Sorry...

It's been a bit too long since I've posted anything. way too long. To all of the people who may accidentally have stumbled on the blog, became huge fans, and then expected more, I say to you "you don't even exist, sir!".

This post is more just a quick list of what's been going on, and then a review of the B.O.B. Ironman stroller will follow shortly.

1. Lil guy is growing really fast. Like a weed really. He's playing, rolling, baby talking, and just generally being quite the awesome guy.

2. The Mrs. has several marathon plans, all in effort to trounce prior PR's, and as long as the chondromalacia doesn't go completely insane, it should be a good year for running!

3. As the man of the house, it's my job to be the one to be injured. As many have read in the past, back issue, broken ribs, and costochondritis has really sidelined me the past season, and is finally allowing me to get back into the flow of things. Competition will only be had if God grants me absolutely no more injuries this year.

So how about a quick break down of my training so far!
I have been doing quite a bit more mountain biking this year, as I should be able to finally start competing for Marzocchi later this year. Swimming has also been a heavy part of my training, but not quite as much right now. Mountain biking has been just too much fun! Mile splits on undulating hills has been right at 4:14, assuming no people traffic. Actual trail speeds are all over the map right now, based on some very bad storms downing some very large trees.
Running has been a fickle lady, all depending on what the back let's me do. Mile times have ranged from 5:47 up to 10:30, just depending on terrain and pain. I've recently had a few gluteus medius spasms, so if anyone has any input on avoiding those, let me know!

To sum up, training good, wife great, boy so good, God... too good to us recently.

Thanks for the read, check back soon for the B.O.B. review.

BEST. DAY. EVER.

A lot has happened in the past 2 months that I missed blogging.
Podiatry is rocking and rolling. Our little family will soon be moving on to residency, and then (God willing) back to AK!
My wife and I welcomed our first son to the world on Dec 10th. That's pretty awesome, we love the lil turd to death, and he's a good kid. I'll probably write about that later.

EVEN BIGGER NEWS!
MARMOT SUMMIT HAT IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm extremely excited to report that my in-laws gave me a replacement Marmot Summit hat for Christmas! I am so excited to welcome this fave gear piece back to my quiver of outdoor gear, and can't wait to push it through some awesome climbing, skiing, and backpacking
Pure love...
My son's pretty cool too.

Injinji toe socks: unboxing

I have no clue how to pronounce injinji. I guess that's fine really, it's not so important. More importantly, I have a big blister in between my big toe and 2nd toe on my right foot. Gore-tex shoes tear it up, making it get bigger and blood filled.

CW-X compression socks: a review and an attempt to explain compression clothing.

I recently purchased some CW-X compression socks. I like them. You should buy them. they work well, they feel nice, they have not ripped yet.

After that terrible review (seriously, great socks, work as told), I'm going to dive into compression clothing as a training modality.
Looking at a study by Kemmler, compression stockings (think socks), actually affect running anaerobic, aerobic, lactate threshold, BUT not VO2 max. Essentially, the let you suffer for a little bit longer on the run. They don't really help you raise your horse power, but they give you a little more gas. With a sprinting test on moderately in shape runners, athletes were able to pump for an extra 1.41 seconds. Doesn't sound like a lot, but that really adds up in the long term.

Where's the Respect

This last Sunday, many classy trail runners took off on the 2nd running of the Bobcat Trail Marathon. They tackled surprisingly ugly hills in south-east Ohio, ran in mud, maybe some snow, and fairly cold temps. They did it all with smiles and happiness... mostly... we all know how much "fun" marathons can be.

Heartbreakingly (real word??? meh...), many of the runners found out that some weiners decided it'd be hilarious to tamper with the marathon signage. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

I feel for these runners. It's gut wrenching hard enough to do a marathon of this caliber, and to find out that you were shorted by 2 miles has to rock you in the family jewels. So be courteous out there. Don't tamper with signage.... then again if you're reading this blog post you probably wouldn't do this crap anyways.

