Bill and Cathy McArthur on the Road 2010: 5

  Monday, February 1 , started early for Bill, who got up at 5:00 AM in order to fit a long workout into the morning. Unfortunately, it was raining. Bill did 2 crossword puzzles and ate breakfast. The rain continued, so Bill wore 3 layers, including his raincoat and headed out at 7:09 AM. He decided to use 5K bike rides instead of the usual 10K legs. Bill was wearing his winter hat and his paddling gloves. In spite of the conditions, Bill had a good workout: 5K bike: (10.7 mph), 10K run (8:50 min/mile), 5K bike: (10.8 mph), 10K run (8:49 min/mile), 5K bike: (11.5 mph), 5K run (8:49 min/mile). His running added up to 15.5 miles, so this was an important training workout. Bill ran his 15th mile in 8:42. After the workout and stretching, Bill lay down in a puddle outside and elevated and massaged his legs. He finished with a hot shower. The rain got worse, so Bill called his student Francisco and arranged to pick him up for their tutoring session. Bill ate a quick lunch, picked up Francisco at 12:15 PM, and arrived at LVCC for tutoring around 12:20 PM. The session lasted until 1:00 PM:

We started with a look at the "English No Problem" level 3 materials. Francisco OKed the choice of a textbook. Bill presented him with the Picture Dictionary and the student text book. Bill went over the use of the words "thing" and "item" for use as speaking aids when the name of a particular noun isn't known or is forgotten. Then Bill started to go over the verb sheet for "to walk". Bill assigned the following as homework:

1. Find an English language TV show that plays on Saturday or Sunday for both of us to watch and discuss on Mondays.
2. Write a few sentences in your journal about what we did in this class.
3. Choose 3 verbs for the next verb sheets.

Bill dropped Francisco at his house at 1:10 PM and headed back to give Cathy the car to drive to her tutoring session. Bill lay on the bed with his iPod and looked over the tutoring textbook materials while he chilled out. When Cathy returned from tutoring, we walked over to Tom and Jean Reilly's newly arrived RV and sat around with them and Greg and Carol and chatted for a while. Around 5:00 PM, Bill drove to Walmart to return our two RedBox dvds. We went to country line dancing from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. While we ate dinner, we viewed "House". When that was done, Bill was ready for bed.

  Tuesday was a day of threatening weather that missed us all day. The morning was drying with a bit of sun to help evaporate the puddles left over from Monday. Cathy went to her exercise class. Bill did some crossword puzzles and got his kayaking gear together for later. We both did some preparation for our next tutoring sessions. We had an early lunch and then Bill left in his kayak for a 3 hour, 50 minute paddle that covered 13.7 miles. There was a full moon current and some south wind to make things interesting on Naples Bay. With the threatening weather, Bill wanted to stay close, so he paddled through all of the canals of Aqualane Shores. Bill didn't realize how vast the neighborhood is. Bill was very tired about 2 hours into the paddle, but he realized it was all in his mind and finished strongly. Cathy went to the gym for a late afternoon class while Bill cleaned his gear and showered. We joined Tom and Jean Reilly at 6:00 PM to dine at Grouper and Chips. Surprisingly, we were able to walk in and sit right down. The food was excellent as always. After we returned to the RV, we viewed "24" and the review hour of the "Lost" season opener.

  Wednesday started cool and cloudy, but became sunny and warm later. Cathy went to her morning exercise class, but on the way discovered that a man in the RV park was on the floor of his home and couldn't get up. Bill and another man and wife struggled to get the victim up onto his bed. It doesn't help that the victim's wife suffers from dementia. Bill did some crossword puzzles and worked on tutoring preparation as he waited for the day to warm a bit. Cathy headed to the gym for her second class of the day and Bill went out for a five mile tempo run:

He felt very leg weary and, early on, decided to make it a recovery run. Later in the run, Bill's iPod started to babble, which made Bill mad and made him pick up his pace. When he finished, he was happy with the workout. He stretched a couple of times on the walk back to the RV, where he did thorough stretching and leg elevation. After lunch, Cathy did the laundry while Bill relaxed in the sun with his iPod. After a while, Bill came back in the RV and worked on editing his design for a "Team McArthur" running shirt. Bill did a chat with a shirt representative and then emailed Son Bill with the details. We had a quinoa and grilled chicken dinner as we watched most of the rest of the "Lost" season opener. We walked over to Tom and Jean's RV at 7:30 PM and played some dominoes with them for about an hour. Bill discovered a possible left-handed brain defect when he found that he couldn't tell how many dots were on the higher numbered tiles without painstakingly counting them. He figured that his right brain hemisphere was balking at associated a number with the pattern. When we returned to the RV, we finished watching "Lost" and were lost as usual.

