Random Stuff

I realize that I haven't been posting a lot lately (that's an understatement) but I have been busy, with work, planning a wedding, getting the house and yard in order, and running, of course.

Tomorrow I am doing the MORE Half-Marathon in Central Park, really more for fun than anything else. It's a good cause, with the money going towards women's charities (you have to be a woman to run in it!) There's also a MORE Marathon taking place at the same time. That's a lot of bitches in the park...:-) A bunch of women from my running club are doing it. Kewl.

Some updates:

I was in rehab for a month. No, not the Amy Winehouse kind, the physical therapy kind. From time to time, you may have seen me write about this annoying pain in my hip upon getting out of bed in the morning. It would only bother me in the AM but once I got moving and took my shower, I was fine. Or so I thought.

It didn't hurt me while I ran but I knew that something wasn't quite up to snuff. I felt an imbalance of sorts, as if I was off-kilter. There was a heaviness in my left hip and leg that wasn't there before. I told Tom that I was going to get the hip x-rayed. His reaction was that little aches and pains are part of getting older. I disagree. Little aches and pains can become big ones and can also be indicative of something more serious going on, like arthritis. To me, getting older does not have to equal living in pain.

I looked in my insurance plan and found a sports doc at Lenox Hill Hospital. I waited in his office about 30 minuntes which I realize is the norm for a big NYC doctor, he saw me all of 5 minutes and sent me for a x-ray in the same building. It was then that I realized that, with the exception of my teeth, I have never had an x-ray in my 50 years on this earth. I was expecting a big production but that, too, took all of 5 minutes.

The good news: I don't have arthritis, thank God. In fact, my bones were in pretty good shape for some who's taken as many falls as I have on the trail. After doing some manipulations of my hips and legs, he determined that I had tendonitis in the glute area, which is a fancy way of saying pain in the ass. I also had a very tight iliotibial (IT) band. All from overuse.

The treatment consisted of PT 2 times a week for 4-6 weeks, daily doses of Advil and icing the affected area 10 minutes at a time.

To make a long story short, I found a wonderful PT guy literally right across the street from my office. He had me doing exercises to strengthen my ankles and IT band plus we worked on balance. I emabrrassed to tell you how off-balance I was.

My problem was cleared up within a month and I fell like a new person. No nagging pain when I get out of bed. I ran a 10-mile race last week in Freehold and finished in 1:25:24, my second best time ever for that distance. (My best was in 2005with a 1:25:02).

You see, I had gone to a chiro and massage therapist. Now while those treatments are good things, they are temporary fixes, in my opinion. If you have a problem that's not going away, you need to pull out the big guns. Glad I did.

Other stuff. Something weird is going on in the deli where I buy my lunch. No, I don't mean the increase in prices--that's everywhere. Most of the time, I eat salads for lunch, because they're cheap and I like them. I get either egg whites or grilled chicken on romaine lettuce with broccoli, black beans, corn, peas and walnuts. You're supposed to get a small slice of pita bread with your salad. One to a customer. There's one guy, however, who always shoves a second piece of bread into my salad. At first I thought it was just an oversight. But I asked my co-workers and they don't get extra slices of bread. Is that weird or what? Do I look that forlorn that perfect strangers are slipping me extra slices of bread? Please, I don't need the extra calories, thank you very much.

My oldest brother is very sick but he's in denial just how sick he is. Without going into tremendous detail, my brother has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF). Plus, he has to have an operation to repair a faulty valve in his heart. Needless to say, he is NOT an excellent candidate for surgery. He's 65, a former smoker (when I say former, I mean he just quit this year upon threat that he will most certainly die if he continues to smoke), and he has CHF. So, I am worried, yes. His attitude is "at least I don't have cancer." I don't know if he's trying to be funny or not, but neither one is a great hand.

Most of these problems are due to bad lifestyle choices on his part: the smoking, bad diet (which has now improved due to the wonderful woman he's married to), lack of exercise (he's golfs but that's about it). And I can't even pray for him because he's an atheist. So, I just tell him I love him and leave it at that.