Acupuncture, 24 Miles Biked and 8 Miles Run

Here’s what I look like when I’m 40 pounds lighter and 10 years younger:

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I intend to be back at that weight in the next year or so.

I’m still healing my left calf, which has had severely cramped muscles and tight tendons and also my right hip, which I threw out of place by not allowing my calf to heal 😦 so the last week was mostly biking and concluded with an 8 mile trail run in Escondido. The run was rough on me and I still have some healing to do, but the run was gorgeous.

I had acupuncture last Friday. This was my first time. It was amazing! I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say I went in barely able to walk up stairs and left skipping (figuratively). While I still struggled with some pain, I could never have done the run on Saturday without the acupuncture. My neighbor is the acupuncturist and was kind enough to treat me for free, yay! She’s also completing her PhD in Eastern Medicine and was very knowledgeable across a range of disciplines including exercise physiology. Acupuncture == Awesome.

Post Production, Please?

Dude, photoshop the grease off my forehead!

There was an article in the San Diego Business Journal (SDBJ) last month about MindTouch. I’ve had many people congratulate me on the article. I was somewhat perplexed because MindTouch was also recently in the New York Times and I’ve had more people congratulate me about this SDBJ article than I did when were in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal! I didn’t realize how well read SDBJ is locally. Then I learned yesterday the article was on the cover, above the fold. No wonder.

I don’t know what photo was used in the print edition. Probably the same above,. However, I hope they used one that doesn’t highlight my greasy forehead. 🙂 If anyone has a copy of the print issue please send me a copy.

I'm Huge In Israel

I’ve had my photos used by the Wall Street Journal, Building.com and other less popular pubs. Here’s another of my photos in the wild:

I'm HUGE in Israel

In case you’re wondering, the article is about Israeli moms that have natural child birth after having had previous births by Cesarean. The subtitle for the image reads: “Weary but jubilant.” 🙂

This Week: 34 Miles Biked, 8 Miles Run

Ride to work.While I’m sorting out this problem with my leg I’ve been biking a lot and taking it easy on the running. West Coast Roadrunners ran 10 miles today. I think I wisely decided to rest this one and opted for a 20 mile bike ride through San Diego. It was amazing. Hillcrest to Point Loma’s Liberty Station, along the harbor, looped shelter island, to Seaport Village, past the ballpark, through Balboa Park, past the Hillcrest farmers market and then home. It was a gorgeous day. I intend to do another 20 miles tomorrow, but this time I think I’ll head out to Pacific Beach ans. I’ll be sure to bring my camera.

17 Miles Run And A Few More Biked

I usually post this at the end of the week, which would have been last Sunday, but between the arrival of Roe and the stomach virus Tara and I were infected by last Saturday night 😦 I’m running a bit behind.

I ran 9 miles on Saturday. There were lots of hills on this course and my pace was a disappointing 10:26 (iirc). Hey, I still stoked ran 9 miles. This was my longest run ever.

I’m still having a lot of problems with my left calf. It’s a line that runs from the inside left ankle to the knee and it feels almost like a pinched nerve. It is sufficiently painful as to be capable of almost bringing a tear to my eye. I have no idea what’s causing the problem, but nothing I’ve tried to date is alleviating it. I’m going to check in with a doctor and a chiropractor ASAP.

My training this week:

Feb 21 Feb 22 Feb 23 Feb 24 Feb 25 Feb 26 Feb 27 Feb 28
9 miles OFF 40 min (missed – vomiting 😦 ) 12X30/30 (sprint intervals – I just ran 40 mins instead) OFF
(I ran 35 minutes)		 45 min
(I biked because of my left leg)		 OFF
(I plan to do 6+ miles biking)		 10 miles

Roe 2.0 Product Launch

Roesevelt David Fulkerson was born February 15 at 23:20 PT (-8 GMT). He weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces and was 19 inches long. I say Roe 2.0 because my name is Aaron Roe Fulkerson. However, to be accurate he’s actually a 5.0 release. My Great Grandfather was named Newton Roosevelt Chrisope. He went by “Roe”. He begat two sons, one of which he named Bobby Roe who begat a son and two daughters , on of which was named Roeann (crap, I forget my mother’s middle name). Roeann begat two sons and a daughter. One son, Eric Daniel, begat two daughters, one was named Madeline Roe. The other son, the cooler and more handsome of the two, was named Aaron Roe, that’s me, who begat a son and a daughter. The son was named Roesevelt David.

Tara, Roe, AaronCan you believe how great Tara looks? This photo was taken about twenty minutes after Roe was born!

Tara and I decided to spell it “Roesevelt” to prevent him from being nicked “Roo”. I suspect Geoff “Kangaroo” Norton would have liked this though. I suppose since I have a niece with “Roe” in her name this could make Roesevelt’s version number 5.2…Anyway, David is also my father’s name. Hence, Roesevelt David Fulkerson and that is the story of the name for those of you who asked via Twitter and Facebook.

