered them on though...

I hurt it while substitute teaching for a PE teacher.  His lesson plan was to play 'Line Soccer', which involved basically jogging.  I run 25-30 miles a week and the teams were uneven...so I played (I play every time I sub for PE)....

Near the end of the game, while jogging (I wasn't touched, sprinting, accelerating, etc.) my right calf felt like I was hit by a baseball.  I first thought my phone fell out of my pocket and hit my calf, but no....the next step hurt...big time.  Honestly, it scared me some...

Spring break came two days later and I took it easy for the first six days.  I hobbled around a bit for those days, but by Wednesday of break, I started running again.  It was slow going...at least a minute per mile slower than I'm used to, probably more.

But for the next two weeks I was back to running 25-30 miles per week, albeit, at a much slower pace...I'm running Grandmas Marathon again this summer so I have a goal, a schedule and a timeline I need to keep...

Which brings us to this past Saturday where I was running the Goldy's 10 mile run.  I made it 5.5 miles through the run (at a faster pace than I had been doing the last two weeks or so) and BOOM my calf seemed to be hit by a baseball again (right in the middle of a bridge over the Mississippi River).  I was done.  I hobbled another 3/4 mile to some buses that could take me to the start line.

I went to Twin Cities Orthopedic Urgent Care the next day.  They took a few X-rays...no stress fracture and the achilles seems to be intact.  It's probably a partially torn calf muscle...

Which means...I get this...

Until at least a followup appointment on April 19....

I've been pretty good at wearing it the last two days.  I don't wear it while driving (it's too wide) or while lifting weights in the morning (too sweaty), but I wear it during school all day (which brings a lot of questions) and most of the time while at home.

Basically the doctor said if I continued with what I was doing, I would completely tear the muscle long before the marathon....

I'm listening...I'll wear it until Tuesday...hopefully not longer....

Minnesota Zoo

The kids are on spring break this week, so I took a personal day so they could do something fun besides going to daycare (or in Kieran's case, stay at home playing playstation).  Two of the three wanted to go to the zoo and weather forecast looked like today would be the best day of the next four or five days, so we went to the zoo....

About that weather forecast...the 30% chance of rain turned into steady rain until almost 1:15 (we got to the zoo at 9:40 and it was not raining when we left Cologne).  The picture above?  That was the most sun we saw and it was as we were leaving...

Rain or no rain, there's still plenty to do at the zoo.  Like take a look at the Hawaiian Monk Seals...

There are five of them at the zoo, but only one was out in the main tank.  We learned later they prefer to be on their own...

Weather forecast said 50 degrees, but when it was raining, it was well below that....so we headed for the tropics!  At least the tropic trail where Luke & Lex found the Komodo Dragon just hanging out...

Kieran preferred to be at a little bit of a distance from his siblings, but still likes the dragon...

Although, I'm pretty sure the dragon would prefer all of us were gone...

Along the tropic trail, we watched a very active gibbon/lemur/monkey (the kids would correct me) for a long time...Luke said he was just trying to show off....

Lex wanted a picture of the Flamingos...so we got a picture of a Flamingo...

On the Minnesota Trail, I don't ever remember being this close to the Mountain Lions or Cougars or Pumas (whatever you'd like to call them), they weren't active, just trying to avoid the rain...

Kieran's favorite animal at the zoo is the Penguins from South Africa, I just wasn't able to get a good picture of Kieran and a penguin.  So here's Lex and an adult...

At that point, it was go home or go outside....rain or no rain....there was a vote to go home, but we went outside (it wasn't a heavy rain at that point)...

On the Russian Coast trail section we found the leopard hanging close to the glass....apparently cats don't like the water...

The tiger was different though...it was out pacing and growling (that may have been because of the rain)..

The Takins didn't care one bit about water falling from the sky...

The Wild Horses from China thought it was the best time - the kids thought they were playing tag...

I'm not too sure what the camels thought about it though...

We went back to the Brown Bears before we left because the sun was coming out.  The bears were enjoying lounging in the sun and I liked this picture...

As we walked out I took this picture (I do like pictures of people in front of signs) and it looks like the weather was fantastic.  It wasn't, but the kids had fun...

Fort Snelling State Park

The kids didn't have school on Friday and the weather wasn't that bad, so the four of us took off to Fort Snelling State Park for a little hiking.  We were going to hike the trail that goes around Pike Island, it is a 3 mile trail, plus another half mile or so to get to the island.  I bet we hiked a minimum of four miles that day.

Kieran really enjoys reading signs or interpretive centers, Luke can usually get the gist of the sign before one of us reads it to him.  Here there learning about why there is a large Minnesota river valley, why there's a Mississippi river gorge up until St. Anthony falls and why there are a series of waterfalls in the area.

But mostly our hikes end up something like this...both boys acquire sticks to be used occasionally as walking sticks, but more often than not, as guns...

And any bench we find?  Luke will immediately call for a rest...

If they can find a large stump to climb on, even better...

I'm the one who makes them stand at places like this - a marker showing past flood years on the rivers...

All along the Minnesota river side of the island we saw lots of evidence of beavers.  So we had lots of talks beavers and 'beaver marks' as Kieran called them.  Luke wanted to see a beaver, Lex wanted to pet one...

At the halfway point of the hike we came to the sign that we look for as part of the hiking club.  It gives us the password that we need to record.  Every 25 miles we get a patch, as of right now, we've hiked over 15 miles of trails as part of the hiking club.  (No, we not going to show you the password)...

We spent a lot of time here (there were at least 3 benches) exploring the confluence of the Minnesota river and the Mississippi river...

