Alas, we are moving. We’ve been living at two sites — TakeItOutsideNC.com and GetOutGetFit.com — for several months; it just makes sense to consolidate under one roof. So we are. From now on, you can find us at GetGoingNC.com. We’ll still be reporting and writing about the same things — from walking the greenways to bombing singletrack, from rediscovering your local playground to tackling a new route at the climbing gym. Just at a new address. And with a more statewide approach.

So starting Monday, Oct. 5, drop by GetGoingNC.com and pay us a visit. And we promise: You won’t have to move furniture.

Details here.

OK, a hamstring injury isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t have the cache of, say, an ACL injury. But it’s common among weekend warriors. Don’t warm up, go out too fast — ping! — there’s a debilitating snap in the back of your leg. A muscle snap that if you ignore can hobble you for weeks. First, a look at how to avoid irritating your hamstring in the first place.

Not long ago, we warmed up by stretching. Then we learned that stretching cold muscles wasn’t such a good idea. Now we’re advised to warm up slowly. For instance, at our Fit-tastic workouts we jog very slowly for a mile and a half to two miles before running hard. When I pulled my hamstring Monday I was sprinting for a flyball in a game of kickball; Had I taken 10 minutes to jog up the street and back beforehand I might have avoided the injury. But I didn’t, and I was stuck with a strained hamy, a moderate strain based on my interpretation of the rough rating system for evaluating hamstring pulls.

Immediately, I iced the injury and took ibuprofen. Good first steps, according to the online source I turned to, a Web site by Washington, D.C., physician Stephen M. Pribut, who specializes in podiatric sports medicine, biomechanics and foot surgery. Follow that up with “gentle compression” and rest. That jibed with my Fit-tastic running coach Tim Clark’s recommendation, which makes for a neat — not to mention tasty and nutritious — acronym: RICE. That is, Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.

Tim was especially high on compression: “Wear a wrap [and ACE bandage, for instance] overnight while sleeping,” he suggested. “I’ve found this works real well for muscle soreness.”

Obviously, it was the “R” aspect of the equation that caused me  consternation. No one likes to be benched. Coaches realize this, even doctors.

“Certainly walking is okay as long as the pain is not too severe and you’re not limping, which can cause other problems,” Tim said. As part of rehab, Dr. Pribut said it was OK to run two miles “at a glacial pace.” Hold off on the stretching for a week or so, then gradually reintroduce it. Take longer warmups — “it may take 1/2 hour or longer to do a proper warmup,” advises Dr. Pribut and after doing speedwork be sure to warm down, for one to two miles, before gently stretching.

Follow this advice and, depending upon the severity of the injury, it should take two to six weeks for the hamstring to mend.

Two to six weeks?

They need to revisit the hippocratic acronym, I thought. Instead of RICE, it should be RICEEP.

For Extreme Patience.

All hail the re-inflatable ball and the cul-de-sac.

It was a good hour until dinner, the early evening was warm and sunny, the rush of kids coming home from school and parents from work over. A perfect opportunity for fun in the burbs.

“Who wants to go play in the street?” I yelled. As expected, I had three takers. We armed ourselves with a soccer ball, a junior-sized football and a basketball, which we noodled around with in the cul-de-sac before I spotted the orphaned white ball. It was your basic play ball, the kind stores keep in big wire cages and sell for a buck. It was bleached of color but held air and was otherwise in good shape. It had no heft, no weight, and no matter how hard you kicked it, didn’t matter if you were Rhys Lloyd, this flighty featherweight wasn’t going out of the cul-de-sac, let alone through a neighbor’s window.

“Let’s play kickball!”

Kickball. That staple of grade school recess that for most — but not all — of us vanished after 6th grade. Unlike its more successful cousins baseball and softball, kickball isn’t as demanding or demeaning for those of us of lesser motor skills. It also doesn’t hurt as much when the hand-eye coordination isn’t what it could be. Similar rules to softball and baseball, but much more laid back. Plus, everyone tends to get in on the action; there’s less of a “Put-Joey-in-right-field-because-no-one-ever-hits-out-there” element. Especially when you’re playing two-on-two, which is what we were playing in the cul-de-sac.

