Once A Runner…

Okay, So Now I Have A Strength-Training Home Gym

And I no longer have the excuse for not using it because of not being able to get to the bench and weights for all the clutter crowded in around it. I’ll sit down later and draw up a light general strengthening program, and I know I’ll be including a few sets of work on my quads.

This evening’s walk was pleasant enough — except that the sun is always at an awful angle at that time of day during this time of year around here and it makes seeing oncoming traffic a bit difficult sometimes. On the other hand, the sun full in my face pretty much guarantees I’m lit up well enough for the drivers to see me, I guess!

I varied the route a bit and still came out at about the same distance as usual. The knees didn’t hurt too badly — only a twinge here and there. Mostly, my tibialis anterior muscles were tight and painful. That’s plain and simple needing to get them into shape and nothing I can do but keep on trucking.

I stretched a bit longer than usual afterwards since I wasn’t pressed for time to shower, cook breakfast, and get ready for work like I am in the mornings. Regardless of the time crunch in the mornings, I love getting the walk in early so that I feel more charged during my workday.

So, overall, a good walk and I felt pretty good despite all the labor the wife and I put in on the garage cleaning today.

Knee Aches and Pains

EDIT: A lot of people land here after searching the web for information about their knee ailments. In fact, this is now probably the single most visited post on my blog. Jump over to my other post Knee Pain for a link to a site with a whole lot of information on the topic. (The link is also in my sidebar under Links.)

Okay, got up this morning as usual and did the loop around the neighborhood at more or less the usual walking pace — no jogging thrown in at all since yesterday included some. Overall, about normal, or as normal as can be expected this early into getting back into some semblance of shape.

The knees, however, are a little sore and there is a slight ache that come and goes. The bad part is that there is a spot on each knee at the top of the tibia — forward of or near the region of the medial collateral ligament attachment to the tibia — that is tender to the touch. Hard to isolate precisely, it could also be a little bit higher, in the area of the medial menisca. Either way, the pain is damned sharp when I tap in the area with a finger, so I’m a little concerned.

As I wondered about the source of the pain, I noticed my feet were still in a much worn pair of New Balance 1023 shoes that are about three years old. I don’t wear my new Nike+ shoes except for my walking and jogging, after which I putz around in the old New Balance shoes in the house or yard, at work, out and about town for shopping, etc. There’s no way those old shoes still have any appreciable cushioning remaining after all that abuse.

So, while my wife was shopping for last minute stuff for our granddaughter Halee’s birthday, I looked for a new pair of knock-about shoes to replace the old, worn-out ones. I finally settled on a pair of New Balance 661s — cushioning, neutral foot. I can continue in the Nike Air Structure Triax+ 11 shoes for my workouts where their cushioning and stability will come in handy and then switch to the more neutral, but still cushioned NB 661s for the rest of the time I spend on my feet.

Maybe they’ll help keep my legs a bit fresher than that old pair. My knees felt a little better while in them today, so we’ll see.

I AM My Own Worst Enemy

For some absurd reason, I decided to sleep in this morning and take my walk later along Perimeter Parkway after dropping my wife off to work. I guess I just wanted a change of scenery. Yeah, that excuse will do as well as any.

Lots of folks staying at the Doubletree Inn or living in the two apartment complexes there use Perimeter Parkway for walking or running, so it’s not a bad stretch of road for that purpose — except for the construction along there for the Bobby Jones/Interstate 20 flyover turning parts of the shoulder to crap. Yeah, I’d forgotten about that.

Regardless, there are parts further down near the back side of Doctor’s Hospital where the shoulder is still smooth and level. And it’s at these parts that I thought it would be a good idea to ratchet up from an ambling walk to a bit of a jog this morning. Except for my knees, it was okay. It felt really good to try to stretch and stride more smoothly, but I know it only felt like I was smooth — I know I was just jogging.

The right knee was a bit twingy and the left chimed in a few times, too. I still have to hold back a little, even though it was pleasant at the end of my walk to hear Joan Benoit Samuelson congratulate me for a new “PR” for the mile. (Yeah, I know. Not really, but I’m starting all over so it will have to do. The slate is clean and the past just don’t matter in that way now.)

My knees don’t ache… yet. If they do later, I have only myself to blame, of course, but it did feel pretty good to try to jog a bit. I can’t wait to drop a little more weight and for my muscles and knees to get stronger. I know I have to wait a bit longer, though, if I want to keep going for the long run.

I’m probably going to tackle the garage this weekend and get a space cleared for the weight bench. I seriously need to start strengthening my quads to better support my knees, and a general strengthening program would be a good thing to settle into anyway — especially as there are four really good benefits to be realized from it:

• adding muscle mass will increase calorie burn since muscle needs more calories for maintenance
• stronger muscles can do more and do not tire as easily
• strengthening opposing muscle groups can help prevent injuries
• stronger bones — weight-bearing exercises are proven to increase bone density

If I can get started on a good general fitness program and maintain the aerobic activity, I can probably see increased weight loss which will lead to stronger, faster running sooner than just walking/jogging alone. That’s the theory anyway.

