Life on the Mason Dixon Line

Well it’s a week after the marathon and we are recovering fairly well. Susan’s hip has been giving her problems for several months now and it got worse during the marathon. The PT thinks it is either her IT band or hip flexors but it is so high on her hip that it is hard for her to get any stretches to work on it. The hip is still giving her a good bit of pain but other than that she is doing good.

All the dead skin from the chafing has come off of my leg and I have a lot of nice new pink skin. It is itchy and tender but healing much faster than I thought it would. The blister under my left foot was never very bad and is completely better now. The one on my right foot is still very painful and keeps trying to get infected. It is extremely hard to keep a huge blister on the bottom of my foot clean and covered. Hopefully it will be better before long.

Muscle wise we are both fine (I think the bike ride the day after the marathon really helped with that) and ready to get back at it. We swam yesterday and are ready to get back on our bikes as soon as the weather improves a little (it has been cold and rainy the past several days).

My motto has always been, “NEVER FORFEIT AN ENTRY FEE!” Paul’s has been, “NEVER GO TO THE DR!” So when I went back out on the course to get him and the first thing he said was, “I need to go to the med tent at the finish” and the second was, “We might be forfeiting our first entry fee”–I knew he was in trouble.

20 hours later Paul mounted the bike and pulled me through 20 mph winds that gusted even higher throughout the 63 mile ride. He has 4 inch blisters broken open on the bottom of both feet plus a patch about 5×5 inches on his inner thigh that I think is 2nd degree burned from his shorts (friction burn from chafing?), plus the usual muscle fatigue.

We came home to Barton having pooped on our bed (again) so I started washing bedclothes. Then the washer started leaking water.  Luckily we have tomorrow off. Interval napping was the original plan, but now we will be doing first aid on Paul and the washing machine! We plan to post more about the race, but we both finished both races and that was our first goal.  Thank you to Paul’s mom, grandmother, Biz, Roy, Becca and Tripp for coming out to support us!

EDIT 02/19/2009 by Paul:

Thankfully it looks like the washer is fine. It has moved itself back to the wall and I think that was making the hose leak. We moved it back out some and it hasn’t leaked since.