Stars of Track & Field

Because I was unable to run the Melbourne and the Beaches Music Marathon this past weekend, I did the next best thing: I volunteered.

• Out at the starting area and registration table at 6:30 a.m., greeting runners in the light drizzle and cheering them on.
• At the starting line just before 7 a.m., a megaphone thrust into my hand, telling everyone to stay to the right of the orange cones if they wanted their race chips to activate.
• Moving boxes to the storage trailer and heading over to the finish line to await the first finishers for the half-marathon.

It was at that point that Deb, the volunteer coordinator, handed me a key to the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce building and said, "Go over there and open it at 8 a.m. for the elite runners."

It wasn't what I had in mind. I had imagined myself handing out water and Gatorade at one of the dozens of stations along the course, or riding my bike back and forth looking for stragglers, the injured or the lame.

But staying out of the rain and cold for a couple of hours wasn't such a bad thing, and I'd still get to watch the middle-pack runners come across the finish later. My people.

I was sitting at a computer in the lobby when the first runners came in. They startled me so that I grabbed my flimsy styrofoam cup of coffee and spilled it on the floor. After cleaning up, I started greeting the incoming runners -- among the best amateur athletes in the nation. They'd come from Colorado, Chicago and northern Pennsylvania to run in our little race.

But the biggest moment of the day came when Bill Rodgers (seated in photo at right) and Frank Shorter came into the room. Rodgers sat, exhausted, drenched in sweat. I shook his hand and told him what a fan I had been since high school. We chatted about his performance a bit, the course and the weather. 

Shorter came in moments later, wearing a hat and sweating. He said he had run the course backwards. I told him it was because of him and Rodgers that I began running cross-country in high school and continue to run to this day.

They both seemed like really nice, down-to-earth guys -- and a lot smaller than I'd imagined.

Zola Budd (standing in photo) was there, too. And for the record, yes, she was wearing running shoes.

It was a grand moment in my life, and my reward for helping out. From now on, whenever I'm injured or not ready in my training cycle to run a marathon, I'd gladly volunteer again.

And now, here's Mercury Rev with "Goddess on a Highway":

Life ain't a track meet. It's a marathon.

I thought I'd give everyone a break from all the whining about back aches and hip problems and knee pain until I had something substantial to report.

Now, I do. I'm back to a regular running schedule -- four miles a day, three days a week just to get back into the groove, and I've already dropped my pace by almost two minutes -- from well over 12 minutes to just under 11 minutes. It is a good feeling to move along at a 10:30 pace, even if it's a far way off from the under 9-minute pace I need to set for myself to beat certain people I trash-talked last week.

The biggest news is that for the first time since I began running again, I didn't have that hip socket pounding that had been plaguing me, and my SI joint didn't flare up. That is true progress.

I had laid off running for about a month over the holidays. I was having serious hip pain on both sides, right above the posterior saddle. And the SI joint, blah blah blah. I fought it with anti-inflammatories, ice packs and pain killers and just good old fashioned slackitude. Nothing like lazing around for two weeks watching TV, reading books, eating junk food and guzzling red wine for proper R&R.

But when I got on the scale and saw my weight had climbed over 210, I had to take action. I decided, Fuck this pain, it's just something I'm going to have to live with, laced up my running shoes and hit the road. And it felt like hell, the femur grinding into my hip socket, sending sharp stabbing pain into my SI joint.

Ice and Tramadol followed.

Two days later, I went out again. Ran four miles. Pounded away like a lumbering ox. Ice and pills.

Saturday, I had my first breakthrough. Ran four miles at a 10:35 pace. Ice. Pills.

Sunday. Forty minutes of yoga. No running. No ice. No pills.

Monday. Every muscle in my body ached from the yoga.

Today (Tuesday): Ran four miles. Feeling no pain. Yet.

And now, Ice Cube has a message for ya.

Master of the Universe

OK, so I am not the fastest runner in the universe. Never was. Not even in high school.

But I wasn't the slowest, either.

