After my run on Halloween I decided that heading out for another run in two days would be even scarier than the ghosts and witches I’d seen decorating the neighborhood, mainly due to my right Achilles tendon still being sore.
I’ve decided to rest it until at least this Saturday, November 10th. That will give me a week and a half for the tendon to recover. I think that may be enough time but we’ll see. If I still feel I am not up for a full run on Saturday I’ll probably at least do a walk as the low impact nature of that shouldn’t aggravate the foot.
The combination of not running and snacking has seen me inch above my maintenance weight for the first time in months. Granted it’s only by 0.2 pounds so far but still, it took me weeks to gain back the three pounds I’d lost from the flu. Now I seem to be having no trouble at all with the whole gaining thing. I’m trying to exercise (ho ho) a little more restraint when it comes to nibbling on calorie-laden goodies.
The day after my weird knee issue and it is not hurting so yay! If I flex it I can feel where it was hurt but it’s now more of s stiffness so I am hoping this is a muscle bruise and nothing too serious.
I am regretfully planning on skipping the usual Friday run but planning a tentative return on Monday. That will give me five days to heal and rest. If this is insufficient I am ordering a replacement bionic knee from the Internet.
Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.03 km
Weather: Hazy sun, high cloud
Temp: 20-22ºC
Wind: moderate
Calories burned: 782
Total distance to date: 1591 km
The day started overcast but as run time approached the sky continued to brighten, so I knew conditions would be improving rather than deteriorating. On the plus side the temperature was noticeably lower, even slightly below seasonal and this made for a much more comfortable run, despite it being perhaps even more humid than Monday. The sun started breaking through the clouds but for the most part all I got was hazy sun and cloud until the final km or so when the cloud cover finally burned off completely. And by then I had other things to be concerned with.
My pace started out decently and I felt pretty good. I was confident I could knock at least a few seconds off Monday’s Africa hot pace. Somewhere between 7 and 8 km I felt an odd twinge on the side of my right knee. Other than noting it was odd (I had done nothing to the knee or leg that might have caused some kind of strain) I did nothing and kept running. The twinge grew more prominent and turned to what I would describe as discomfort. Something was clearly not right. By the 10 km point it was just plain old-fashioned pain and I mustered along to the 11 km mark and ended my run there through sheer will, even picking the pace up slightly as I hobbled through the final 400m or so. My pace bottomed out at 5:20 at one point and the final km was a sluggish 5:14. Considering how the knee felt by then that was actually pretty good.
It hurt on the walk home — not a good sign. Once home I iced it 15 minutes on/off for 1 hour and 45 minutes. An hour after the last pack the side of the knee is still cool to the touch.
My best guess is I pulled one or more tendons. How this happened is a mystery as it happened without any warning. before or during the run. I went from twinge to OW MY KNEE.
I’m going to see how it feels when I get up tomorrow and go from there, possibly having the doc check it out or just rest it for the remainder of the week.
I seem to be jinxed. Whenever I hit a new milestone something always happens. I’m hoping this is fairly minor and although I probably won’t be running Friday I still hope to be back out there ASAP.
I ended up tying monday’s pace, which is decent considering how I felt for the last couple of km. If the knee had behaved I would have beaten it, I’m sure.
Today I went to the doctor to discuss the bunch o’ blood work I had done. I knew there wasn’t going to be catastrophic news because they obligingly call you to come in if the lab returns results stamped with something like PATIENT HAS THREE DAYS TO LIVE.
I made the trek to Richmond via the still sexy Expo Line and the decidedly unsexy Canada Line. There’s not much you can do to dress up a subway. It’s even more annoying in that most of it is cut and cover so it meanders all over the place to follow the road above it.
As is usually the case I arrived at the office early and had to wait awhile before the doctor came in. I like my doctor. He’s friendly and smart. He’s also older than me so when he gives the ‘men of your age’ speech it’s always somewhat ruefully.
