Knitiot Savant

What do you think about?

When I run I try very hard to keep my mind quiet and still.  I listen to the music coming in on my iPod, hear the occasional thud of my feet hitting the pavement, a car engine but I let those sounds swirl by.  I want to be present in my running.  More often than I'd like my ability to quiet my mind flutters away and I find myself thinking.  Lately I've been thinking a lot about my best friend in 8th grade.  Her name was Cherie.

Cherie was a big girl...not in the sense of being overweight but in stature.  She had dark hair and eyes and was taller than most girls and at 13 had a very mature body.  Cherie seemed confident in everything she did, which was in sharp contrast to me. 

I was the new kid that year.  We'd moved again and this time I got to face Jr. High not only as a skinny, awkward, underdeveloped and ugly teen but as the new kid.  The suck factor was high.

I don't remember the specifics of how we met but I remember the event itself as clearly as I remember my wedding day.  Cherie introduced herself first, naturally and I, not willing to looked up responded with something like, "Hi.  I'm Susan.  I'm new."  Cherie hesitated and said, "I've seen you before.  You're always looking down.  Why?  There's nothing to look at down there." 

We were best friends until she moved away a couple of months before the year ended.  We spent the night at each other's houses, ate lots of french fries and talked about boys.  I don't remember where she moved and I don't even remember if we wrote to each other.  I do, and did to this day, remember not to look down.  Ever.  There really is nothing to see down there.

When running is hard or life just sucks shit, I remember Cherie and her timeless advice.  Pretty smart for a 13 year old.

A New Year Pick Me Up

Wanna guess what I did yesterday morning?  No.  It didn't involve knitting.  I did that on New Year's Eve.

I had this post in my head about resolutions but ya know what?  Running, knitting, living, parenting...it all takes adaptability and a willingness to improve and learn.  A new year doesn't change that, it just makes us all hyper aware of stuff about ourselves and our lives that we'd like to improve.  Don't get me wrong, I've got goals but I'm going to let them unfold as the year progresses.  Sort of ramps up the suspense, huh?  Or not.  I could be wrong.

Anger Management

I don't ask for or accept help easily.  It is a serious character flaw.  This flaw is the reason I waited over one month to see a doctor about my hip.  I was angry about his suggestion but followed it; physical therapy 3 times a week for 4 weeks.  I went to the PT.  I was angry about the cause of my injury.  The cause of my injury was not that I didn't stretch enough.  It wasn't running on the road even though I'd done the majority of my training on a treadmill to AVOID injury.  It wasn't even caused by the extra weight that I'm carrying.  No.  My injury was the result of my fucked up hips.  Bad hips.  Bad like I'm so limber I can do shit that would make a prostitute blush.  Bad hips like they roll in and, when I run I'm running against what my hips want to do and it leads to never, ever running pain free.  I can't control the cause of the injury and loss of control made me mad.  I'm into my second week of PT and I'm mad and feeling defeated.  I get to run in therapy but only in a harness suspended above the treadmill taking 60lbs. of weight or more off my hip.  I'm not so mad then because I get to run pain free.  I think that I'd finally decided I wasn't going to run again.  I can't fight the genetic legacy of my hips.  I can exercise, strengthen my core and try not to slump but, at the end of day I'm one freakishly limber woman.  I was mad and I was going to quit.  Until tonight.

Tonight I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill.  I took it easy, paid attention to my hips, my posture, scrutinized my reflection in the glass to make sure I wasn't rocking and rolling like a drunken sailor.  I ran for 27 minutes before my hip decided it had had enough.  Twenty seven minutes and they were ALL pain free.  I wasn't suspended from anything.  I was carrying every bit of my weight on my own feet/ankles/calves/knees/hips and I ran.

My hip aches now but because I finally asked for help, I have pain medication.  I have exercises to do and a few more weeks of PT.  I'm not so mad now and I'm sure as hell not going to quit.