Into a wall, Speed
I headed to the track last night for my 3rd consecutive week. 24 hours earlier I assumed I was going to have to skip this week as I had sharp shooting pain in my lower right back for some unknown reason. However when I woke up yesterday the pain was gone so I decided to hit the track. I also had decided that I was going to increase the laps from 4 to 5, my plan for slow progression that would hopefully lead to being able to run a 5K again in March.
The run itself went ok. I had seemingly normal levels of discomfort the first couple laps which went numb later. I felt a little knee pain but again wrote it off to par for the course until my body warmed up more. Running 5 laps didn’t feel more challenging really than four, I am sure if I had to, I could go longer. After I ran I did my normal stretching, nothing felt particularly bad. However when I got home that changed.
My first sign was when I was trying to kick my sneakers off in the garage. Trying to get the left shoe off sent discomfort through my left “good” knee. It was mild but I could feel something was different than how I felt the previous two runs. As last night progressed I could feel more soreness creeping into the knee, it was the deep seated variety, a sensation I am very familiar with. It was starting to feel like it did when I injured myself running the parking garage two years ago. God damn it.
When I woke up this morning it was full on hurting, somewhat swollen and I was depressed. It seems pretty clear that whatever took me out of commission two years ago with this same knee has flared back up after only three short running sessions on flat ground. I’ll see how things go but I have read this book many times before, I know how it normally ends. I am not happy. Rebooting the act of running is good for me mentally. Having it hit a brick wall so quickly is another reminder of the futility and frustration I have been feeling in many ways.
Yesterday I got a new Fire TV Cube. I had one of the 1st generation cubes. It had become really slow when loading streaming apps and would inexplicably burp back to the main menu in the middle of a show pretty regularly. I bought a current gen cube as supposedly it has better hardware which equals better performance. Hooking it up was easy as I could use the cable/cords from the old unit. The difference in performance was indeed massive. I had become so accustomed to an app taking 30 seconds or more to come up, when they were loading almost instantly it was a shock. Responsiveness was like night night and day. I was very happy with the purchase. Amazon has a trade in program for their old devices. I was able to get $15 for the old unit in the form of a gift card, a win/win for me. It’s nice when something actually lives up to and even exceeds your expectations. It doesn’t happen often.