Almost New Years Blues

Today was a positive day, but filled with some negatives. I'm trying not to be glum, but it is was it is. I went to a track meet at BU today and hung out with my teammates while they raced. I took split times, cheered, and chatted with some people I haven't seen in a little bit (my friend Carol is studying medicine in Maryland, she was up on break). I ran 32 minutes or so around the outside of the track at a good pace, and picked it up quite a bit to at least 8:00 pace when I was running with a teammate who was cooling down. The knee is responding. It is getting better. This is a good thing. However, I miss training and competing quite a bit. I HATE seeing people I usually run against racing. I'm not sure which is worse, not being able to run at all or being restricted in the running I do. The problem is that I have to contain myself or else bad things will happen and we'll be back where we started. Nonetheless, the thought of not racing at all until March is pretty rough. When I hurt myself my dad said "this is just a blip, don't worry." Well, it aint no frickin blip. I guess I'm in a running funk.

One year ago this weekend, I ran the best distance race of my life. 38:10 in the 10K with a few pretty decent hills. Now I can only run 5K in 30 minutes - fabulous.

Running Continues

Just returned from Day 3 of the running adventure. It was pretty darn cold (and breezy) out at the Tufts track, but the track surface is very soft and good for recovering slow pokes like myself. Even though my goal was 30 minutes, I did clock myself to see just how fast (or slow) I was plodding around. Turns out my pace was about 9:45 per mile. I tried hard to pick it up a little on the last lap, staying in my comfort zone for the knee, and ran at about 8:50 pace. Although the knee feels weird, it seems to be all right structurally. The main issue is that my legs (especially the right) are weak. I have ziltch-o knee drive unless I consciously think about it. Furthermore, I think I am favoring my good leg - which is not good for the good leg.

On a brighter note, I went to practice last night and saw the old GBTC croo at the indoor track. Although I could obviously not partake in the workout, I was able to merge my 30 minutes with their warm-up run, and while they ran their intervals I lifted and then iced down. We practice at the Reggie Lewis Center, a fantastic public facility in Roxbury Crossing. The key was that to start my 30 minutes, I had to restart my watch (recall the first day I just ran 2 miles straight up). For 9 weeks, my watch had exclaimed "21:06," which was from when I instinctively stopped my watch after tearing my cartilage and killing my knee. 21:06 is history, and let me tell you if my Timex had memory I wouldn't have saved it.

The anti-climatic Day 1

I was considering making a completely sappy post about my first day of running, but decided that would be, well, awful. Yesterday, under partly cloudy skies and a temp of 43 degrees, I gingerly jogged around the Tufts track. I first started with walking the turns and jogging the straights - did this for a mile - but after not feeling any real discomfort I took a lap off to walk and then jogged 2 miles straight on the track. It must have looked pretty funny, because I was going so obnoxiously slow at the start. My brain was perfectly comfortable in sending the signals, but my body was completely confused on what to do. Nonetheless, by 1 mile in of the jog, besides the fact that both legs felt weak, I was moving at perhaps 10:00 mile pace. There wasn't really much pain associated with it, although there was some soreness under the left incision towards the start and a slight discomfort near the injury site on Lap 7. I iced down afterwards and everything seems to be all right. I'm excited to try again, although I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rain. We'll see.

Maryland, My Maryland

I'm in Maryland visiting my aunt for the Christmas holiday (hey, just because I'm Jewish doesn't mean I can't take advantage of the day off). My aunt's machine uses a modem, so more tomorrow when I get home. I will say that last Thursday, instead of jogging, I went to PT (there was an opening) and I must admit that it was a bit superfluous; not much had changed.

Jogging commences tomorrow on Christmas Day. Film at 11.

Ode To the Marino

On Friday I went to the Northeastern Gym (the Marino Center) for the last time this year - its being renovated over the break. When it re-opens on January 3rd, I'll be jogging again hopefully which will radically change my workouts. I'm going to take a moment to do a shout out for the ole' Marino. Northeastern has always been probably the #7 college people think of when they think about Boston schools. Come on, try to make a list, and I'm sure Harvard is at the top, followed by . . . . and see where you put Northeastern. It occasionally shows up on the national radar screen because of the wildly popular co-op program, but that's it. In NU's defense, its not a bad urban academic institution, and the engineering school is quite good.

However, someone in the facilties department in the early 1990's was a true genius. This person thought, hey instead of having crappy rec facilities for non-athletes and making everyone go to Gold's Gym or the Huntington Street Y, let's build our own gym and market it to students. They found a very wealthy donor (Mr. Marino) and spared no expense. When it opened in 1996, the Marino Center was the premier collegiate recreation space in the country. All of the facilities people at universities around region had the Bill Simmons "Troy Aikman Face" of being completely dumbfounded that little Northeastern had produced a facility that was not just better than any at Harvard or MIT or BC or BU or Brandeis or Williams or Amherst, but that this recreational space blew theirs out of the water and was drawing away potential applicants. BU, a bitter rival for applicants and athletes, had to spend about 3 times as much just to make sure its facility (which opened last year) was bigger and more impressive. BC didn't even try.

