Posts Tagged ‘rehabilitation’

Waiting to Exhale

It was nice to get back out on the road again, even in a limited way. I ran a total of 7 miles this week, averaging a 9:20 pace. For the foreseeable future, I’ll run only four days a week, but I have added two days of cross-training – one of light weights and one of swimming.

Well, I can’t really call it swimming yet because, hard as it may be to believe, I never learned to swim. I can float without a problem and I have snorkeled in deep water while wearing a vest, but my “swimming” can just about get me across a pool, frog-style, as long as I can hold my breath.

Once out of your teens, you’re too embarrassed to try to learn to swim because you think you’ll look stupid. But now that I’m 51 years old, I look stupid trying to do anything, so I might as well learn to swim. I signed up for adult swimming lessons. They begin next week.

I don’t want to go in completely clueless, so I did a a little Internet research on swimming. I learned that in order to swim properly you have to exhale into the water and turn your head to inhale. Apparently this is the biggest hurdle for beginning swimmers and I understand why. Air in your lungs makes you float. Air out of your lungs makes you sink. Mentally overcoming that calculus is a challenge.

So I headed out to the pool – early, before anyone else showed up – and I practiced breathing. Even though I’ve been doing it all my life, it turns out I need some work on it. I have to break my bad habit of holding my breath underwater, then trying to exhale and inhale in the short time my head is out of the water. Chlorine is so tasty.

Anyway, I learned you can get a pretty good aerobic workout simply by lying face down in the water and blowing bubbles out of your nose. Twenty minutes of that and I felt as though I had been doing hill repeats. Still, there is a little spark of excitement whenever you try something new, even if you stink at it. I’m looking forward to my lessons.

You might think I am now on the long road to triathlons, and I could be, except for one thing.

I never learned to ride a bike.

Out of the Doghouse

I ran for the first time in a month this morning – 1.76 miles at 9:59 pace. My right leg is still stiff  but I don’t have those horrible shooting pains down my sciatic nerve anymore.

I’m scheduled for an MRI this week and an appointment with the spine center next month. I’m convinced that by the time they see me there will be nothing to see.

It felt good to do any sort of physical activity. The other day I went with the Lovely Mrs. A. to the mall just to get out of the house. I spent most of the time in the car listening to the radio. I noticed that in the car parked next to me there was a guy, also in the passenger seat, reclining with a neck pillow and his eyes closed. It occurred to me that shopping malls are missing out on a huge money-making opportunity.

You’ll notice even inside the mall there are plenty of seats, usually occupied by husbands, and there are often chairs outside of department store dressing rooms. This is a waste. There ought to be a facility in the middle of the mall with a series of cubicles containing a large screen TV and stereo system, a recliner, a pitcher of beer, some buffalo wings and a big soft pretzel. Charge about $20-25 an hour. This way couples can look forward to and enjoy a trip to the mall and back together without one of you having to engage in any activities you don’t like. Wives will get to spend more time shopping – which will be good for them and for the economy. Husbands get to keep their wives happy without having to follow them around the women’s underwear racks. And they’ll also be spending money. It’s a winner for everyone.

Give it a cute name like the Doghouse or the Man Kennel or the Hubby Mill and women won’t mind leaving you there (unlike calling it something like, oh, Hooters).

If you like that one, remind me sometime to tell you about my other huge money-making ideas, like FlapJack-in-the-Box.

Two Miles Never Felt So Sweet

It wasn’t far, and it wasn’t fast, but it was fabulous.

My first run in 23 days covered a scant two miles, but I did it in 17:03, which was about three minutes quicker than I expected. Both legs feel exactly the same – pain-free.

No need to warn me about doing too much, too fast. I’ve already given up on the marathon, and my only plan is to work my way up to 20 miles per week by the end of the year. I’m most happy that I can enjoy the primo running weather here in Sacramento, before the rains start.

Walking Is Not Funny

In the last 39 days, I’ve run a grand total of 20 miles – 13.1 of those during the Sacramento Cowtown Half-Marathon. I’ve done no exercise at all since the race, in an effort to rejuvenate my old right leg tendons. I no longer have any stiffness or discomfort, so I thought it was time to at least try a weight-bearing activity.

For each of the past three days, the Lovely Mrs. A. and I have taken a two-mile stroll, which we completed in just under 32 minutes. It’s a very pleasant way to spend a half-hour, the weather is terrific, and my leg feels pretty good. But it got me to thinking about those mobs of people who walk half-marathons and marathons. If we kept our walking pace for a full marathon, we’d come in just under seven hours.

I don’t want to do things I like for seven hours.

Don’t get me wrong. I mean, if I survived a plane crash in the middle of the Mojave I would summon the strength and desire to walk for seven hours. But voluntarily? Never. I’ve bonked on long training runs, and the best remedy for overcoming it was knowing that walking back to the car would take a couple of hours. I’m convinced the prospect of a very long walk led to the invention of the marathon death shuffle.

I’m not down on race walkers. Whatever technique you use to get across the finish line is fine with me. But if I can’t run, I think I have to move the speedometer in the other direction – maybe a skateboard, a soapbox derby car, or an Acme rocket sled.

I’m a Runner Again

At last.

I haven’t run at all for 10 days, but I vigorously punished the elliptical and stationary bike for 7 of those days. This rainy morning I went out for a 1.75-mile run around my neighborhood, wearing an ankle brace just in case.

All the time on the bike seems to have improved my leg turnover, and I had no discomfort at all, finishing up in 14:30, which is about an 8:17 pace. My endurance, of course, is completely shot, and I was huffing and puffing heavily at the end.

Still, unless I wake up tomorrow with a stabbing pain in my ankle, it looks as though I’m ready to slowly resume training. I’ll cross-train tomorrow and Monday and assuming everything is fine, go for another 1.75 on Tuesday. If that goes well, then I’ll inch it up to every other day – to see if there are any cumulative effects.

The layoffs and the long road back are always difficult, but spending a lot of time in the gym at least chased the blues away. The worst thing is just sitting around, waiting to get better.

The Week of No Running

Well, I can walk normally, and the pain is gone even without Advil, but the stiffness remains and I know from previous experience that I’ll only aggravate it if I start in again too soon. So I wait until both legs feel pretty much the same.

In the meantime, the updated standings from the Buzz Oates RunSac Race Series have been posted. You have to love an event that rewards you more for sheer dogged stupidity than for speed. Last Sunday I ran a reasonable 50:28 10k. It was age-graded to a 44:09… which was good enough for 39th place out of 46 runners!

Yes, I’m clearly out of my league. However, in the short term at least, I am kicking major butt because as long as you race, you get points. No matter how fast you are, if you don’t race, you get zero points. So my crummy finish still boosted me to 26th place in the overall standings, out of 153 participants.

That’s pretty impressive, until you check and discover that I’m 26th out of the 31 guys who have run all three races so far.

The next race is in two weeks, but it’s touch-and-go whether I’ll manage it. Until then, it’s massage, ice, rest and prayer.