It was pleasantly cool this morning when I woke up a little after 6:30 a.m., so I put on the shoes and shorts, grabbed my Nike+ iPod and took a 20-minute walk.  NaNoWriMo is on the horizon and I’m starting to think about story again, but I also figured I’d better get a little more air into my lungs so I can not only survive NaNo for another year but have enough oxygen in my brain to think and actually write something worth a damn this time.

Am I really, really returning to tackle getting back into running shape again after giving in to gaming and laziness such that I’ve pretty much ruined all my progress?  (I weighed 192 pounds after my walk this morning!) Time will tell, I guess. But I think that maybe if my theory about oxygen to my brain proves successful in helping me to turn my story idea into a solid novel, then I’d have to be an even bigger idiot than I’ve already been to not continue this time, wouldn’t I?

I’m supposed to be working out at least every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, with an optional longer workout on Sunday. However, several trips to the home improvement-gardening store(s), getting home late from work, and other details have made it too easy to skip and leave it for tomorrow. And, we all know, tomorrow never comes!

Saturday was a pleasant run — though all the while I had to keep one eye on some rather nasty-looking storm clouds gathering in the distance. There was a little trouble with my left knee paining me a bit during and after. It persists, but it’s not terrible. I know this is a long road. Can’t get there any faster than my body will adjust to things, but I’ve made it worse by not keeping up the schedule regularly enough to permit my body to adjust properly.

Add to that a slip back into the gaming side of things, since my player character in World of Warcraft is a Paladin (Protection spec for tanking) and is needed for my daughter, her boyfriend, and my two oldest online-gaming friends to run more challenging instances we’ve all talked about running forever. His gear is finally shaping up for the more moderately advanced instances that provide access to the gear they all want — not to mention it all being a bit more challenging and fun than the routine content — so I’ve been putting in a little more time in getting him set for that. It’s far too easy to play a little longer than I intended, robbing me of the sleep I should get instead.

So, Spring has arrived here. Lawn maintenance is back in the mix. Gardening is back in the mix. Gaming is back in the mix. I’ve just got to get a handle on it all and bring everything together, prioritized appropriately, and make it all work. The workouts have to fit in, regardless. I have to make that piece of things work, or I’m looking at falling back into the less healthful habits and patterns of before.

I’ve only just started reading it and I like it fine so far. I’ll have a bit more to say on it as I go along, I’m sure.

I’m not having much difficulty with the transition to jogging for most of my workouts now. I’ll still force myself to keep to a walking warm-up, then jogging for what should normally be 2/3 of my workout time duration, and finish with a walk for a cool-down. This is progressive enough for me at this stage, and the full-day’s rest as recovery is working well for me, too.

Though I’m feeling stronger and my joints — especially my knees — are giving me less and less trouble, I still have a little trouble with them. Mostly, that comes a bit after my workouts or later in evening. Nothing like before, so this is a good sign.

Overall, I think I’m still making good progress. I’m pleased.

However, I already note a tendency to try to “race” myself. I want to push more already, and I’ve only just started! This is kind of dangerous and could lead to a major setback if I don’t reign myself in constantly. It’s not that I’m not strong enough — I do feel much stronger. It’s that testing the limits of those gains in every workout is totally foolish and counterproductive.

Work has to be followed by rest if you’re to make any gains in strength and endurance, and rest by work if you’re to continue to make any progress, but work intensity has to be increased progressively, added to in manageable increments. Going too far, too fast, too soon is a recipe for disaster. It just takes ramping one of those up too quickly to tip the intensity of the work effort too far and start a chain reaction that could wind up setting me back to the beginning all over again.

Yesterday, I set out on my normal 30-minute Nike+ iPod workout setting, complete with the walk for five minutes, then start jogging, with the intention of walking the last five minutes. However, I did go farther and a little faster than I had intended. No ill effects this time — other than a little soreness.

But hearing Tiger Woods in my iPod headphones telling me that I’ve just turned in my fastest mile — three workouts in a row — tells me I need to watch it. This isn’t the time for all that. This is the time to build up slowly and gradually, to follow a system, not choose what to do by whim. I need to settle into a rhythm and increase rate and intensity progressively. I’m still going to have to constantly remind myself of what has sort of become my motto: Patience and perseverance.