In the meantime, I have to take each day as it comes and every little bit of progress in stride. This is a challenge, to be sure, but the real challenges are a long way off, mere dreams at the moment. Of course, there is always the challenge just to keep going, and that’s the one that can make or break everything.

The Road Back So Far (Week One)

Well, with almost two weeks on this new eating regimen and a full week of walking every morning, I can see some progress. No, I’m not thinner, though some people say I look like I lost a little bit of weight. Instead, I notice internal changes that are far more important at present than changes in my appearance.

I don’t wake up with a headache as I used to do just about every single day before changing my diet. I do wake up with a few muscular and skeletal aches and pains, but that’s just the body reworking things to accommodate activities long forgotten. Past experiences — even though they are from periods in my life when I was much younger and more resilient — tell me that this will mostly pass as I get into shape. There will be adjustments to take into consideration given my current age, so I have to try to be smarter than I have been in the past especially seeing as that resilience of youth ain’t there to protect me from my own reckless enthusiasm.

I sometimes had edema — swelling, caused by fluid retention — in my lower legs, and after a day of standing or sitting too long without exercising the large muscles of my legs to help pump blood back to my heart I could actually press my thumb into my shin and leave an indentation. That’s gone now. And I can actually feel my lower legs — I mean, they feel more alive right now instead of tired, aching, hot and swollen. I give part of the credit to the fact that far less sodium in my diet now means my body retains less water, of course. But also some credit has to go to my actually getting up from bed early and stepping out into the darkness to use my legs for something other than two supports to hold me up — like, to instead move a bit and help my blood circulate more strongly.

I feel far less irritable than I used to, so that’s a very positive thing. I get frustrated less often and even when I do I’m less prone to outbursts now than I was. My wife says I’m much easier to live with like this.

I’m not really concentrating significantly better than before, but I notice a little bit of improvement. More will come in time, I think.

My sleep patterns haven’t fully adjusted, but I sleep better. I wake feeling more refreshed and I don’t lie there for long dreading the act of pulling on my sweats and shoes to go out for my walk.

The sore muscles and joints, however, are part of the game and I’ve really never minded that too much. The stiffness — even after a little stretching, which I was never as conscientious about as I should be — is annoying, but that will become better with time, too.

I’m still not physically prepared to run — much less run well — yet. I’m still too heavy. My muscles and joints aren’t quite adjusted to the increased activity. But I’m chafing at the bit to get there. I have to rein in the urge to run too soon. I will start some sort of “beginning running” schedule when I’m ready, I think, but I have to make sure I’m ready. The exhilaration of a run too early could lead to undoing all I’m trying to do if I injure myself.

Eh, this ain’t a race. This is progress and I have to stay with the plan. I’ve got the rest of my life to run. I’ll eventually get back to a point where I can run and I can say that I’m seriously running for my life, but just not yet.

How I Got to Here…

So, yeah, I started running fairly seriously some time in 1970 when my dad was in Vietnam for his second tour. I also played baseball and tried out for football. I wasn’t very good at either sport, though I really enjoyed baseball. I was tall and skinny and not very coordinated. Running became more my thing, but that was before Frank Shorter won the marathon and Dave Wottle’s amazing finish in the 800 finals in Munich, so the storied “Running Boom” of the late Seventies was still a few years away at that time. For most of my peers back then, running was sort of just something that we did as part of playing an organized sport, never really a sport unto itself.

Johnston Junior High School, which apparently no longer exists in Anniston, Alabama, didn’t have a track team when I attended, so mostly I just ran lap after lap around the athletic fields with some kid whose name I will probably never remember. It’d be nice to remember that kid’s name some day because he had come from some school up North where they did promote track and cross country and he really encouraged me to see things differently and just run.

I didn’t actually run track until my eighth grade year in Kirby, Texas (outside San Antonio), where I ran the quarter-mile at Kirby Junior High School. I broke Brad Palmer’s school record (59.9), set the previous year, and Gilbert Encarnacion — if I recall correctly — returned me the favor the following year, lowering my 59.7 mark to 59.5.

At Judson High School in Converse, Texas, I ran the mile and cross country (usually two-mile road courses back then). I lettered in the mile my junior year when I placed fifth in the District 29AAAA meet with a 4:42. My regular running buddy, Danny Busheme, ran a 4:30 and finished second to Wayne Becken of Roosevelt High School to qualify for Regionals. Along with most of the distance runners from the track team and the cross country team, I also ran in local fun runs and events sponsored by the San Antonio Road Runners and was an SARR member for several years.

Judson High School was growing very fast back when I attended, having just barely moved up into District 14AAA my first two years there before immediately being pushed up again, straight to District 29AAAA by my junior year. So, though we had no official cross country team my sophomore year, Tony Lozano, Bert Richardson, Mike Terry, Danny Busheme, and I were permitted to run in the Region IV cross country championships in San Marcos, Texas. The following two years, Judson High School earned a trip to San Marcos by winning back-to-back District 29AAAA championships in 1974 and 1975.