So, the birth. Tara, Ashby and I went for a nice long walk in Balboa Park in the morning. Tara was experiencing severe leg cramping and back pains. The back pains were clearly contractions, but the leg cramps we weren’t sure about. At first we thought maybe she was just really dehydrated, but Tara being a runner is obsessive about hydration and this seemed unlikely.

We cut our walk short and headed home. Tara Googled leg cramps and pregnancy and discovered this can signal the baby is dropping. When this happens sometimes the baby can place pressure on a nerve bundle and cause symptoms that feel just like leg cramping.

I suggested Tara take a nap since her contractions were spaced out and if she were to be in labor it would be good to be rested. She agreed and when she woke we called our Doctor and was instructed to head into the birthing center.

Ashby, Tara and I arrived at Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla at about 3 pm. Her contractions were a couple minutes apart. By 10 PM she had only progressed to 5 cm and the Doctor decided to use an IUPC to determine the strength of her contractions and to gage the effects of Pitocin, which she wanted to introduce to move things along. Thirty to forty minutes later Tara was completely dilated and the nurse and doctor were rushing to get into position.

Contraction. Push three times. “There he is, he’s almost out”
Contraction. Push three times. “Ok, he’s out. Let do one more push.”
Push. Done.

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Wow, it was that easy. God bless epidurals. This was completely different from Ashby’s birth.

Speaking of Ashby, she’s been amazing. She is totally into being a big sister.Thanks to a friend of Tara’s she even has a special “big sis” shirt. Her and I have been spending a lot of time together and I’ve been pumping up how special she is for being a big sister. We also had many books about being a Big Sister Coupon For Free Ice Cream. ROCK!big sister that we’ve been reading to her over the last several months. We attended a big sister class as a family. She had big sister presents from Roe when he was born. I’ve added a song about being a “big sister” to my repertoire of songs I sing nightly (mostly Cat Stevens and the Grateful Dead tunes).

During labor I was twittering status updates. I have this setup to also post to my Facebook account, which is nice because I don’t know anyone outside my professional social network that uses Twitter. My intent was to create a record of the events as they happened. Also, it’s a nice way to pass the time and soothe the nerves. Here’s my twitter stream from the time we got to the hospital to the time our family arrived home.

A 28 photo slide show of the birth (it’s PG, nothing gross):

In conclusion, I’m blessed with a gorgeous, healthy and wonderful family that I love dearly. Man am I lucky!

16 Miles Run

NOTE: I was wrote this post last Sunday, but I didn’t publish it because we left for the hospital to give birth to our 2nd child: Roesevelt David Fulkerson. I twittered the birth and I’ll be publishing a blog post ASAP about Roe and the birth.

Time for my weekly training update. First, let me remind myself here that I started running with my other  shoes at the beginning of this week. Shoes are good for 300 miles and I’m rotating two pairs to make sure I have shoes for the Rock and Roll Marathon on June 1.

This week was especially hectic at work as I finished a time consuming project. As a result I missed running one day :-(, which means I only got in three runs. My run on Tuesday was 3.74 miles through downtown and in the rain. My run Thursday was a great 5 mile run through Mission Hills. The Saturday run was a brutal 8 mile run that began at Morley Field to the North of Balboa park. The run was partly on muddy trails and consisted of running up and down canyons. It whipped my ass. Rion did fantastic with a 9:40ish pace. My pace was terrible at 10:49.

America's Finest City - Half Marathon 2008My left calf is giving me problems. My muscles in the calf and shin cramp up so tight that it is difficult to even walk. When this happens it’s always within the first two miles and I have to stretch it vigorously for it to loosen up. This happened to me after the first canyon during the 8 mile run yesterday and it took me a half mile to get the calf to loosen so I could run again. I never know when to expect it to give me problems, but whenever it does it leaves me feeling not in control. It’s very frustrating. Also, after runs along the right side of this left calf, from just above my foot (on the right side) to just below the knee on the inside of the leg and what feels to be under the calf muscle I have a sharp sustained pain that does not feel like a pulled muscle, but more like tendon strain.

I spoke with one of the WC Roadrunner coaches about strategies to help. Obviously I’m already stretching the hell out of the problem (left) calf before every run. The coach suggested: stretch it more, run on your heels and also toes during warm-up to stretch it more and work it with “The Stick“, which I’ve been considering buying anyway.

My training schedule this week:

Feb 14
 Feb 15 Feb 16
 Feb 17
 Feb 18
 Feb 19
 Feb 20
 Feb 21
8 miles OFF 40 min (missed) 25 min 45 min 35 min OFF 9 miles
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Legal Andrew: Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know

My God, this is retarded:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

via Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know « Legal Andrew.

This is bizarre. You’re agreeing to give Facebook license to do whatever they want with your content? What if I post photos of my children? Oh Gee, they can include that in a cigarette advertisement or some other offensive product. This is insane. They also do not make any guarantees about security or privacy.

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