The overall news was good — no hideous diseases or deficiencies that would require hospitalization/surgery/medication/alien intervention. The scare that came out of an April 2008 visit to a walk-in clinic (‘You’re one year away from Type II diabetes”) is gone with my much more sensible diet. My combined bad/good cholesterol number is fine and I don’t appear to be deficient in anything else, blood-wise.
One of two areas of concern was my bad cholesterol level — it is a bit higher than what would be considered optimal. The doctor figures this is likely a genetic predisposition and is nothing to be concerned about. He gave me a number to call for a free consultation with a government dietician if I’m concerned I may be eating wrong and horrible things. The other concern was regarding how efficiently my kidney is flushing out the things it’s supposed to — the jargon got a bit technical for me. Basically he said that as you age the efficiency decreases by about 1 per year and while my current level is fine, in 40 years it would be at a critical level. I’d also be 87 then, so it’s quite possible I wouldn’t give a flying fig about it, either. The advice here was to take kidney-friendly medication when needed and to monitor it year by year.
And that was about it. I’m scheduled for a full physical next month so we’ll find out if I have nutty blood pressure and whatnot. I’m hoping for perfectly boring results because my health is one part of my life I prefer to be dull.
Five days later and my back is starting to feel a little closer to normal after The Stooping Incident. I have written a haiku to help remember this less-than-cherished event.
This Back of Mine
Bending down and zap
Pain and the old man shuffle
Stupid random back
I find myself distracted on this Easter Sunday by my back. Sleeping with the pulled muscles last night was not as bad I had expected, with it only being an issue when I wanted to roll over. Starting the rollover motion was a bit of a pain (ho ho). I tried to just lay on my back but when I’m awake I’m like a shark, I need to keep moving. Tonight I plan on having my brain and back discuss this and come to an agreement of sorts that will minimize anything that will hurt.
Putting my socks on this morning was also not the most fun thing I did today but by afternoon I was well enough to walk to the store. I sometimes even had it slip my mind that my back was sore at all. I am skeptical about being ready to run tomorrow, but hope springs eternal and all that.
This afternoon I noticed a splotch on the kitchen tile. Rather than bring out the handy Swiffer mop to clean up such a minor scuff, I broke out the spray cleaner from under the kitchen sink and gave it a few blasts.
Something funny happened when I stooped to put the cleaner back under the sink and by funny I mean ‘extremely painful’. I felt a sudden jolt of pain shoot through my lower back. I spent the next hour or so feeling very sore and rather immobile. Tonight, three Advil later, I am still sore but a lot more mobile. I am hoping that a good night’s rest will help heal the ol’ back muscles to where they were before this unexpected and unwanted event occurred.
I don’t recall doing anything that may have led to my back suddenly spasming like this (or whatever it was) so I’m also hoping this doesn’t happen again any time soon. Or ever.
Today I had some blood drawn for some standard tests prior to my check-up. It could have gone worse, it could have gone better. I’ll edit in the summary I write on Broken Forum. For now a haiku:
Draw some blood for tests
Fasting first leaves me woozy
Some pain then float home
Unlike most of the links I have listed under the My Links category, I am actually using this site on a daily basis!
While the name is a bit cutesy for my taste, MyFitnessPal is a fairly good tool for tracking diet and exercise and since I’m a wee bit off from where I’d like to be weight-wise, it seemed like a good idea to start using it. There is a thread on Broken Forum where a bunch of us have become fa(s)t friends and signed up. I was also having issues with the Livestrong app I had been using (and paid for), including an obnoxious issue where it kept popping up daily reminders on my phone, even after I had turned them off, so I was ready to make a switch.
MFP is much better-behaved and the website makes entering info easy as pie. Mmm, fattening, delicious pie.
Today was another successful day of not-swimming. Like most people I was born with the talent of not-swimming. Unlike most, I went on to refine it by becoming more clumsy and even less buoyant in the water.
