As of Thursday last week I've changed my medication from Etodolac to Anchor Steam, and there has been much rejoicing. As of Sunday last I've started running again. It's more of a ludicrously slow jog than a run, but that really doesn't matter. Every day, except for one day off, I've started my run fully expecting it to end in disaster. My bad knee would always hurt at the beginning, but not bad enough to make me quit. Then it would get a little better and stay just well enough that I could finish the run I'd planned, but not much better. Then it would be sore throughout the next day. It was not encouraging. Then Sunday morning Cupcake chased me out of the house, demanding that I take a little much-needed time for myself. For once I didn't argue, and I went out to tackle the powerlines trail, which I completed without any problems with my knee. That was encouraging. Then I checked my training log and saw that I ran 52 miles last week, which isn't much less than I was doing before I got hurt. That was also encouraging. Today everything feels pretty normal, which is just great. I guess I'm back in training until Junior Jr. squeezes his way through Cupcake's lady garden sometime in the beginning of August. Woot!
A few thoughts even more random than usual:
1. I can do seven pull-ups now. This my be a Guinness Book world record for the most pull-ups ever achieved by a complete and total wuss. I'll have to check.
2. Beavis and Butthead have ruined children's books for me. Whenever I read to Junior Sr., I'll invariably utter a word or phrase that'll make me chortle-snicker-whatever because it's funny, even though it shouldn't be. Some examples: "That night, Reggie showed me his junk." "Fat raindrops began falling on Shrek's hot knob"
I can't get through "Where the Wild Things Are" without breaking into a Tone Loc impersonation at least 6 or 7 times. Help me.
3. From a distance runner's perspective, gaining 10 pounds of flab feels the same as gaining 10 pounds of upper-body muscle mass which feels the same as duct-taping a 10 pound pork shoulder to your head. Not that the 10 pounds I gained during my two months off is all muscle. It's definitiely a combination of the three things mentioned above. Mmmm...pork products...
4. Who puts four random thoughts into a blog? Not me, that's for sure.
Almost immediately following my last post, the minor pain in my POS knee get a lot worse and stayed that way for over a week. Good times. So I haven't run since then, except for one failed test where I jogged the 20 feet to the end of our driveway and had to stop. After another trip to doctor and another $60 in co-pays I got a prescription for Etodolac, a heavy-duty anti-inflamatory with a list of nasty-sounding side effects long enough to make Happy Fun Ball blush. I'll be taking it twice a day for three weeks for my tendonitis, which was almost certainly caused by all the stretching I did during my month off. Oh...and no alcohol. Argh!!!! I'll continue to lose fitness and get fat, and I'll have to do it dead, stone sober.
"That night, Reggie showed me his junk."
"Fat raindrops began falling on Shrek's hot knob"
