Riding on the Rims

OK, so today I had the third and last of the steroid injections into my Sacro-Ilial Joint. Have I told you how painful it is to have a long needle jammed through your back muscles and into your hip? My doc calls it needle trauma. Ouch!

But hopefully it is the last time I will have to endure that, at least for a long while!


Anyway, while I was there, Doc and I chatted about my back. My spine. We looked at the MRI of my spine and he pointed out some salient features on that road map of my life.

Why? Because I asked him about post-treatment activities, like running. He said one or two miles a day -- or three to four in my case -- would be all right.

While my L3-4 disc was nice and plump, my L4-5 and other discs were toast. Flat as pancakes. My vertebrae were riding right on top of each other, without any shock absorption in between. And the facets were sitting on top of each other's gel-covered tips, where all the nerve endings are.

He explained that bone-on-bone was like riding on the rims of a car. Would I want to take that car to Daytona and drive around the track at 150 mph? No, I think not.

But, that is what I'd be doing if I ran more than a couple of miles a day. So be it.

Question is, really, can I pull off one more marathon on those rims? Can I qualify for the Boston? Don't trains run on rims?

Stay tuned. These tires are blown and I'm riding on rims, but I won't slow down.

Here's a new guy named Brock Zeman, with some pals, singing "Riding on the Rims."