Couch potato

That photograph was taken just over a year ago.

I had just run my first 10k (for the record in 57:58 – not bad for an old bird!) and was feeling rather pleased with myself.
Flushed with that success I planned to work up to a half marathon by the end of 2012.

Ah well.
Pride goeth before destruction and all that.
I ran two more 10ks during the summer, then the niggly cartilage in my left knee started to nag. And then to hurt after a couple of miles. So I stopped running and started cycling. Slightly different muscles, but good exercise and it was something Robert and I could do together.

I had just got to the stage of thinking about looking for a “proper” bike to replace my old jalopy when the next disaster struck.
In early October, I spent an afternoon digging over the veg garden to get it ready for the winter. A short bout of mortal combat with a particularly well dug-in cabbage stalk resulted in a torn rotator cuff; an injury I would not wish on my worst enemy.

Not a stabby sort of pain, but what I would describe as impossibly severe discomfort. It got to the stage where I could not stand, sit, lie or walk in any position for more than a few minutes at a time. For a couple of weeks, all I could do was half-lie, half-sit in bed, propped up with pillows like some crotchety dowager duchess. I am not a good patient!

But I am fortunate in having a wonderful chiropractor.
He pulled and prodded, wiggled and jiggled until he was pretty certain where the problem lay.
Then the solution amounted to rest, ice and massage. Robert could provide the last two. The first was down to me.

So essentially I spent from the end of October until Christmas sitting by the woodburner, slumped on the sofa and doped up with ibuprofen, either typing or obsessively knitting – the only two activities that didn’t hurt. Most of my family received scarves as gifts!

It took until the first few days of this new year to realise that the pain had largely dissipated.
In the meantime, all my muscle appears to have turned to blancmange. I don’t appear to have put on any weight, so it must be true what they say about muscle weighing more than fat, but there is a definite squidginess about the mid-section that really has to go.

As last year’s hubris appears to have courted disaster, I am reluctant to put forward any sort of plan. But my walking boots are by the door and the constant rain of the last two months seems to have metamorphosed into light snow and frost, so there is every possibility that the next few days might result in some sort of exercise.
At last.