Anyway, for now I'll have to use NU's smaller rec space, the Rosen-Badger Center. However, I'm pretty psyched to see what the Marino will look like when they clean the place and open it for the next semester.

Here is a link if you have never seen it:

https://www.campusrec.neu.edu/marino/images.shtml

Double Dribble

I meant to post yesterday (Wednesday) about Tuesday's workout but . . . oh well. Consider this a double post.

Tuesday's workout was the most vigorous to date. 40 minutes with 4 7-minute hard intervals, simulating a hill climb. Again, I used the Schwinn bicycles with the manual resistance rather than the computerized bicycles. After cycling and doing the prescribed lifts (press, curls, step-downs) I noticed that the basketball courts were open. I snagged a ball and shot some hoops as a cooldown. Of course, I couldn't take a jump shot or run after the ball, but I did dribble around in a very very light jogging way that dribbling is. There has been substantial gains from week 4 to 5, more than 3 to 4.

This brings us to today's appointment with the Anne-ster. She is detecting through her telepathy (or as Space Ghost would say, "Special Powers") that I'm itching to go, and we did a bunch of balance drills on foam mats and other apparatuses. She had me jog in place on the trampoline, which seemed to be a precursor to real jogging. However, she said real jogging was a week away at Week 6, which I think is right in spite of the mental strain it will create. Thus, one week from today in the company of perhaps no one, barring any unforseen weirdness I will attempt to jog a bit on the Tufts track near my house. In the meantime, I will continue to bomb away on the bike and strengthen my leg muscles. This will be a rough week mentally to say the least.

Anne also thinks I'm inflexible. This is not new news. Not only is my dad not flexible, my mom isn't either. I'm doomed on both ends.

Tomorrow is the first night of the minor Jewish holiday that unfortunately gets stuck next to the Christmas spending hysteria, good ole Hanukkah. As Adam Sandler would say - "Hanukkah is . . . . the festival of lights . . . . instead of one boring day . . . . we get EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS !"

Monday Mourning

"Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life"
--My friend Isaac Benowitz

Yesterday I utilized the Schwinn old style exercise bikes at Northeastern that are hidden up on the top floor near the rowing machines. It was much easier to use, because you could change the resistance very easily with a knob, instead of hitting buttons and waiting for the computer to do something. I did a bit of an interval workout - 8min warm-up, 5min hard, 5 min easy, 5 min hard, 2.5 min easy, 2.5 min hard, 2 min cool down. Next time I go (tomorrow), I am going to go up to 35 minutes. I am also getting significantly stronger in the upper body, although considering pre-injury I was an 142 pound stringbean anything is better than nothing.

Additionally, I am being helped by the administration side of track & field; being in two different governing bodies (my club board and the USATF chapter board) has kept my mind a wee bit occupied with that side of my sport.

Getting very antsy to jog, but I know its still about 10 days away.

Halfway Home Doldrums

Today is 4 weeks, which is halfway through the expected 8 week recovery period. I'm a little glum because I'm starting to miss the "joy of running" as Jim Fixx would say, and I didn't perceive a lot of improvement from 3 wks to 4 wks. Anne introduced some more challenging drills, and my knee was creaking and sore all the way home. It is also adjusting to the new weight training which is quite a step up from the drills I was doing from 0-3 weeks. The swelling really hasn't changed in some time. I just have to hang tight, stay in the pack, and we'll be good to go after New Year's.

Additionally, I made the mistake of telling Anne about my blog. Now the entire PT staff at MGH, including Missy the front desk chief, thinks I'm a complete wack-job. Maybe I should keep my blog G rated . . . . or maybe not.

Upping the Tempo

I saw Anne on Thursday and she said that I could go for 20 minutes on the elliptical and 20 minutes on the bicycle, which was perhaps a little more than The Doc had said (30 minutes per instrument) - but naturally since I want to do as much as possible I took her advice. I went to the Northeastern Gym (which by the way is FANTASTIC) and utilized the arc trainers there. I'm not sure if I like the arc trainer better, but its definitely safer for my knee. Anne also recommended a few conventional lifts, which is cool because they are very familiar to me (e.g. leg press). I must say though that with these exercises there is a very fine line between improvement/ strengthening and causing swelling.

On Saturday I attended the first indoor track of our season. Our cross-country runners, in shape from the XC season, all ran very well in the 5000m. Although it was nice to spectate, I would much prefer to compete. I miss competition. One of friends, Jeff Rockwood, commented that you always get hurt when you're in the best shape. Jeff was in great shape last year when he had a season-ender when he destroyed his ankle on the long jump pit.

Doctor Gill was again prominently displayed during the NFL game when Mark Vrabel got his "bell rung," code word for a concussion.