I am doing the Couch to 5K program now. I ran the second of my Week 1 runs today and I feel pretty great. My hip is a little loose, a leftover from some car accidents I have been in—including the time I was hit by a giant truck right on my left hip, the one giving me trouble. I vacillate between thinking that it is some terrible rare problem, a stress fracture that I am making worse and worse, or just something I need to pamper with aftercare. Regardless, I can interval run for thirty minutes and I can walk for four hours or more, I can ride for hours...but my hip always has something to say about it. In turn, my knees seem to think that means they have an opinion. I bribe them with ibuprofen on the worst days and ice and wraps on the others.
One of the things I have learned from all of this is why it really pays off to join a gym and have a trainer. It is rid— excuse me, RIDICULOUSLY expensive. Upwards of 50 dollars a session for a reasonably priced trainer...but you go, you meet with them, you tell them, My hip is doing such and such, and they can tell you the best way to treat it. When to keep pushing, how to rehab, whether or not to worry...all the stuff that is so up in the air for me right now. Is a trainer the same as a full body MRI? No, but their best guess is still probably, because of experience, better than mine. And despite that fifty, a damn-sight cheaper than an MRI. Hooray, no health insurance. I mean, it sucks.
The holidays are upon me and I have plans to go out to Boston to visit a friend I haven't seen in about a year, maybe longer. He missed out on watching me gain weight (about thirty or so over a year) and of course, this fifty-pounds lighter version is probably going to be new to him too. There is a certain amount of nervousness that goes along with that. Not because I think he will treat me differently but because I feel so different and my life is so different. Running? Yeah, that's new. The food is a bit scary too. Not the food, but the fact that our relationship has always had a long dinner table running through it. On that table was ice cream, cakes, Mexican food, more ice cream, fried eggs, burgers, bacon...there was this breakfast called The Pile at a diner in Salt Lake city that began with about two potatoes, country-style, included onions, peppers, mushrooms—all fried, two fried eggs (or three if you chose), bacon, a cup of coffee extra sweet, extra cream, and a half stack of pancakes.
I ate that or something just as bad for me, every Sunday for about two years.
Breakfast for me these days is uh, oatmeal with prunes...that was yesterday. Today was protein smoothie and some bran flakes. And you couldn't pay me to go back to The Pile. Damn.
I know that this visit will be super-fun and I am not worried about food being an obstacle to that but there is still the issue of food to be dealt with, as there always is.
Good news, I am still awesome.
That is all, no bad news.