Keep it classy, people.

Black Diamond Windweight Gloves Review

I"ll air my grievances first. The seams inside the gloves are a little annoying and I don't like how the fleece attracts hair. Now that we have the dirty business ironed out, I can extol the good graces of the Black Diamond Windweight Gloves.

Operation Elderly 20's: The First Legit

I have heard that doctors make horrible patients. I assume this is true. I pretty much assume that anything I do is truth, so let's run with that. Thus, I rode my bike before my Nov. 1st doctors appointment. It was only 12 miles, but man did it feel good.

I feel like now is a good time to  talk about easing yourself in to working out.

What the viewers think

I'm more just curious to see what you think of the blog, as a reader, what do you like, hate, and why did you stop by?
drop a comment below.

quick perspective on barefoot fury

A lot of people have a very diverse outlook on barefoot running. I'm not providing my own opinion at this point, but rather one random musing. Really, there have been very, very few legitimate scientific, peer reviewed studies on this particular topic, so it'd be very, very unprofessional to give expert opinion at this point. I'll probably end up giving it any at some point.

The calcaneus (heel bone) has a special are called the neutral triangle. It's were the trabeculae (bone scaffold) meet at a particular angle such that they transfer forces beautifully. From the heel forward. Further more, equinus, or the condition of walking on your tip toes all the time, leads to a whole cohort of problems later in life. It's something to consider, by no means definitive.

I do, however, fully agree with the ideas of Cody Lundin. He advocates a barefoot approach to survival and hiking in general. I understand where he's coming from, by going barefoot he's forced to go slow. I like the idea. I personally wouldn't like to walk through the jungle, leishmaniasis and all, but I understand it.
Check him out here

The Dirty Breakfast

And now I'm breaking into backcountry/camping recipe topics!

Dirty and super easy, this recipe is about as user easy as possible.

1. buy bob evans sausage and gravy mix
2. buy premade biscuits
3. heat the mix
4. crumble in biscuits
5. eat

too easy... kinda sad... and really not great for backpacking. So...

Marmot Summit Hat. You will be sorely missed...

 Mrs. J steals the Marmot Summit Hat, Denali National Park

Last winter I lost a dear friend, my Marmot Summit Hat. He fought through the washer valiantly, but somehow managed to sneak into the dryer. I can only imagine the pain of being dried as a wool hat, but I gather that it can't feel good. He currently resides in box somewhere, waiting to be worn by my son when he eventually grows a head somewhere between the size of a toddler and a 12 year old.

Flector! Broken Ribs! Torn Cartiladge! Days Without Pain!

By no means is this a medical diagnosis or a promotion of a product. I'm not even sure if I can legally do this. If I can't please tell me so and perhaps do it in a way where I don't go to jail. I'm not paid to do this, I have no affiliation with whatever pharmaceutical company makes Flector patches, but whatever.

photo courtesy of flectorpatch.com

Vest help

I'm looking for some advice on a trail running vest for this coming winter season. To give you an idea, my body runs like an absurd furnace when I'm actually moving, but as soon as I stop, things get pretty chilly. It makes for some crazy layering questions winter hiking, but things are pretty straight forward running. Typically I rock shorts, longer wool socks, gore-tex shoes, a tech t, then a long sleeve tech t. This works great until wind or precipitation hit. I then go to either my Marmot Gravity softshell or my Precip. These both tend to have me overheated in about... 10 minutes of running, even with pit zips wide open. I also run in light gloves, and hardly ever a hat. This is for long runs too, looking at 12-16 miles plus.

I'm looking at the Mountain Hardwear Transition Vest, but I'm curious to hear other input. I'm not really looking for a windshirt, like the Marmot DriClime, but am open to suggestions. I'm also open to free stuff. Free stuff which I will review and extol it's good graces. This statement will probably never reach the desks of people who could potentially make that happen, but none the less, as a broke medical student with a baby on the way, free stuff is the bestest!

Thoughts on a vest for running and mountain biking? Needs to be highly visible, breathable, windproof, and DWR'd.

