Excuse: IT band agony
Wine consumed: MYOB. It is Christmas. On January 1, I shall reform and snap into healthy habits. Easy!
I am listening to Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining by Stephen King.
We get to see Danny as an adult; he is still coping with some trauma from the Overlook and dealing with some alcohol issues. King is, obviously, a good writer. But he likes to do things like have the character think in italics. A lot. I find this to be an annoying writerly habit. It goes like this:
Slo Jo adjusted her hydration belt and jogged down Central, the ground crunching under her feet. She focused on the road ahead of her, one step at a time
oh god is that my IT band?
and tried to put thoughts of the many miles before her out of her mind
IT BAND IT BAND IT BAND
Then she saw the dead man. He was jogging, wearing neon green compression socks and a black shirt. He didn't know he was dead, but Slo Jo could see the flies covering his face and knew he would be dead soon. It was really too bad that he was out for a jog as his last act; perhaps he'd have a heart attack or get hit by a car
IT BAND!!!!
***
Totally stole the flies on the dead man thing from the book. Moving along. So last Monday, after writing my blog post about my week of wine-and-chocolate-induced slackerliness, I thought, I'm gonna go out and do a long run. Five miles in, my left knee exploded.
[Expletive] IT band
So I had to walk two miles back to the car, and that sucked. Self doubt crept in. I wondered if I was really going to be able to do this.
Two days later, I tried to do an eight-mile run. Three and a half miles in: left knee. Done. Had to walk home. The thing about walking is, it takes freaking forever. So not only was I thinking, oh man, I can't do this
I CAN'T DO THIS
but I had a long time to think that horrible thought. I'm totally behind on my training, and can't do the training because I get pain. This is really, really disappointing. I bet Danny could see flies crawling on my knee as a harbinger of doom.
I've taken some steps. First, CC and I went to a yoga stretch class. It was a little weird because it involved a gong (right by my ear!) and a ocean-noise making machine that the instructor puts over your head when your eyes are closed. I'm not very zen, I guess, because I got the giggles. And there was a put-your-legs-in-the-air-for-about-six-hours component that I disliked. But we did some good hip stretches, which I needed, and I felt good afterward.
Second, I got a sports massage. And it HURT. I even told the masseuse about TST's pic of James Bond and the threat of massaging his IT bands as torture, and she laughed merrily at that for about five minutes. Then the torture resumed. As it turns out, I have tight glutes.
(Sadly, a different kind of tight ass.)
The tight glute muscles are pulling on the connectors to the IT bands, and the IT bands are also tight, and apparently after three miles everything just contracts and stops the Slo Jo Amazing Running Machine from going forward. I didn't even realize those muscles were sore until she attacked them. I cried a little. Then she would pull my leg into an odd shape and attack the muscles some more. I think it helped. I'm sore all over today.
Last, I'm really going to focus on stretching. All that TV time? It is now stretching time.
I haven't given up yet. I still have six weekends before the marathon. I may have to shorten the taper. I'm not sure. But I'm going to run on Sunday, and I am really, really, really hoping that I don't get the knee pain. Send me good loose muscle thoughts! And I'll try to change my mental thoughts to
I CAN DO THIS.
Happy holidays!
No comments:
Post a Comment