Grease is the word

When you haven't run real distances in a while, say anything over 4-5 miles, you sometimes forget one crucial ingredient: grease.

Last week, when I wound up running 9 miles, I forgot to grease up the legs and I suffered all day for it with raw, chafed skin on my inner thighs.

Today, before I kicked off a moderate 7.5 miler, I applied Vaseline to the upper legs. 

What a difference a little lube job can make.

So, from now on, whenever I run over 6 miles, out comes the jar of petroleum jelly.

The hard part is washing it off afterwards. I recommend Dr. Bronner's peppermint castile soap.

For the record: 7.5 miles at 1:18:52 for a moderate 10:30 pace. That's far off from what I was running before my SI Joint and hip socket injuries, but I'll take it.

The idea for now is to increase distance on weekends, and increase pace during the shorter runs during the week.

Swimming complements the road work perfectly. The muscles I work out running get a rest when I swim, and the swimming strengthens the core for when I'm running.

Thursday's swim was so much better than Monday's. I cannot wait to get into the pool again.

And now, for your musical entertainment, here's the original video of Flaming Lips doing "She Don't Use Jelly."

Better Living Through Chemicals

When I got the injection into my SI Joint (left), I thought I would be tossing out my meds, the ones that have been keeping me going the past few months as I dealt with this excruciating lower back/hip/butt pain.

But the post-procedure instructions had a sentence that meant worlds: "Continue your previous medication."

The technician in the doctor's office, whom I shall call X-Ray Annie, said I should keep taking my meds, but only the pain pill and muscle relaxer "as needed."

Sweet.

For the record, here's what I've been taking:

• Meloxicam, 15 MG
• Tramadol, 50 MG
• Metaxalone, 800 MG

Meloxicam and metaxalone sound like two ancient Aztec potions meant to raise the spirit of Quetzacoatl, and should probably chased down with mescal, but the doctor recommends against combining any of these drugs with alcohol.

Meloxicam is a pretty mild, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory which can have some effect on kidney function output if I take it too long. It appears to cause severe kidney damage in cats.

Metaxalone, a muscle relaxer that goes by the trade name Skelaxin (sounds like a Swedish diuretic or weight loss medicine?), is the gold standard. It doesn't make me drowsy, so it's good to take during the day. I can work and function pretty well on this medication, whereas even if I took one Flexoril at night before bed I would be groggy all the next day. Sometimes they make me hyper. Relatively few side effects, and even the people who invented it don't exactly know how it works except that it has some liver interaction.It a

Tramadol is bliss. It's an opiate-based painkiller that does the trick and still leaves me coherent and bright-eyed. Actually, I've noticed my pupils are like pencil points when I've taken one of these. Gotta watch it, could affect the kidneys.

I will keep taking the anti-inflammatory meds, as long as it takes until the inflammation is knocked down. And I promise to take the muscle relaxer and pain meds, only "as needed."

And now for your listening pleasure, "Sex and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll," by Ian Dury and the Blockheads:

The Roadkill Report

The SI Joint injection today was a big succes. The doctor gave me two valium to loosen up, and then shoved a needle full of fun into the crown of my sacrum, and another needle into a bone spur sitting on my ilium. Instant relief!

But drowzy! Man, I slept for three hours after I got home. The doctor recommended 24-48 hours of rest before resuming normal activitie

So while I'm shut down in recovery mode I think I'll answer some fan mail.

Dear Jeffro:
"Have you ever stumbled over a gator or slipped on roadkill?"
Frank Garza, Northport High School, Class of '76

Well, Frank, that is a really good question. As you know, both alligators and roadkill are savory delicacies among the true Floridians, the "cracker." Or as they say down here, "Dem's good eatin!"

As a longtime resident of Florida I've lived from Miami to Tallahassee, from Gainesville to Port St. Lucie. I've pulverized slow-moving pidgeons on the morning commute, and have smeared armadillo meat across the tarmac.

