Eating a Robot; Run, Stop, Run

Now that Robotics season is over, we're free to eat the robots.

Both Buzz and Sputnik asked for robot cakes for their birthdays. I made each the same general way, using a 9x13 cake pan cut into pieces and then covered with homemade fondant and frosted. I have a recipe that *tastes* very good for the fondant - but I'm still working on getting the consistency right. It's a learning process.

Anyway, here's Buzz's cake from the other day:

And Sputnik's from way back in March:

Both were somewhat dictated by the child's description and/or drawings.

In (non) running news. I took almost 2 weeks off to rest my hip. I went to see the doc on Tuesday. He told me what I wanted to hear - he thought it was a strained tendon, probably due to weak muscles (he thought the hip adductors, although the hip adductor 'tests' did not produce pain) ... he gave me some pages of stretches for the hip adductors, and said I could keep training for the 10K. I was both hopeful and skeptical.

On Wednesday I took a "short, easy" 2 mile test run. I could tell the hip felt off at times, and sometimes hurt, but sometimes didn't seem to too much ... but as the day wore on, it got worse. I ended up lurching around so much that the leaders of the race prep class I'm taking sent me home, telling me I shouldn't be briskly walking on it. All the instructors (many of them nurses) that I talked to at the class encouraged me to call the doc back and push for physical therapy, to get a 'full workup' ... they seemed to think there was still hope for me running a 10K in June, if I was proactive with treatment.

So ... we'll see. For now I will stay off the hip - again - until I talk to the doc. Who isn't in (at our location) on Thursday, so it'll have to wait until Friday.