injury & recovering.

July of 2022 and after nearly two and a half years of generally slouching, working from home, catching (and mostly recovering from) COVID, discovering a knee injury, and slugging out a lazyaf training plan (just barely) with the excuse that world had gone to shit, I decided I needed to turn it around. For reals.

This is what I am doing to get some...

active feets.

... a kinda blog about healing, restoration and recovery.
1 year 4 months ago

Among other frustrations, the inevitable finally happened. It slipped my mind to do my daily pushups

For the last 40ish days, I've been incrementally adding to my daily push-up tally, working up from a modest 20 reps in early August to missing the mark of hitting 60 (which I would have done yesterday... had I not forgotten!) In all, I accumulated a respectable one thousand, five hundred and eighty push-ups. And combined with all my swimming, I'm feeling quite a bit of strength improvement in my arms and chest.

So today, I'm restarting and kicking off a slightly different challenge, not resetting but instead leveling out and trying to do a maintenance push in my fall 50s pushup challenge.

For each day over the next, um, let's say until at least Halloween, I'm going to do fifty push-ups per day. No increments. Just trying to get to a grand total of two thousand push-ups before the end of October.

(To cut myself a bit of slack, I'm going to implement a single day catchup rule. As in... if I fall asleep at the wheel again, I can do double the next day to get catch up.)

In the meantime, my second challenge officially begins today: fifty push ups per day. Go.

1 year 4 months ago

September 2022

I've been recording a lot of zombie time lately.

That has nothing to do with the quickly approaching Halloween season nor with my unfortunate gait that has resulted from a damaged knee ligament. It's just what I've been calling that mental paralysis that results from having free time, a vague list of hobbies, and decision fatigue.

An example scenario:

It's 7pm on a weeknight. I've done a full day of work. We've eaten dinner and cleaned up. The dog has been walked and the kid is hunkered down texting her friends for the evening. It's not a night for a workout so I'm pretty much free to do something else of my choosing.

I could go in the basement and practice my violin (did I mention I play the violin?) A high value. way to spend an hour. Um. What else?

I could sit down with my art gear and do some painting (did I mention I'm into watercolours at the moment?) A creative and relaxing way to spend the evening, perhaps with a podcast or audiobook in the background. Hmm.

I could write a blog post. That would be fairly productive. Though I don't really feel like I have much to write at the moment. What else is there?

I could play some video games. I've been working my way through the latest Assassin's Creed installment and and hour with that would be fun. A chill bit of time before bed. But, then again...

I could watch some television. I have a few shows I've been working my way through. A less valuable use of time, but still relaxing after a long day. Sigh. I really should do something more productive though.

Instead, while I waver back and forth, I flip on the TV and load up YouTube. I'll just watch a five minute video while I try to motivate myself. Virtually, completely, a total waste of time.

Not motivated yet? Another? Another... another... another. Oh look, it's bed time. I've just spent the evening in zombie time.

i've ordered a paper journal

It's a fancy one. It's from one of those companies that makes high quality notebooks and watercolour paper.

How does this fit into a technology blog post? Or into a recovery blog post?

I see it like this: technology or tools that enable us to plan and organize our lives, our days, our motivations in a way that allows us to accomplish our goals may be almost as vital to success as the right running shoes, drinking enough water, or having a good social support network.

I get my runs done (well, right now my swimming laps done) because I timebox. Mentally, at least.

I set a goal.

I pick a time.

I fill that time with the planned activity to achieve the goal.

I'm going swimming on Saturday morning. That's when I'm going. That's when I'm planning on going. That's when my opportunity to go will be. That's when I need to go. If I don't go then, I'll sit on the couch and end up watching YouTube until the time evaporates into nothing.

I'll zombie time my Saturday morning.

And while this may seem like I have my days and motivations under control, really I've just applied this to my fitness and it's a lingering effect of having to be accountable to a running crew. We run on such and such an evening or morning, so we run. Now I've been swimming in those same time slots.

I haven't put the same sort of time boxing around my other bits of life. I haven't set thirty minutes aside for working through my scales and some music on my violin. I haven't put two hours aside on a Tuesday evening to paint something with my watercolours. I haven't given myself to kill ninety minutes on a Monday before bed enjoying a video game.

Instead, I do none of those things because I struggle to prioritize myself on the fly.

So, I've ordered a paper journal. A calendar with months and pages to do some kind of bullet journaling, time boxing, check list making effort.

People swear by such things to organize their lives.

I'll find out soon if I'm destined to be one of those people.

1 year 4 months ago

Shit.

A day and a half ago I was writing all smug about my successful second recovery run, excited that I seemed on the path to amping up my running over the next few weeks.

In the middle of the night after that run I woke up to a throbbing pain back in my knee. Ignored it, because I half-hoped it was just some residual swelling or something, and went back to sleep. But. But all day yesterday the pain was back close to full throttle. A full on, limping around the house, hobbling on the stairs, too painful to even walk the dog, right back to where I was six weeks ago.

This morning it's still a little stiff and achy and I was able to walk around the park without too much bother.

Yet, now I'm not one hundred percent sure where that leaves me.

My plan has me doing a swim tonight (which is not a problem) but scheduled to tackle a three klick run tomorrow.

I'm reconsidering. Seriously. And wondering what my next steps are on this little knee-capped adventure.

Sigh.

Shit.

Bigger sigh.

Stay tuned.

and more.