And as a middle-aged adult, I was putting in respectable times, 22-23 minutes for 5ks, finishing the first half of a marathon in under two hours, hitting a personal marathon record of 4.06 two years ago at age 50!

So when this hip injury sidelined me, I was bummed. I was on my way to breaking the four-hour marathon!

But I had to stop running for a year, until I finally got diagnosed with a Sacro-ilial joint injury and got referred to a specialist for steroid injections. He told me to stop running until he was through treating me.

After my last steroid injection, he advised that I could run again, but not all out like I used to run. Two-three miles at the most. He said my disks were so shot, running for me was akin to riding on the rims of a car after the tires had blown.

I wouldn't want to take a car like that out to Daytona, would I? 

I've got news for him:  I couldn't if I wanted to.

Now, I find myself running at a 10-11 minute pace, barely covering 3 miles in under 40 minutes. I suppose that is what my doctor had in mind when he said to "use it, but cruise it."

Today was my fourth run since he gave me the green light. I'd say my pace has picked up since that first run, and the pain doesn't increase after a run. Those are good signs. My goal is to slowly and steadily improve my pace to under 10 minutes a mile.

Ultimately, I want to get to where a 9-minute pace feels like cruising, not racing.

And I want to lose another 20 pounds. I reached 205 this morning, good for 6'1" but be better. I still feel like I'm holding a 20-pound bowling ball in my lap when I sit down.

Slowly, once again, I am becoming master of my own universe.

Now some Pulp:

Master of the Universe

OK, so I am not the fastest runner in the universe. Never was. Not even in high school.

But I wasn't the slowest, either.

And as a middle-aged adult, I was putting in respectable times, 22-23 minutes for 5ks, finishing the first half of a marathon in under two hours, hitting a personal record of 4.06 two years ago at age 50!

So when this hip injury sidelined me, I was bummed. I was on my way to breaking the four-hour marathon!

But I had to stop running for a year, until I finally got diagnosed with a Sacro-ilial joint injury and got referred to a specialist for steroid injections. He told me to stop running until he was through treating me.

After my last steroid injection, he advised that I could run again, but not all out like I used to run. Two-three miles at the most. He said my disks were so shot, running for me was akin to riding on the rims of a car after the tires had blown.

I wouldn't want to take a car like that out to Daytona, would I? 

I've got news for him:  I couldn't if I wanted to.

Now, I find myself running at a 10-11 minute pace, barely covering 3 miles in under 40 minutes. I suppose that is what my doctor had in mind when he said to "use it, but cruise it."

Today was my fourth run since he gave me the green light. I'd say my pace has picked up since that first run, and the pain doesn't increase after a run. Those are good signs. My goal is to slowly and steadily improve my pace to under 10 minutes a mile.

Ultimately, I want to get to where a 9-minute pace feels like cruising, not racing.

And I want to lose another 20 pounds. I reached 205 this morning, good for 6'1" but be better. I still feel like I'm holding a 20-pound bowling ball in my lap when I sit down.

Slowly, once again, I am becoming master of my own universe again.

Now some Pulp:

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."

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):

Hard Eight

Gamblers have a term for betting the dice will come up double fours in a craps roll. Hard eight. The odds are so enormous that the payout is huge. There's a great character study of a film by the same name, directed by Paul Michael Thomas. It stars John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall and Gwyneth Paltrow as a hooker with a heart of coal.

Hard eight is what I ran Sunday evening. For me, it was the first time in more than a year that I ran eight miles without stopping, and ran it at a sustained pace of about 10 minutes. Not bad considering I laid off running for a year and am being treated for a SI Joint inflammation, which was misdiagnosed alternatively as diskitis, lower disk protrusion and rheumatoid arthritis. It's an inflamed joint, and the anti-inflammatories I'm taking have knocked it down enough that for the last four weeks I've been able to run four times a week, with at least one big run thrown in the mix just to see if I can do it. I can do it.

