Oh, and I almost forgot to mention:
It may have sucked royally, but Saturday’s 6 miles is the furthest distance I have ever run.
I hated almost every second of it, but I am, nonetheless, stoked.
So About the Knee… February 25, 2007
Not last weekend, but sometime during the week before, I hurt my knee. It was just a slight, dull, pain, and I worked through it. From the quality time I’d recently spent with shin splints, I’d learned to ice it down after the run, and things were ok.
During last week’s five-mile run, I wore a nifty little knee strap that was awesome for the first couple of miles…and nothing more than an itchy reminder of that damn knee pain for the rest of it.
I got home and did my icing business, putting on a brace, elevating the leg, icing it like it had a fever…and then proved I’m a genius by going out that afternoon and again that night, and walking all over town on a bum leg. I was ready to die by the time I got home.
I whined like a baby all day Sunday and alternated ice and heat, with additional use of this big honking knee brace of Alexander’s. I limped and hobbled and was generally miserable, wondering why nothing helped.
On Monday, I skipped my speedwork. Tuesday, I skipped weights. Wednesday, I skipped my run, and Thursday and Friday were also write-offs. I was the paragon of health and determination.
From Monday through Thursday, I wore a rotating cast of knee straps, braces, and pads. Things would slowly start feeling better, and then searing pain would shoot up the side of my leg, into my back, and stick its thumbs into my eyeballs.
Come Thursday, I realized that a running injury on someone of my physique is not only hard to believe but kind of sad. So I consulted my pal the interwebs to see if I could find out more about this “knee pain” thing, since what I thought I knew was proving so effective.
And whaddaya know?
Turns out, most knee braces, unless they’re specially made for you and super-pricy, generally don’t help you. The particular flavor of knee pain I’ve been sampling for the last fortnight is your typical runner’s knee, which is all about your kneecap tracking (or not) when you bend it. Going downhill or downstairs is murder.
But I already knew this. The main thing I learned was that those knee braces you get at the drug store can actually make it worse, by pressing your kneecap IN to the irritated area.
Fabulous.
So on Thursday afternoon I stopped wearing the braces, kept at it with the ice and heat and elevation and rest, and by Saturday morning I actually felt fine. I had a little bit of a cold, but that’s neither here nor there.
I skipped the TNT team run on Saturday morning because I didn’t feel like having my first run in a week, during which my knee might completely pop out from its socket to run alongside me, in the rain.
But that evening I made Alexander go to the gym with me, and I put in my 6 miles on the treadmill.
It was ridiculously brutal. There was a lot of walking and a lot of wheezing, and by the last couple miles there was a lot of my kneecap screaming, “what the hell are you doing, woman?!?!?!?”
But I finished the distance and was able to walk, albeit slowly, afterward. And then I spent the rest of the night on the couch, sharing some quality time with my ice packs and heat pads.
Today, there’s been some knee pain, but not as bad as last week. I’m hopeful that by laying off of it for the most part, and doing some muscle-strengthening exercises, and by NOT wearing those knee braces except during exercise, i’ll be able to pull off next week’s seven miles without crying.
In the meantime, here’s a free plug for an amazing product….
One of the other knee-related things I learned was that knee pain often isn’t about just the knee. Say I had a tight muscle in my quad. To compensate, it’d pull on my kneecap–which’d then miss on its tracking, and start to hurt. Might be I wouldn’t even know about the quad muscle. I’d just feel an owie in my knee.
To get at some of those deeper muscle knots (this has been equally revolutionary for the shin splints), The Stick is basically just a dowel with rollers on it, but it’s flexible and has nice little ergonomic handles. While not as luxurious as paying for a deep-tissue massage from someone wearing a white smock and a Northern European accent, it has much the same effect. Roll that sucker up and down your quad, and it just eases the tension right out of it. I don’t know if it actually helped with the healing of the knee. But, unlike the Ace bandage product line, it didn’t actually hurt it.
So I heart The Stick and I recommend it to everyone who has ever had sore muscles. It’s tops.
And now, we’ll see if I was right about having a handle on my runner’s knee, or if I’m about to cripple myself for life.
Cheers!
Freaking Out but Fine in the End February 25, 2007
So NOW I’ve screwed up my knee. I think I’ve got a handle on it, but it took the last week to do it. I refrained from writing about it because I was secretly worrying that it might be serious. And since people have been making donations online and sending me checks for the LLS, I’ve been in a stage of mild freak-out about what I’ll do if I’m not able to run.
I imagine it’s kind of like what you’d feel like if you broke off your engagement after the wedding checks had started coming in….I mean, except for the part where a relationship ends and you have to cancel the caterer and figure out how to look your mother in the eye ever again.
