HEEDLESS

I was apparently, not going to heed the warning signs. It was Saturday evening, December 13, and I was home from the Bat Mitzvah I'd just attended. I knew I shouldn't do the planned 16 miler in Central Park tomorrow. My lower left calf/Achilles area had bothered me, on and off, all week. Caution was called for. Perhaps an elliptical workout, a long one, would be a useful compromise. Good training, low injury risk. Smart!

But there on my computer was an email message from Tamar who I was supposed to run with. I'd half hoped that she'd forgotten. But she hadn't and she wrote that she was looking forward to the run. And I was, too.

It would be challenging with her. She's faster than me and chooses tough workouts. To run with her, I'd be forced to quicken the pace. And she'd struck a chord when she'd said earlier in the week: "When I start a long run, I don't stop." That meant no stopping for water or gu or stretching as I'd been doing on all my long runs in this training cycle. That felt like cheating to me though I had good reasons to do it.

I'd been cautious recently to guard against injury, reinjury and because my aerobic strength was just not back yet. I was tired of it. Running with Tamar meant a more aggressive run. I didn't think I'd do that on my own; with her, I thought, I would.

But only, unfortunately, if I could. And the discomfort of the week made me think that, perhaps, this wasn't the time to try. On the other hand, while I was at the Bat Mitzvah I'd stretched and twisted and pointed and flexed the calf and the ankle in every which way and every which manner I could. And it felt fine. Could it be favorable divine intervention because I was at a Bat Mitzvah? Doubtful because:

a-I'd missed the services and was only attending the party. God couldn't be thrilled about that.

b-I don't believe in God.

c-If I did believe in God, I wouldn't believe in God who cared about my calf.

d-If God did care about my calf, why would he/she intervene now for one lousy long run and not over the summer when I'd missed 8 weeks?

On the other hand, the calf did seem to feel okay no matter what I did to it. Oh, and one other thing. I just knew that if I cancelled now Tamar would probably never schedule another run with me again. So I called her and made plans for Sunday morning. It was time to take a risk.

I arrived early. I decided to test the calf out with a short run on the level, flat bridal path. It did seem odd to warm up for a long run and make it even longer, especially since I wasn't sure I could do the distance in the first place. But I wanted to know how the area would feel. If it broke down there and then I'd have to cancel. Obviously I can't do what I can't do. But at least this way I'd know for sure that I'd given it my best shot and just couldn't do it.

It seemed a manly approach.

It felt fine. Tamar arrived and soon we were off. The pace was good and the calf felt okay. As we approached our first hill (ups and downs tend to set it off) I was apprehensive. And on the second hill. The third. And the fourth. We had nice conversations going on but I must admit that my mind was more aware of any messages that my calf cared to send me. It wasn't sending me any and I grew more confident. And better able to concentrate on our discussions. And on our pace which I had to ask us to slow a few times. And it was fine!

We finished 11 miles at a good pace with no stops and no reinjury and now we had just one 5 mile loop to go. I was, however, wearing down. My sentences were limited to just a few words that I hoped would provoke a long response. That would give me more time to breath. At mile 13, with 3 miles to go, Tamar commented that it looked like I could now beat her in a race. I had no idea what it might look like; what it felt like, however, was that if I tried it I'd die.

The whole run I was self concious that I was slowing Tamar from the pace she'd like to run. She kept telling me no as she hadn't done more than a 12 miler recently. The pace was fine, she said. At 14 miles though I felt like I couldn't maintain it. I told her to go ahead if she wanted and I'd meet her at the finish. I no longer felt guilty as she sped away. Except she wasn't. I kept up with her. We reached our 16 mile goal. My (our) pace had never slowed.

I was SO happy as I poured down an entire gatoraid. My fastest long run of the current training cycle and just my second on the tough hills of Central Park. No stopping, no injuries, no pain, no cheating. A good, aggressive workout.

And a fun one, too. I looked forward to our reward brunch. And I was glad that I hadn't heeded my self warning...at least this time.

MIXED UP SIGNALS

Obama's elected and our eight year national nightmare about to end. My calf, my achilles don't hurt and I'm running consistantly. Long runs and speed workouts. Things are so good!!

The economy is crumbling and maybe my practise will, too. My running times are slow while my heart beats fast. The Disney Marathon is barely 2 weeks away and I need another month of training. How could things be more discouraging?

The truth is, I can't figure it out. Not the Obama and the economy part, of course, those are clear. It's the running. Interval workouts, tempo workouts, anytime I try to go fast. I push, my legs speed up, my heart rate rises. My pace quickens and I go the distance. But I don't do it fast.

