Sticky

I freely admit it has been quite a bit of time since I’ve last blogged, a fact which was hammered home to me this morning when I logged into the site and had to hesitate a few times before remembering my login and password. I have already locked myself out of a bank account this morning for the lack of correct memory, and I’m having to wait until 8am Eastern Standard Time tomorrow to correct that, so you can see how there was some trepidation there.

“Things have been busy”, or words to that effect, come to mind; but that phrase and those circumstances are the point of a different post. Given how long it took me to write this one I think you can safely return to the site in April.

In the meantime, I wanted to talk about tape.

Up until yesterday late afternoon, I had spent some five days with an eighteen-inch strip of K-tape diagonally across my back, left shoulder to right kidney. Its purpose was to keep my posture corrected, as when I had gone to the doctor on Tuesday she discovered that if my feet/knees/hips were straight and forward, my torso and shoulders were not. They were angled slightly to the right. While this wasn’t immediately noticeable to me (nor, do I think, it was noticeable to those around me, otherwise I’m pretty sure someone would have mentioned it), it did mean that when I attempted to run I was doing so in such a fashion as to cause myself some pain and definite damage.

Yes, I’m running again.

Having once again signed up for an event (well, two now) because I seem to have a disconnect between what I want to do and what I can do, I set myself to the doctor with a clear and concise goal: Her job is to get me running again with little or no pain. My job is to do exactly what she tells me to, however ridiculous.

This has led to some uncomfortable and odd things, and an 18-inch piece of bright blue tape across my back was the least of them.

Up until now those exercise balls you see at the gym — or sometimes people at work sit on them, they’re supposed to help your core — have been something for me to toss out-of-the-way whilst I put down a mat and did “real” exercise.  Now, I have to do things like balance on them, on my shins. Currently this looks like me kneeling on the ball, with the ball under my shins, and my hands along the equator of the ball, so I am hunched over. One could forgive themselves for thinking I was praying, because there is quite a bit of muttering going on. My original goal was to reach 8 seconds (note to self: much safer than riding a bull) and then my next goal is to do this without hands to steady me. I though she was off her nut until an acquaintance of mine, who just had open heart surgery 3 weeks back, posted a picture of himself on an exercise ball. He was on his shins, but the rest of him was bolt upright. Touché.

I have also had to modify the way I run. The original method of running was to go to the gym, get on the treadmill, and set a speed. I’d zone out to some music and/or to the work problem of the day (I do better running if I don’t have to think about it) and the treadmill would effectively “run” me.  The problem with the treadmill running you is that it does exactly that — it forces you at a certain pace and it may be that your body wasn’t ready to take that next footfall at that particular split second. Ow. Ow. Ow.  So, I need to run outside now. In the Puget Sound Area. In Winter. (NB: today’s run was fine, thanks to an unseasonably warm patch, but I’m not looking forward to the typical mid-forties — or lower — cold and rain that will greet me Tuesday morning).

Then there’s another bit of tape I need to have every time I run: Leukotape, McConnell-taped across my lower left knee. Effectively it creates a pocket of the swollen, damaged tissue that is my left knee (viscosupplementation has not done that knee long-term favors — I haven’t had an injection in a year and I’m going to try to stay away) and smashes it into the space between my kneecap and the right of my left kneecap. It’s precisely that weird flesh color that band-aid uses and that no one’s flesh actually is, except possibly Speaker Boehner’s. It also leaves a very unattractive grey adhesive outline when removed, and if you do it too often you can get a nasty rash. It works well for hair removal, though.

As a result of all of this activity my FitBit and EveryMove think I’m awesome and are suitably praising me with little icons in the typical fashion of gamified fitness. I’m having to mark my actual success, however, in distance increase (now back up to 2.5mi after a small detour) and reduced visits to the PT.

Someday I won’t have to use tape to hold me together properly, either.