My brother, Darrell, (a half-miler and a member of the cross country team) and I almost didn’t get to go to Regionals in my senior year. The coach threatened to throw us off the team for training every day — he caught us doing an easy run the day before the first cross country meet of that season. As it was, I ended up quitting track that year because that cross country coach became the head track coach. His training methods were stuck in the past, based on hard interval work at race pace and supposedly designed for “peaking” for every meet in the season.

Danny Busheme, Darrell, and I had learned from Tony Lozano the Lydiard system where our training was carefully structured for peaking for an intended target race — in our case, the district meet, the most important meet of our season. The situation became intolerable when it was made abundantly clear that any compromise must be all on our part and none on the coach’s, so Danny Busheme and I walked away from the program altogether. Darrell stayed, and I think he might have been the smartest of us three for doing so, but I just couldn’t pull tractor tires with the off-season football players when I knew I should be out on the roads building an endurance base. I still ran some on my own, though, and I had plans to run in college, but that never happened.

When my dad retired from the Army, there were five of us kids at home with me being the oldest. Going away to university wasn’t going to happen and even a local college was going to be rough on the budget. The Army still had the Vietnam-Era G.I. Bill back then, and I decided a four-year hitch was worth getting college paid for by my Uncle Sam. That four-year hitch turned into a career that lasted almost 21 years. I went through most of my Army career still believing I was a runner, and there were several years in there when I worked pretty hard to prepare (not really training, but at least putting in mileage) for road races — mostly 10Ks — and I also ran the Mule Mountain Marathon (from Bisbee to Sierra Vista, Arizona) in 1994. I barely finished that marathon, but I finished it.

I was posting maximum scores on my Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) for most of my last several years in the service. Prior to that, I was mostly interested in just doing the minimums for push-ups and sit-ups to save most of my energy for the two-mile run. Yeah, kind of stupid, but I was a runner. Push-ups and sit-ups weren’t the part I liked to put my effort into. And, yeah, there were more than a few times when I just wasn’t in good enough shape to do very well and was happy just to pass the APFT at all.

To be sure, there were also stretches in there where I fell out of the pack of runners and did very poorly at keeping up any regular kind of running. As a result, by the time I had hung up my Army uniform for the last time and retired, I wound up about 24 pounds heavier than I was when I enlisted. After two years working overseas and then returning to the States to go back to school full time and finally get a degree while also working a full-time job, I was even worse off. Inertia had set in and the weight piled on as my conditioning deteriorated badly.

After earning my degree, I started running a bit again and made it through a few 10Ks here in Georgia, but a knee injury sidelined me in July 2002. Since then, I’ve done very little — only a little walking for a while during several different periods of time before stopping again. And that has further complicated matters. Three days before my 50th birthday, I rummaged around until I found the bathroom scale, dusted it off, and stepped onto the damned thing. I weighed 206 pounds — seventy pounds more than I did when I graduated high school!

So, my early birthday present to myself was to start a real diet. Not a quickie weight-loss diet — I’m talking a complete change in eating habits. No more processed foods. Only lean meat or fish at every meal with fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables. A little over a week later, I’m down a few pounds — largely water loss since I have also cut my salt intake to the bone, I don’t have my usual headaches in the morning, and my wife reports that my snoring isn’t waking her at night.

For my birthday, I bought a new pair of shoes and I started a walk/run program — a whole lot more walking than running at the moment, to be sure, but a good start nonetheless. I’ve been at that for five days now. If I can keep my wits about me this time, unlike in 2002, maybe I can keep my impatience from taking me too fast or too far too soon again and I can avoid an injury.

The problem is, naturally, that my mind remembers how it feels to fly and my body is still grounded, unable to soar as I once could. Of course, I like remembering that I once did because I’ve got — no, I need — to believe I still can some day — not as fast or far as when I was young, but just being able to really run again and just keep on running is my dream now.

One year from now, I want to be running around White Rock Lake in Dallas with my brother, who’s still out there running 5Ks at a 7-minute+ pace practically on the eve of his 49th birthday.

He’ll probably smoke me, but I can’t think of any better way to help him celebrate his 50th birthday next year.

Hello world!

I took the name of this blog from the title of the novel by John L. Parker, Jr. which was published in 1978. That was about eight years after I started running endless laps around a huge athletic field as a bored seventh grader in phys. ed. class at Johnston Junior High School (Anniston, Alabama), which was also not long after I had read the biographies of milers Roger Bannister and Glenn Cunningham.

Here, I may occasionally wax nostalgic about my past running. I’m likely to get some of the facts wrong after so many years, but that’s to be expected. I’ll try to be as accurate as I can, but I know my memory isn’t perfect. I also know that I tend to recall things as having a rosier glow than whatever the real truth may be, so I might sometimes be guilty of painting a prettier picture of the past than what it truly was.

Regardless, I wanted to start this blog to keep track of all those memories as well as to chronicle my “comeback” to the running life. I’ve let a whole lot of years go by without ever realizing the potential I might once have had and that’s gone forever. Now, the objective is just to get back to running and, when I do, to keep running.