But if you just separate out the part where you’ve started to get money….The handful of people who’ve sent me checks that I haven’t sent on the the LLS, well, I could send those back. But what about the people who gave online? I’m doubtful the LLS would say, “No problem. We’ll just give you back this money that we were going to use on life-saving research and support. No problem.” Would I get to send my friends, family, and associates a note politely thanking them for making a donation under unintentionally false pretenses?
“Hi Mom and Dad–turns out I’m a bigger wuss than I thought and my body rejected the idea of running. Sooooooo, thanks for making a donation and don’t you worry–next time I’m raising money for something I won’t make you laugh out loud by asking you to support me again, given that I’ll fail at it and all.”
It doesn’t take much for me to work myself up into a self-flagellating drama queen.
BUT–the story, at least for mile 6, has a happy if painful ending. I’ll move on to another entry for that one.
So fear not, gentle supporters and lookers-on! I WILL run this damn thing. If you’ve already made a donation, thank you and don’t worry–I’m still in the game. If you haven’t yet, you know, you might consider it–I’m putting myself through a heaping amount of pain, both physical and mental, to earn your monetary love.
I’m a Runner. I’m a Winner. Things are Gonna Change I Can Feel It. February 20, 2007
On Saturday, we ran 5 miles. This is the second time I have ever run 5 miles, the longest distance I’ve ever run. Next week will be six–which, if I survive, will be the furthest I have ever run.
The thing I’m learning about running is that it apparently makes everyone who does it a junior philosopher. Fighting through the persistent pain and heavy breathing and sweating on a regular basis means that not only do you have a lot of time to think about things, but that you need to spend a great deal of that time coming up with reasons to justify the fact that you’re out there doing it.
And, if you don’t particularly ally yourself with one god or another, you’re even more susceptible. Earnest religious types can tell themselves that the baby Jesus or Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster is testing them and pushing them to exceed their limits.
But if you’re a nonbeliever, it’s pretty much just you and the motivational poster in your mind.
This was tested for me on Saturday, when our route designers created a circuit that seemed purely designed to cause heartbreak.
TNT places their aid stations every four miles. This means that on a five-mile run, you know that you’ve still got one more mile before you can collapse. You start and go through the run prepared to go another mile after the aidstation.
What you are not prepared to do is double back on sections you’ve just run, passing teammates who have also just run them, and not quite sure if you’re ever going to be allowed to stop.
On the first four miles, we ran a loop around scenic NW Portland. It was lovely–a gorgeous day, and as we ran along, we were able to tick off the landmarks. Yup, just went down 23rd Avenue and grossed out people eating brunch. Just passed a homeless guy peeing on a bush. There goes that apartment building I like, with a vagrant couple performing the unspeakable under the fire escape.
Ah, Saturday morning in the city.
But then, on the last mile, we had to double-back. The aid station was out in a parking lot in a largely empty industrial district. You could see the aid station for a good quarter-mile before you got to it…so for that entire time, you could see your teammates running back the way they’d just come, toward you. And then, when you’re ready to take that last mile, you turn around, and see those faster bastards coming at you again, smiling and waving. For a freakin quarter of a mile.
That’s way too long to have to wave and smile encouragingly at all those people who are so glad they aren’t you.
But it’s not enough for the course to go back the way we came–no, they had to turn the route, so just when you think there’s some hope you might be done soon, you’ve got to run another couple of blocks before you can turn around again and finally be in the home stretch.
There were three or four “almost-done” spots within that last mile. Which is, oh about two or three too many. I can handle knowing I’ve got another mile to go. but when that mile starts to double and triple in length before my eyes, it just makes me want to cry.
At the part where we had to turn and go up a couple of blocks, there was no one ahead of me and no one behind me for a few blocks. I could so easily have just ducked around the corner, waited the length of time I thought it would take, and started back up again around the corner.
I was sorely tempted. My shin splints are nearly gone, but my knee is now an issue, and I was so ready to be done.
But then I startled myself with some motivational thinking. “The only person you’ll be hurting is you, Temple,” some freakish do-gooder inside my brain whispered to me.
“Will this do anything to make next week’s run easier?”
“You can do this. You can do anything you set your mind to.”
Holy crap.
Is this what I’ve got to look forward to for the next two months?
That’s the Best You Could Do? February 19, 2007
This has nothing to do with running, but it’s on my mind.
There’s a Subway Sandwich joint here in Portland, at E. Burnside and 30-somethingth, with this as its readerboard sign:
“We scored 100% on our Health Inspection”
Really?
That’s the message you want to put out there?
That’s your best advertisement?
This is something you want us to know was in doubt before?
