Taking the Bitter Medicine

Letter to the Mayor:

"Pat:  I read your vivid description of your injury, and all I can say is OUCH!!!  Jeez, that must have hurt!!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, and we all hope to see you on the road soon."

Letter from the Mayor:

"Richard:  Thanks.  It is amazing how fast one can go into shock after a painful injury, and one sees one of their body parts in a discombobulated position!  It will take a long process, but I plan on a comeback."

Letter to the Mayor:

"Good!  Keep us posted.  I’m out for a few days with some tendinitis in my lower leg – too much mileage, combined with too much kneeling while pointing my new rock patio.  I kept coming back, running 2 miles, then 4 miles, then OUCH!  So I’m taking that bitterest medicine for all runners, Rest.  7 days tomorrow.  That’s what you need to do on a grander scale, but I’m confident you will be running again.  In the meantime, it must be pretty hard on Sally (as it is on Martha at this end)." 

And so that sums it up.  Seven days tomorrow.  My purpose holds to be uncharacteristically cautious and REST.  Rest that, paraphrasing the Bard, knits up the raveled sleeve of care.  And so this blog will rest, too, until further notice.  

If anybody is reading. . .

"Rest, rest, perturbed spirit" - Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5.

High Mileage Vehicles

We own a 1998 Honda CRV which has accumulated nearly 250,000 miles.  I could sell it for perhaps as much as $500, but it is worth more to me as a vehicle to haul rocks, sand, gravel, firewood and the like than replacing it with a pickup truck.  It also has a rack on top which enables me to haul lumber, so it is in many ways better than a pickup truck.  And it is a 4 X 4, which could mean a backup vehicle in snowy weather.  Looks pretty good from a distance, until you get up close and see all the wrinkles.  It has been in the shop from time to time.  And Jeez! - it sure makes some awful sounds, especially when it first starts up in the morning:  belts squealing, muffler rattling, engine straining and creaking to climb up the hill to the highway in the morning. 

 
That's what happens to high mileage vehicles if you don't sell them or trade them in - they just get older and older, drive shafts unexpectedly dropping out, strange lights appearing on the dashboard.  They are no longer reliable vehicles to take out of Town.

Very much like high mileage runners.  In the immortal words of the Grateful Dead, "They just keep truckin' on."

Injuries

In retrospect - ah, wonderful retrospect! - that ten-miler in my last post was a mistake.  I knew it was a mistake during the last two miles, and I should have stopped there.  But this runner is a stubborn creature and now he is an injured creature.  My e-mail to Vicki says it all:

I’ve been sidelined by a nagging injury – a little tendinitis in my right lower leg.  It seems to clear up when I run – I did a 9:35 mile yesterday as my second mile – but then hurts later in the day.  At least it’s not the other way around.  I remember running those perfect six miles with Art and you almost two weeks ago now, and felt race-ready, then missed some runs due to a stomach bug, and probably came back a little too aggressively to make up for lost time – typical mistake by a runner! – going a couple of miles on Sunday and then a hard 10 miles in the rain the next day (Monday).  I don’t want to wind up really injured, like Skip, so I’m probably going to back off on mileage and speed for awhile, and likely will not run the half marathon.

So that's the short story, and since this blog has few if any followers, it will suffice.  

But I do not know a runner who has not been injured, and usually it is his or her own fault:  too much too soon, inadequate warm-up or cool-down, etc.  How we deal with injury is what makes us real runners, runners for life.  So for my part, I'm going to the gym, walking, stretching, and taking that bitterest of medicines:  REST.