Hit me with some suggestions!

Marmot Exum. Only One Complaint.

I've been putting off writing this review for a while. Why? You know when you love something so much that your heart hurts to say something bad about it, especially in public? It's just hard to say something mean about anything you love so much. I'll get back to that point after I extol all of the Exum's good graces.

They're Back!

Many trail runners probably already know this. Black bears are back in North East Ohio. Personally, I've seen a lot of evidence of it, from poo to paw prints. Never a direct sighting, but sometimes you just know something deep in your bones. This I know.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/newsnet5/newsnet5_ts3812

Anyways, what's a trail runner to do if they happen to round a corner and make friendly with a black bear?

1. These aren't the bears of lore. These bears are affectionately known as Pennsylvania Shy one state to the east. Typically, you won't have a problem. In fact, you're incredibly lucky if you do actually see one.

2. As soon as you've made contact, make yourself as big as possible. Do nothing that seems threatening, like yelling and making eye contact. Also, don't make yourself look like food. Don't cower, don't bend over, and don't run away.

3. Back away slowly, talking, looking big, and don't make eye contact. 99% of the time this works.

3. Black bear are different than grizzly. If they do charge, most likely you're food. Run. Drop your pack as a sacrifice. Assuming all this doesn't work so well, fight like hell. I can't describe anything better than that. You're goal at this point is to injure the bear, this way you won't die.

4. Most of charges are because of people splitting a mom from cubs. Don't do this.

Seriously, your chances of dealing with a bear are significantly less than dealing with dogs. I've had to ward off dog attacks thrice on the trails, never dealt with a bear. Enjoy your run!

Operation Elderly 20's: workout 1

This is huge. 5 days after back surgery, I did my first major workout to get back to ultramarathon shape. I'm talking huge people!

I spun for 5 minutes.

Heck ya I did! I changed the skewer on my bike, pulled out the trainer, and set it the bike in all by myself. Bam! 5 minutes of spinning later and I was starting to get sore, but it felt so good to get moving. This got me thinking, what workout can you do in 5 minutes that will absolutely sap you and get you in ultra-shape?

The up down. Burpee. Whatever. Many ways to do it, but here's a video of the basics.

Another class is the football up down.
1. drive your feet! (chop your feet, run in place, whatever)
2. drop to your chest, in the low part of the pushup position
3. pop back up to your feet.
4. repeat until you hate yourself

Operation Elderly 20's

It's been 3 days since surgery. All I can think about is running. And skiing... climbing too... oh mountain biking... even weightlifting. Basically, I really, really want to get back to working out, and working out at the upper echelon that I've been used to. I've been working out of 9 straight years, with very little time off, and I can say that the last 2 weeks of forced no working out has been amazingly aggravating/satisfying.

My groin hasn't hurt in months. My knees are lively. My abs have not hurt for 4 days straight (which is amazing when they've been actively contracting for several months to hold your back in position as not to further damage the disc). Heck, I don't even have any big calluses or blisters on my feet!

It's killing me. My body feels great, my mind feels terrible. I just want to get out on the trails, feel lactic acid rip through my muscles, and then I want to chug victory chocolate milk like there's no tomorrow. Not going to happen though. Another 12 days until I may be able to get in the pool... feels long but I know it's not that bad really.

So I'm starting Operation Elderly 20's. My goal is to get my body back into big mountain shape by this coming March 22. That's the goal. We'll see what happens though!

I'll be putting every single major workout under this headline. I'm not gonna put stuff like "today I ran 4 miles". It's going to be big days, like bricks, huge runs, and... God willing... a big first descent skiing with my little brother. The plan has been laid, now we'll see how fast we can get back to xterra and ultra shape.

Malachi 3:10. Shut up, brain.

Many of you have read and commented to Mrs. J and I on God's faithfulness through my back surgery and the obvious miracles that God did for us. I'm absolutely ashamed to tell you that the next day, feeling absolutely amazing, my first thought and emotion when confronted with what could be an absolute medical insurance fiasco, was fear and extreme stress.