When you’re in the field with a full nine players, you’re only responsible for covering 1/9th of the playing surface. Ball goes to left field, you’re in right, not your problem; Stand, watch, wonder what mom packed in your Roy Rogers lunchbox. When you’re playing with just two players, you’re responsible for half the field — and if you’re a competitive 53-year-old feeling the need to prove yourself to two 14-year-olds and an 11-year-old, you assume responsibility for more.

It was the second inning and we were only down by two but, as I believe I mentioned yesterday, I could feel the game slipping away. They had the bases loaded; we needed this next out. My 14-year-old teammate rolled the pitch, our 11-year-old adversary delivered with a wounded duck down the first base line. “Mine!” I yelled, followed quickly by, “Aieeee!” That’s when my hamy — the semitendinosus, to be exact — went. I hobbled and short-hopped the fly ball; the 11-year-old was safe, the ghost runner scored, I was done. Or would be after we played another three innings and lost 7-6.

The strained muscle aside, this little orphaned ball gave us a great  workout before dinner on a school night. We ran, we kicked, we threw, we ducked. And had I had the foresight to warm up, to maybe jog slowly up and down the street for a few minutes before starting, I wouldn’t have spent the evening Googling “semitendinosus injury” and pestering my running coach for advice on how to quickly work through this injury.

Advice I will share tomorrow, because, again I have exhausted my self-imposed word limit for the day.

Photo of semitendinosus: BioMedical Engineering OnLine

It was the second inning and we were only down by two, but already I could feel the game slipping away. There was a short fly to the first base side, I started to sprint over and — Aiieee! — I felt a hamstring go. The semitendinosus, if my reading of the Full Body Anatomy chart was right. I one-hopped the fly, another run scored and I suddenly had visions of my active life grinding to a leg-elevated, ice-bagged halt.

I rarely get injured, thanks more to the grace of Coach Upstairs than to dedicated preventative training on my part. Never was much for stretching when stretching before a workout was in, tend to jump right into an activity today rather than do a slow warm-up, as is the current prescription among trainer types. Fit-tastic and my coach Tim Clark have begun to introduce me to this novel concept — we start every workout with a very easy 2-mile run — but old habits die especially hard in older psyches.

Immediately after irritating my hamstring— well, not immediately; we finished the game, losing 7-6 — I did what any modern day recreational athlete does: I Googled it. Wait, I lie again: The first thing I did was get out my “Anatomy of  Exercise: A Trainer’s Inside Guide to Your Workout” to determine that indeed it was my left semitendinosus that had been aggrieved. I learned that it was a tendon, that it was one of three members of the hamstring family running the back of the leg, and that on a severity scale of three, my injury was a two — some pain, walk with a noticeable limp.

As is the case with any Google search, it took me a minute or two to find what appeared to be a reliable source. I went first to my go-to source on health matters, Mayoclinic.com, where I found a brief but helpful description indicating that in such strains, the muscle fiber is either stretched or torn, that rest and gentle stretching and strengthening exercises are typically good, that the injury can take two to six weeks — with proper attention — to heel. Good enough for a non-active type, but I needed to know more. Specifically, I needed specifics on how I could whittle that two to six weeks down to two to three days. I Googled on.

When I Google for medical information, I primarily look at two things. One, credentials. Is the source well-versed on the topic? Does she have a medical degree? Is he certified in sports medicine or training? A quick visit to the “About” section should answer this question. (If there is no “About” section, that should answer your question right there.) I also look at whether the site is trying to sell anything. The first site I visited had good, basic information on the muscles and their function. But when it came to dealing with injuries, there were only links to various videos, medicines and “therapy” programs guaranteed to work or your money back. I opted for the Web site of Dr. Stephen M. Pribut, a Washington, D.C., doctor specializing in podiatric sports medicine, biomechanics and foot surgery. His site has been up since 1995, his descriptions and advice were easy to understand.

