Life's good right now, so I'm going to try to not let anger dictate my post here. It's easy being angry about a downturn in the hunt for a condo, a rough day of work or your favorite baseball team falling apart. Those are all things you have no control over and will all be fine the next day. Your body is another story. You can't stop the aging process, no matter how much water you drink, you will get older.
So here's the full story about the right knee. It all started way back in Lake Tahoe. I was having a drunken conversation with my buddy Sam in a seedy Tahoe Casino about playing a pick-up basketball game with my other Tahoe compadres, Joey, Jay, and the mad bomber Eric Prensky. In terms of basketball, I've always been the 5th best player out of this group and Joe, has been the best. My theory was, that Joe and I could take on the 3 of them and win. I knew deep down all I'd have to do is play good D, and keep tossing Joe the rock. Sam's counter theory was they could just double team Joe the whole time and keep one guy on me. His theory almost had me back peddling but I had already boasted too much, so the game was played.
I was right though. I did exactly what I intended and they just couldn't stop Joe no matter which style of defense they tried (and believe me, they tried many). We were playing to 11, and winning something like 10-5, Joe having scored all our points. I was checking the ball in when the eye of the tiger hit me and I HAD to score the game winner. My 17-year-old mentality kicked in and I thought I could just drive the lane like I was Evan Bernard so I gunned it right at everyone, jumped, and threw up a shot uglier than someone who just woke up hungover in a pile of mud. Worse yet, when I landed, but right knee never came back.
When I got back to Tampa, I resumed my running and it just wasn't working. The knee would act up and I stop nearly as quick as I started. I started doing alternative exercises and alas, after a month or so, the pain was gone.
Over the past few weeks, I've been running the best I've ran since the mid 2000s. In fact, I'm even trying to do another 5k in 24 minutes, which WAS an attainable goal ... until tonight. I'm about a mile into my run tonight and all of a sudden my right knee starts feeling Lipps, Inc.-type funky. This happens every now and then and I can just run through it so I tried. Not happening. Then I decided to walk for awhile and start running again. Even more pain! Then I tried stretching it ... EVEN MORE PAIN!!!
Though no one will ever confuse me with a professional athlete, I see why athletes like to go out on their own terms and not due to injury. For them, their athleticism is their truest passion, and being robbed of that by injury must be brutal. I'm some free thinker that jobs because of the clarity it brings and tonight, no matter how much I wanted it, I couldn't have it. My effing body wouldn't let me have what I wanted.
So here I am writing about my damned dirty ape of a right knee, kind of pissed actually because I could only run a mile tonight before the break down. I was running so well too. I felt like I could take on the whole Empire myself today. My body said, Nooooooo Nooooooo No. I'm only 34 and I have knee problems. This sucks. Sucks rhino.
Life's good though, so I'm not going to let this bring me down. Hopefully a night of rest will bring me back to health and I can have a great run tomorrow.
Freegin' knee.
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