A New Problem for my Feet

That's right.  Kittens.  We have an infestation of kittens in one of our spare bedrooms.  The little orange one is named "Strax" and the black one is "Domovoi" (aka "Domo"). 

They're completely insane, adorable, cuddly and friendly, but they, particularly Domo, have decided that my feet -- the same feet that bring them their food and toys -- are an enemy to be relentlessly attacked at every occasion.

I'd be annoyed at them, but they're just so cute.  

They're probably going to be restricted to the spare bedroom for another week or two while Strax fights off a problem with his eye.  Plus, we want to very gradually introduce them to Higgy and Elizabeth, who are not going to be happy about this.  And we have hide all the sneakers.

A Furry Friend Lost

A little over 15 years ago, a tiny, mostly black kitten tried to claw his way up the leg of my jeans.  I was less than thrilled with this.  My girlfriend, Chris (who is now my wife),  had adopted this little cat, Pooka, and his brother, Higgy, the prototypical brown tabby, over the summer before our senior year of college.  I was less than thrilled with this.  Pooka passed away very suddenly yesterday, and now that one of my furry buddies is gone, I'm a complete wreck.

He was a great friend to us, and I'll always remember him.  He was always happy and outgoing.  After Chris adopted him, he adopted me.  I didn't particularly like cats, but Pooka decided that I was his friend, and he was going to pal around with me.  It didn't take long for me to grow very fond of the big, black, happy cat.

In his mind, everything in the house belonged to him and everyone in the world wanted to be his friend.  If you talked to him or petted him, he would be purring in seconds.  If you started petting him, there was a great chance that you had made a friend for life and an excellent chance that he was going to roll over to expose his tummy for rubbing.  Indeed, it was very common, as I walked around our house, to randomly come across Pooka lying on the floor with his tummy up in the air, purring.  He was a big, friendly, noisy presence in our house.  It feels empty here without him, and we will miss him greatly.  He was a great friend, and we could not have asked for a more awesome cat.

 This sad day could have come 10 years from now (15 corresponds to roughly 80 in cats), and I never would have been ready.  That said, I'm thankful for every day that I had with my great, soft, purry friend, Pooka the Cat. 

Pooka was not as good at hiding as he thought he was.

Post-race naps will not be as cool.

Foam rolling will never be the same.  Pooka always stretched with me before a run.  

Then, he would run the four feet to the kitchen in world-record speed.  

He usually made funny cat noises when he ran.

He was soft, cuddly, and good-natured, but he was also a fighter.  He had a lot of medical issues over the years and he always came through it with his good Pooka cheer intact.  Thanks to our friends at Valley Green Vet Hospital, he got to be an active, happy kitty for over 15 years and he was his cheerful self right up until about noon yesterday.  I'll never forget the time he came back home after having bladder-stone surgery when he was around 8 years old.  Drugged-up, he stumbled out of his cat carrier, took two steps and fell over.  I was concerned, but when I went over to check on him, he was already purring.  

After surgery, his tummy looked like it had a happy face on it.

He had to wear a cone for a few months in the winter of 2011.  After he got comfortable with it, he was hilarious.  It was then that he often started making a "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" noise as he walked through house. So I'd hear him coming and then I'd hear a "bonk" as the cone caught on a wall or table.  Then, pause.  Then, after he'd confusedly adjust his direction, "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" and off he went.  

Or lastly, just a few months ago, when a pinched nerve or related issue caused one of his back legs to be paralyzed, it wasn't long before he was climbing out of the big bin that I'd made into his nest.  He never quite walked normally again, but just a few days ago, my wife and were marveling at some of the jumps our big old kitty friend would still attempt, and make.

I could go on, and on, and on with my favorite memories of Pooka.  But mostly I'll just remember how soft he was, how loud he purred, how friendly he was to both his biological brother and their younger adopted sister, and just how happy he was and how happy made us.  You're perfect, Pooka, and I'm glad we got to go through the last 14 years together.  

This Isn't Fun Anymore

That's what I said to myself on Saturday morning, as I set on the steps of Northeastern Middle School, breathing heavily, a veritable river of sweat running down the steps and into the parking lot below.  I don't mean to complain in saying that, but it's just a fact for me right now.  Nothing about running is enjoyable for me these days.