As a runner, I've seen a lot of those guts and gizzards up close and personal. Recently, I saw a small corn snake that was barely beaned in the head, but enough to kill it. Remember the difference between the benign corn and the deadly coral snakes: "Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Red touch black, venom lack."

I also saw a gathering of turkey vultures or buzzards murdering something totally unrecognizable on more than one occasion.

They're fascinating creatures, actually. Nature's death scene cleanup crew. Only without the van, toxic chemicals and snug-fitting coveralls and gloves. I mean, they sit on the road, picking at dead rotting flesh until the only thing left is a grease stain. That is some serious, ruthless efficiency.

And they remind me of the vultures in the Disney movie, Jungle Book. You know the ones, the ones with Liverpudlian accents drawn to look like the Beatles, complete with mop tops!


Anyway, Frank, I came close to stumbling over a gator just the other morning. I was running along this quiet residential street that winds along Crane Creek, when I hear this crash through the rushes. I turned quickly enough to see a four-foot gator splash into the creek. Coolness.

And now, since my birthday is coming up and we been talking about roadkill, here's a video from the Drive-by Truckers (note the 40 Watt Club backdrop):

An SI Joint (Burnin' Down The House)

This is it, the day I go in for my steroid injection into my SI Joint. Ironically, my lower back and right hip feel better than they have in months. I have almost no burning or pain in the hip and butt, but no matter.

I'm doing it.

My neurologist explained that the inflammation is like a room on fire in a house. The injection will put out that fire before it spreads throughout the house and burns it down completely.

The attached video explains it pretty clearly, but you'll have to put up with a commercial from the Mormons first.

I've tried for a year to get this thing right, and my chiropractor and massage therapist have been very helpful pinpointing the pain and easing it through manipulation and massage. My chiropractor called it months ago -- telling me the pain was coming from my SI joint.

But they've taken me as far as they can on this, and now it's time to knock it out thoroughly and decidedly.

The doctor will first inject me with lydocaine to numb out the area, then inject a steroid stew into the crown of my right sacrum. I should feel the effects almost immediately. Here's hoping.

And so, here's a great video by the legendary Talking Heads:

Like A Sauna In Here

Running this morning, started at the crack of dawn to avoid the heat. Still spritzing like crazy.

Feeling well enough to tackle the causeway, and just as I'm heading up the eastern incline, two or three dolphins break the surface of the Indian River Lagoon, their black-purple backsides glistening like eggplants in the orange dawn.

Ancient Greek mariners read it as a sign of good fortune when dolphins followed their triremes out of the harbour. I look on their presence as fortuitous as well. Only one song I know of uses the word triremes, by the way, and that's "Deeper Down," by Wilco.



I logged 7.5 miles this morning, got lapped by the high school cross country team and sweated like a whore in church. I guess it's the humidity after all.

Capped the morning run off by chasing down a meloxicam  (15 MG) with a mango/strawberry smoothie. Yum!

Tomorrow's the day I'm scheduled to get a steroid injection in my SI joint. Can't wait. Hope to give the meloxixam, tramadol, and skalaxin the big kiss-off.

This morning's running song is "It's So Humid,"  by 2 Live Jews. Enjoy. And Mazel Tov!

1

Blue Light Special

Living on the east coast of Florida poses two serious challenges for long-distances runners: terrain and climate. It's flatter than a surfboard, and the heat index is off the scales.

Training for a marathon in the subtropics is downright crazy.

No escaping the heat. You just have to run before the sun gets up, because as soon as the sun crests the first yardarm, it's already into the high 80s with the humidity ratcheting up the heat index several more degrees. We have two temps: what it says on the bank thermometer, and what it feels like. There ought to be a third category: what it feels like running.

Finding a place to get in some decent hill work isn't easy, but if you live along the Intracoastal Waterway like I do, you go for the next best thing: a causeway.