And it’s a letterboard. So not only did someone think of that phrase, but they took the time to pick out all of the letters, and then paid someone minimum wage to put them up there, one by one.
We’re Subway. Our sandwiches probably won’t give you ptomaine.
To Run, Perchance to Smoke February 16, 2007
I used to smoke.
For people who knew me during that glorious period of my life, this is like saying, “I used to have opposable thumbs.”
My cigarette wasn’t an extension of me–I was an extension of it. In that moment where you wake up from a dream and realize that whole world didn’t exist? Around here the cigarette would wake up and realize it had imagined me.
The only reason I haven’t started up again in the 4+ years since I quit is that quitting sucked so much, I don’t want to have to go through it again. One of the saddest days in my life was about a month after I quit. On a terrible day when everything had gone wrong and I was near breaking, I fished out the safety pack (you smokers know what I’m talking about) from its hiding place and was fully prepared to jump off the wagon with both feet.
When I lit that cigarette and inhaled, I expected a comforting caress, a bath of warm feelings and a soft voice telling me everything would be alright.
What I got was a lungful of chemicals and an ashtray on my tongue. I’d needed that cigarette to save me that night, and it abandoned me. It was worse than my first breakup.
After I finished hyperventilating I smoked three more, threw up, and cried myself to sleep.
A lot of ex-smokers say they’re happy they quit, live much fuller lives now, are amazed at all the different smells and tastes they’d missed for so long…
Not me.
I miss it like hell.
I miss it like I’d miss one of my legs.
Every morning I wake up and think to myself, “Self? You know what’d make this day perfect? A cigarette. You know what’d make that cup of coffee taste absolutely amazing? Another cigarette. And that outfit you’re wearing? A cigarette would really bring out the green in your eyes.”
But no. With the exception of a once- or twice-annual puff on a friend’s cigarette (that now makes me so high I have to sit down and put my head between my knees), I haven’t gone back.
There’s no righteousness there. Quitters never win, and I definitely think a little bit less of myself for doing so. We’re planning a wedding here in the next few months, and I tell Alexander I’m not sure I can commit to him–after all, I couldn’t even commit to smoking, and I loved it more than most people love their children.
So instead of smoking, I’ve spent the last few years trying to find ways to re-create that feeling. Whereas most people now go out of their way to avoid second-hand smoke, I lean into it. If I’m walking behind a smoker on the street, I maneuver myself to be directly downwind. Nonchalantly, and in as non-stalker a way as possible, I inhale deeply and follow them as closely as possible.
Given how slowly I run now, I’m pretty positive that I wouldn’t even be able to run a mile if I still smoked. Which means that if I still smoked, I likely would never have started running.
Which is ironic, because running is the only activity I’ve found so far that can actually replicate the feeling of smoking.
And it’s AWESOME.
Since I’m slow and new at this, I tend to push myself a little too hard every few runs or so. Which means that I usually end up doubled over and wheezing at some point during the workout.
And that moment, when my lungs are fully open and gasping for air and my trachea burns just a little as my chest expands and contracts involuntarily–sweet jesus, that’s just like taking a huge drag on a delicious cigarette.
The first time it happened, the overwhelming sense of deja-vu made me so happy that I wept a little. This was the feeling I’d been looking for four years ago on that night when I realized I’d officially quit smoking.
This isn’t really the sort of thing your coaches and teammates on a race to raise money to fight cancer want to hear…
But I run because it feels like smoking.
In Review: Ice Packs February 14, 2007
I once read about elite runners who would immerse themselves in bathtubs of ice water right after hard workouts.
Why, I wondered, would they need to do that? That just sounds silly.
As I type this with three ice packs strapped to various parts of my lower body, I believe I have figured out the answer to that question.
So I’ve still got shin splints, and now I’ve also got a knee that’s also begging for my attention. So today’s entry will be a review of ice packs I have known and loved. Don’t be fooled! They are not all the same.
Blue ice: Those dark blue ice things you put in your cooler. Not recommended. In a pinch, ok if you wrap a towel around them. I used the ones in our freezer for a couple of days until I was able to get to the store. But not recommended. They’re too hard. And ours, at least, smell of pickles and potato salad.
Bag of frozen vegetables: Peas and corn work best for this, because of the smaller pieces. It’s like those cool airpplane pillows with the little tiny balls of….whatever that stuff is. The smaller pieces move around better and fit your contours. Be warned, though, you should plan to eat or discard said bag of veggies after about 4 uses. Not only does the thawing and re-freezing affect the taste, but it’ll also make the bag more rigid and less ice-pack friendly.
Wet towel, frozen: Say you ache all over. Or say, for instance, some genius took all your ice packs out of the freezer to find something for dinner and forgot to put them back. The wet towel gets nice and cold quickly, and you can just drape it wherever you want it. Full-on terry cloth bath towels get super-soggy and heavy, though. Dish towels or hand towels highly recommended.