I know that the loss of so much training time this summer has an adverse affect and that it lingers. Gaining a few pounds doesn't help while being cautous with my training to guard against reinjury is smart but doesn't help me recover quickly.

But I keep wondering if, perhaps, my speed will never return. Maybe age is doing me in. And I wonder if Disney will be awful. So I keep looking for November and December workouts leading up to past Disney's to compare to similar runs now. Which was faster? If I'm slower now, are there extenuating circumstances like bad weather or wearing heavier clothes? In which was my heart rate faster? I keep hoping for encouraging comparisons. But, for the most part, they're not. They just remind me of what I already know. I'm not going as fast as I want. I'm not in the shape that I want.

There are many bright spots. When I compare myself now to how I was one or two or three months ago, that is. Or when I consider my pain free lower extremity to the continuous discomfort over the summer. But when I go further back than that...not so great.

The signals are mixed. But one thing is clear enough. Disney is 17 days away.

ONCE AGAIN, WITH FEELING

It's been quite a while since I thought we could elect a great president. That person was Senator George McGovern, a very long time ago. He ran when the war in Vietnam was raging and he had surprisingly taken the Democratic nomination by promising to bring the troops home. Nixon countered by saying that he and Secretary Kissenger had a secret plan to end hostilities, but he couldn't reveal it till after the election.

I hated the war and refused to be drafted, vowing to my draft board that I would resist or leave the country if they tried to take me. They believed me and that was why, in early 1972, I found myself doing community organizing (ironically!) among the Appalachan poor of Northern Kentucky as my "alternative service" to military involvement. And it's there that I worked, with all my heart, for McGovern.

On election day, we were totally crushed. Kentucky was among the first states projected for Nixon...based on returns from the urban heart of the state around Louisville and Lexington. They didn't even have to look at the numbers from my part of the state to put it in Nixon's column. Talk about futility! And almost all of the rest of the country quickly followed.

With the election over we would learn the details of Nixon's plan for ending the war: Bomb North Vietnamese cities.

Now we have the chance to elect someone who is as smart, thoughtful, decent and far sighted as the good Senator McGovern. Senator Obama is a better organizer and more politically astute and he certainly made a far better choice for his vice presidential nominee! He can end the war in Iraq, inspire people and provide progressive leadership.

His presidency is worth fighting for so tomorrow morning I'm off to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to spend the days leading up to the election working in the campaign. I'm nervous but excited. Imagine me giving up the Jets when they are playing for a possible share of the division lead! I think I did a pretty good job in Kentucky so I hope to do at least as well this time.

And definitely hope for far better results!

HOPEFUL

Could it be that my do nothing strategy is working? So far this week the results are promising.

After succeeding at doing nothing for 5 days my sports chiropractor worked hard on my hamstring and reported that it was much improved. I knew it was because all his hard work on it hadn't caused much pain. Always a good sign! Then he noticed a deep bruise behind my knee which was likely caused by pooling blood from the injury. That made me nervous...I'd never noticed pooling blood after any other injury. Pooling blood can't be a positive, right?

But apparently it's not much of anything. My chiro ignored it, saying when the treatment ended that I was good to go. So off I went. An easy hour on the elliptical on Tuesday. My nothingness streak was, happily, over. Then, on Wednesday I did my 4.5 mile bridal path/reservoir loop in Central Park. It went slow but well. I did it again on Friday and I was 4 minutes faster.

My pace has quickened to high 9 minutes per mile. That's about 30 seconds off the slowest pace I'd ever run when healthy. But it is SO much better than what I've been doing since my calf/Achilles turned against me. In fact, there were times during the run on Friday where I felt something that I haven't felt in a long time...normal.

And that is why I feel hopeful.

SO HARD TO DO

I've adopted a new tactic to heal. I'm doing nothing. A little walking, a little stretching, a little icing. To me that's nothing. I'm not:

-Working thru the injuries.
-Alternate training around them.
-Backing off when it starts to hurt.
-Doing easy stuff like yoga, but cautously.

No, nothing. That's my plan. Because I've tried training carefully. I've run only on grass fields, the bridal path and the reservoir loop. I've run 11 and 12 minute miles. I've gone so slowly on the few down hills that I might as well have been walking. I've worked hard only on the non impact Elliptical. And I've challenged myself with power yoga in a heated room and yoga is definitely not easy for me. Yet all I've gotten from this is a sense of falling out of shape and seeing only the scantest progress in these nagging injuries. And now a slightly pulled hamstring has been added to my out of kilter list. So that's why I've decided to do nothing.