The first few times were tough. I'd run two miles, rest, maybe walk a bit, jog over the causeway, rest, walk a bit, and do the same on my way back. Last week I managed to run over the causeway without a break, a full 3.7 miles. I stopped for a water break, stretched and ran back over the causeway, took one more water break, and then home.

After two days off, with about 240 miles of driving to West Palm thrown in, a barbecue, some kayaking, much beer drinking and a depressing night watching the Gators get torn to shreds by Bama, I was back home Sunday, doing the laundry and decided to lace up -- still running in my year-old-plus Brooks Adrenalines. I can safely say, without any doubt, after tonight that the spring is shot, and I need new shoes.

For some reason, I felt pretty pumped. Bouncing off the balls of my feet, shoulders back and cruising along pretty nicely, until some kid motored by me like I was standing still. I decided to push up my game. I leaned into the causeway incline and kicked it at the top, then settled into a nice amble on the decline. By the time I got to Douglas Park, I thought, why not go all the way to the four-mile point before turning around. Why not go the whole eight mile?



My second attack of the causeway was better than the first. I drove up that hill as hard as I could, and when I got to the top I pumped it before easing into a nice trot down the hill.

The rest of the run was mostly flat with little ups and downs, and it was getting on twilight. A nice time to be running when the weather turns cool enough here in Florida. So I just kept pushing myself, willing the piriformis to loosen up and quit acting like an old codger. I ran the last half mile or so balls out.

And I finished in under 90 minutes. Maybe even 80. I should get a watch. But that means I was running right around a steady 10 minutes for a whole eight miles without stopping, except for some water at the halfway mark.

For me that is a huge milestone on the road to recovery. I was lucky to plod through four miles in 40 minutes or longer when I started running again two months ago. Running eight miles in a little over 80 minutes is huge for me, and that is saying a lot. I mean, my best running time about three years ago was a 5k where I broke 23 minutes -- my best! I used to run seven miles in 54 minutes during workouts. My time at the half-way mark for the Space Coast Marathon was 1:52, and my pace for the entire run was 9:27, for a 4:07 finish.

 It's possible that three months from now, with a couple more steroid injections, ice packs, massage therapy, yoga  and chiropractics, I could be close to those old times. It's just as possible I may never hit that 9:27 pace again, but I'm not saying I can't do it, either.

Now, for something a little different, a great scene from Hard Eight, where the duelling Philips -- Baker Hall and Seymour Hoffman -- test their wills against each other over a craps table:

Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal

OK. Right. I've been running on a regular basis for about five, six weeks now, and I think it's time to kick it into high gear. And by that I mean it's time to choose a training program for my next marathon.

It's been a year and several weeks since my last marathon, the grueling Tupelo marathon that blew out my SI Joint and caused piriformis pain so severe I couldn't run for a year. But after the start of my epidural treatments, my condition has improved dramatically. I've actually run one 9.5 mile run and I'm up to about 20 miles a week.

But that puts me in a dilemma when it comes to choosing a workout program. I've used Hal Higdon's Novice II and Intermediate I schedules for my first two marathons, and did pretty well by him (4:36 and 4:09, respectively). But where do I place myself now? Novice? Intermediate? Somewhere in between? Do I start at the beginning, jump in at week four or five, or what?

I ran a 4, and a 7.4, and tomorrow plan to run another 4. That would put me at something like week seven on Novice II, which calls for a 14-mile run Saturday. I don't know if I'm up for that yet. I may be ready for an 11-miler, and I've got the course plotted out already (my house to Melbourne Beach and back). Maybe I should look for the week where the longest run is 9 miles and jump in there.

Or, maybe I should see what other schedules are out there.

Runner's World has several training schedules depending on your level of experience for $29.95. They also have plans to break the 4 and 3 hour marks, as well as a plan for prepping for Boston. I think I'll pass on that until I know I can finish a marathon at all.

Running Times warns you right from the the start that its training schedule is tough, and just looking at it gave me leg cramps. Maybe after full recovery. Maybe after I actually finish a marathon!