The one I run is the US 192 Causeway, or the Melbourne Causeway. The official name for the span is the Ernest Kouwen-Hoven Bridge, named after a Dutch man who emigrated to Florida, and liked to build bridges and grow timber. He built the original Melbourne Causeway in 1919, and the Florida Legislature named a subsequent bridge after him in 1977. Nobody locally calls it by its proper name, and very few people who grew up here even heard of Kouwen-Hoven. My friends who grew up here call jokingly call it Mt. Melbourne.

Yesterday I ran to the blue light at the top of old Ernie's bridge, stopped and turned around, making a nice 5.5 mile run on a hot-as-balls Saturday morning. Here's the song, "Blue Light," by the band Bloc Party.

That's a big milestone for me, because it's the first time since injuring myself in the Tupelo Marathon that I was able to exceed 15 miles in one week. Not that I'm setting any land speed records yet.

Also, it marks the second time I tackled the causeway since I began running again three weeks ago, after a year of suffering from a back injury I got running the Tupelo Marathon. I call this route The Blue Light Special because of the blue navigational signal at the crest of the causeway, which I suppose serves a two-fold purpose: it lets boaters know where the channel is at night, and keeps planes from flying into it.

But it doesn't keep people from jumping from the top of the span, 55 feet above the Indian River Lagoon. People have died doing it, and a brass plaque right near the blue light serves as a reminder of what happens to fools who dare to dive off the bridge at their own peril. Don't wind up like "Doug Bob" commemorated here -- born in 1986, died 2002 -- you do the math.

Anyway, I think I hit another milestone that comes with old age -- erm, make that wisdom. When it hurts, stop. Which is why I stopped at the blue light and turned around. I could have kept going across the two-mile causeway, and done an eight-mile run instead of 5.5. But the heat was getting to me, I'd run all out and was pretty spent by the time I hit the top of the causeway.

And my SI joint was pinging something fierce, along with a little pain tickling the piriformis muscle. I knew it was time to quit, that my body had had enough for the week and I should be happy with what I'd accomplished reaching that 17-mile mark in one week, without dying of heat stroke.

Maybe I'll double-down and hit the Blue Light Special twice tomorrow, the day before I go in for my steroid injection.

OK. Now for a cool running song, the one that was pounding in my head while bopping down the causeway: Step On, by Happy Mondays:

The Devil's Backbone

"Ouch! I think I done broke my sacro-crackerjack!"

Had my epidural consult with a neurologist/radiologist today. Nice guy. Very informative. Tells me what's going on is I've got a lot of cloudy inflammation obscuring what should be a nicely defined line in the joint between my sacrum and ilium bones on the right side of my hip. Where there's smoke, there's fire!

That's the old Sacro-iliac, see song references to "The Hucklebuck," the "Lewis Boogie," "Rub It In," and "The Message."

By the way, if you're tired of doing the Booga-Loo or if you're scared of The Swim, you might want to do the "The Sacro-Iliac," by 10 cc.

Anyway, he explained as he viewed the MRI taken in July, I've got a lot of wear and tear on the old spine. Some disk compression, some outright disintegration in the case of one disk, and some still healthy disks, notably the ol' L4-L5 that had been operated on 13 years ago after it blew out while lifting a Sunfish sailboat onto its trailer. Sunfish is the most popular single-person sailing boat in the USA. Go to the Wikipedia article here.

He also saw some mild facet arthritis (facets are the little hooks that link together on the spinal column) and some bone wear, but nothing unusual for a guy my age.

"I can tell you've done a lot of living, and never missed out on an opportunity," the good doctor told me with a wink and a grin. Made me feel a bit devilish, as if he could read all my sins like a map etched all over my spine. Ah, well. Yes, I've abused the old body running, mountain-biking, dropping out of airplanes etc.



But he didn't see any real problems with disk protrusions, and recommended an injection right in the upper part of the ilium. It should douse the inflammation and mend the old hip joint.

I return in one week for the first of my injections. And afterwards, I should be up and running again in no time.

Oh, P.S. I ordered a copy of the MRI and will post as soon as it's available.