Run For Your Life

So, what do I do after a day of wellness and self-indulgence? I go out and run 9 miles, setting a 10.8 minute pace, which translates into a middling 5.55 mph.

How do I know all this? I found a great website that calculates your caloric burn at Run The Planet: http://www.runtheplanet.com/resources/tools/calculators/caloriecounter.asp

I'm not crazy about the near-11 minute pace, but it could be worse. At least I am UNDER an 11-minute pace and I knew I ran faster on the first half going out than on the return leg.

Still and all, not bad for a 52-year-old guy whose doctor advised him not to run more than four miles a day. Heck, I didn't think I'd be able to run more than five or six miles in a single outing at this stage in my recovery. It's only been two months since the end of my steroid injection treatments.

I have to say, however, my SI joint and hip ball socket are on fire, and the right thigh is cramping. Ice and Meloxicam are the order of the day, with a side dish of Tramadol and a muscle relaxer, along with some good old-fashioned stretching.

And Gatorade to replenish those pesky electrolytes.

Speaking of: As I pulled a Gatorade out of the fridge after my run, I flashed on the scene in "127 Hours" where Aron Ralston, his arm pinned to a canyon wall by a medium-sized boulder, remembers the bottle of Gatorade he left in the back of his SUV. Great movie. Never leave home without your Swiss Army Knife, because a cheap-ass multitool just doesn't cut it.

Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. I gotta run.

As far as the swimming goes, so far it's been very good for me, toning the abdominal and lower back muscles, working on my upper body. More than likely I will hit the pool later in the day for some laps.

As I close, I'm left wondering what to play for you. "Once in a Lifetime"? "I Wanna Be Your Dog"? How about "Lust for Life"? That seems appropriate.

Furlough Fun Day

Due to the prudent fiscal planning of my highly paid corporate overlords, I've got to take a full week of furlough this quarter.

Translation: five days of enforced leave without pay.

To make the best of it I've scheduled my furlough days around several weekends like bacon-wrapped shrimp to make up for the fact we have no company-sanctioned holidays over the next three months.

It's a win-win.

Today is the first of those furlough days and I am spending it in full recovery mode after a week of  running and swimming torqued my right hip and shoulder.

 Welcome to my Wellness Day.

It started at 8 a.m. with a trip to my chiropractor, Dr. John Workman, and his massage therapist, Tony Spano. After a 15-minute massage on my shoulder and hip, John worked out the rest of my kinks. I left his office feeling light-headed and pain-free.

It's as if they broke up and released all the toxins I'd been storing in my joints and muscles.

For the rest of the day I think I will just relax, take a walk on the beach, go see a movie (127 Hours is finally playing) and maybe do some yoga later.

Because tomorrow, I'll be running eight miles and hitting the pool.

And now, for all my friends who say they only run if they're being chased, here's N.W.A.:

Bone-spurs on the saddle

This is depressing. I was doing great. Really enjoying building up my running regimen to about 20 miles a week.

But now I have to put a kybosh on the running, for a couple of months, anyway.

When I went in this morning for my second steroid injection for my SI Joint inflammation, my doctor and I discussed my running, how much of it I was doing, whether it was causing pain. He showed me a whole mess of bone spurs along my sacro-ilial joint. Strenuous exercise, pushing too hard, causes those spurs to jangle.

"Your injury is related to high levels of pounding," he said, preaching moderation in all things. "Although I suspect you and I have very different ideas of what moderation means."

Well, yeah. For more than two years I was training for and running in marathons. I was going through a new pair of training shoes every three months. So the idea of running three to five miles a day, with one nice 8-miler thrown in on the weekends didn't seem unreasonable, and it didn't seem to be hurting.

"The medicine I'm giving you lasts 4-6 weeks," he said, during which time I might not feel the pain that would normally register from my injury. Once the medication wore off, I'd be going around saying, "Like, hey, where did that come from?!"

Point taken: I'm still injured. His goal is to correct the injury, get me back to health and keep me from doing anything that would make that injury permanent. Pain has a way of following pathways, he said. If this had gone on for another year, I'd be owning this pain for the rest of my life.

That's why I'm here, I told the doc. Stop running, he said.

Do things that don't pound the joints. Stretch. Bike. Swim. Walk. Do yoga.

But for the next two months, he said, do not run.

That is going to be very tough indeed. Because these boots were not made for walkin'.

Now, here to ease my pain is "Blood on The Saddle," a classic Tex Ritter song done to death by The Dropdead Beats (with a lead singer channeling Tom Waits):