State of the Art Marathon Trainng has a 19-week mileage buildup schedule leading right into the week of a marathon, strategies for injury prevention, a reasonable 18-week training schedule and other resources, like speed and strength workouts. And it's free! Sounds good, but I'm not sure.

So, I return to Hal. His programs are simple, easy to follow and don't require a lot of concentration. I figure I may as well start in at the Novice 2 level, starting at week one. It'll give me a chance to dial things back, and slowly work my way up to marathon level in 18 weeks -- just in time for the Disney Marathon!

Or I could just continue to run four, five days a week, increasing my mileage by about 10 percent a week, continue stretching and throw in some bike riding and swimming. I haven't made up my mind yet, but stay tuned. I will let you know.

Meanwhile, as I contemplate the universe of training plans available, let's listen to a real groovy, Grammy-winning version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Latin Jazz artist Eumir Deodata:

Turd On The Run

Sorry. But there is no delicate way to broach a subject every distance runner has hurdled at one time or another, and that is the efficient, discreet disposal of certain bodily wastes.

Nature sometimes calls at inconvenient moments, particularly on a nine-mile run to the beach and back before the sun is up, before any stores are open. Your stomach cramps, your intestines writhe, and.... you gotta drop a deuce. So what is a runner to do when that dreaded call comes?

Well, the answer is simple, unfortunately. You must do that doo doo that you do so well, and make due best as you can under the circumstances.

Relief is no simple task. You've got to find a secluded spot where no one is going to find you au naturel, shorts around the ankles, in an undignified squat. Running into the woods with nothing but a Harvest Moon to guide your way is no fun. Brambles, thickets and god knows if you're squatting in Poison Ivy.

If you're lucky, you can find a secluded spot under the beach boardwalk or a dune crossover.



I don't know how else to put this, but you've got to hope that the end result is firm and compact.

Finally, you pray that it is all dealt with quickly so you can pull up your shorts and run away from the evidence as fast as you can.

And now, Phish doing its own version of the Rolling Stones' "Turd on the Run," off of Exile On Main Street.

Bowling For Buddha

One of the hardest things about laying off running and pretty much any really strenuous exercise for a year is the weight gain. For me at least, it took forever to adjust my diet to the change in metabolism and the outrageous calorie burn you get running 40-50 miles a week, plus swimming and biking on cross-training days.

Despite the lack of exercise, I kept eating and drinking wine like Bacchus, failing to adjust my caloric intake. And I kept expanding like a balloon.

At the peak of my training two years ago, just before the Space Coast Marathon, I weighed just shy of 195 pounds. After the Tupelo marathon 10 months later, I was hovering around 205. By the time I got my doctor to get me an MRI three months ago, I weighed 229. Fully clothed. Wearing my five-hole Doc Martens.

 I was a happy Buddha, smiling and loving life.

But my doctor said lose the weight.

Running with an extra 34 pounds feels like lugging around two bowling balls strapped to your midsection. It is not fun. Your breathing is heavy. You plod along like Wimpy after indulging in a hamburger orgy. It does not feel good. You can only do about 3-4 miles a day, very slowly (10-12 minute pace in my case).





I've discussed weight loss plans with friends, nutritionists and doctors. The best one: eat less. Seriously. And cut back on the booze, never mind the miraculous restorative powers of Resveratrol contained in every bottle of red wine. As one writer once said, You have to stay hungry and stay sober.

And moderate exercise. Forty minutes a day of walking or biking or swimming, light jogging if your doctor OKs it. Basically, I've gotten back to running several times a week after my SI Joint injection and chiropractic treatment. I do regular physical therapy and yoga exercises to stretch out and strengthen my core and leg muscles. And I'm gradually losing weight. I am down to about 212-215 stark naked following a run or bike ride. I know that's cheating because there's a few pounds of water weight that will come back by day's end.

But I've noticed as I lose weight and recondition my core, I am running faster and stronger now that I'm no longer running around with two bowling balls strapped to my gut (down to one!).

