Back to Back
Back in the dim corners of my memory, I recall a song in which a farmer-fiddler sat on his porch fiddling away while his roof leaked rain all over him. A passing traveler advised him to fix his roof, to which the farmer replied, I can’t. It’s raining. The logical traveler suggested that when the rain let up, he could do it easily. The farmer kept fiddling and said, Get along for you give me a pain; My cabin never leaks when it doesn’t rain. As a kid, I thought that was pretty funny.
I bring this up because in some ways, I am like the farmer with respect to my health and in particular regarding care of my aging back. I am fortunate to have never had any major back problems beyond occasional sciatica and other leg pains originating in there. But as the years … and years … go by what were once nuisances are sometimes debilitating, limiting what I can do. This week was a perfect example. I awoke several days ago with aching calves, the sort of aches I used to call dead legs in my long-past marathon days. You’d think by this time in my life I’d immediately assume my back is the culprit, but as a former runner, the first thing I do is pick up my Runners Repair Manual (quite simply the best book on leg and foot problems for runners) to find our what might be wrong with my legs. Yes, I am allowed to use The Runners Repair Manual courtesy of the grandfather clause in my running contract. But sooner or later, it dawns on me … the problem might be my back so I do a few back stretches. The pain in my legs subsides momentarily and I can feel the tightness in my back. So I start a regimen of heat on my lower back, anti-inflammatories and regular stretching and almost immediately start to feel better. And within a few days to a week, I’m back to normal.
However, if I did those stretches regularly … and paid some attention to my day-to-day posture (I tend to be a sloucher) … I would avoid those bouts of leg pain. So, there you have it … Oldereyes doesn’t do his stretches regularly because There’s no need to stretch when my legs don’t hurt. From the vantage point of a 73 year old non-stretching ex-runner with sore legs, the fiddling farmer doesn’t seem so funny any more. The damnedest thing is that just a few simple chair stretches, shown here, seem to keep the leg pains away. Once again, I’ll add the stretches to my Things to Do in the Morning list. What do I do when the list of Things to Do in the Morning takes all day?
Tags: back pain, feeling older, humor, senior health, stretching
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