Summer!

I had a great nine days in Italy, with very little running.  The running I did was spectacular, however, along the Naples Waterfront (the castle is also where our conference was held!!),

 and the Arno in Florence

 Then we got to retrace our steps from the Rome Marathon in 2013, with cocktails on the Piazza Navona, and

Dinner at La Campana, the site of some excellent carb loading that we blogged about back in 2013 -- this time with Vicki and Emma.  Happy Father's day to me!!

I even got to correct my ordering mistake and tried the black truffle linguini!!  Then to top off a perfect week, who should show up in New York, just in time to cure jet lag with a fantastic, hot, humid run through Central Park, but Philip!

Summer is off to an excellent start!!

The bad and the ugly (not much good here): Part One

As promised, I am sharing some "highlights" from last week's 3D gait analysis at UVA. In case anyone has forgotten, I have been suffering from a variety of lower leg and foot issues for the past several years (more than two for sure). Before that, I was pregnant, and before that, I had my knee stuff (arthroscopic surgery in '08). I haven't been able to string together any consistent mileage (not without pain, anyway) in about nine years.

So I went looking for answers, or at least insights. I read about 3D gait analysis one night randomly (probably on someone else's blog) and when I found out that there was a facility less than three hours away, I had to look into it. And it turns out that my most recent PT knows the director of the lab and he was able to brief him on my case a bit in advance of my arrival.

Max, the 3D guy, also set me up with an appointment with UVA's head physical therapist, Eric Magrum, who is pretty well known as a runner-fixer. The only thing I couldn't make happen was an adjacent appointment with the medical director of the program, who literally wrote the book on running. But I still got a lot of info.

Here is the raw data I got. When you see that I was "running" at 5.3 mph, you will get a good sense of how much I've been struggling lately. I wrote a lot more here previously about the conclusions and recommendations I got, but then I forgot to save it. I'll let you all stew on this and then will report back in Part Two of this saga.