I Will Be a Spectator

So I've decided I will not be running the 2010 ING New York City Marathon.  This was a very difficult decision, but I believe it was the right one.  I am seriously undertrained, and have been battling injury for the past year.  My mileage has been way, way down from where it was even in the spring, and I've had very few successful long runs this season.  For me to run a marathon in just two weeks would be extremely difficult, possibly risking even more injury.  It would also be a really really really slow run, and would just not be an enjoyable experience for me.

I came to this decision on Sunday, in the middle of what was to be my last long run before the marathon.  You'll recall that last week was the FRNY Blue Line Run, the last 20 miles of the marathon, and I had a pretty disastrous run, pretty much falling apart and having to take a taxi after 17 miles.  After last week, I gave myself one more chance to have a good long run before the marathon.  I came up with a great 22 mile route, which traces the last 15 miles of the marathon, following a 7-mile run from my apartment to Williamsburg.  I specifically wanted to do the end of the marathon route again so that, on race day, I wouldn't be dogged by the reminder of how crappy I felt during the Blue Line Run down Fifth Avenue.

So Sunday, I headed out for my planned 22-miler.  I felt fine for the first 12-13 miles.  But then I just started to get tired, and kind of lost my energy to keep it going.  I could probably have still continued, but I knew it would be a struggle, and mentally, I knew that it just wouldn't be fun.  About mile 14, I stated thinking that I just didn't want to run 8 more miles to finish my planned run; and the thought of running 12 more miles in the marathon just seemed like it would be miserable.  So I decided to just stop, enjoy the run that I had, defer on this year's marathon, and head home for some lunch.

It was a difficult decision, but one that I think I'm glad I made.  Running is supposed to be enjoyable.  Even when it's difficult and I'm pushing myself to the limit, I enjoy it.  But pushing myself to do a race that I'm not properly trained for is just not fun.  It's also not responsible running.  I'd like to think that I've matured enough as a runner that I don't have to be out there for every race, pushing my body to do things that it really shouldn't be doing.  It's not always about the distance covered, or the time that I ran it in, or how many times I can do a race.  Running is more about the love of the sport, and the ability to continue pursuing this passion.  I know that, by making the difficult but responsible decision to pass on this year's NYC Marathon, I am strengthening my love for running, and taking care of my body so that I can have other great races in the future.  While I'm definitely disappointed in missing out on New York, I am even more inspired to take care of myself and train properly in the spring in order to have a kick ass Boston.  I'm so excited to get back in shape and renew my love of running.

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After deciding not to run the marathon, I was definitely a little bummed.  But fortunately, I had previously made plans for some runner friends to come over for dinner.  Among them were Mikey and Derek who got me excited to be a part of "CHEER FORCE ONE," our marathon cheering squad.  I'm hoping we'll get to see our teammates in three separate spots--Greenpoint, 1st Ave and 5th Ave.  I've never actually been a spectator at the marathon, so think this will be a lot of fun.  

Ever since Mikey's chicken dinner last week, I've been thinking about making some pulled pork.  The last time I cooked up a pork shoulder, though, I ended up eating pulled pork for weeks, and I got a little sick of it.  So this time I decided to have a pulled pork party, with a bunch of fun side dishes.  

This time, I made my own barbecue sauce (although I kept handy a bottle of store-bought sauce just in case I was unsuccessful).  I actually make barbecue sauce often, but I only know how to make it with asian flavors (soy sauce, sesame oil, grated ginger, hoisin, oyster sauce, bulgogi sauce, etc.)  But I didn't want this sauce to be too asiany, because I didn't think that would work so well with my side dishes.  So my sauce consisted of: sauteed chopped onions, garlic power, ketchup, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, chili power, cayenne pepper powder, Manishewitz grape wine, red wine vinegar and a little bit of sriracha sauce.  It came out really good!  A perfect blend of tartness and sweetness, with a little bit of a kick.  Someone even commented that I would make a lot of money if I bottled it.  :-)

For my side dishes, I made cole slaw, baked beans, collard greens and a corn pudding.  Mikey and I got into a disagreement about the collard greens.  He thought they should be sauteed and served crisp and bright green.  I thought that, when serving collard greens with barbecue, they should be cooked for a loooong time, and super wilted to the point where they practically melt in your mouth.  We ended up in a compromise and served them somewhat wilted but still crisp.  Feel free to comment below on how you like your collard greens!