Why so embarrassing? Well, God did just save my physical body from what could have ultimately amounted to paralysis and/or death, but when it came to money, I freaked out. It's not that I didn't worry quite a bit about the back, but after just having lived through a literal miracle, I didn't just instantly trust that God would take care of our current situation. That's embarrassing.

To sum it up, it looks as if our insurance may have some incredibly awkward clause and stance on spinal injuries, and we're desperately hoping that this doesn't apply to what was a medical emergency surgery. Then we got a call from our ob gyn's office that our med insurance has some ridiculously low maternity coverage (put it this way, the ideal delivery would still leave us 18,000 uncovered). I'm finding the maternity rider hilarious, because we've actually paid more cash for the rider than the insurance company will be paying out for coverage. I won't pretend to love Obama-care, but I got a quick slap in the face on how twisted we've allowed medical insurance to become. This hits straight at home, you know, since I'm a year out from being a doctor myself. This definitely makes me much more sympathetic to my future patients.

So where does Malachi 3:10 come in? God blatantly says test me! I'm not going to go out and tell the reader our tithe and giving, I don't think that's appropriate, yet let it be known that we now know that God will be faithful. He's a gracious God. I can't wait to share with you how God works in the future months.

I can't wait to put up pics of my almost born son, too. God will be faithful. He's going to take care. The storehouses of heaven will be opened up.

After all, saving my life is much more impressive than paying some medical bills. And we've already seen God save my life just this past Tuesday.

Here we go!

wow. bad injury. surgery. God's MIRACLES!

I've never taken this blog to my faith side of life. I didn't plan on ever doing that, as this thing is supposed to focus on work outs, gear reviews, and outdoor sport tips and tricks. I can't comfortably ignore the miracles of healing that God has been doing the past several weeks, specifically during surgery yesterday.

Let's get up to speed. For 6 months I've had back problems. I ignored them (ski season), I put ice on it (running season), and lied to myself (climbing season) that the pain wasn't that bad. Things finally went crashing down (wakeboarding) and I knew that the injury went from ignorable to horrible. Running became miserable, sitting sucked, and all I could do was swim.

Over Labor Day weekend, Mrs. J and I went to visit my parents. Sunday evening I woke up to pee and knew instantly that the insane pain down my left leg was sciatica (I'll write up a post about the symptoms later). I woke up Monday morning to the most pain perhaps in my life... not a small feet (haha, podiatry joke), as I've broken something like 25 bones. Mrs. J took me to the ER that night, we got the shots in the butt, and then got an apt with Dr. Brad Hillard of University Hospitals (amazing doc!). Mrs J boss, Dr. Noel Aboud of Solon Spine and Wellness, sent us out to get an MRI, just to expedite things. Dr. Aboud called us Wednesday morning, telling us that'd I'd be needing back surgery. This was echoed to us by Dr. Hillard, who made sure we would be seen by one of North East Ohio's best spinal surgeons.

I went to see Dr. Hart of University Hospitals, one of the Cleve's best neurosurgeons, who was able to squeeze us in super early. At this point I knew I had a large fragment of my disc material that had squeezed out of the disc space to sit on my nerve. I'll explain all the science later. I heard that this was a pretty big fragment, which was reaffirmed by Dr. Hart when he said, "yah, so I hear that the Grand Canyon is a large hole in the ground".

To put things bluntly, I did this back injury big! The fragment measured 12mm on the MRI and was one of the biggest Dr. Hart has seen in 15 years. AWESOME! Bad news though. Dr. Hart was fairly certain that the fragment had popped into the thecal sack, part of the dura, and if it had, I was looking at about a week in the hospital with other surgeries to come. Oh yah, and if I got a bacterial or viral infection in the thecal sack, most likely it would go to my brain. That kills people.