Also, my back doesn't hurt -- hardly at all these days. I've stopped taking the Tramadol and the muscle relaxer, just a daily ant-inflammatory. My recovery rate is quicker, and I'm now running on average five to six miles a day, with an eight or nine mile run planned for this weekend.

And now, for your listening enjoyment, "Take The Skinheads Bowling," by Camper Van Beethoven:

Road Hard

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!

Or does he?

At what point do you know it's time to hang up your old running shoes and get a new pair? Do you wait until the tread is worn down to nothing? Do you chuck them when the foamy cushion has lost its snap and is squashed to the thinness of an 80-year-old's lumbar disk? Or do you keep running in them until the odor becomes absolutely unbearable, so foul even your dog won't sniff it anymore?

I've had these Brooks Adrenalines for over a year, bought at the Running Zone in Melbourne. Truthfully, ever since I injured myself during the Tupelo Marathon last Labor Day Weekend, they haven't seen a lot of mileage until lately.

But I have noticed the tread wearing down. And the heels are wearing down evenly. That's good. That means this must be the right model for me. Other brands I've worn -- the popular ASICS 2105 and the Mizuno Wave -- tended to wear unevenly, decomposing more quickly on the outer strike zone of the heel.

And they wore out more quickly than the  Brooks. So I guess I'm stuck with the Brooks Adrenaline.

That brings me back to the original question. Is it time to replace them? Or is there still plenty of life in them yet? Can I bear the smell for another week, two weeks or even a month?

While I ponder these questions, I think I'll listen to "Bad Sneakers" by Steely Dan. I never quite figured out what the song means, but I love the line, "I'm going insane, laughing in the pouring rain."

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:

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:

Back from the dead

It has been a year since I ran the Tupelo Marathon, which has the intimidating motto: "Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead." As the motto implies, Tupelo is a grueling run in searing heat, and can tackle the best trained athletes.

I hadn't run a marathon since the previous November, and had not been training as rigorously as I should have. I also had driven 14 hours from Florida to get to the race, and probably was not in any shape to run a marathon. But I'd driven all that way to make the cut-off, paid my fee and got my shirt. And I was determined to finish this marathon, to get that medallion, if nothing else.

I ran the first half nice and easy, at a slower pace than I've started out in previous marathons. I was heading into the second half at a comfortable pace I hoped to maintain and finish at around the four-hour mark.

Well, right around mile 20 I threw a major brick. I seized up, my right hip socket seemed to go out of place. The pain shot up and down my legs. I couldn't move.

But I finished the race, with a personal worst of 5 hours, 35 minutes or something abysmally close to that. And I got my damned finisher's medallion.

I spent the next day hobbling around Tupelo, checking out where Elvis was born and looking for some good BBQ. Next day, I drove to Memphis, where I found the best BBQ in my life: Interstate BBQ. Even got to meet the BBQ god himself, Jim Neely.

And for a year since I have suffered for my sins, with unimaginable sacro-iliac pain. My inept doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, and I couldn't run. I gained 20 pounds. I felt miserable.

Finally, an MRI revealed I had disk protrusion at L4-L5, where I'd had back surgery 13 years previously. I'm fortunate that I bounced back from the microdiskectomy and was able to run and bike and stay active all these years.

But now I face the specter of never running again. My new doc (a former team doc for a big midwestern college) says no more marathons. Hang those medallions on the wall and take it easy. Sounds reasonable.

But if I give in, won't I become one of the trampled over? I've been on anti-inflammatories for a month, and been stretching and strengthening with ashtanga yoga. Yes, the right leg tingles, and the pain is still there in the lower back, but I've been slowly able to run again little by little. Four miles a day, every other day for the last few weeks, and today I ran my first 7.5, with causeways!

I feel better than ever, and plan to run at least one more marathon before I hang up my shoes for good.

Am I crazy, or is this just the exhilaration one feels bouncing back from the dead?