I think the biggest hit of the night was the corn pudding.  I decided to make corn pudding because I thought it would be a more interesting alternative to cornbread, which I'm not always a huge fan of.  Everyone liked it!  It was completely finished by the end of the night.  The consistency was kind of half-pudding/half-cornbread, and it was really able to showcase the sweetness of the corn.  I thought I'd include a recipe, which I adapted from a combination of this and this:

              Dave's Delicious Corn Pudding

              3 15-ounce cans of corn (2 cans drained; 1 can pureed)

              1 medium chopped onion, sauteed

              2 eggs

              6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, melted

              8 oz sour cream

              1 box jiffy corn bread mix

              1 tablespoon sugar

              Combine all ingredients and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  Enjoy!

And for dessert, homemade sweet potato pie.  Yummmmmm!!!!!

Six weeks off...

I have not run for two weeks now, and I learned this week that it's going to be quite a while longer.

Last Friday, I went back to Dr. Babiy.  The purpose of the visit was to look at the x-rays on my ankle and determine the next steps, as well as to get my electromyogram (EMG) on my butt.  The x-ray came back negative for a fracture.  However, it did show some signs of "cortical thickening," which I guess means that the outer layer of my tibia bone had grown thicker than usual.  She said this was probably the result of my running--as the muscles pull on the bone, they cause stress on it and make the cortex thicker.  She said this was probably not a huge deal, but told me to get an MRI just in case.

The EMG is a test used to record the electrical activity of muscles.  It can be used to detect muscle abnormalities, such as when there is a pinched nerve.  The purpose of the test was to see if I had problems with the sciatic nerve, since I had reported a "pins and needles" sensation to her.

The test was sort of like the rubber mallet reflex test that doctors do, only more high-tech, and much more painful.  The doctor places these electrodes up and down my leg.  She would administer a little shock here and there to basically see how much my leg reacted.  By my foot, where the sciatic nerve is at its smallest, I would feel what amounted to a little electrical pinprick.  But as she moved up my leg, the shocks felt more and more intense, and my reflexive reaction got bigger and bigger.  When she got to my butt, it felt like I got hit with a stun gun, and my leg let out a huge uncontrollable kick.  It was kind of funny and painful at the same time.  The EMG showed that there was nothing wrong with my sciatic nerve, so it turns out that my butt issue is just a muscle problem, like a pulled hamstring or something. 

Later, at physical therapy, my PT Marina (funny, both Dr. Babiy's and my PT's first names are Marina) confirmed that the problem area was not, as I had believed, my piriformis muscle.  She did this by isolating my piriformis muscle: I lay on the table on my left, bent my right leg and raised my right leg up, while her hand applied downward pressure.  This maneuver apparently isolates the piriformis muscle, which ends up flexing out of the butt.  She poked around at that muscle, and I didn't feel anything abnormal.  The area where I felt tenderness was further outside--my glute.  So I guess Dr. Metzl was right, I just have a weak butt. 

