I was looking through my drafted posts which were never published and then the posts that I did publish and realized that my last post was published in February! How is this possible?! How has time gone by that fast?

In the last six months, I’ve continued searching for a cause of my “recurring, bilateral, sequential optic neuropathy.” I was seeing a neural ophthalmologist at Upstate in Syracuse until she ceased to impress me, left Upstate and moved away.

I ended up seeing a specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute and another specialist at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. And guess what, they don’t know what it is and/or their opinions don’t agree. So I’m still at square zero. God is literally the only One who knows what is causing the recurrence.

Because of my vision, I rode my bike only once this summer. I’ve been running instead; trail running. I’ve never been a huge fan of running but I must say that trail running is growing on me. For me it’s not really about speed, it’s about endurance, stamina, distance, and recovery. I’ve gotten to the point where I can run (jog might be the more appropriate term) (walking maybe a quarter) 8-10 miles pretty comfortably. I’ve been pushing my distance and the last I I ran was 12 miles in about 2 hours and 17 minutes.

Then last weekend, me and a team of friends, former coworkers, and my dad participated in my third Ragnar Trail relay. This time, it was in the Green Mountains of Vermont. It was challenging, lot of uphill, hot and humid weather, and a little bit of rain, but overall I’m very happy. Our team name was “Scrambled Legs.” Thankfully my training paid off, my legs (well, my knees mostly) were not nearly as scrambled as they were after the last two, so I’m happy with that.

What’s a Ragnar relay? An event where you start running with your team sometime Friday morning and then you run for at least 24 hours (unless your team is super-human fast). The trail relays are centered at a state park or other similar type venue. There are three trail loops that each team member runs once in a relay so each person has several hours to rest between runs.

While there is a certain level of pain that is endured, you push yourself to your limit and with the support of your team and the great community that converges for a weekend, you push through and it ends up being a very memorable blast of an event.

One thing I love about Ragnar, they use very little to no plasticware. Everything is reusable or compostable or recycle-able. And the course is left mostly pristine with the exception of many, many footprints of thousands of runners.

Ragnar got me feeling confident enough to tackle my first half marathon in mid-October! So, my running will continue and hopefully might improve my speed. But if I don’t, I’ll be thankful to just keep running. Anyway, not much else to share. I’ll just keep on keepin on.