Tonight we ran the Stanford Dish Loop for training. I've walked this loop a few times, but run it only once, last season also for training. Last year, I was told we were running counter-clockwise around the loop, so I promptly ran clockwise. I have no idea how I mixed those two directions, but apparently I went the easier way: counter-clockwise starts with one ginormous hill that basically thrashes your legs, making the rest of the run more of a mental workout than a physical one.

I struggled with the middle third of the run, having severe cramps on the backside hill, and having to walk up most of it. The backside of the run, however, once I reached the top, was smooth sailing at a nice, fast, comfortable pace.

The nicest part of the run was when Brynne told me to look up, hey, you can see the City from here. It was faint, but visible. I'd never seen San Francisco from Palo Alto before. It was quite lovely. I wish I had had my camera.

Google has a program where you can set up new search results to be emailed to you on a regular basis, say once a day. I have several set up, because I find them interesting. I also have a couple set up for research purposes for a couple projects I'm doing.

One of the alerts is the term "migraine" from which I receive anywhere from three to three dozen notes, all in one email, a day.

The first one on today's alert read:

Migraine may protect against cognitive decline
Reuters.uk - UK
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women with a lifetime history of migraine have
less cognitive decline over time than women without migraine. ...

My first thought was, hot damn! Finally, something positive to come out of these torturous events.

I scrolled a little farther down the page, and came across this alert:

Migraines could lead to brain damage
Hindustan Times - New Delhi,Delhi,India
Researchers have established the fact that migraine can be a progressive
disorder and frequent sufferers have an increased risk of brain damage. ... 

Great. Just great.

Do I have a choice? I'd like the first, please.

Reading the article, though, doesn't sound like the first is actually incongruous with the second. The study shoes the rate of decline is less for migraineurs with aura, but the decline is still there. Possible reasons are diet changes, adequate sleep and other trigger avoidances that cause people who have migraines to be healthier overall (minus the headaches).

It's almost as if we're shown early in life how being blind, nauseous, and frail can be, and we adjust to minimize the reoccurances of those reminders.

Or something.

So, today at Velocity Sports, we hooked up to the sleds, but not to push or pull them. Instead, we used them as anchors. Kris has used the sleds before in a workout. I hadn't, and took a while to figure out the harness. It was a chest harness with the hook in the back, and broad straps along the shoulders.

Unfortunately, when I put it on, all you could see was boob. It was like my breasts reached out and smacked the casual observer who looked in my direction. Even Bryanne looked at me and inadvertently said, "Whoa."

Using the sleds as anchors, we attached ourselves to long bungee cords, sprinted forward twenty yards, touched the ground, ran backward twenty yards, repeated for four reps, then did 20 pushups, the whole set then repeated four times total. The sprint forward was easy until the last five yards, the run backward even easier. I don't run backward particularly well, so I enjoyed actually being able to run backward for once.

After the first set of four reps of four sprints plus pushups, we were to do another set with situps instead of pushups. Kris commented that he didn't feel the bungee cord was providing much resistence, and asked if he could run to the wall, another five yards beyond our current stopping point. Bryanne suggested, instead, that he move the sled back three yards, so that he feels the resistance sooner. He shoved the sled back. Bryanne added more weight to the sled since Kris was going to be pulling it more, and we lined up to run again.

When we start these runs, I'm usually able to keep up with Kris for the first run or the first few steps. As we started on the first sprint, Kris was on the far side, Bryanne in the middle and I ran on her other side. We ran the first twenty yards together until a "GAK!" and Kris disappeared from our peripheral.

The bungee cord had provided Kris more resistance than he had realized and, in a cartoon dog reaching the end of his leash moment, when he reached the end of the cord, it stopped, and he did, too. Quite suddenly.

We had to stop for a long time, unable to do anything but laugh.

Once, when I was around four years old, my family arrived from out somewhere I have absolutely no idea where. I was in the back seat of the car when my mom opened the car door and hopped out. She immediately turned, and shut the car door, turning back to the house. As she turned, she heard a high pitch muffled little "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

A moment later, she realized that I had reached up on the door jam when she opened the car door, and she had closed the door on my fingers. She opened the door quickly and released my fingers.

I ended up losing a couple fingernails, but gained an entertaining story.

When Kris and I leave in the morning for Velocity Sports, having switched to the 7am class for the "convenient" time and the personalized training with group rate prices, the car is often covered in dew. I've taken to wiping off the passenger side window before opening the car door, so that Kris can see outside my side of the car.

This morning, I forgot to wipe the window before entering the car, so I rolled the window down slightly. Kris hates when I roll the window all way, believing the water will roll into to inside of the door and rust it out. I stuck my hand out the window and started wiping off the window so that Kris could see.

Kris looked left, looked right, rolled the window down slightly so that he could see, looked left again, and, as he pulled out of our street turning left, reache down and pulled on the passenger window switch to roll it up.

With my entire hand still out the window.

Clearly my vocabulary has increased in the intervening decades. Instead of a high pitched muffled little "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Kris heard a very succinct, "OOOOOOOOOoooooooooWwwwwwwwwwwwwwWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

Today at practice I worked on my low release backhand throws: I'm determined to make that throw on Beth well before the end of the season. Tyler also worked with me on catching before practice. He doesn't like the claw catch, but it works for me, so I won't be changing that one any time soon. He did, however, recommend than I attack the disc on any catch, pull it closer to me on impact, always have my hands moving aggressively towards the disc. Lessons to practice.

After practice, it was clear Andy wasn't doing much to minimize his disc charm. After most everyone had packed up and headed off, Kris, Andy and I wandered to the cars. Instead of just heading straight over, each step was practically a moment in a playful game of "What can I do with this disc now?"

As we approached the batting cage, I asked Andy if Kris had told him about his 30th birthday party, where we recorded various disc throwing speeds. Andy said yes, and, after sliding under the netting into the cage, threw a disc fairly hard at the far end of the cage.

The netting, of course, caught the disc, and gently dropped it to the ground. Andy went, picked it up, and threw it straight at us. I flinched. Kris laughed, and tried to catch it. And tried, and tried again. The net kept deflecting the discs Andy threw. After about ten tries, Kris finally caught one and Andy crawled back out of the cage.

We made it all of maybe 10 yards closer to the cars when Andy threw his disc into the open shelf of a file cabinet on the side of the shot put field. He missed, but Kris immediately followed by trying to throw his disc onto the shelf. A few seconds later, another disc came flying in from Tyler, as he tried his hand. The three of them spent a few minutes playing with discs and the file cabinet, seeing who could both hit the target opening and have his disc stay put.

Normally, the walk from the fields to the cars is uneventful. Today, it was entertaining and fun.

I blame Andy.