And THAT is just the hardest thing to do.

Oh, I can do it for awhile and feel calm about it. The other day I was stretching in the gym when a friend approached and asked if I was doing the NYC Marathon. When I explained that these little hurts prevented me from doing so, she responded: "You look very peaceful."

Well, I like peaceful and I felt pleased with her comment. I though that it's a sign of mental health to make something good (peacefulness) out of something bad (forced, limited inactivity).

But the good feelings don't last very long. I get antsy. I want to do what I love. I want to be athletic and competitive and challenge myself. And even now I know that I can. I could weight train. I could (carefully) do Hot Power Yoga. I could (perhaps) do the elliptical. Certainly I could swim. But any of them could also exacerbate one or more of the things that ail me. Probably not swimming but that's the most inconvenient and boring.

So I force myself to do nothing. At least for a few days more. I do non physical things that are good. I remind myself that missing a few more days won't have such a terribly negative affect and that when I'm ready I'll come back strong. And then it's okay. And then it's not. So I make plans that I so far manage to keep myself from enacting.

Man, this nothingness is a challenge. It is really hard to do!!

NOT MUCH FUN AT ALL

I have these injuries. They nag at me and refuse to go away. Groin and Achilles Tendon and Soleus. The groin makes it difficult and painful to stride with any length and curtails my ability to sprint. The Achilles and Soleus become extremely uncomfortable after any real distance and slows my pace on even relatively short runs. They've made it SO difficult to compete and SO difficult to run. And SO difficult to have my athletic fun.

I haven't raced since July or trained in a meaningful way. There's no way I can do the New York Marathon in November and I'm having doubts about Disney in January. I've been able to play softball because that doesn't require running for any length of time. But my speed is limited especially when my groin tightens after about an hour or so. Don't even ask about the second game of double headers!!

I go for treatment and I'm told that nothing feels bad. Great! Until I try to do something and keep hitting against these confounding limitations. Of course I cross train and have incorporated yoga in heated rooms into my options. But it's NOT RUNNING!!!!!

I think I need to take a break and let everything settle down but that is very difficult. I feel the summer (and time) slipping away. I've lost my sense of being in really good shape. I've concentrated on softball because I can at least muddle through the game but the fast running it demands probably exacerbates my ills.

At least there have been softball successes. My Sunday team won our championship and I played well at crucial moments. I've also done fine with my weekday team, the one that was the source of much dispair a few months ago. I've regained much of what I felt I'd lost there and we are now in the playoffs. We can take the championship there, too.

And in our first playoff contest this week I did very well...till I pulled a hamstring! So now I can't run at all. Maybe the forced rest will help heal the other ailments. But it's depressing. And a drag. And boring. And makes me distrustful of my body. And feel so old.

Get my point? Not much fun at all.

RUNNING PAINS

I must be very fragile. Something always hurts and by that I really mean somethings. And those somethings seem to affect my running, affect my speed, affect my training.

And it doesn't do much for my mood, either.

A few weeks ago I was running in the outfield to cut off a base hit. I stumbled as I got to the ball and kept from falling by using my left arm to brace myself against the ground. Hours later my wrist hurt so much that I thought I might have broken it.

In May I ran a solid Brooklyn Half Marathon. Around the fourth mile I raised blisters on the inside of both my feet. At race's conclusion my feet and shoes were bathed in blood. I've taped mightily, but, since then, I've developed blisters on several long runs, making them extremely uncomfortable and certainly slowing my pace.

And, of course, there was the pulled calf muscle during a mid May softball game that cost me almost 2 weeks of training.

Finally, most recently, all the abdominal work I've been doing with my trainer has given me not six-pack abs but a lower abdominal strain, or, worst case possibility, a hernia. For the past week or so I hurt SO much there as I start to run. The pain generally subsides but is often at least somewhat uncomfortable. It has to affect my speed.

What a mess I am!

Well, the wrist only hurts now when I throw, the calf is healed and the blistering seems much better now that my podiatrist shaved off the offending portions of my orthotics. Since it seems like I can run through the ab problem my strategy is to ignore it as much as possible and hope that it will get better.

Still, I can's say that I went into today's Gay and Lesbian Five Mile Race with a whole lot of confidence. What body part would be most likely to betray me? And then, of course, there was the problem with the heat and humidity...there was too much of both and I don't generally run well in either of them.

So the race began and, to my delight, the lower ab didn't hurt me much. Nor did the blister. Nor did anything else. And my time for the first mile was good. And my time for the second mile was just as good!

