Stubborn injury

Running: 
This quad injury is really proving to be stubborn. I can tell just by trying to jog to the mailbox that there is still an issue. Until there is no pain I can’t even try to do any distance. As of now it has only impacted a couple of 5k races I would have done. Next weekend I had hoped to run the Paavo Nurmi marathon in Hurley. Those plans will also now need to be scratched. Any longer than another week and other fall race plans will have to be altered. I’m guessing I could get ready in about a month with a one week taper period if I needed to for a marathon. That’s based on the number of miles I’ve already put in this year to draw back on. No pain doing anything else other than running. Being on vacation last week helped by being a distraction from not being able to run. My workouts have been about an hour a day on the elliptical, rowing machine and/or bike. The last two days I ran 1 mile on the treadmill holding onto the sides so my full weight isn’t on the leg. I might continue to do this as long as it seems to not make things worse. All the yard work in this heat has also helped to keep some of the weight off during this time. I suppose I might even have to start watching what I eat. Oh no!



Hunting:

While on vacation I was able to get out fishing one day with my brother Todd. We really wanted to get out to Outer Island to my favorite spot. The wind and waves the day we tried kept that from happening. We got most of the way there, but when we reached the farther Islands there were remnants of an overnight storm that still had the lake riled up. We chose to try a new place that was half way between Cat and Outer Islands. We happened to see an old map of Dad’s that had this spot circled. Neither of us remember fishing this spot of hearing dad talk about it. It turned out to be a good choice. We ended up catching a salmon before we even had the first line in the water completely. We ended up catching our limit of lake trout in addition to the salmon. We even had to throw one back and had several other fish on. So it ended up a pretty good day. Here are some more fish pictures.

Todd and I also went to check our deer stands one afternoon. The deer sign around my spot seems to be significant. They really hammered the mineral lick I have created and built up over the past several years. Lots of activity and trails from all directions coming in.

These are pictures looking out from the new tree blind in my back yard. The first is looking left over the corn and the second straight ahead and right over the brassica’s and clover.

Gardening:

The vine crops (pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, and watermelon) seem to be doing quite well. There seem to be a few less pumpkins than past years, but the ones that are there are doing quite well. There is still time to generate lots more as long as the vines hold up from disease and pests. We have had so much rain this year that other than the first week the garden was in I haven’t had to water at all. This has saved lots of hours of work over past years. Unfortunately it makes the weeds grow better too so more time needs to be spent keeping them under control. The first sweet corn from my garden is only about a week away I would guess. If I don’t get it first the raccoons will let me know when it is ripe to pick.

I have one peach tree left that is big enough to bear fruit. I picked probably about 100 or so peaches from this one tree this week. This tree isn’t in as much sun as I would like, so most of the peaches are on the smallish side, but they sure are good. Who says you can’t grow peaches in Wisconsin.