Now, perhaps the smart thing would be to go directly to my doctor. And if my situation were more severe — if I had intense pain that wasn’t initially placated by ice and iboprofen, if I was walking like Chester on Gunsmoke, I would. But on similar matters in the past I’ve found that with the abundance of increasingly helpful information available on the internet — especially regarding minor sports injuries — it’s more efficient, economically and otherwise, to at least try the internet doctor route. (In part, this is because I’ve been told to act my age one too many times.) If I follow an online prescription and don’t see improvement in a week or two, I’ll make a brick-and-mortar appointment.

I’ve babbled enough for today. I’ll get to what my online doc — as well as my Fit-tastic running coach, Tim Clark — suggested tomorrow.

No need to stay cooped up just because it's dark out, not when there's night hiking to be done on the Eno.

Need something to keep you moving this weekend? Here’s the long and short of it.

You can take a long hike at Umstead State Park (12.5 miles, beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday), a short hike in the dark (in search of nocturnal critters, Saturday evening at 7:15 at Eno River State Park), a short run in Cary (a 5K or 1.25-mile race as part of Celebrate Cary at Sunset), or a long bike ride (4 hours, on a mountain bike, in Garner) Sunday afternoon — all afternoon.

Intrigued? Find details at our sister site, TakeItOutsideNC.com.

You can bet June never stuck anything from a cardboard box into her oven.

Saw a commercial this morning that depicted a family preparing to sit down at the dinner table as the narrator notes that children of families that eat dinner together get better grades. Which is true: A 2005 Columbia University study found that teens who ate dinner with their families on a regular basis were 40 percent more likely to get As and Bs, while a Harvard University study cited the importance of family dinners in helping children develop language skills. Family dinner is a good thing, no argument there.

But then the commercial goes on to show mom slicing portions of lasagna from a piping hot frozen dinner, a frozen dinner from one of the leading manufacturers of such concoctions. We looked up the nutritional breakdown on one serving of this particular prepared lasagna and discovered that one lone serving has 690 calories. That’s about 28 percent of the average American male’s total calorie intake per day and 38 percent of the average American female’s. And that’s just one element of one meal, a meal in the evening no less, when you should be consuming fewer calories. Further, this serving of family-time lasagna contains 22 grams of fat (35 percent of the daily recommended allotment), 1,857 milligrams of sodium (77 percent), 77 milligrams of cholesterol (26 percent) and 75 grams of total carbohydrates (25 percent). On the plus side, it provides 6 percent of your daily recommended dosage of Vitamin C!

I’m hardly questioning the convenience factor; It’s a frequent necessity in the average American household these days. We’ve had convenience-driven meals in the GOGF household the past three evenings. But quick meals don’t have to be laden with calories and fat. A quick Google reveals a plethora of sites that offer quick meal suggestions. EatingWell.com offers 30-minute recipes, Fitness Magazine goes 10 minutes better with 20-minute dinner recipes. Go to your local bookstore quailridgebooks.booksense.com and you’ll find shelves of similarly-focused titles. And you can probably trim those prep times by making dinner a truly family-oriented event and getting the kids to pitch in.

Family dinner is good. A family dinner that doesn’t turn us into statistics is even better.

Ernie Parker talks strategy with coach Tim Clark.

I’ve shared why I signed up for the Fit-tastic running program: to relive the glory days of my running youth and hopefully do sub 8-minute miles in the Halloween weekend Monster Dash 5K. Now here’s why some of my peers in the advanced runner category are in the program.

Susan Jessup

For Susan, it was either run a half marathon or buy a little red sports car.  “I turned 50 last May,” Susan explains, “and decided that I wanted to do something that I had never done before – maybe this was my way of experiencing a mid life crisis.  That something new resulted in my decision to run a half marathon.  I had never run before so this was a big goal for me.”

