That was the day I learned that being in fairly ok bike riding shape had nothing to do with running. I did finish in under an hour. Just barely. I turned the final corner to see the big clock that said 00:59:22. So I had a block or two to go and about 38 seconds to get there. I sprinted for all I was worth and reached a speed of upwards of 10 miles an hour. Hobbling across the finish line to the cheer of all the thousands of people who had already finished.
I think it was about a week later that I was able to walk again without any visible signs of injury. It was a tough week.
The worst of it was my right hip. It has given me pain off and on since that day (I don't know the year - but I figure it was roughly 15 years ago).
After that day, whenever I decided to get back into running, the pain in my hip would start up. Well, every time except one.
One winter at least 10 years ago, I got to a new low weight (about 190) and decided to get back into running. I decided I'd start slow and quit each session at the first sign of any hip pain. This way, I figured I could gradually work up to running fitness.
It kind of worked. I did a 5K the following March in under my goal time of 25 minutes. Brady helped pace me in on time on that one. He had finished his race and went over to where I was and ran along side me and coaxed me to get across in time.
That particular race featured a keg of beer at the end. Free beer until it was all gone. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, it was gone in well under 25 minutes.
I had no hip pain after that race.
Once I got away from running after that, I have never been able to start up without pain. It didn't matter how slow I went. Running brought pain.
It has been getting worse since last winter. I injured myself trying to jog on the treadmill as part of a warmup for squats.
Squats are far and away my favorite strength training exercise, but that one day of jogging for about 10 minutes, 14 months ago has left me with too much pain to do them.
This winter, I've been warming up on the rollers and trying to do squats (no weight) as much as I can. I can usually get about 5 to 10 in per set before the pain makes me stop.
A couple of years ago, I talked to the doctor about the problem and said it doesn't bug me too much as long as I ride and don't run. He seemed ok with that, so I was too.
We have a couple of rental properties. I am a Lord of some of the finest land near the Benson area. At one of the
So last month I put the big stack of cash in my wallet and went to the bank to deposit it. While I was driving to the bank, my hip was bugging me quite a bit. It was the same pain as always, but I hadn't been having much pain before I put the extra cash in my ...
Doh!
So 15 years later, I had a thought forming in my brain. I was driving along, furrowed brow, thinking:
"Hey ... I know."
"What if ..."
"All this time ..."
"The problem has been ..."
"Me sitting on my Costanza-esque wallet."
It can't be that simple. So I immediately dismissed the idea and did nothing about it and have excruciating hip pain to this day.
The End.
~~
Ok so It's probably too early to tell, but after I wondered if maybe my wallet wasn't at least partially to blame for my pain, I looked for an alternative to carrying my money in my back pocket. I tried a couple of different things, but ended up with a solution that I like ever so much. It's basically 2 sheets of carbon fiber the size of a credit card and a strap. I put my cards, driver's license, insurance cards, Regal Theater preferred customer awards card (just kidding), Tile wallet finder, and some cash in it and carry the whole thing in my front pocket.
I have had a little lingering pain since I started doing this 3 weeks ago but nowhere near the pain I had before. Also, I'm on week 2 of squats with more weight than I've used in years and no pain. Yaay me!
Here's a picture of the thing. It's made by a company called Fidelo and it's pretty sweet.
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