Two miles, a distance that used to be extremely easy for me, is a struggle.  I probably can't run a 5K right now and I feel like I'm a few weeks away from being there.  The half marathon I'm signed up for in October is probably a stretch physically, anyway, but mentally, it just seems completely outside the realm of the possible.

More troubling, is that I just don't want to run more than two miles right now.  I mean, why would I?  It's hot, it's humid, and it's hard; just not enjoyable in any sense of the word right now.  Really, I probably can -- and should -- try to push myself up toward 3 miles this coming weekend to get a better read on my compartment syndrome symptoms.  I'll definitely need a change of scenery for it (rail trail, maybe?) because I definitely am feeling bad vibes about just running it in the neighborhood where I usually run, where I limped back to my car so many times last year and earlier this one.

Again, I don't mean to complain, but I'm not sure how I fix the mental/motivational aspect of this.   I think I just need to accept that until I get some more conditioning back and the weather cools down, that this is going to be miserable.  It's just harder than usual to see the big picture when I really haven't had a really good, enjoyable, or rewarding run since the first half of last year. Today's run wasn't as miserable as Saturday's, except for the part where I tripped on uneven sidewalk and went flying.  That kind of sucked.

Meanwhile, I'll be out there on the road on Wednesday or Thursday morning, hating every second  of it.

Again?

2 miles.  18:18.  So, my fastest run of the new era, but that's not really important.

What's important:

• No compartment syndrome pain through 4 two-mile runs (last Thursday, last Saturday, Tuesday, and today).  Again, not conclusive by any means, but a good sign.
• I felt really out-of-breath.  I was going to do two mile runs this week and next weekend, and then start trying to move up, but I feel like I'll probably be "stuck" on two a little longer than that.  A) I want to be cautious and B) I hate running in warm weather, so this was the worst time for me to begin a comeback.  I'd like to push myself up to 3, even if I have to mix in some walking, in the next two weeks just to get a sense of if my symptoms are really better, or if they only seem better because I am not running far enough.
• Someone upstairs is clearly telling me that running is stupid and I shouldn't do it anymore.:

And the Crowd Goes Wild!

Today, I started my Wellfit Infury Prevention Program, a sort of post-physical therapy supervised workout program that is a lot easier on the wallet than continued PT. ($45/month rather than a $50/session copay).  That's another post in and of itself.  But, because my therapist shares a name with an NBA Hall-of-Famer, I'm inspired to do what I like to do best on this blog:  tell long, rambling, pointless stories.

I was not a terrible basketball player in my youth.  At least, that's what I told myself.  I had a 3-year career as a shooting guard and small forward in 5th, 6th, and 7th grade at St. John.  I wasn't a good scorer.  I think I scored a total of 19 points in those 3 years, but I was good passer and rebounder, and I really did work hard in practice. In 5th and 6th grade, I played on the Jr. Boys team and in 7th grade moved up to Sr. Boys.  We played the local public schools and got routinely annihilated, going winless in my 5th and 6th grade years.  

In 7th grade, the shrinking parochial school only had one team for 5th through 8th graders (there were no 8th graders on the team, so my 7th-grade friends and I were the veteran leadership of the team.  Ha!)  We also bumped down a league, so we were playing the bigger public schools' "B teams".  We still lost more than we won that year, but we were competitive and it was a lot more fun than getting destroyed game after game.  I still remember our first close game.  We pulled out a nice lead against one of the local Catholic middle schools (their "A" team, too, I think), when our coach put the 5th-graders in to get them some playing time.  And they blew the game!  I understand that in youth sports it should be more about participation than winning, but most of us hadn't won a game our whole careers!

After 7th grade, I switched schools to a larger (graduated with a class of...65!) christian school.  I went out for the basketball team in 8th grade, got cut, and didn't try out in 9th grade, but I continued to ball with my neighborhood and school friends.

Meanwhile, in 10th grade I was in a sports club that would go over once a week to play basketball, touch football, or soccer at the local park.  I stuck to hoops, and playing among my friends I did very, very well in all phases of the game.  Indeed, often the court was covered in goose crap, meaning there were like 100 extra defenders on the court, and I'd still play very well.

