New MRI and Front Eaters New York

I got another MRI yesterday, my fourth one since November.  You'll recall that my first three MRIs were on my ankle, my back and hip).  Yesterday's MRI was, believe it or not, the first MRI I've gotten in the actual location where I'm feeling my butt pain, that is, the "right proximal hamstring @ ischial tuberosity."  (The ischial tuberosity is the sit bone of the pelvis where the hamstring attaches itself to via a tendon).

Dr. Degis had me get this new MRI.  His plan is for me to get a steroid injection into my hamstring, and the MRI will pinpoint the exact spot of the tear where the steroid will be injected.  Once that is figured out, I will be working with Dr. Ronald Adler of Hospital for Special Surgery, who specializes in radiology and imaging, to perform an "ultrasound guided steroid injection."  I'm not sure what that means, but it sounded really promising.  I even did some research on my own and I found this article which recommends ultrasound guided steroid injections for "high hamstring tendinopathy in runners," which is what I think I have.

Well, I just got the results of the MRI back.  Apparently there is nothing f-cking wrong with my hamstring.  "No fracture, periosteal new bone formation, or marrow edema."  "No muscle tear, contusion, or hematoma."  "No associated marrow change."  Everything's frigging normal.  Yeah, that's why when I sit down for 10 minutes, it feels like my leg is getting attacked by a million pins and needles.  That's why I can't do a frigging speed workout without limping for the next week.  That's when when I stretch my hamstring after even an easy run, it feels like it's on fire.  Cuz everything's normal.

Ugh, all I want is for someone to figure out what I have, and for them to fix it.  This butt pain has been going on for eight months now, without any sign of it going away.  I'm starting to wonder if i should reconsider my fall running plans, maybe not doing a marathon or Reach the Beach...I feel like that would be devastating.  I can't begin to say how frustrated I am.

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Tomorrow I'm doing the Park to Park Swim.  It's a two-mile swim in the Hudson River, from 125th Street to 165th Street.  It'll be my longest open water swim ever (if I finish, haha).  I'm excited but nervous.  Last year, I did the Great Hudson River Swim, a 1.3-miler from Christopher Street to Battery Park City.  It seems a little odd that this time I'm swimming northward, but apparently the Hudson River Swim Series are all timed to have a tidal assist.  My goal tomorrow is first to finish without drowning, and second, to finish somewhere in the top 70%.  The 70% is kind of an arbitrary number, but it would qualify me to swim in the Liberty Island Swim on June 25th (I don't even want to swim it, it would just be nice to qualify).   Last year the 70% finisher completed the swim in 1:12.  My one-mile swim last week was 32:18.  So in theory, with a tidal assist, I think I can break 1:12.  We'll see.  At the Great Hudson River Swim, I was 140 out of 171, so that's 82%.  But that was before I learned how to swim.

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I've been skipping the outdoor speed workouts with Front Runners over the past several weeks.  On Thursdays and Sundays, the club does workouts on the outdoor track, and on Tuesdays it does hill workouts in Central Park.  I really like the Tuesday workouts, but I've been skipping them because of my butt.  One good thing to come out of having my Tuesdays free is that I've gotten a chance to eat with Front Runners, which is just as fun as running with Front Runners.

My friend Fatai, who often appears in this blog (see here and here), has started a new business venture.  Fatai is a Ph.D. candidate in Food Studies at NYU, so he's an expert in all things food-related.  His new business, Budding Taste, takes people on "Taste Excursions" in restaurants all over the city.  The excursions are based on a unifying theme, like Chinese food or spicy food, and we get to experience the city's diverse food flavors and learn how to taste critically.  Of course, that means we get to eat really tasty food!

I went on the Chinese tasting series, which took people to restaurants in Queens and Manhattan serving Sichuan, Cantonese, Northern Chinese, Fujianese, and Taiwanese food.  I've actually learned a lot about the different cuisines of China, and really enjoyed the chance to sample them all.  Here are some pics from the Northern Chinese place we went to in Queens.  (Sorry for the crappy Blackberry photos, they don't do justice to the food!)

Fatai's taking reservations now for his next series, which will be spicy foods.  We'll be sampling the food of Korean, the West Indies, Sichuan Province, Ethiopia and India.  I'm really excited.  If you let him know that you're a reader of Running to Dinner, I'm sure he will give you a discount!

PS: Like the Budding Taste website?  Fellow Front Runner John MacConnell designed it!

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I've been obsessed with flank steak lately.  Flank steak is usually what goes into fajitas and sometimes asian stir-fries.  I like it because it's a relatively inexpensive cut of beef, yet it's very lean, easy to make and flavorful when done correctly.  It also lets me break out my cast-iron skillet, which I like cooking with.  