OrthoMed Cold/Hot gel pack: My new best friend. At only a few bucks, you can buy a ton of them. They stay flexible when frozen so you can use them on any area, and you can pop them in the microwave for a quick heat pack. I imagine because they’re so cheap and I’m giving them a serious workout, they won’t last very long–but so far, I’m loving every bit of it.
More to come, as I test more of these things out.
You Know You’re Getting Older When… February 12, 2007
It takes two days for your pain to catch up with you.
I have a flexible-schedule job, and I’ve designated Mondays as my lighter-work days. So I’m sitting here, in the middle of the morning when normal people are already on their second meeting of the day, trying to convince myself to go to the gym and get started.
But overnight, my legs turned into cement blocks and my lower abdomen is Sonny Liston’s punching bag.
This was not the case yesterday, nor on Saturday after the run.
It’s taking 2 days for my post-run pain to fully peak!
I suppose that’s good because it means I might be able to walk immediately after the race….but the Tuesday afterwards is going to suck, big-time.
Je Voudrais un Bouteille de Vin, s’il Vous Plait February 11, 2007
I get bored easily.
Part of it’s an attention-span thing, thanks to being the first generation that grew up with television as a babysitter. And part of it is that I’m always thinking I should be doing more. If I’m watching tv? I should also be reading, or knitting, or working. I bring books along for leisurely walks through the park, and I’ve usually got the news channel streaming on a web page underneath whatever document or spreadsheet I’m working on for work. For someone who’s so ridiculously Type A, you’d think I’d be a captain of industry by now. But I’m a dilettante, always moving from one thing to the next. Sure, I could channel all of my curiosity and motivation into knowing everything there is to know about trading stocks on the world market. But how dull. I’d much rather know a little to middling about a lot of different stuff. (Hellllooooo, Liberal Arts degree.) And interestingly enough, such dilettante-ism equips me marvelously well for the non-profit and project-managing work I’ve ended up pursuing.
But, unsurprisingly, I digress. The point to all that was that for yesterday’s long run, I decided to refresh my knowledge of French.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a bit of a nerd. Though I cursed them for it as a child, I thank my parents now for leading me down that path by sending me to a private elementary school that taught intensive French to us at the same time as we were learning English. It’s a teaching theory that’s been well-established, and it’s a travesty that our public schools are cutting languages so markedly that we’re now lucky if kids even know that there are other languages in the world by the time they reach high school.
As a result of my elementary school experience, I learned French almost intuitively. When I moved to public school in 6th grade, this made for immediate residence in nerd-land. To keep taking French at the level I knew it, I had to go to the high school three days a week to study with them. Many kudos to our district for working that out, but lord was I a freak.
The slightly shorter version of this story is that, by the time I hit high school, I’d really stopped learning French. I kept taking it, of course, through my first couple years of college. But all those classes really only helped me practice things I already knew. I studied in France my second year at college, and then didn’t take or practice French again after I returned. That was….right about 10 years ago now. If you don’t use it you lose it, and my French has pretty much deteriorated back to where it was when I entered the public schools in 6th grade.
I’ve been planning to try to get it back, and got some audio book stuff to help with it. It’s been sitting on my computer for a while now, and I’ve been waiting for the right time to use it. Long-run Saturdays seemed like the perfect opportunity.
So this week I listened to Earworms French I. Following the idea that music and rhythmic repetition help reinforce learning (for evidence of that practice, see our armed forces or the ABC Song), Earworms plays a smooth jazz beat behind the smiling voices of a man and a woman repeating French phrases like “Do you have a table for two?” and “A coffee with milk, please.”
It was deeply uncool and almost laughable…and yet, completely consuming.
As I ran along, I tried to play ahead of the game, saying the French phrases with the French lady, to see if I still knew them. For the most part I was able to, and there were only a couple of things that I had completely forgotten.
So all in all, Saturday morning was a pretty productive one. I ran 4 miles, and equipped myself to buy a nameless, brandless bottle of wine (red or white) at a table for two. What I can’t do is ask for directions to the restaurant, order a meal, or determine how much it costs. I also can’t have a conversation with my partner about anything besides coffee–but who knows? Maybe that’s the way of the French. I’ll have to find out on Volume Deux.
Maybe This Fad Will Catch On February 10, 2007
We went out this morning for the “long run,” and both during the run and on my way there and back, I noticed a LOT of people out running. Maybe it’s just that now that I’m thinking about running a lot more I’m noticing it. But, wow–this fad seems to have a lot more staying power than the bubble skirt.