With encouragement from my friends, I got the idea to try out for the JV team.  Luckily for me, there were few enough returners from the previous year that they really weren't making cuts.  So, my career was resurrected.  I worked my butt off in practice, and I think I genuinely improved a lot. One time, I even think I scraped the bottom most molecules of the rim with my fingertips.  

I liked being on the team, enjoying the early dismissals for road games and the camaraderie as we rode the team bus to opposing schools, blasting hair metal or 90s rap music to inspire us, and watching most of the game from the bench.   I didn't get a lot of playing time, but I don't think I embarrassed myself or the school when I was in there.  I was realistic, knowing I was one of the last two guys off the bench, but only once did my lack of playing time really, really bother me...

We were down at least 40 points late in the 4th quarter at Littlestown, a public school in Adams County, but I had still not gotten in the game.  With about 5 minutes left, our coach stormed off the bench to go help the varsity coach, his brother, prepare his guys for their game.  The assistant coach called me over at the next time out and says "Brian and (other last guy off the bench), I don't care what happens, just go out there and try your best."  I always appreciated that.  I quickly got the ball and got fouled.  I was only about a 60% free-throw shooter, if that even, and I missed my 1 and 1.

But I got another chance on the next possession. I grabbed a long rebound and had an open jumper just inside the corner of the foul line.  I released the ball, and to this day I can still picture the perfect arc and see the rotation of the ball...

...as it soared completely over the backboard for a very embarrassing air-ball.  With only a few minutes left in the game, the gym was filling up for the varsity, and so quite a big crowd had a great laugh at my expense.  I was not so amused, but I did follow it up with another rebound and a made shot from the same place on a later possession.  When the coach heard that I got two rebounds and scored, he seemed pretty impressed.  I belive the final score was 60-12, so I was by default one of the leading scorers.

I didn't play the next year, when I probably would have been warming the JV bench again as a Junior. However, I think I still continued to get better playing against other JV and varsity guys at weekly church youth group meetings  through the rest of high school, and I even played pretty well in intramurals my freshman year of college. After that my mad skills started to decline via rust, but I'll always have that memory of the ball soaring over the backboard.  

Go Away, Nature!

I live on a back road in a semi-rural area, but for safety and laziness reasons I usually run in a slightly flatter, sidewalk equipped, normal suburban neighborhood a few miles away.  

But, even though I was in normal American suburban neighborhood and not my backwoods trail of terror, I still a saw a big blacksnake on my two-mile run this morning. 

I couldn't get my camera phone to work (to either dial 911 or take a picture), so here is an artist's rendering:

Needless to say, I ran a bit faster than I did on Saturday.

Trying Again

I ran two miles on Thursday.  That may not sound like much, but it was the first two miles I've ran since April 20...which is also about the last time this blog was updated.

I have not been idle during that time.  I've been fairly diligent with the exercise bike -- since biking was the only cardio my orthopedist said I should do while I was rehabbing -- and also lifting more consistently than I have at any time in the last 3 years.  I've still been trying to earn my donuts.

I've been in physical therapy during May and June, learning new stretches and exercises that I hope will help me avoid the knife.  I've had my muscle fascias for 36 years, after all.  I'd like to keep them.

My run on Thursday was humbling:  2 miles in 19:04.  That's fine, and honestly, I couldn't care less about speed right now.  But afterward, I felt like it had been years, not months since I ran.  Parts of my legs of hurt that hadn't hurt since I decided to take up this stupid sport in 2006.  My quads were still sore from Thursday when I headed out for the second run of this latest comeback (2 miles, 19:34) this morning. I'm sure they'll hurt like hell tonight.  I was completely out of breath.  I can go 60 minutes on the exercise bike, no problem, but running is a whole different beast.

But its what didn't hurt that's important.  Shins=fine.  Ankles=fine.  Calves=sore, but regular soreness, not injured sore.  (I think I can tell the difference!)

It's a small sample size.  Just two runs at a distance where symptoms might not show up. I'll know more at 3 miles, I think.

I'm by no means out of the woods yet.  But right now, I'll take this gladly.