Stealth Athlete

Surprised today to note that it's been well over a month since I was injured. At any rate, I'm happy to report that I'm definitely on the mend. I've been feeling a lot better in the last two weeks but have kept fairly quiet about it--don't want to awaken the running gods and have them notice that I'm on my way back.

In the course of this injury I've 1) missed more than two full weeks of running, 2) spent 5 days immobilized with either food poisoning or the flu, 3) learned to "swog" (swim-jog), 4) spent way too much time on the stationery bike that I set up in my kitchen, 5) rowed thousands of meters on Concept Rower river, the tributary to nowhere, and 6) ridden my bike on nearby streets and trails a lot more than I would ever let on to my excellent and earnest MD.


The ingenious stationery bike stand, holding my trusty Univega in the "ready" position. Note the telephone and the TV remote also at the ready.

I read recently that non-weight-bearing cross-training while you're injured might not be the best thing in the world to do. The reason? You keep your cardiovascular system strong, maintaining your stamina, and when you come back to running you take that Cadillac endurance engine you've been revving up every day and try to gun it in your too-recently broken-down Volkswagen bug chassis. In other words, your muscular-skeletal strength is way below the level of your husky cardiovascular system.

This makes sense to me. My solution to this problem as I rejoin the world of left-right locomotion is to stealth run. Look, I tell my body, I'm walking fast and jogging slow. This isn't real running at all!

Last Thursday I had my greatest adventure yet. I logged 3.25 miles before breakfast. I even broke a sweat--something that hasn't happened while I was in actual running clothes since the beginning of October. My hip felt OK. ("Hip" is shorthand for my piriformis and gluteus medius muscles as well as the poor whupped sciatic nerve those two inflamed muscles have been whaling on.) The hip wasn't completely quiet, but every time it barked I slowed to a walk.

I am almost back to where I can worry that a big stretch of the Ohlone Greenway is fenced off for construction and will be until July 2012. In order to worry about it I have to be running far enough to get to it--a distance of 1.5 miles. And I got to it Thursday. A comment on my life that it was a hugely exciting event. So exciting that I'm planning on doing again tomorrow for the "long" run of my week. If it rains I'll probably just be pleased that once again I'm running enough to even worry about inclement weather. Yay!

Comments

Merrilee said…
I can totally relate to the feeling of not wanting to jinx a recovery by blogging about it. Here's to you!
6:32 PM
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