Ideally it would be good to marinate a flank steak, but sometimes I get lazy and just rub some salt and pepper onto it, maybe some Worcestershire or soy sauce, a little mirin.  It's best to have it sit on the counter for a little while for it to reach room temperature so it cooks quicker.  The cooking part is easy, I just put it in a HOT cast iron skillet, for about 4-5 minutes a side, depending on the thickness.  It ends up getting my house super smoky, but I can live for a day or two with the smell of meat if it tastes good, which this definitely does.

After a 5-10 minute rest wrapped up in foil, I'll slice it up.  The key to flank steak is you have to slice it very thinly, across the grain.  The flank is pretty much the cow's abdominal muscle, so the grain runs the long way down the belly.  Just like the ab muscles of a runner are always engaged, the flank is always working for a cow too, and thus can be extremely tough if you cut it like a normal steak.  But, cooked quickly and cut thinly across the grain, flank steak is super tender and delicious.  Yummm.

Taper, taper, taper. And a big hunk of beef.

I'm officially tapering now...  just six days left until the Boston Marathon!  There's a part of me that thinks it's a little bit ridiculous that I'm tapering, since my weekly mileage for the past couple of months has rarely gotten beyond 30.  But for this week, I've decided to cut out yoga, swimming and biking, and will just do a few easy runs at marathon pace.

Sunday was the NYRR TGL Run as One 4-Miler.  I had no intention of running this race.  But on Saturday, as I was doing my last longish run of the season, an 8-miler with Matt and Mikey B, Matt wore the race t-shirt, which was a fancy technical New Balance thing.  And later, Peter wanted company as he went to NYRR to pick up his bib, so I decided to go with him and sign up too to get my free t-shirt.

Nervous about running too fast a week before the marathon, I decided to just jog it, except for the last mile, where I stepped it up a bit.  My splits: 7:15, 7:13, 7:27, 6:42; 28:37 total.  This was my slowest 4-miler since April 2007.  But I felt pretty good, and I'm going into Boston feeling confident that I can finish it without messing up my butt/hamstring.

Tonight, I'm planning to go to the Armory to do mile repeats with Mikey at marathon pace.  I found it really helpful to do some miles at MP before Chicago because it gave me an idea of how much effort I should be expending at the start.  It's even more important to have proper pacing in Boston because the first half is downhill.

And for me especially, I think it's extremely important to go out at the proper pace.  In Chicago, I ran the entire race with the 3:10 pace group, and they helped to slow me down at the start and push me along towards the end.  There are no pace groups in Boston.  The idea, I think, is that because everyone is lined up according to their qualifying time, everyone around you will be running the same pace.  But I qualified with a 3:09 and have no plans to run anything near that...  which means I'll have to deliberately run slower than the people around me, and be OK with getting passed by everyone.  This is easier said than done.  And if I go out too fast to start, I'll have nothing left in me for the 5-6 miles of hills beginning at mile 16.

So my big question is what should my goal time and pace be?  I was originally thinking of letting Boston just be a totally "fun" marathon, and setting a pretty modest 3:30 goal.  But after my relatively successful final 20-miler last weekend, I think I can shoot for something a little more ambitious, in the 3:20 range.  That comes out to a 7:38 average pace, which I think is pretty doable for me right now, as long as I run smart.

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This week is Mike Terry's birthday, so on Sunday I invited a few of the Front Runners over in my first post-new-kitchen dinner party.

On the menu:

*Iceberg lettuce wedge with homemade blue cheese dressing and crumbled bacon

My first time making blue cheese dressing was a big success.  And it couldn't have been easier.  I don't know why anyone would buy it in a bottle if homemade is so much better, and literally only takes two minutes to make.  I just mixed together a quarter pound of blue cheese, about a cup of mayo, a few tablespoons of sour cream (left over from taco night on Thursday), some lemon juice (mom sent me a bunch of lemons from the tree in their yard in San Jose), and some grinds of black pepper.  That's it!

*Broiled sirloin steaks

I got a couple of 2-3 pound steaks at Fairway after the 4-miler.  I love broiling these steaks for a big group.  It's so easy, I just put sprinkled some salt and pepper on them and broiled for about 7-8 minutes a side (which was probably about one or two minutes too long in my new oven).  I then took the pan drippings, and added some half and half, whiskey, and about a tablespoon of ground pepper for a tasty au poivre sauce.  

* Mashed potatoes

Yummmm.....  I found a perfect use for all of that bacon grease I had from making bacon bits for the salad!

* Creamed spinach

This turned out good.  But it was looking a little too soupy, so I tried to thicken it up with a roux.      I was in a rush, and there was too much flour in the roux, and it didn't fully cook through in the oil, so when I added the roux to the spinach, I ended up getting big chunks of flour in it.  Yuck.  So then I had to pick out like a million little lumps of flour from the spinach, and a few people still ended up biting into a flourball.  Ugh.

Overall, I think the dinner was a big success.  We topped off everything with a delicious birthday ice cream cake that John brought from Baskin-Robbins.  I still have the left over 1/3 of a cake in my freezer.  But I plan to finish it by marathon weekend.  

;-)