Time to get a grip

I wasn't going to write this one because I am embarrassed, but in the interest of being honest, here I go.

I have kept my promise to keep from jogging around the upper lake, where the roots and stones are now hidden under fallen leaves. I have actually successfully jogged around the paved lower lake, and I should just leave it at that if I feel the need to run at all. Runners know that it is very hard to give it up.

Yesterday I was walking Maddie around the upper lake, and when I saw a straight-away I just picked up the pace and jogged for less than a minute between two trees. In the second that it took for me to say to myself, "I really shouldn't do this," I fell hard. I hit my head, and my glasses went flying.

I got up and walked slowly home, feeling the bump rising on my cheekbone. I took out some ice and lay down upstairs on my bed. I think that by going up there I was hiding from Joe, who was due home soon.

It really amounts to hiding from myself. Even though I have been an amateur athlete, I am like any athlete who just can't come to grips with the limitations that come with age, and, in my case, of course, with all the things that I have been through. It also comes down to impulse control.

When Joe came home he saw the now black-and-blue area on my face and asked what happened. He could see that I was really upset and gave me a hug. We talked it through, going back over my falls and how close I have come to severe injury, notably the time I fell off my bike and came horribly close to getting run over. He said that in addition to avoiding the obvious, I have to in general pick up my feet. "You walk like your father," he said.

Notwithstanding the effects of age and illness, I have always been a little oblivious. We talked about the time when the kids were little and we were visiting my parents at Atlantic Beach. I went for a jog while they went down to the beach. Happily running along, I tripped on a loose piece of pavement in front of the house of people we knew. Dripping blood from my shoulder, I went inside and they washed me up. They offered me a ride, but I jogged back to our house, bleeding all the way. The injury left a whitish scar on my shoulder.

I seem to always fall on my left side. It is the side of the shoulder that was separated during a break from my first chemotherapy 10 years ago, when I fell during a doubles match and had to go to the ER right before going back to Boston for another round of chemotherapy.

But back to the present, I had an incredible headache last night and missed book group. We don't meet that often, and I had really wanted to go to discuss "Orange is the New Black." There will be worse outcomes if I don't finally get a grip. I think I will actually succeed this time.

A Walk to Remember

Here's some good news for walkers, and by extension for runners too:

Regular walking can modestly expand the hippocampus, a part of the brain important to the formation of memories. The hippocampus, something many of us have not thought much about, begins to atrophy around the age of 55 or 60, but the New York Times reported this week that in a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that moderate walking can help reverse the atrophy, thereby improving memory function.

A more in-depth look at the study was reported by the U.S. Department of Health Human Services.

Question: I've been walking quite a bit. Why do I still have trouble finding my keys? Maybe it would be worse and without the walking and running I'd never find them.

In hopes of being able to run without pain in my knees and heels, today I got another new pair sneakers at a runner's store in Northampton. They are New Balance 1064, and they fit Ken Holtz's criteria: single layer, firm insole. I'm going to try them on a treadmill before I take them outside.

The woman who sold them to me, clearly a runner who knew what she was talking about, said that in addition to stretching for my plantar fasciitis, I should roll my feet on something smaller and harder than the tennis ball I've been using. She said maybe use a golf ball or a ball that they sell which is hard and has little spiky things on it.

They were out of stock, and I don't have a golf ball, so I used a mini tennis ball with a smiley face on it that Donna gave me in 2003 when I had leukemia for the first time. I keep it on my dresser with a collection of other special things.

I've used it for this purpose before, and it looks a little worse for wear, but it kept smiling at me.

The blue and silver running shoes look cool and have a wavy lace that supposedly makes them difficult to come untied. I think I'll try them out tomorrow.

Running or swimming?

I just joined a Facebook group called Runners are Better than Swimmers. It has 1,578 members. Its competitor, Swimmers are Better than Runners, is, as of today, ahead in the race, with 1,783 members.
It’s an interesting time to join such a group, what with everyone (understandably) caught up in Michael Phelps' record-breaking eight gold medals at the Olympics. In an interview, Phelps said he wants to help swimming grow.
I can do both, but I put up with swimming, while I love running.

I’m a decent swimmer, and was even a lifeguard in my college days. (Passing that test, in which a burly instructor seemed like he was trying to drown me, was no fun.) I like to swim for fun on a hot day, but I don’t like doing it for exercise, especially in the winter, when there’s all that business of getting wet and the first shock of getting into the water, which feels cold at first even though it ends up feeling OK.

A few years ago, I got a common runner’s injury, plantar fasciitis. It’s a severe pain in the heel and turns out to be a big pain in the butt. I tried to run through it, but I could barely walk. I almost cried at the sharp pain even when just walking into my driveway to pick up the newspaper.

I complained bitterly. When I read up about it, I learned that other sufferers of plantar fasciitis are known to complain loudly too. A year or so before this foot fault, I had suffered mightily during treatment for leukemia. I got severe infections, rashes, fevers, the works. Yet I didn’t complain. My friends and family thought it odd, to say the least, that I made so much more noise about foot pain.

The podiatrist said that swimming was the best exercise at this point. I scowled.
When I told my friend Bob, a runner and tennis player whose hips were bothering him, he said, “Sooner or later we all end up in the pool.”

So swim I did. I had gotten very rusty, but my stroke got smoother with some practice and help from my teenage daughter, Katie, who is a beautiful swimmer. Eventually I found the Zen in swimming. Counting the laps, and feeling my body glide through the water, I felt myself grow calm and focused. And it did end up feeling like a good all-around workout.
My foot took months to feel better, but as soon as it did, I turned my back on the pool and took to the road.

Runners and their Races

The photo at right is of me finishing 

the St. Patrick's Race in the 1980s.

Most runners have a race they feel is their own. The St. Patrick's Race in Holyoke, Mass., a challenging 10K, is no more my race than it is that of the approximately 2,500 runners who run it every year a day before the city's big St. Patrick's Day Parade. But when people mention the race, I say, "Oh, that's my race." It's not because of my speed. I'm not especially slow, and not especially fast, but I am committed. I think my best time was 52 minutes. I'm not one of those people who keeps a log of race times. I look it up every year, but I never write it down. I have lost count of how many times I've run it, but it's probably around a dozen.

I started in the 1980s with friends from the former Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, a good little newspaper that lived and breathed the race, the parade, and the colleen coronation ball, which I remember as being the time when my strapless bra fell down around my knees during a dance. We went to the race for the fun, the festivities, the camaraderie and the challenge. At that time the race was longer by about two miles, following the hilly 

road that cuts through Holyoke Community College. They lopped 

off that extra challenge to attract more participants.
I took a break from the race after each of my children was born, and 

each time felt that I had finally come back when I could do the race again.

After my leukemia went into remission, I ran the race twice -- last year and the year before. For reasons that I will explain later, I couldn't run the race this past Saturday, when it attracted a record-breaking number of participants, more than 3,000. I did, however, go for a little jog at 1 p.m., the time the race started.

Our area has two big races: St. Pat's and, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the Talking Turkey race, six miles around a beautiful reservoir also in Holyoke. My friend was raped at that reservoir, and for her, running that race was proof that she was stronger than her fears.

Similarly, when I returned to St. Pat's, the race that led me to the discovery that I had leukemia, I felt like I was facing some kind of demon and also celebrating a rebirth. I was nervous, excited and scared, all at once. Most importantly, I was a runner, not a patient. And when I finished, at a little over an hour, my mixed reactions showed me that I was thinking like a runner, too.
First came the exhilaration of crossing the finish line. Then came the critical thinking.
"I feel pretty good," I thought. "I could have gone a little faster. Well, maybe next year."