So I've been working some exercises to strengthen it, although some of them don't really seem to be butt exercises at all.  One of them is a "pushup" where I lie on the floor and push my chest up while keeping my legs and hips on the floor, kind of like an Upward Facing Dog in yoga.  My favorite part of physical therapy is when she attaches the electrodes to my butt.  The electrodes make a tingling sensation, nothing like the EMG shocks.  She sets the machine for ten minutes, and I usually end up taking a quick nap while it makes my butt feel all warm and fuzzy.  Here's the machine:

The next day, Saturday, I went to get my MRI on my ankle.  I have to say, as great a doctor as Dr. Babiy is, the places she sends me to get imaging done are the worst.  For my x-rays, I went to a place on 17th Street, where I had to sit in the waiting room for an hour and a half!  This was during my lunch break so I thought I was going to get fired.  For my MRI, Dr. Babiy sent me to Union Square Diagnostic Imaging.  I appreciated how this place had evening and weekend appointments.  They were able to fit me in the day after I called them, for a Saturday evening appointment at 7:30 (yes, I was planning to spend Saturday night getting a magnetic image of my ankle).  Around 2:00 they called me and told me they were running ahead of schedule, and asked if I could come in at 5:30.  I gladly obliged.

Well, I got to the waiting room, and ended up waiting for an hour and forty-five minutes.  I was like, ripsh-t.  I mean, like, they f-cking tell me to get to my appointment two hours early only to wait in the f-cking waiting room for two f-cking hours to watch f-cking Animal Planet on the f-cking TV?!?!  I went like apesh-t at the poor receptionist there, who was the one who told me to come early.  Not one of my proudest moments.

The MRI itself went off without much incident.  Despite the completely unnecessary noise (like an ambulance siren combined with a tractor truck's backup beeps), I managed to fall asleep during the half hour long process.

Wednesday, I had another physical therapy appointment.  And although I did not have a separate appointment that day with Dr. Babiy, she agreed to see me after my PT to discuss my MRI results with me.  It's things like this that make Dr. Babiy such a remarkable sports medicine doc.  I can't imagine another doctor taking time out of their busy day to have an unscheduled meeting with me.  So here's another plug for her.

Well, the MRI results were not good.  I have a partial tear in my tibial tendon.  On top of that, a bone bruise cannot be ruled out.  Though she's not able to say for sure at this point, Dr. Babiy said that these types of injuries usually require about six weeks off from running.  I've already taken two, so four more to go...  Dr. Babiy also referred me to a foot and ankle specialist, Dr. Jessica Gallina, who will further evaluate and treat the condition.  She mentioned the possibility of wearing a boot.

What little information is available online about posterior tibial tendon tears does not give me great confidence.  It is also somewhat confusing.  This injury does not appear to be a common one in runners.  Instead, it usually occurs in sports that require a lot of lateral movement, such as basketball or tennis.  It could also result from a sprained ankle.  I vaguely remember twisting my ankle at some point after the NYC marathon.  But there's a possibility that I'm imagining it, or it could have been my other ankle, and I certainly don't remember it being particularly major.  My appointment with Dr. Gallina is on Monday, so I guess at this point, there's no real point to stressing over it.  It's worth mentioning that while all this is certainly bumming me out, I am glad I sought out Dr. Babiy for a second opinion after Dr. Metzl told me there was nothing wrong with my ankle.  I'll let you know what happens after my Monday exam.

Last week I went to yoga five times.  Yesterday, I realized that I need to get back to doing cardio, lest I continue to balloon up.  I went swimming for the first time in months.  Hopefully, by the end of six weeks, I'll at least be able to develop my stroke.

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I made a couple of chicken dinners over the past week.  The first one was a five-spice braised chicken and daikon that I made in my pressure cooker.  I just threw the chicken and daikon in the pot, along with some scallions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine, Manischewitz, five spice powder, star anise, and sugar.  In the picture below, the daikon looks a little like scallops.  I recently discovered that I can make brown rice in my rice cooker, so I'm making an effort to eat more brown rice instead of white rice.  And I've been on a collard greens kick of late, so that made a nice pairing.

