Out for the count

The marathon is in a little over a week and already people seem to be dropping like flies.  Okay, perhaps I am being melodramatic, but there has seemed to be a recent surge in the number of debilitating injuries in the group.  First it was Chase’s torn meniscus, then my knee gave out, Austin’s foot is doing some weird painful thing, and I heard Seth mention today that he got injured and probably wouldn’t be running.  So many injuries!  I think I had mentioned previously my 9 mile run which left me sore and with a hurt knee.  Well by Tuesday of this week it was feeling a lot better (I hadn’t had pain in a few days including during my semi-regular almost-late-to-school sprints to the bus stop) and I decided to go for a short run through the woods to test it out.  Bad idea.  I got a little over a mile in and my knee started hurting again, this time so badly that I was limping trying to walk.   I was on an area of the path I had never been on before, but with the help of a few signs and some directions from other walkers, I was able to find my way back.  It was actually fun hiking around in the woods, but still, I would rather have been running.  So now I am back to trying to get my leg to heal up as much as possible.  I am hanging on to a small shred of hope that I will still be able to run the half-marathon, but I can’t help but expect that my knee would probably give out at 5 miles, at best. 

In other news, the group had an all day excursion on Wednesday to visit the Neanderthal Museum and to tour the Bayer facility.  I have to admit that usually with a long day of activities I often find it hard to stay interested the entire time, but this time I had no such problem.  The day started at Bayer where I was impressed by their awesome facilities.  Our guide showed us around the communications center which included a bunch of fun interactive exhibits on not just the company’s history and main focus areas, but on world problems and medicine as well.  I love places like this, where you step in and you feel a bit like you’re in a sci-fi movie.  We also were bussed around the Bayer campus and shown the various other facilities.  To me it looked a lot like a bunch of pipes, but seeing the robots and packaging at work was awesome.

The Neanderthal museum was equally interesting.  I was fascinated by the progression of humanity and surprised at how modern the Neanderthal looked.  Whenever I learn about evolutionary things I try to also relate it to religion and Christianity.  Now I am not trying to start a debate here or take a stand, but I tend to believe that these two things are not mutually exclusive.  So while one part of my brain was analyzing the information from a scientific point of view, I was also searching for underlying purpose or patterns and trying to reconcile it with what I know of the bible and creationism.  It is a fun challenge actually, and it only serves to enhance my desire to learn more.

Proof that our group is a bunch of monkeys :)

 Luckily the sun had reappeared that day and we were able to lounge in the park where the Neanderthal was actually discovered for a bit before heading back to Bonn.  I really enjoyed the excursion.  While it was an extremely full day and severely cut into my study time, I am glad that I got to see Bayer and the museum.