I guess I run now

No, the answer is no. I haven’t lost in the longest time & I haven’t been upset about that for the longest time. I’ve pretty much settled into the weight I was 2 summers ago & I’m holding. But I don’t want to hold. No more! I want to break into the 160s again, I want to go beyond that, I want to lose 17 by Christmas & buy a new pair of much smaller jeans for my birthday.

So here we go again. Back to it. Today will be a long work day, but I’m mixing in a couple of walks, situps, pushups, and maybe some squats (depending on the knee). Tomorrow if the swelling is down, I’m doing the 5k. & snacks are fruit, nuts, & seeds for the next week. I want to see movement on that scale. It’s time to break into the 160s, enough coasting. Maybe I should try calorie counting again?

Breakfast: light orange juice (40) & protein shake mix (80) with 1/2 banana (50) TOTAL = 170

Lunch: pumpkin soup (with 1/8 cup pumpkin seeds on top) & salad with light dressing (soup=90, seeds=93, salad=100) TOTAL = 283

Dinner: pumpkin soup with 1/8 cup pumpkin seeds (183); 1/2 cup squash (33), green beans (34), chicken sausage (120), whole wheat bun (110) TOTAL= 480

Total for day=933 (okay, no good)

So it’s just a sprain, nothing huge that could explain my sucky runs, my suckiness. But I did notice that I lost range of motion last month on the leg lift machine (they’re computerized, so if I don’t hit my ideal range, it doesn’t count & I haven’t been able to hit it once in a long, long time). So maybe this has been coming on for a long time & boot camp just aggravated it?

Anywho, I love my doctor. First of all, I love saying “my doctor.” He’s only the second one I’ve had in 42 years: the first was my pediatrician. After Dr. Miller, my pediatrician, I had no insurance, so no doctors for me (or some 46 million other Americans). It’s so nice to go to my own doctor who knows my name & my medical history (not that it’s easy to piece together those scattered records) rather than to whichever nurse practitioner happens to be tending the free clinic or whichever doctor’s working one of those pay-as-you-go mediquick places or whichever intern’s on call in the emergency room. I have a doctor now. Wow!

So he’s calling my knee thing a sprain & has recommended exactly what I’ve been doing, ibuprophin, ice, & compression. Only he wants me taking 6 ibuprophin daily for 2 weeks to make sure the swelling is really gone. & I go back in two weeks…imagine that, a follow-up visit! He thinks I should sit out of the 5k on Sunday, but we negotiated & if I’m feeling up to it, I’m going to do it…slowly. He also spent like 5 minutes showing me (we did it together!) how to do a proper squat that won’t kill my knees. Not my trainer’s style of a full-on squat into a low sit & as many of these as you can do in 1 minute, but I’ll do a happy medium between what he says & what she wants.

So reason #2 why I love my doctor: he’s not big on putting you on meds. More of a holistic practitioner who talks about diet & exercise & vitamins. Maybe they’re all like this now? But no one I’ve ever seen before has ever taken more than 2 minutes to look me over, so it’s wonderfully weird to go to a doctor who explains causes & symptoms & cures & gives you options for dealing with this stuff & spends 5 minutes just showing you how to do a proper squat. I’m kinda embarassed talking about this cause I have friends who don’t have insurance & can’t afford to buy their own & it seems unfair that I do finally have it. & I know we’re not supposed to get political at 3FC, but I really think this is a health issue & a fairness issue, not a political issue: this doctor thing should be a right for all of us, not a privilege for a select few.

Okay, that’s my diatribe for the day & I see now that I’ve made myself late for open lab hours, which means that I’ll have a dozen students waiting for me…no one ever wants to see me when I get to the office on time.

Happy day chicks!

I’ve been hobbling around on a busted knee since Tuesday morning: much swelling, much pain, no range of motion, and it keeps giving out on me.

So I go to boot camp yesterday (which rocked, btw, I LOVE bootcamp!) & my trainer fixes me up with some kind of elastic thing under my knee to keep it from giving out & she tells me to take it easy. Now back in high school, I’d use any damn excuse to get out of gym class, but there was no way I was going to miss boot camp or take it very easy. The elastic really helped & while she made it clear she’s not a doctor, my trainer said I probably have water on the knee.

So I looked it up online & one of the cures is antibiotics. Now I’m thinking: was I on antibiotics back in the summer, the last time (and first time, I think) I was actually able to run 2 miles in a row? I think the antibiotics & good run occurred around the same time. So now I’m hoping that the reason I’m such a lame runner is cause my knees suck. I mean, they always ache and hurt, especially after outside runs, but it never occurred to me that they might be holding me back as well. Man, I really hope that’s the case! Weird. I’m sitting here hoping I have knee problems. But I’ll take those problems since they can be fixed, and then there’s a chance I could be a decent runner yet.

So I have an appointment with the doctor this afternoon after I drop hubby off at the airport. That’s weird too since I usually prefer to let things run their course rather than visit the doctor (one of the many horrible symptoms of not having any health insurance at all from age 21-40). But this is serious, apparently: this could affect my boot camp performance. Is it possible to be a new type of person after only 4 sessions in boot camp? Last night when I just burst out with “I love boot camp so much!” My husband literally took a step backwards & said, “I never expected to hear you say that!” That makes two of us!