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October 17, 2004
live! vicariously! (or, chin up!)
This week certainly had its ups and downs. Monday and Tuesday I hit the gym pretty hard. Tuesday I was kind of tired and sore, but I thought it was from using muscles I don't normally use in running so I didn't think much of it. In fact I welcomed it. Wednesday I did no exercise, felt so much worse throughout the day that I stopped in at the doctor's (it's just across the street from my work). He hadn't seen the MRI yet, but he gave me some mild painkillers, a pair of crutches, and a prescription for another round of xrays and told me to schedule an appointment for the next day after the xrays.
Flash forward to Thursday: I still feel like crap, the doctor looks at the new xrays and says yes, it's a stress fracture of the fibula. He offers me the choice of a walking boot or a cast. I choose the boot because it's removable. I asked about crosstraining and after rolling his eyes he said no weightbearing stuff for 4 weeks (the length of the sentence). I have a followup appointment in 2 weeks so I suppose I could beg for early parole at that time.
Friday marked the third day in a row with no exercise whatsoever. I spent a lot of time working and then as soon as there was no more work to be done I found something else to do, some of it useful and some of it not. Then I went to a dinner party and drank a bunch of wine.
Saturday I hauled my sorry butt to the gym for anykind of redemption I could find. Luckily this gym is very new and has every kind of machine you can ever think of. They even have a recumbent elliptical, which I'd never even heard of. I got on 4 different machines for 15 minutes each (all I could stand), then did some very very wimpy lower-body weights.
Today I went to the gym again for more of the same. I think I like the rowing machine a lot. It's definitely exercise, but it's so different from running that you just can't compare it to running, so you just row. I rowed 5km, then did 15 min each on the recumbent ET and the ergometer (silly thing you "pedal" with your arms), then 30 min on the recumbent bike, then more wimpy LB weights. It's not much but I feel like I'm doing something as opposed to doing nothing.
This weekend our first cold front of the season came through, and in Florida this is a really big deal and a cause for lots of outdoor celebration, especially for those who have slogged miles and miles all summer long. I missed a 5-mile race that's really a blast. Some of my clubmates raced it and did really well. I tried not to be envious and almost succeeded.
Posted by joe positive at October 17, 2004 6:36 PM