I'm no stranger to almost dieing. I've looked down chutes while skiing that terrified me to no end. I've taken falls climbing where I probably should have died (also, didn't get injured... sooo... cool). This is the first time I've legitimately been scared while looking at the valley of the shadow of death. I have a wife. I have a little boy growing in the belly oven. That's responsibility! That's dependence! That's need! That's terrifying!

We set surgery for Tuesday, Sept 21st. Friends, family, pastors began to pray for us. We began to pray so intensively that sometimes I would wind up laying on the floor in tears, with pain and yearning. I can't quite share all the ways that God showed his face, but I will share my most obvious pre-surgery confirmation that all will be ok.

In my special prayer spot, the same one where God told me that all would be fine for med school boards, I took my shoes off out of reference for what had become a special place to me. After prayer, reading, and just talking to the Lord, I was clearly told to not turn around, to only focus forward. I was also told to expect something special. Pomegranate. That seems so trivial, but they're out of season, they're my favorite food, they're symbols of health, and God often demonstrates His glory by food. The most obvious example that comes to mind is manna delivered to the Isrealites during the exodus. I left and went to the grocery store to grab eggs and onions for my wife, and went to another grocery store than normal (the normal one was crazy busy). As I walked in and headed towards the onions... there they were. First of the year, not even fully ripe. Sitting off to the side, not in front, and only about 10 of them or so... were pomegranates. I knew right away that God was in control, that all was fine, and that'd I'd be holding my newborn son this December! I started to tear up in the middle of the grocery store, holding a pair of pomegranates. I bet that was hilarious to someone.

The next day was surgery day. Actually, that was yesterday, so you can probably guess right now that things went so well. They did. They went miraculously!
I was told that I'd be in surgery for at least 2 hours, probably more to prepare the thecal sack and keep me from you know... kicking the bucket. I was wheeled into surgery at 10:04.

At 11:05 Dr. Hart came out to the waiting room to talk to Mrs. J and my mom. You can imagine how terrified Mrs. J was. This was far too fast... something wrong had to happen... what horrible medical problem would we be facing.

Dr. Hart simply smiled. He said that the fragment was even bigger than they thought. He cut a little bit of it out and removed a very small bit of it. He went back in to continue removing piece by piece, but the 2 inch fragment decided to just come out in one piece, which is amazing. Dr. Hart spent a good bit of time searching for a thecal tear, tried several techniques to force cerebral spinal fluid to leak and show where the tear was... but none could be found.

A surgery that should have taken hours to finish took about 30 minutes of actual surgery, without prep and closure. That is a miracle. God is so good. I can't tell you how lucky I am. I should be at the hospital laying horizontal for several days but I'm at home, in minimal pain, able to walk, and I ate pizza last night! PIZZA!!!

I can't tell you how good God has been in the last several weeks without sitting down and really explaining the gravity of the situation. All I can say is that God gave me a miracle. I can't contain my joy and am more than wiling to talk to anyone about Jesus, about how He worked in my life, and how he can work in yours.

I'll be writing my journey back to ultra-marathon shape, back to xterra shape, and back to climbing Rainier (planned for next year, God wiling). I can't wait to share with you my journey as a father, also.

I'm just happy to be at home, happy to be alive, and happy that I serve a God who does answer prayer.

Things I Forgot to Workout 4: Sitting

For those of you following along, I managed to start my back injury by my crappy posture while studying for hours upon hours a day. Here's what I should have done...

1. stop slouching. while I wrote that I had to correct myself
2. Don't sit without your lumbar region planted to the back of the chair... SI joints don't like the extra pressure from you sitting your butt on the front edge and leaning back
3. Try doing a few superman moves per day. Lay on your belly, lift up both your legs and feet. Yell "To infinity and beyond!". Change the name of the exercise to "The Buzz Lightyear".

Not much else right now. I'm just biding my time until the back doesn't hurt. Still haven't hit the trails for a good run, and it's been almost to weeks. That breaks my heart a bit.

On the positive note, XTERRA Triathlons are a go for next year. I'm incredibly excited.