An Old Man Back

In my mother’s later years, one of her favorite sayings was, The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be.  She certainly had more than her share of maladies to deal with as she aged.  To my mind, it is proof that God or nature (depending on your stance on spiritual matters) doesn’t dole out maladies according to virtue of the recipient, otherwise she would have had a much easier time of it.  On the other hand, I had reached 77 with virtually no major maladies.  That may prove the same premise because although I have tried my best to be a good man, I am not the saint that my medical history would seem to indicate. 

Friday Favorites 1/18/2013

A while back … in the Paleozoic era … when I was doing several marathons and triathlons plus an assortment of 10K runs each year, my training regimen consisted of cycling 100 miles, running 25 or 30 miles and swimming 4 or 5 miles a week.   It was the only time in my life that I had to try to eat more so that I wouldn’t lose weight.  The book that got me started was the 1977 best seller, The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx.  By the time Jim’s reputation as a running guru was tarnished by his death from a heart attack after a training run in 1984, I’d moved on to more specialized books like Jeff Galloway’s Book on Running, which in its first edition included a training schedule that I used to train for my first marathon and Scott Tinley’s Winning Triathlon.   Like most runners, I found that dealing with leg and foot injuries were part of the process, perhaps more in my case because I had more upper body mass than most runners.  Every book on training included at least a chapter on preventing and treating injuries but I needed more.   The more I found was The Runner’s Repair Manual by podiatrist Murray F. Weisenfeld.   My training books have departed from my bookshelves for places unknown … library donations, our storage bin or those unidentified boxes in the garage … but The Runner’s Repair Manual lives on in my nightstand because I know, as long as I am ambulatory, I will deal with leg and foot pain.