I visited the area the day before, taking a walk on a path overlooking the confluence of the rivers from the Minnesota side.  It's pretty hard to miss the Minnesota, being filled with sediment from upstream.  The Mississippi has much less sediment.  Lake Pepin downstream is being filled in by the sediment coming from the Minnesota.  Studies have repeatedly showed that the filling in of Lake Pepin has accelerated after Europeans came to the area.  The cause is all the fields that are tiled, as water is quickly drained from the fields, it's taken to the Minnesota river valley and quickly erodes the valley walls itself.  That sediment heads straight for the river.

On the Mississippi river side, there are lots of large trees with cavities you can walk into.  I posted a few last August too...

Back at the visitor center, we finally found the beaver, well Lex did and she couldn't even pet it...

A pretty decent, and tiring day...

Easter Egg Hunting

This morning was the local Easter Egg hunt and the kids and I went down to participate - well, they did the participating while I took the pictures.  There were lambs and goats to pet and of course we needed to have a picture with the Easter bunny (Lex was really excited for that, the boys, not as much)...

Lex's turn came first, here she is at the start of hunt, on the right side (wearing her traditional pink)...

She took off and started getting eggs, though most of the kids went as far as possible, Lex stayed close.  Here's her action shot, as she tried to catch up with the rest...

This year, Luke and Kieran were in the same age bracket (Luke was a little hesitant about being in the same group as the bigger kids), but it went fine.  Here they are lined up at the beginning...

They both had two very different strategies - Kieran's was to run as far and fast as possible, to get out in front of the group, while Luke stayed back near the beginning picking up all the eggs the others ran over.  Here's an action shot of Luke...

And an action shot of Kieran -- much farther away though...

At the end, they had to take all the candy (or money) out of the eggs and here are their spoils...

Not a bad morning...

Easter Eggs

Easter is coming soon and it was time to color the eggs....though the process this time was new to me...

I'm used to the idea of dropping eggs into a container and basically staining them.  This was placing an egg in your gloved hand, placing a few drops of paint on the egg and then rolling them around.  From the looks on their faces, it took a little getting used to...

But Lex recovered...here she is showing off her egg...

Lex was the one who was really excited to decorate eggs.  Luke did 2 or 3 eggs, probably just so he could say he did.  Kieran, well it didn't interest him nearly as much as heading outside...don't even think he slowed down...

Hot Dash 10 Mile

Sarah, Pam and I were supposed to run the Hot Dash 10 mile Saturday morning in St. Anthony.  Sarah and Pam ran it, I did not run because I did something to my calf, probably strained it, while subbing for a Phy Ed teacher on Thursday, so just drove them down and watched.  We got a fresh dusting of snow and ice the night before and passed at least nine spinouts on the way there....

I really only planned to hobble around and watch Sarah and Pam finish the race, but then I realized there were hiking paths down in the Mississippi River gorge.  So after an awkward jump over the barrier saying 'path is closed'...I was off...and with no footprints in the snow, I was the only one there...

I could still see the runners, that's the 5K runners up on the Stone Arch Bridge...

The trail takes you below many of mills in the area, like this Pillsbury building.  These mills would all bring river water into their mill and release the water back to the river below...

And I got some nice views of the Stone Arch Bridge...

I had never been below the bridge before...

Eventually, I went up onto the bridge, this was the last mile or so that runners had to run...me...I went to take a look at Saint Anthony Falls, which was the only natural waterfall on the Upper Mississippi before it was replaced by a concrete spillway in 1869 (because the falls were in danger of collapsing and Minneapolis needed it to power the mills).

And to see the now closed Upper Saint Anthony Lock.  The Lock was closed last June due to a law signed by the President that was designed to prevent invasive species from getting to the upper Mississippi River.

Kieran wanted a picture of the Mill City Museum and the ruins nearby, which his class toured last May...so here it is...

Oh, plus the 10 mile race was still going on....here's Pam crossing the bridge...

And Sarah came by a few minutes later...

It was a fun morning...

Ice Out - Lake Benton

What's wrong with these pictures?

This was Friday night, 65 degrees at 5:00 pm....

This was this afternoon, cloudy and cool, but an ice free Lake Benton with male, red-wing blackbirds standing guard (ice out was overnight March 10/11 and the blackbirds were back by at least March 9 - the earliest I remember for either)....

All of this is way too early and there will be ecological consequences because of this general trend.  Winters are starting later and ending sooner.  Temperatures are not as low as they used to be, especially the night time temperatures.  Species are migrating back to Minnesota earlier than in the past and leaving the state later than the past....

I mean, lets cut the crap, the climate is and has been changing right in front of our eyes...and we know it's our fault.  Humans are driving the climate system at a pace faster than the earth can react due to 150+ years of continuing to burn fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate.

How often do we see headlines like "February 2016 was the most abnormally warm month ever recorded, topping January 2016."  Before this year, Minneapolis had 3 days with temperatures in the 70s before March 15, we've had 2 this month.  The trend is up and the general public doesn't seem to care...

But wasn't it nice in shorts and flip-flops?  Darn right...but there is a cost.  The boundary waters are losing their native conifers (being replaced with deciduous trees), invasive species are taking a hold (see many opossums in the 1960s?), the moose population is declining in part due to climate, plants are not blossoming at the right time as species come back earlier, large scale droughts, flood events, etc., etc., etc.  The list is long (I don't even want to start with what's going on in the Arctic, which is driving events globally)...

Enjoy the warmer and earlier springs (and later falls) - I'm sure I will continue to wear shorts in early March, but unfortunately our kids, their kids and the following generations will deal with the consequences...