Tom's Place

I went for a run with the group starting from City Hall tonight and I wore my regular road shoes. I only lasted about two blocks and my left foot started hurting like crazy, that plantar facieitis. So I walked back to city hall and came home. My foot feels fine now but I am wondering if it is my shoes. I wore my new trail shoes on Saturday and completed the run with no problems, my foot felt a little sore afterwards but was fine during the run. I am going to try my next run with my trail shoes and see what happens.

We took a day trip up to Calgary on Monday. Corey was off work for the day and we had some Christmas gifts from Pincher Creek to deliver that they weren’t able to get at Christmas. Kailey and Caleb came to their place also for the day to join us. It was a nice weather day and the roads were good so that made the trip much more enjoyable. We had a good day together. I drove Libby to school and picked her up again after school. We were able to have a good visit while driving to and from school. Julie made a delicious supper and we had a good drive home in the evening. 

I went for a run on Saturday with the marathon club. My foot was feeling better before I went and didn’t give me any problems during the run but was certainly painful afterwards and for a couple of days later. I have continued to stretch and exercise the foot and it is much better again today so I will go for a short run this evening and see what happens.

I got a phone call Monday evening when we got home from Calgary to meet with the stake president Tuesday evening and bring Maurene with me. Well, all kinds of terrible scenarios ran through my head as to what calling I would get. I was totally surprised when they called me to be the stake financial clerk. That hadn’t even hit the radar. I have never been any kind of a clerk before never mind a financial one so I will have a lot to learn but my schedule for doing my duties will be flexible which appeals to me. It could have been much worse.

I am taking this week off running. I am not sure what brought it on but my heel started hurting on the weekend and from past experience I know it is plantar fasciitis and I also know not to ignore it and hope it will go away soon. I am going to ride the stationary bike over at the gym instead of run this week and I am doing stretches and exercises to help it heal. It is already feeling much better but I know not to rush back to running too soon. The interesting thing is that the stretch that makes it feel the best is stretching my calf muscles. If all continues to go well, I will go for a run this Saturday with the club. I don’t know if not stretching enough is the cause of perhaps my shoes are getting too old. I will try a run Saturday and see what happens.

It has been a while since I posted on the blog. Things were so busy over Christmas that I got out of the habit quite easily. My training has been going well. I am now doing weights at the university gym on Tuesday and Thursday every week. I found an app for my iPad called iFitness which is just excellent. It has hundreds of exercises for all parts of the body and routines that are already set up. It tracks my routines so I enter the weight and reps. It looks a little geeky with my iPad in the gym but it works. I am still using my iPod nano when I run and the Nike+ system is great for tracking my running. 

My online course has started up now and it looks like I will have 19 students. Things are going well so far. I am going to work on the course on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at the university and will make myself available for students in my office if they need to come and talk about something.

We had a whole bunch of snow yesterday and today and it is very cold. I will have to see what it is like in the morning. I think I will go and run at the university rather than plough through the snow in the cold weather. I will see what happens.

We travelled up to Pincher Creek yesterday for our annual post Christmas get together. We had a lot of fun and lots of good food. There were 16 kids and 3 dogs and a bunch of grown ups, it was wild to say the least.

Some of the kids in Pincher

Kailey and Caleb arrived this afternoon and will be staying for a few days. I went out to Costco and bought a new camera with the money that the kids gave me for that purpose. I got a little, very small, Sony camera that takes good photos and is very easy to pack around.

Lucas opening gifts

Panorama shot with the new camera

It was a very different Christmas Day for us. Maurene and I spent most of the day at home, just the two of us. It was nice but sure different from most other years. We exchanged gifts in the morning and Maurene liked her ring so I am very happy about that. Later in the afternoon we went over to Aaron and Skye’s place for Christmas dinner. We had a great time there and played some game’s with them and Aaron’s  parents after the kids went to bed. I set up Stratton’s present from us on his wall, he really liked playing with it.

Stratton with his Hot Wheels Wall set

We had a great Christmas Eve today. Corey and his family came down from Calgary and Skye and her family came over too. We spent a great day together playing games and making gingerbread houses and eating treats. The grandkids put on the nativity before we opened gifts but the angel Ayla would not cooperate. Both families went home later on in the evening to be at home Christmas morning. We did a FaceTime chat with Scott and Stacey in Victoria and also with Jay in High River.

Jay went to the Christmas party for the company he works for and he won a MacBook Pro. Very nice door prize.

Nativity sans angel

I got the Jetta a few days ago and it was great to have it back and looking just as good as when we bought it. Well, maybe not as clean but you certainly couldn’t tell it had been in an accident.

This month Runner’s Soul is sponsoring a December streak where participants try to run at least one mile every day in December. When you complete a run, you post that you have finished it on their Facebook event page. Then every day they draw a name for a prize. I am participating and will try to do every day in December except for the Sundays of course. So I guess it will not be an official streak but too bad. 

I got a call from Gord at the Davis body shop telling me that the Jetta wouldn’t be ready for a while yet. I guess all of the body work was completed by Friday afternoon but they did a four wheel alignment and discovered that one of the front struts was bent so it had to be replaced. So they had to order the parts and will complete the work when the parts arrive. I think it will probably be another week yet because they use genuine Volkswagen parts and they take longer to get.

I went for a run around the lake this morning, it is a beautiful morning, sunny and no wind. It was a nice run and it is nice to have the music to keep me company when I run alone. I am off to Coutts this afternoon to pick up some books Maurene ordered for herself and for her mother for Christmas. They are being delivered to the warehouse in Sweetgrass to save on shipping costs. I hope I don’t have any trouble at the border.

I went for a run this morning with the Runner’s Soul bunch. They were starting a run every day in December promotion. I just bought some new headphones for my iPad that are great with a gift card for Costco that I got from Cindy and Karma. So I decided to run with the iPod and try the Nike+ feature on it. It did a good job with the distance, pretty close to the actual distance I think. It kept track of distance and time and pace. I uploaded it to the Nike website when I got home, it does it automatically when you sync the iPod on the computer and it does some pretty amazing graphs and keeps track of all you runs. I am impressed with it and I think it will be very useful. The URL for the site is: http://nikeplus.nike.com/plus/running/home/Beartrap1