Being injured sucks.

Being injured because your dog toppled you over and your wrecked your knee sucks even more.

After a month (one. long. stinking. month.) of not running and riding the bike-that-goes-nowhere at the gym for impossibly long times (my record so far: 3 hours, 35 minutes, woot-woot), I ran two days ago.

I ran a whole frigging mile.

And people, it was great. It was stupendous. I cherished every awkward and slow step.

I didn’t even run a mile consecutively. I ran a half mile and two quarter miles.

No matter. Baby steps, right?

Then I woke up the next morning with pain in my knee. I have to admit that I didn’t handle this well. I whined. I complained. I lay on the sofa and acted as if the world had ended.

It hadn’t, of course. I was just a big baby with a sore knee.

I’ve been injured three times in the past two years, and not one of those has been a true, bona fide running injury. They were all due to falls or freak accidents. Which means that I must either be exceedingly clumsy, exceedingly unlucky or run on exceedingly technical and rocky trails.

The other big news is that one of my Christmas presents arrived and I know what it is, since I picked it out and made sure it was one sale, too. (I am totally the buy-only-when-on-sale type of gal and love getting a bargain, even when someone else is paying.)

Isn’t it awesome? This is the Patagonia Houdini jacket, and it is SO light. It weighs mere ounces and can fold up to fit inside its own pocket. So clever!

Cannot wait to wear this. It will be perfect in Tucson.

That’s the other news: We are thinking of buying a house in Tucson. Actually, this will be my house (mine!) and I’ll live it in each winter and soak up the desert and take long and delicious runs in the canyons and among the cacti. Prices are cheap, which is what I like–you can get a small house with a wonderful yard for around $100K, and I want something small, the smaller the better.

My dream house.

This one below is the one I really, really wanted. It’s on Richey Blvd. and comes with a lap pool in the backyard. A lap pool! And, get this, the price was only $89,900. How can that be? You can barely buy a toothpick in Anchorage for that price. But alas, it’s pending, which means that someone else already snatched it up. (Don’t you just want to lie by that pool and read a good book?)

But back to reality and my life with a bum knee in snowy Alaska.

This week’s stats:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 1 hour on the bike, hill program; and weights
Wednesday: 2.45 hours on the bike, hill program
Thursday: 1 mile run (!!); 1.5 hours on bike, hill program; weights
Friday: 1.75 hours on bike, hill program
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: 2 hours bike, hill program; weights
Total: 1 mile run, too many damned hours on the bike

Have a great week, everyone.