She started running “a little on my own,” heard about Fit-tastic, signed up and ran the graduation Monster Dash last October in 35 minutes – “not great but a good start.”  She took the winter off, signed up for the spring session of Fit-tastic, ran the Race for the Cure in 32 minutes. Now in her third Fit-tastic session, Susan’s goal is to finally run that half marathon, the OBX in November.

“I get more than I ever imagined out of the program.  I have more energy, I am working towards my goal of running a half marathon and I have met some wonderful people that I would have never met otherwise.  One benefit that I never imagined is that my teenagers, ages 13 and 18, are proud of the fact that their mom runs.

“I don’t know if you have teenagers,” she adds. “If you do, you know how hard it is to find some way that they can be proud of you as a parent.”

Ernie Parker

“I am 66 years old and started my running career last August at the persistence of my daughter, Renee. First night I thought no way could I do this but I still enjoy trying.  This is my third session of Fit-tastic and I keep returning because you meet wonderful people that encourage you while sharing a common goal.  Running is a new adventure for me at my age. It makes me feel good about myself, it gives me much more energy, and I can eat foods that I have avoided for the last several years. Best thing that I have ever done for me!”

And since you can’t very well tell your mom to do something that you wouldn’t do, here’s daughter Renee, who is 41:

Renee Weaver

Renee, in her second Fit-tastic session, has been running for 9 years, but “not seriously until three years ago. The Race for the Cure got me started running — I have run the race every year except two.” She adds: “I started running to lose weight and get fit. I continue to run to challenge myself.”

Kelly Akers

Kelly is 35 and started running in 2008 when she and a friend visiting from Hawaii decided to run the Cooper River Bridge 10K in Charleston, S.C. “We had no expectations going into the race since I had not really run since high school and she was nursing a hip injury from the Marines. We thought we would walk or jog a little so it was no big deal. Well, we jogged all of it and finished in 1 hour 17 minutes. We were thrilled and felt super human that our feet could carry us 6.2 miles.”

Kelly vowed to run a race a month for the rest of the year, which included a half marathon that she did in 2 hours, 8 seconds. (She’s training for the Outer Banks Half Marathon in November with a goal of breaking 2 hours.)

Kelly has been in all three Fit-tastic sessions and says she’ll keep coming back “because I really enjoy meeting people trying to achieve similar goals and keeping healthy.” Healthwise, she’s lost 16 pounds since entering the program, “my body fat is a fabulous 24 percent,” and where she once suffered from hypertension she reports her blood pressure is now normal.

Shannan Brooks

Shannan, who is 30 now, started running in high school. “I was overweight and one day decided to do something about it.  So, I went outside and started jogging, every day trying to jog one more telephone pole, until I ran one mile without stopping.  That was a very accomplished moment for me. I then started running in track and training hard, sometimes morning and afternoon.  I lost alot of weight and became good at the sport.  Since then, I have always enjoyed running.”

But, as most of us come to realize, the demands of day-to-day life can derail the best of intentions. Homeschooling two kids and working part-time put a crimp in Shannan’s running plans. “Fitness always seems to be my last priority.” Fit-tastic has helped change that. “This program has helped me make it a bigger priority and get fit, so that I can enjoy running again.  Running is not fun if it is not done consistently.”

Scarlette Chapel

Forty-year-old Scarlette describes herself as a longtime walker/runner who’s stepped up the running over the last five years. She joined Fit-tastic to improve her running skills and, in the process, hopefully lessen her risk of injury. Her goal is to run a 10K in October (she also has a secret goal, which maybe we can convince her to reveal later). In fact, though, her real goal in joining the program is perhaps the best we’ve heard.

“I LIKE to run,” says Scarlette, “but I wanted to be an athlete who LOVED to run!!”