The next night, I made pan-barbecued chicken.  For the barbecue sauce, I used ketchup, soy sauce, sesame oil, grated ginger, sugar and Worcestershire sauce.  My cast-iron skillet did a great job at giving the chicken a tasty caramelized crust.  I served it with a vinegar-based nappa cabbage coleslaw (I was excited to use, for the first time in my life, coriander seeds in this), and some not-so-homemade Bush's Baked Beans.  Oh, and some leftover brown rice and collard greens.  Dessert was a delicious Betty Crocker carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  Mmmmm......

Gone Fishing

My butt is still hurting.  I've decided that Dr. Metzl's diagnosis of a "weak butt" is not completely accurate.  My symptoms appear to be a textbook case of sciatica (minus the loss of bladder or bowel control).  I have a numbness / pins-and-needles sensation from the lower part of my back to right above the knee.  Sciatica is commonly caused by a herniated disk or piriformis syndrome.  I'm not completely sure what a herniated disk is, but it has something to do the the cartilage in the spine, and it can occur when engaging in heavy lifting with your back.

In playing back the last month or so in my head, and spending way too much time on mayoclinic.com, I had an "a-ha" moment.  The day before the Chicago Marathon, I had some pretty bad back pain.  I believe it came from lugging my carry-on bag from my house, on the subway and a bus to La Guardia, into the overhead compartment of the plane, and then onto another subway and bus to the hotel in Chicago.  The next day (Saturday), the back pain was so intense that I wondered if I'd be able to run on Sunday.  Fortunately, the pain subsided for the marathon.  But immediately after the marathon was when I started to feel the butt pain.  And now I wonder if that pain stems from a herniated disk that occurred when I was lifting my carry-on bag.  Damn me for being a cheapskate and taking public transportation everywhere that day.  The good news is that herniated disk/sciatica gets better on its own with some rest.  But still, I think an MRI would ease my mind a bit.  Can anyone recommend a doctor that I can go to for a quick MRI?

In addition, my left ankle is still giving me problems.  I don't think it's serious--probably a tendon issue.  But, while the butt issue is not debilitating, the ankle problem has really limited my running.  In the two weeks post-NYC marathon, I've run a total of 10 miles.  One upshot of this, though, is that I've gotten a chance to return to yoga, which has allowed me to both build up my butt muscles and stretch the problem areas.

Last Thursday, FaTai and Roberto came over for dinner.  I never really cook whole fish, but FaTai does frequently, and I love to eat it.  I stopped by Hong Kong Supermarket in Chinatown on the way home and I saw that they had live tilapia swimming in a tank, so I decided to get one.  Believe it or not, it was my first time ever buying a live fish, and the fishmonger's technique was a bit of a shock: first he scooped my fish out of the water with a net and put it into a plastic bag, then he took the bag with the flailing fish and hurled it against the wall.  The fish stopped flailing.  I think it was pretty much knocked out at this point, but just to be sure, he took the side of a cleaver and smacked it against the fish's head.  I have a feeling that fish had seen better days.

I also ended up buying some pork rib tips, tofu and a mystery leafy green vegetable.

Once home, I cooked up a batch of mapo tofu.  Mapo tofu is a traditional Sichuan dish with tofu and pork and lots of hot chili-bean sauce.  Literally translated, it means "pockmarked grandmother's tofu."  I always thought it was so named because the beans/chilis/pork resembled a grandmother's pockmarked face, but the references online appear to universally state that it was named after an old woman during the Qing dynasty who served this dish in her restaurant.  I guess it's more appetizing to have a dish served by a pockmarked old woman than to be eating her face.

The the leafy greens, which I just sauteed with garlic, came out pretty well.  I'm not sure what kind of greens they were, but the stems were a lot more tender than Chinese broccoli.

The pork rib tips were a bit of a mystery.  I didn't really know what I was going to do with them.  Fatai doubted me, saying that I would need 30-40 minutes to cook them well enough.   That immediately lit a lightbulb in my head, prompting me to pull out my new pressure cooker.  I first seared the pork a bit with some garlic, ginger and scallions, and then added some seasonings (soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, Franzia), and sealed up the pressure cooker.  Eight minutes later, I ended up with delicious, tender, fall off the bone ribs.  A little Korean bulgogi sauce added some sweetness.  Yum.