On the weight-loss front, I weighed in at 181 pounds this morning. I’ve added a sidebar item to track my progress. I’ve also gone ahead and declared a goal weight.

I’m making good progress and I’m happy with how things are going so far. I need to try not to get too happy and so carried away with how well it’s going that I sabotage my progress by being foolish.

More or less the usual routine.  Set the Nike+ iPod for a 30-minute workout and started.  This time, however, I only walked the first five minutes, started jogging at around an 11-min/mile pace and slowly picked it up (averaged 10:22/mile), and then walked when the voice announced “Five minutes remaining.”

Of course, I’m a little sore today, but it’s worth every bit of soreness to me!

It’s nothing all that special, but it represents damned good progress.  And I’m pleased to get this far.  Finally.

Regardless, I now have a copy where I didn’t before, so it’s all good in the end.

Before I read it, though, it’s going to be “restored” so I can be certain that it will be in shape after one reading to be read again and again. That’s where a librarian friend stepped in. (She’s the one who alerted me to it being available on Amazon in the first place.) I delivered it to her on Thursday and she’s promised to soon have it in good, serviceable condition for years of reading pleasure.

Now, to find a copy of Long Road to Boston…

Overall, it felt great. Almost no problem with the ankle injury. Nearly nothing at all from the knees. Almost no knee pain or ache in either knee the whole way. The pace was very slow, of course. I remember reading somewhere the poet Odgen Nash saying something like, “…when I jog, I joggle.” And I do joggle, what with some extra weight still on my frame, while jogging — not running really yet — but the weight will come off someday and I might be able to actually run again… without the joggle.

I guess an initial adjustment period is to be expected. I forget how these things should go — even though I read what others have written and should expect certain things — but it’s easy to simply not remember how the body has to adjust progressively to increased physical stresses. So long on the couch or in front of the keyboard and not out on the roads. Yeah, I forgot what it’s like.

And — just to be sure I can stay on track from here on out — I’m going to try to keep in mind that there really is some wisdom to taking days off to recover. I’m taking Sunday off. I think I may alternate days of only walking with days of mixed walking and jogging. When I can manage something faster than about 11 minutes or so a mile, I may be able to cut down the walking and slowly build up from jogging to some faster running. At least for a while, I believe, I’ll have to be a jogger until I can get to the point where I can run easily and comfortably without much trouble.

It’s going to be a long road. I knew that before I started, but I think I wasn’t clear on how long it could really be this time around. I’ve got a lot of time to travel it, though. There’s no hurry. Not really. Patience and perseverance.

That pretty much fell apart when I started having the ankle problem, which has also recruited my right knee into its diabolical scheme to make things go a little more interestingly difficult to realize those goals.

Now, after three days off, I feel pretty crappy. Here we are going into Easter — with all the candy lying around for the grandkids — and I feel like I’m wasting my time. Still, a little work on the exercises the doctor gave me to do, some additional strength training work, and I almost feel good again. Then, I want to go out and walk but the ankle and knee protest. So, more rest, ice, and kicking my feet up for a while.  And that bowl of Easter candy sitting just within reach.  A comfort food thing?

I have to think this is going to pass. It has to pass, as all injuries and such usually do. In the meantime, it just feels horrible.

Prescription? Rest, ice, compression, elevation, NSAIDS for pain and inflammation. I didn’t want to hear the rest part of the treatment, but I knew that was coming when I hobbled in there. RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation) is always the smart thing to do anyway, and the one thing doctors will almost always tell you to apply.

When the doctor explained that I could be looking at a rupture of the tendon if I didn’t let it heal, that my right foot could lose what arch it has left and go flat, and then we’d be talking surgical correction, well… that was enough for me. I left the hospital with a photocopied sheet of exercises to do, an ankle wrap-brace kind of thing, a big rubber band, and a bottle of ibuprofen.

I took off yesterday from my walking, tried to spend as little time on my feet as possible, iced the ankle, and did the exercises on the photocopied page he gave me. The ankle is wrapped and feels okay — less pain anyway and less swelling. I guess I might be out of the walking game for a few days or so. I’ll keep track of the pain and swelling and see when I might be able to manage getting in a little walking around the block again. In the meantime, I’ll have to reduce my daily caloric intake to compensate for the loss of physical activity, of course.

Sucks to have any kind of injury, but having a worse one later when I want to be running again would suck more.