Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

First Track Meet, Baseball Game, and Diarrhea!

>> Thursday, April 23, 2026

We had a busy day on Thursday last week! After I finished teaching my classes, I drove 25 mins to Henry's first track meet! He'd been fighting a knee injury for the last few months, so he really only got in ONE hard workout since cross country season last fall. So he ran a leg of the 4x800 relay without his spikes:

Go Henry! He took off NICE AND FAST!

Finishing with the 2nd fastest time of his team: 2:33 for his first 800.

(I should say he had the 2nd fastest time on the "B team" relay he was a part of, as his school also had a "faster" team. I think his time was better than 2 of the "faster" team runners, so Henry was around the 4th fastest of the 8 on his team to run the 4x800. No times were amazing as his team ran 10:44 and the "fast" team ran 10:08.)

Then I shot back into St. Paul to watch Charlie's baseball game:

He was part of turning a double play at 2nd earlier in the game!

And finally, Charlie and I stopped by the University where I teach because the art gallery was having an opening of the student juried exhibition, and maybe 1/3 of the accepted works were done by current or former students of mine. And the art gallery is literally the building in the background above Charlie's head in the photo above. So we just walked over to see the exhibition and eat some snacks:

I had some of the seafood dip.

And I think it was the seafood dip that wanted back out of me around 10:30 that night.

Yep, it wasn't pleasant. It started with lots of stomach gurgling right around when I was trying to fall asleep, and I knew shortly that I'd be parked in the bathroom for a while. The good news is that I slipped out of and then back into my night splint (which has 3 plastic clips that make a slight snapping noise) without waking my wife! I "set up shop" in the bathroom from about 10:15 until close to 1 a.m. Luckily, I had my phone and was just watching whatever videos my Facebook algorithm wanted to show me - I was watching a guy pan for gold for 20 minutes at one point.

I poop OFTEN. Usually 3-5x day. And after that, I didn't poop for 36 hours (1.5 days), and it was NOT NORMAL when I first pooped. A slightly more normal poop happened after 2.5 days (mid-day on Sunday), but things were't truly normal for about 4 full days. Yikes.

Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Killing a Plantar Wart

>> Wednesday, April 22, 2026

I've had a wart on the ball of my left foot for like 2 years. I treat it for a while, think it's dead, and then it comes back. With being injured and not running 2 weeks ago, I figured I'd really up my "wart killing game." I froze it maybe 2.5 weeks ago, and then still used the liquid to burn it off along with the little "medicated discs" overnight. The roots of the wart started dying and turing brown:

It's hard to tell, but that's quite a DIVOT in my foot.

I was still treating it for a few days after that photo, but it got REALLY sore for about 2 days last week - the liquid acid used to treat it was being put on thin skin! So I stopped treating it for a few days to let it heal up, and then it looked like this:

Pretty sure that's just healthy skin that's re-healing now.

After a few more days, it really hadn't changed:

To be safe, I did freeze it again 2 days ago (shortly after that last photo was taken), so hopefully it's been FULLY sent to hell! I'll check back in in a few weeks...

Re-Starting Running: A Decent Training Week

>> Monday, April 20, 2026

Two weeks ago, I didn't run at all, and all my bike rides were easy as I was tending to some calf pain.

Last week, I started testing things a little, and I noted that I had an easy run, a hard bike (but not long), and another easy run on 3 back-to-back-to-back days. It was starting to feel a LITTLE like normal, but there was no running intensity.

Here's what the week looked like:

That's just easy runs on Mon and Wed, and one that was a BIT more "moderate" on Friday.

Tuesday's ride was that nice, short tempo ride I posted about a few days ago, and then I rode easier on Thursday just to not over-do anything. But then Saturday's trainer ride was more intense: 5x10 min efforts for nearly 2 hours in the saddle. That was a nice way to end my training week!

And my strength time was great at 14 hours and 23 mins (maybe 2nd highest ever behind the previous week of 14:34), but that's partly due to doing more shoulder exercises from my PT. Still had some good lifting days in there!