Downs and Ups

This weekend has only confirmed my belief that an equilibrium is always achieved in life.

Last night I went out and got a little too drunk, a little too irish, a little too feisty.

I woke up saturday morning with a slight headache, went to the meet in Syracuse feeling less than 100%, and very bummed that I couldn't run. I watched and cheered for my teammates, wishing I could be out there pounding around the track with them.

Got home, rode the bike for a while, ate dinner, still not feeling real well, not excited at all for saturday night festivities.

One thing lead to another and we (myself, Newell, Pop) ended up at Red Jug. I was tired, not feeling great...ready to go home and go to sleep. Pop wanted to go to Dark Horse, so as a good friend and wingman I agreed to go in for a little to check it out. Not at all thrilled about it.

(By the the way we were wearing newspaper pirate hats and I had a fake mustache on.)

Sometimes life is funny. Sometimes you go into a bar and see the girl of your dreams. Sometimes that girl tells you that she has a crush on you. Sometimes you have that conversation wearing a fake mustache you got from K-mart.

Sometimes life's not so bad.

Cabin fever

I'm slowly losing my mind. I haven't been able to do anything for the past five days. The trainer told me that I couldn't do anything that involved heavy breathing. Breathing heavily causes my ribs to shift, which aggravates them more and more. To be honest the first day or two was kind of nice. A break from the grind of running in the cold was good. But by now I'm getting real antsy in my pantsies to start doing something. Things that involve heavy breathing are all I enjoy. I can't run, I can't bike, I can't lift. I don't even have any school work to do because this "institution of higher learning" is a joke. I've been reading, watching TV, drawing, and eating (a lot).

I can't take it anymore. I'm going to ride my bike. I feel like an idiot having a bike and trainer taking up 3/4 of the space in my room when I'm not even using it. I'll see you on the other side if I lose my mind. I take comfort in the fact that most of my friends are clinically insane already so I'll have plenty of company in the looney bin.

Injuries

Getting injured is a part of any sport. Actually getting injured is a part of life, especially if you live an active life. Whenever I get hurt, people inevitably tell me that I'm accident prone. No, no I'm not. I'm active. I may get hurt every once in a while, but for the amount of activities I do, I'm actually quite safe.

I have always said that I would never let my running or cycling take over my life, that I wouldn't be afraid to live my life just because I might get hurt and risk missing some time. I've been thinking a lot about this, especially now that I have to take a few days off because of my ribs, and the subsequent back spasms brought on by favoring my left side.

It's hard to know that because of something you did, that in one instant, all the fitness you have worked so hard to get will all be lost, to know that day by day, that fitness is leaving you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Maybe I should just stay in my room except when I go out to run.

I've decided that I can't live my life like that. My wild side is something that makes me who I am. I may get hurt now and then, and that may not be the best thing for my fitness, it may not be the best way to get to my goals, but I truly believe that living a full life, that experiencing everything you can trumps being cautious and timid.

That may mean getting hurt occasionally, but the beauty of endurance sports is that the pursuit of fitness never ends, it is ever-present. An injury gives you the opportunity to come back more motivated and hungrier than ever before.

Ribs

As most people that read this probably already know, I've been running for the last two weeks with a rib that is most likely cracked. I crashed snowboarding and came down hard on my left side, and I've been in pain since. This has not been an enjoyable experience. Imagine if you will, a large russian man named Drago jamming his fingers between your bottom two ribs as hard as he can every time you take a deep breath. That's how it feels. I'm doing my best to run through it, seeing as they don't really do much for cracked ribs anyway. But it's tough to run when you can't breath. I think I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but this is starting to get to me.