mmm bad week

I’ve done something bad to my calf muscles and had to abandon my work out only 13 minutes into a 35 minute eliptical thingiee yesterday.  It’s quite a bummer because now I not only have a weak knee but also seriously sore calf muscles.  To top it off, digestive problems (which are always around the corner for me) is going to make swimming unlikely today.  I’ve decided that I’m going to have to take today off, which will be the first day I skip a work out, but it’s sad nonetheless, since I didn’t get a full workout yesterday either.

Running is really painful.  I don’t know why people do it.  I don’t want to lead anyone on to the notion that I like to run, because I don’t.  There’s a buzz or a high at the end, but getting it is really awful… like whoring for crack.  My body is also rejecting it as evidence by my legs and knees, though with the PT (which includes regular leg presses), my legs are getting huge.  I could seriously kick someone in the lower part of their leg very hard if I wanted to.  Beyond that, I’m not sure what the function of huge legs with bad knees could be.

In other news, I’ve decided what chapter 3 of this blog is going to be.  Since the race (and training for the race) is over at the beginning of June, I need something that starts in June so… MARTIAL ARTS!  Woot.  I’ll be starting a martial arts course in June that combines Taekwondo with Brazilian Jujitsu.  I have no idea what that’s going to be like…

A knee in need

Tomorrow I go to the doctor to get the OK with my knee.  My legs were really roughed up in Utah skiing, but they have made a complete recovery.  I even managed to get in 20 minutes at the pool today.  The water there is too chlorinated - too much so to do swimming for more than 30 or 40 minutes at a time.  Now that I shave my face, my sensitive skin is now reactive extra-stupid sensitive and flakes white stuff off a few hours after drying.

As for the knee, I’m not much sure what to make of it.  All the joints in my lower half have hurt, with the exception of my feet.  The new fancy-pants runnings shoes my mom got me helped, I’m sure, but obviously not sufficient to totally prevent complication.  One thing they did prevent, for which I’m eternally grateful, was shin splints.  I haven’t had to deal with them once.  I’m quite certain my knee, of which only the right seems to provide any sustained discomfort, was injured from a combination of over use and abuse, as I tried to stomp something in the lab while pissed off and over extended my knee into our concrete floor whilst wearing my boots.  I suppose had I sat down and followed my normal habit - do nothing, I don’t imagine I would have hurt it - but I did a 4 mile run the next day did an extended 30 minute swim the day after that and ran 3 miles the day after that.

BUT - that being said, I haven’t had to wear my wrap for the last 2 days and there has been no obvious swelling.  Periodically, after much walking around campus, the thing becomes sensitive.  I suppose the doctor will have something to say on it tomorrow, presumably instructions not to run on it for a little while longer, as well as PT instructions which he already promised he would give me, since I appear to have joints which are prone to being over extended and thus need muscle tissue…. (and if anyone could tell me how building tone muscle tissue compensates for joint overextension I would be very curious to hear.  Body builders don’t seem to lose any range of motion as they bulk up - why would my knee?)

13 pounds down

Well, I’ve managed to loose now 13 pounds since January 4th and let me tell you, I feel like CRAP. The math-o-matics work out to something on the order of 800-1000 calories every day or, to put it into perspective, 4.465 bowls of breakfast cereal with 1% milk. Plus a regimented workout plan created by my very own father, which I’ve decided is too confusing to follow and will be asking for a newer, simplified plan that doesn’t involve bizarre 4 minute bursts of running interspersed between walking and interpretive dance.

It’s not that I miss eating copious amounts of food, mind you. I got over that after about the second week, I just find myself bored and hungry - time I would have otherwise enjoyed being bored and eating, or bored and cooking something in a kiddie pool of butter. But I’ve found new flavors in the foods I eat, that don’t involve deep frying or extensive introduction of exogenous fat. For instance, the difference in flavor between adding 5 tablespoons of butter to a chicken breast and adding none is remarkably small.

But we shall see. My ’small goal’ is 30 pounds by April 1st, to put me at a pleasant 189 pounds. My sinsiter ‘almost killing myself’ goal is only 40 pounds more to put me at a comfy 179 pounds, which I haven’t been at since I started graduate life.