No crunches today and a torrential downpour put the kibosh (it’s been far too long since I’ve used that word) on the initial bike ride, as my cycling jacket and pants are not handy and riding an unfamiliar bike (with hydraulic brakes, which sound industrial and scary) on streets slicked with rain seems like a good way to maybe screw up my other ankle.
But I’ll be working on something exercise-wise this week, even if it’s just rigorous gnashing of my teeth.
Doing some extended walking tonight I have to admit I could feel my ankle. Not hurting but there, like an itch in the part of your back you can’t quite reach.
Bummer. But not unexpected.
Stupid ankle.
I think I’ll try a few crunches tomorrow, just to get something started. I’m referring to the exercise, not the delicious mouth-shredding breakfast cereal of the Cap’n variety.
It’s raining today. Boo!
I am actually getting mildly excited over the prospect of cycling. It’s been a long while since I rode my bike to work and it’s been longer still since I just plain rode for recreational. I look forward to making all those seldom-used leg muscles cry out for a day or two.
Walking at a brisk clip continues to present no discomfort at all. I am glad. 80 days to go.
It’s sunny today. Hooray!
I can now walk briskly and my ankle does not hurt anymore. Hooray again! I am fairly positive now that the bone is not fractured but bruised. My plan is to feel it up on Day 28 and see if there is any pain when applying pressure. I suspect it won’t pass the test but I remain hopeful.
Here on Day 2 I find that I no longer feel any pain or discomfort when walking at a more leisurely pace. It still feels a bit tweaked when I pick up to my usual stride.
The weather is drizzly and cool — 6ºC when I checked a thermometer. For the first time this fall I wore my winter jacket and it felt good — which is bad, because it means winter and The Rains are not far off. The sun is also setting at like 3 p.m., too.
I have three trajectories planned for my non-running exercise:
Twelve weeks is 84 days.
The 84th day from today is January 16th, 2012. January 17th is when the doctor at the clinic officially cleared me for running again. I have vowed to blog for at least the next 84 consecutive days as a result. That will show my ankle who’s boss! Or something.
He didn’t want to send me for an x-ray because he said his treatment would be the same and why irradiate your body if you don’t need to? On the plus side I didn’t have to pee in a cup.
Since the ankle has been improving noticeably each day since my last run I don’t believe any bone is fractured because this kind of healing simply doesn’t jibe with that. Even my laughably bad Internet self-diagnostic skills have me feeling confident about that.
On the other hand it might be a bone bruise and clearly four weeks off was not sufficient for it to heal up fully. I can very clearly feel the discomfort/pain by applying pressure to the affected area so I’ll be checking periodically on the ankle to see if I can perhaps shave a few weeks off because 12 weeks is a freaking long time.
Meanwhile, I may have to learn how to swim to get some exercise and that went really well last time.
I recently added another link to my small collection of, uh, links. This one is for my Fitocracy profile. Fitocracy is an exercise-tracking site that combines the social aspects of Facebook with the level-up mechanics of a video game. It even has quests. For a geek that works out (yes, I know…) this is a heady combination. I am part of the Quarter to Three group there and as of this writing am level 7. This doesn’t give me a nifty title as I had hoped for but I look forward to level 8 all the same. Only 22 points to go…
The other morning I was in the food court near where I work and, as is usually the case at this time of day, there weren’t many people milling about. Then I espied a line-up that was not merely long, but downright lengthy in extreme.
It turned out it was for McDonald’s, as they had just introduced new buttermilk biscuits as part of their breakfast menu and for two days they were offering them for free.
Free, as it turns out, is a popular price.
Here’s some of what these people got for free by opting for the Sausage ‘n Egg Biscuit Sandwich:
48% of your daily sodium (1140 mg)
57% of your daily fat (37 g)
590 calories
240 mg cholesterol
19 grams protein
30% of your daily iron
So you’ll simultaneously get fat, clog your arteries, increase your blood pressure but also gain a tiny bit of muscle (under the fat). Seems like a good deal. It’s hard to figure out why so many people are obese. Really!
(Disclaimer: Occasional fast food is a welcome indulgence for those who like it. I am eating whole grain tortilla chips and fresh salsa as I type this.)
A good pun is hard to resist. A bad pun, moreso.
My left knee has checked out A-OK and the doctor says I am good to resume jogging, which I plan on doing this Monday. When he seemed a bit evasive on the cause of the soreness in my knee I asked, “Is it one of those ‘getting older’ things?” He immediately started in with, “Well, I wouldn’t want to put a name on it…” which seemed like a polite way of saying, “Yes”. But he was polite, so no dirty look for him!
Here’s hoping my Nike+ sensor still has some juice in it. Here’s also hoping I don’t collapse face-first into the mud after 200 meters.
I have not jogged since September 20th.
This is not by design.
As it happened, back in September my left leg was ailing again and so I opted to give it time to recover before resuming my runs, as I had previously. This particular time it seemed the left ankle was feeling especially tender. I am more convinced now that the way I was running — on an oval course, always counter-clockwise — may have contributed to my left leg bearing more than its fair share and thus making it more susceptible to injury. My plan was to resume running and to either find a new course to run or to simply alternate between running clockwise and counter-clockwise on the path around China Creek Park.
By the time I felt I’d rested enough to resume jogging I began a new job and suddenly my schedule was a lot tougher to work runs around. Couple that with waning daylight hours and I let it slide longer than I would have liked.
Then something weird happened. My left knee started to hurt. More precisely, I would sometimes notice it feeling sore, though it never hurt to actually walk on it. It was most obvious when I would kneel to tie my shoelaces. What makes this weird is that I never experienced any problems with my knees when running. At first I thought I did something to hurt it and just couldn’t remember exactly what I’d done but the soreness is ever-present. I feel it every time I kneel down, though it never gets worse (or better). I plan on having the knee checked out at the clinic soon but mildly fear this may be a chronic injury that will require therapy — or worse!
If the doctor tells me it’s one of those ‘men of your age’ things, I promise to give him a dirty look.
I will update on the potential kneetastrophe soon.
Last week I neglected to bring a lunch to work so I headed to a nearby food court and chose to consume some of the edible products offered at McDonald’s. Specifically I had a McChicken Meal, which consisted of:
On a scale of 1 to 5 Twinkies, I rate the McChicken Meal 4.5 Twinkies. The Twinkie scale works in reverse, so more Twinkies is worse.
I’m packing my lunch every day now.
When I changed my diet back in June 2008 I pretty much swore off sugar-filled snacks and since then have rarely indulged (the occasional strawberry cheesecake mini-Blizzard for example — mmm!) and when I do it’s usually with something unsexy like an apple or one of those Lindt 99% cocoa bars which, to the average person, tastes a lot like chalk with a vague notion of what they imagine to be chocolate added in somewhere.
My current workplace has a Starbucks on the ground floor of the tower. This is not surprising, as there will likely be a Starbucks in every building in every major city at some point. They have an oat fudge bar and from days of yore I remembered it as being quite yummy. When I espied several sitting on a plate in the glass display case, I felt a nostalgic yearning and ultimately caved in to the urge, buying one for the low price of $1.95 (HST not included).
I’m pretty sure the bar contained enough sugar to keep me on a sugar-filled bender for the rest of my shift, the evening and part of my shift the following day. To say the bar was sweet would be akin to noting that Jupiter is a big planet in comparison to Mercury. It was so sweet that it went from yummy straight over into gross. My nostalgic craving was cured, forever.
As I write this I am eating fat-free cottage cheese. Times — and taste buds — change.