The fish presented the biggest challenge.  I decided to "red cook" it, which means to braise it in a seasoned soy sauce base.  Fish is usually fried a little before braising to give it a moist but non-slimy texture.  I didn't feel like using a gallon of oil to fry it properly, so I kind of just pan-fried it a little in my wok.

After frying, I added some soy sauce, rice wine, star anise and of course Franzia, plus some leftover pot-roast juice for braising.  To make the most out of my braising liquid, I also added some shitake mushrooms, Chinese wood's ear mushrooms, dried lily flowers and tofu skin.  Here's the final product:

The fish itself came out really well.  I think pan frying it first helped it to develop its flavor.  The other stuff that I added to the braise (mushrooms, etc) could have used some extra time braising.  (The next day, I put it back in the pressure cooker for about three minutes, and it came out perfect).

We did a pretty good job on the fish, although none of us were brave enough for the head.  Good thing my parents weren't there...they would have been disappointed that we wasted a perfectly good fish face.

Heart and Soul

I went to my appointment with Dr. Jordan Metzl on Monday.  I got x-rays of my butt, hips, pelvis and left ankle.  Apparently I have no fractures.  Instead, he diagnosed me with a "weak butt."  I got a prescription for 6-8 weeks of physical therapy.  Dr. Metzl said I could continue running during this time.

At first, I was considering not going to the physical therapy.  Butt exercises are pretty straightforward, and I probably get plenty of that from all of the warrior poses they do at Yoga to the People.  But I checked out the website of the physical therapist, and it seems like the guy in charge there really knows about runners' injuries.  Michael Conlon, the lead physical therapist, has run 14 marathons, including three Boston Marathons, and also completed two Ironmans.  On top of that, he coaches the NYC chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training.  So I think he'll be a good person to talk to about my butt.  I'll keep you updated.

Monday was a rest day.  Instead of running or Yoga, I took a walk to Western Beef.  My favorite thing about Western Beef is that in the evenings around 7:30ish, they mark down their rotisserie chickens to $2.99.  I'll sometimes buy a few, and portion them out for lunch for the rest of the week.  Or I'll take the breast meat and make a delicious Chinese peanut butter and mustard chicken salad (it's tastier than it sounds).  I often save the bones to make stock.

I was happy to see that on this night, there were plenty of $2.99 rotisserie chickens left.  I decided to pair one up with some soul food inspired sides.  My friend Serenity was with me, and she said she would cook some collard greens (she's from North Carolina; they know their collards there).  I had some white rice left over from chicken curry night last week, so I figured I could use that to make a black-eyed peas and rice side.

Serenity suggested we buy some applesauce to tie everything together.  I gasped at her proposal to buy applesauce...why on earth would you buy flavorless, industrial grade, preservative-laden applesauce when we can just make our own.  So I got a variety of apples to show her how easy it would be.

Serenity's collard greens came out fantastic.  She said she ideally would have put in some bacon for extra flavor, but my bacon was lost somewhere in the deep black hole that is my freezer, so we skipped it.  Being from the South, Serenity likes to cook her vegetables to death.  I would have stopped at this point when there were still bright green and delicious looking.  But hers were actually better.

The peas and rice I made was so simple I'm almost embarrassed.  I just sauteed some garlic and onion, and then dumped in a can of black-eyed peas and my leftover rice.  I added a couple of spoonfuls of Goya recaito (a cilantro-based sauce), salt and pepper, hot sauce, and a ladle full of leftover pot roast juice.  It turned out quite good.

I think the biggest surprise of the night was my applesauce.  I blended together three different varieties of apples, added some cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and brown sugar.  The granny smith apple that I used gave it a fun tartness that is maybe better characterized as an "apple chutney" than applesauce, but but it was super tasty, and brought all of the different flavors together.