Too good, unfortunately. My pace was too fast and I died in the race's second half. Not literally, of course, though I did feel kind of sick. I slowed dramatically, watched much of the running world run past me and, eventually, staggered across the line.

I finished 7th in my age group out of about 65 and around 500th in the race that had over 3000 participants so I didn't do that bad in a comparative sense. It was, I think, my slowest 5 mile race ever. My pace, in fact, was far slower than it had been in the much longer Brooklyn Half Marathon.

But I'm hopeful my abs problem is getting better, nothing else physically bothered me, nothing fell off my body besides lots of sweat and I did run a good two and a half miles.

It would be great if my upcoming running pains would be just from the pain of hard running.

STRUGGLING FOR BETTER

I'm afraid my athletic performances are heading down hill. If that's true, then a big part of my identity is under threat. So evidence that this is the case is VERY upsetting. Any indication that someone besides me recognizes this is INFURIATING!!

That's probably why that last stupid softball game I wrote about bothered me so.

Since then I've played pretty well in my Sunday league and that's cheered me up. It was only this past Monday that we had another game in the week day league, however. I was so nervous about what might happen that I hoped for rain. Let's postpone any potential bad news for about a month!

It didn't rain, though, and only 10 of our players showed up. I had to be in the line up (1 bit of bad news avoided), but, of course, I could play poorly and cement my lowly status and the guy who appears to have replaced me could do well and solidify his.

The starting lineup further darkened my outlook. Once again I was listed in the last spot, the polar opposite of my (once) customary lead off position. I began the game in a foul mood.

The very first inning reinforced all that was wrong. My nemisis lead off with a walk and we started a big inning. I batted with 2 on base and failed to contribute as I flied out weakly on a pitch out of the strike zone. Everything sucked and it was all going to get worse.

And then it turned. My remaining 2 at bats were excellent and I played really well in the field. I worked the pitcher, hit the ball hard, reached base and ran down everything that came near me in the outfield. Suddenly I felt in the groove and my confidence began to grow. My counterpart, meanwhile, hit poorly the rest of the way and had an absolutely disasterous game in left field.

We won the game and the manager said to me that the team really needed me in right field. Okay. Well, we'll see what happens when (and if) those missing guys start to show up.

But for now at least it's better.

THIS HURTS

Hurts and sucks, actually.

My weekday team has struggled from the start, losing 3 of 4 games. Yesterday we faced the league's first place team, an opportunity for us to go deeper into the hole or pull off a big win and turn the season around.

And there was good reason for optimism. Our #1 pitcher, Jose, was scheduled to appear with us for the first time!

Meanwhile, our manager, perturped by our lack of hitting, sent an email to expect line up changes.

Game time arrived with ominous clouds above and, much more threatening for us, Jose not present. In his early season sabatical we'd used 3 other pitchers. NONE of them were there either. We had NO pitcher to go against the best hitting team in the league.

So I was asked to step into the vacuum. I hadn't pitched a game in years nor been a regular pitcher since 1997. But I'd do my best in what would be an almost hopeless situation.

And then the manager read the starting lineup. Remember those line up changes he promised? There was only 1. I was dropped from my customary lead off spot to the last position in the batting order.

Apparently I was the cause of our poor run production. In fact, I wasn't. I'd missed 2 games with injury and work and reached base safely in half my at bats in the contests I'd played.Nothing great, nothing terrible. So why had I been booted from a key spot to the least important? I was stunned.

Nevertheless, I went out to pitch and did reasonably well. They scored twice on hits and once on an error and that was all for 2 innings. Believe me, it could have been much worse. Our bats were silent again and mine, in the 10 hole, was unused as we hadn't even reached my spot in the order yet.

We trailed, 3-0, going into the 3rd inning when Jose arrived. It was a no brainer to put him into pitch, and it was, apparently, a no brainer for the coach to remove me from the game to make room for him though it could have been any other player.

We now had 11 guys at the field. I spent the rest of the evening watching the other 10.

Jose pitched extremely well and added 3 hits including a game turning triple and we came from behind to win. The guy in my spot had 1 hit in 4 turns...nothing special...but his single and speed on the bases helped tie the score.

It was a great team victory but I shared in none of the pleasure. I'd been told where I stood on the team...least important and most disposable of the 11. And considering that there were several others who weren't at the game who would probably play before me, my value is likely even less.

A coach's decision, a coach's evaluation. Coming off a very solid 2007 I'm not sure what I'd done to merit it.

What a drag for this to be my first post in all these months. But boy, does this hurt and embarass and anger me. I've been suddenly marginalized. This used to be my team and I used to matter.