But tonight I agreed to go with Jeff and Jason to the Canada Games Pool in New Westminster. As you might guess from the name this is a rather large pool and it comes complete with amenities like a sauna, swirl pool, kiddie pool, a nutty water slide, basketball hoops and even ping pong tables. The ping pong tables are not in the water.
After changing into my swimming trunks, a newer pair that had never actually touched water, we padded out into the slightly muggy pool area. We shot some basketballs, which you aim at hoops that will keep score in 30 second increments to better prove how basketball is clearly not your thing (as in my case). Next we moved onto the ping pong and I’m reasonably good at this. There is a bit of a ramp-up effect where if someone hits the ball back a little hard it’s natural to do the same until someone sends it rocketing off into oblivion. We managed to avoid oblivion but did have to chase a few balls beyond the official perimeter.
At this point I was quite pleased with myself. I had not drowned! I had yet to get wet but that’s a minor detail. That was about to change, though, as we approached Big Thunder, the name of the water slide. They claim it’s the largest indoor slide in BC and I have no reason to doubt that. It’s essentially a giant green corkscrew that funnels you into a lane of water about half a meter deep at the end. Jason goes first, followed by Jeff who displaces about three bathtubs of water on the way down (Jason thoughtfully warned me of this in advance).
My turn came and instead of being nervous I just slid, sitting up at first but that was slow enough to feel like grandma mode, so I laid down and by the last turn I was feeling the force of a good rollercoaster as I whipped around and into the lane. I ended with a snootful of water but it was still good clean fun.
We next lounged around in the shallow pool (slightly over waist deep), tossing balls around and absolutely not peeing because no one ever pees in a public swimming pool. With time starting to wind down Jeff and I moved to the adults-only swirl pool while Jason moved to the kids pool (AKA the one pool where even I couldn’t flounder and go under). The swirl pool was nice and warm but not hot like I had expected. We shared it with a guy who was probably between 350-400 pounds. I’m calling it a gland condition because he actually seemed fitness-aware.
After the swirl pool we moved to the sauna. I read the warning sign on the way out, as I often do things backward like that. It didn’t tell me what I really already knew: I don’t like saunas. I felt like I was slowly suffocating and of course it’s really quite hot. I’ve always found saunas curious. Under the same conditions people would be turning on fans, activating air conditioners or pouring ice down their tops but the sauna is embraced for the same stupidly hot conditions. Yeah, it’s therapeutic or something. I’d rather lift weights. I left Jeff to sweat it out and returned to the more relaxing jets of the swirl pool.
As we had arrived late we ran out of time before long and had to depart, making a quick stop in the shower on the way out. As expected, about half the guys were au naturel while the rest showered with tier swim trunks on. Not that I was looking or anything but if tonight was any indication this is not a pool frequented by Adonis-like bodies. Still, it’s good to see people out doing that whole fitness/exercise kind of thing.
As I write this I smell of chlorine. I feel like I’ve been sanitized for your protection. It’s not entirely unpleasant, though my hands are a bit dry.
I enjoyed the evening. I want to play ping pong again. The slide was fun. The swirl pool was relaxing.
Water still terrifies me, though. Maybe I’ll consider lessons again, as long as the first lesson is titled “So You Want to Learn How to Swim But Water Scares the Living Crap Out of You”.
Today started with temperatures well below freezing and another blanket of snow fell (damn snow) but we saw the return of a more typical weather pattern follow than has been seen in recent years as temperatures slowly rose and that snow turned to freezing rain and then plain old-fashioned rain.
Torrents of it.
This left the roads and sidewalks seas of slush. I opted not to return to running. I’ll monitor the weather over the weekend but with warming temperatures and the relentless assault of ‘liquid sunshine’ I suspect the snow will not be an issue for more than the rest of today.
The first day I can officially start running again and the ground is too icy to run on. Plus I had to wait for a bed to show up during the daylight hours.