  Thursday was a warm day. Cathy went to her exercise class. Bill drove to Francisco's house to help with his computer and to do a tutoring session. The recovery disk didn't work, so Bill went back to the RV and installed an obsolete version of office on Francisco's computer. Meanwhile, the two had a good tutoring session, covering all of the topics on Bill's schedule. Bill got back in time for an early lunch and headed out for an 18 mile paddle which took 4 hours, 20 minutes. Cathy did her tutoring session and went to the gym for a step class. She thought that she picked up a stress fracture.

  Friday was warm, humid, and partly cloudy with a strong breeze in advance of a weather front. Cathy went to her exercise class. Bill went out for what was intended to be a 5 mile tempo run. He was running at an average pace of 8:30 minutes per mile when his right hamstring stopped him after the fourth mile. Bill stretched, massaged, and elevated his legs, but had to walk 1.5 miles back to the RV slowly and with a limp. As soon as he got back, Bill used ice and elevated his right leg. He also ate a Power Bar to get some protein in his body for repair. Bill did a lot of research on the Internet and came to the conclusion that he had weakened his hamstrings during his finishing sprint at the Run for the Paws and that he had allowed his hamstrings to become too much weaker than his quads, causing the sprain. After lunch, we drove to Starbucks and Publix and then to a Walmart Superstore to buy ankle weights and an Ace bandage. Bill's rehab would begin with rest, then move quickly into stretching and strengthening, followed by cycling and jogging. Bill felt a bit pessimistic about his upcoming races, but will do what it takes to do as well as he can. We grilled burgers for dinner. The cable went out and Bill called Comcast to get the problem fixed.

  Saturday, Bill did some hamstring stretches and leg curls. We worked on tutoring preparation until almost 10 AM, when Cathy met our sister-in-law Shannon on North Road and guided her to Tom and Jean Reilly's RV where she parked. We all piled into the Reilly's rental car and drove to Everglades City for the Seafood Festival. The temperature was in the low 70s and the wind was blowing 10 to 20 mph from the west. When the sun was out, it felt very pleasant, when in, it felt a bit chilly. We walked around for a while and then ate lunch at Susie's Station restaurant, where we also ate last year. We enjoyed grilled and blackened grouper baskets in a quiet environment, since most of the crowd ate fried food from the various kiosks. After lunch, we walked around for a while and bought plumeria cuttings to plant later. Next, we drove to Turner River Road to look at alligators. Afterward, we drove to the Fakahatchee Strand boardwalk, which was more crowded than we've ever seen. There was also more water than we've ever seen. When we reentered Naples, we made a stop at Starbucks before returning to the campground. Shannon left at about 4:50 PM to head north to Ft. Myers. We went back to the RV and turned on the heat. We got ready to go out and were picked up by Tom and Jean to go to dinner at Mangrove Cafe. We ate outside under a heater with a chilly west wind buffeting us. We had good meals, but didn't enjoy the chill of the air. Since our homes in NJ were trying to dig out of over 2 feet of snow, we couldn't feel too much suffering with our air temperature at 63 degrees.

  Sunday was "Super Sunday", but not for Cathy who didn't sleep the night before. During breakfast, our coffee maker stopped working, so we had to use our French press like in the old days in the pop-up camper. Bill did some hamstring stretches and leg curls. Late in the morning, Bill and Cathy were a strange sight as they walked along the airport, hand in hand, Cathy walking forward and Bill walking backward. He had done some research on retro-walking for rehabbing hamstring injuries and decided to try it. After lunch, we went out to get a new coffee maker. Bill remembered liking daughter Katie's Cuisinart, but he Googled "best coffee maker" and hit on the Cuisinart Brew Central DCC-1200, which is what Katie uses. He discovered that he could get it at Best Buy, Sears, Macy's, and JC Penny's for $79.99. We decided to go to the Coastland Mall that has 3 out of 4 of those stores. We started at Macy's. They had two of the units on display, but none in boxes. They had on hand many Cuisinart models, but not the one we wanted. We went to Sears next and found the same story. It was clear that other people had heard about the best coffee maker. We went to Penny's and were able to fulfill our quest. Next, we went to Office Max to print several handouts for our tutoring sessions. We finally went to Starbucks and Publix for some items for dinner. We cooked our traditional Cincinnati Chili Super Bowl dinner while we watched a very exciting game. Bill took a look at the section in "Chi Running" about injuries and found that his sore calves are due to landing on the balls of his feet instead of midfoot and his hamstring soreness and injury is due to landing his feet forward of his body because he is not leaning enough. At least he has more things to work on.

        Bill and Cathy