Sunday Long Run

Sunday morning long runs are back in my life. How good is that? I can slip on my running shoes head out the door and run and run and run some more. I love Sunday morning long runs, did twenty years ago, still do. You get that pleasant sort of tiredness for the rest of the day. It’s the endorphins healing your tired body. Great stuff! 

I treated today’s run as an easy run, didn’t push at all. I have a bunch of ives race on Tuesday so I want to be reasonably fresh for that.

20km 1 hour 47:43

Pran’s Theme Mike Oldfield The Killing Fields.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r68lkEILxTE&feature=related

Imelda Marcos of Running Shoes

It’s getting harder
just keeping life and soul together
I’m sick of fighting even though I know I should.

The cold is biting through each and every nerve and fibre
My broken spirit is frozen to the core.

I don’t want to be here no more.

Wouldn’t it be good to be in your shoes even if it was for just one day?
And wouldn’t it be good if we could wish ourselves away?

 Nick Kershaw 

Having a dodgy knee makes me feel like that sometimes

I have about seven pairs of running shoes. Even though I struggle to walk far, let alone run. I buy shoes in the hope that they give me some relief from knee pain.

I have:

Brooks Radius, Brooks Andrenalin ( worn twice, they don’t suit), Brooks Vapor (ran the fateful Sawtell fun run in them, ACICS GT 2100, Adidas Suprenova Controls and Cushion, New Balance 1060s.

Silent Running is on the ABC at the moment. Geez, it looks like a daggy film for a classic. The special effects are cheesy, so is some of the music ( a mix between international rescue and and a 70s folk festival), the robots lack the appeal of the Robot in Lost in Space.  I can’t say I am a fan of it.

This morning the knee felt good for more than a moment, and I didn’t have it  taped. I put the tape on to go swimming and the knee niggled but not as much as last week. I keep improving at swimming. Can’t swim straight yet.

Please go, go away, please go away.

Knee pain. Changing the lyrics to KC and the Sunshine Band.

A better walk this morning. Walk rating 5.5/10. Felt good for 30 minutes, a sort of itchiness down into the shin. Fired up towards the end. Perhaps I overdid it. The pain was annoying me in the car. Went for another swim. I’m loving the swimming.  I think it is good for my knee, and certainly my heart. It is amazing how a dodgy knee can effect your health in so many ways.

I wonder if Achilles had other points of weakness? Like an Achilles’s  maltracking patella or an achille’s ilio tibial band? At least Achilles’s didn’t have a desk job. Then he’d get an achilles’s moving theatre sign sitting down all day.

To wish impossible things

It was the sweetness of your skin

It was the hope of all we might have been

That filled me with the hope

to wish impossible things

The Cure Wish

These are the lyrics from my favorite song at the moment.

Today cycled 3.2km in 15 minutes. My knee clunked several times on the the down stroke. A hint of nerve pain, in my foot.

Did glute squeezes, wall squats, walk throughs and balancing exercises.

Just went for a hour walk around the Jetty. I actually walked up Muttonbird Island Hill for the first time in  months. The knee was niggling away, but it has been worse. Just thinking that it is probably time for me to put Coffs Harbour behind me. To move on. Maybe there is a better future out there for me? Coffs Harbour has been an unhappy place for me.

I wouldn’t mind ending up back in the Sutherland Shire, or moving over to WA. I think a new start would be inspiring.

I mislaid my drivers license. I tried to get into work to get to the 7th floor, but the place was locked up. I hope I left it on my desk. That’ll be bad for my knee. My foot was a bit fiery in Woolies.

VMO is go

Yes, the VMO is getting stronger each day. My trip to Sydney was no quite as I expected. I found that Brad McIntosh has left the practice at Mosman to set up his own practice. A shame because Brad really helped me in the direction of recovery. I saw another physio named Matt.

It threw me out, because I had to start fresh with my history with a new physio. Also I find that each physio has different ideas and taping techniques. Matt taped the knee more lightly because he was worried about the effect on the tape on the skin. This worried me, I had become comfortable with Brad’s more aggresive technique. All in all I found that I have progressed. My ratio of VMO to VL strength is now 1:2. It was 1:5 last December. At my first consult the VMO hardly registered on the scale!!! Matt recommends laeving the tape on for a whole week. I told him that will be difficult in Coffs Harbour  where the humidity will not let anything stick for long. He gave me some roll on stuff that helps protect the skin and adds to the adhesiveness of the tape.

I went over to the Gardens book shop and bought a flannel flower T-shirt. Then I walked over to the cinema. Pan’s Labyrinth was not on until 6:30. After I left the new taping had me worried. I felt a stab of pain in the outside of the knee in the Botanic Gardens. I thought oh no thats really really sore. I kept walking around town and the pain actually settled down.

I decided to go back to the motel at Wolli Creek, re tape my knee and then go into town to watch the movie. Funnily enough by the time I got to the motel my knee was feeling not too shabby. I replaced the tape anyway.

Walking into town the knee actually felt a bit more fiery with the tighter tape. I went into the virgin Megastore and bought Wish CD by the Cure. I’m about to stick it into the the CD player. It comes with a high recommendation from Camo at work. I like Head on the Door so I thought I might like this as well.  

Went and watched Pan’s Labyrinth. An interesting dark fantasy, and I mean very dark,  about making choices. The main character is ordered by Pan to surrender her brother for sacrifice. He needs to sacrifice the blood of an innocent to open a portal.  The sister must decide when the result of the choice puts her life at risk.

 The ending was quite beautiful. The narrator says something like.

“And the princess left small signs of her life as a girl, for those who now where to look.”

A white flower opened up on the branch of a long dead tree.

Anyway after the movie I stood up and my knee cracked for several minutes. Then it settled down. At times on the way home the knee felt rather good. A little fiery at times but not bad at all. All the time I’m sitting I keep flexing the fibres of my VMO.  I must look like a crazy thigh worshsipper.

This morning I woke up and went for a hour walk right around the Cooks River and back to the motel. My leg felt quite frankly wonderful.  In fact it was my other knee that hurt! So I thought, yep, this day is going to be very high on the top ten list. I cried a bit with relief, I thought jeez you’re a sook. It ocurred to me  that sometimes the things you’ve got to work hardest for are those that give you the most satification of achievement. This knee is one of those things. There have been times that I thought that I’d never walk again, like the way I walked around the lake this morning. My mind immediately started thinking in more positive directions. To be honest, this constant knee pain, had caused me to fall into depression on several occassions.  I finished up in hospital after a stress attack in July. Today, I looked at myself in the mirror, and I said you’re a bloody fighter mate. You can achieve heaps if you put your mind to it. Like 2005, when I was sick with hemochromatosis, and not knowing what the hell was wrong me. I pushed through a wall, that had life on one side, and death on the other. I pushed through and demanded answers from doctors who told me it was JUST stress and a mystery. Yeah, I stress when the doctors and physios I’ve seen in Coffs for help haven’t bloody well helped me.

In town the leg tightnened up a bit, but there was hardly any pain. When the leg gets tight I sit down and activite my VMO by twitching the fibres. I refuse to let it shut it down again. When I stand up again my leg is much freer. It’s like magic. I like it.

I’m back in Coffs, there is a film of sweat coating my legs and back. Coffs Sweat Box, Coffs humid bar.  I like Coffs Harbour when I’m somewhere else. 

P.P.S My VMO was going at this period of pain free, smooth knee function. For a couple of weeks from early to mid February. The flare up in March was basically reinjuring the knee, sending ti further off track and doing more damage. Something I have yet to recover from.