Off With Their Heads!

A lot has been going on, but not a lot has been going on that I can blog about.

I've been going to the gym. I've run the treadmill a few times, which bores me to death. But the treadmill allows me to focus on things that need work, like old injuries and bad form and various weaknesses. It's mind-numbing, but if I am to avoid an injury like I had to deal with last year at this time I think it is necessary.

I've been focusing mostly on legs lately, because of the coming race. I hadn't intended to join a gym just to prepare for a race, but that's only because I had forgotten that the race was coming up so soon. So far a big problem I've uncovered is my knee. It doesn't seem to be very happy. It's been several days since my last run, but it still hurts. It's a cranky bastard.

I found ... I don't know the official word for it .. a jump box? Many gyms these days are reacting to the rediscovery of the value of old-fashioned ideas like kettle bells and medicine balls and dynamic exercises like jumping. So they're equipping their gyms with stands for people to jump onto and off of. My new gym has 2, one very small and one larger stand. It looks like a stool that you'd drag around a library to reach higher shelves, but in fact it is for jumping on. I've been using it. It's easy to get because no one else uses it. I jump and jump and jump. And my knee doesn't much like it.

I also did a few sets of negatives with the leg extension machine, focusing heavily on my weaker and most frequently injured knee. I make it do extra sets. I go heavier and lift the weight with both legs and then force my weaker knee to slowly lower it. I do this over and over until my leg feels like it is going to fall off. I suspect this has something to do with my knee still hurting me all through the weekend. But I don't know that for sure. Hopefully its just soreness and complaining from the exercise and not an actual injury. With this particular knee there is just no telling.

"Off with their heads!"

Things at the office are starting to get ugly. This has nothing to do with Drama Queen or my coffee cup. It relates more to an attitude much higher up that filters down and affects all the rest of us. It's a bit like Alice and Wonderland and the Queen of Hearts' - "off with their heads!" No mistakes or its your head. Ah, but go fast, fast, fast and no mistakes. Faster, dammit, but NO mistakes. Go blindingly fast, don't slow down to think, but don't make even a perceived mistake that isn't a mistake or else its off with your head. Did you ever see the episode of "I Love Lucy" where she worked in a chocolate factory and the assembly line kept going faster and faster and faster? Yeah, its a lot like that.

So anyway, I have to stop here. I'd like to say more, but so much can't be said openly until I change my current situation.




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