Its Been Awhile

Yes, OK, so its been awhile since I've written anything here. It has also been awhile since I've run any races or worked out in general. The reason is because I began to experience a series of injuries, one after the other. And to be honest, these constant injuries just wore me down. It got to the point where instead of trying to achieve a respectable time in a race I was simply trying to complete one entire race without re-injuring anything. And I was not succeeding.

I believe I limped across the finish line of 3 Cotton Row Runs in a row. I also limped through an entire 5K race in Somerville, Tennessee one year. Yes, I limped the ENTIRE race. Pulled a hamstring. I was SO mad that I did the race anyway. But obviously my state of mind by that point was not very optimistic.

Also contributing to my workout unhappiness was the fact that for 3 years straight I was somewhat limited to running on a treadmill. I had a workout partner running beside me, which helped. But he injured his knee while stretching one day. Yes, stretching. That was all he was doing. But that knee injury stayed with him and got progressively worse until today, where he is not running at all anymore. And neither am I.

I no longer have a gym membership. My employer has a room they call a gym. We call it a storage closet where a bunch of weights are piled. But they insist that it is a gym. Or as Human Resources calls it, a 'workout space.' Yeah, not much space there, but at least there is an Olympic bar and some Olympic plates. Theoretically I could squeeze in there and do an actual weight lifting workout.

My workouts lately have consisted of nothing more than climbing a staircase that goes from the ground level up to the 8th floor, which is as high as it goes. Considering my injury-plagued history I have been taking this slowly. I did this climb daily for a very long time before upping my intensity to a light run up the stairs. Even so, three times I have had to stop because of an injury to my knee. Its on old injury, but it comes back whenever it detects me trying to exercise and reminds me that it is there. It usually takes about a week for it to return to normal so that I can resume my stair climbing again. This last time, due to an unexpected office move that required me and several other men in the group to move everyone else's desks for them, the injury lasted closer to 3 weeks. It was nearly healed when I was drafted to help with the move. But it seems much better today.

I know this is not exciting. Very little about this blog is terribly exciting. I'll admit I did this on purpose, to some extent. For those of you still reading, if you were aware of my previous blog then you likely have noticed that I have gone to great lengths to make sure this blog is nothing like it. Its not that I didn't like the previous blog. Its just that I wanted to do something different, more for me than anything else, and with less cussing and nudity.