Push, push, push...

This morning's jog held little in the way of overheard conversation, except for a man who passed me (everyone passes me) who was saying that maybe the reason he felt so bad yesterday was because he hadn't had anything to eat all morning.

"Watson, quick, man, the game's afoot and it's weak from lack of food!"

"Good God, Holmes, surely you don't mean...?"

"Yes, and the disguise is fiendish. He's managed to add inches to his height, dye his hair, change his voice, but we know why he ate nothing yesterday morning! With that, he's given himself away...that, and the fact that he's still wearing that adult diaper..."

Giving birth to an improved cardiopulmonary conditioning is like having a baby; you keep telling yourself to push, but unlike childbirth, you aren't sure what the outcome is going to be. After plugging along and seeing my heart monitor barely register a vital sign, I wondered if I would ever, ever manage to get beyond my jog-this-block, walk-the-next-one mode. Would I ever be able to do it without struggling? Would I eventually breeze through without watching the clock or speeding up just to reach the end of the block so I could rest?

Then, after all that musing as I plodded along, it dawned on me that something had changed: I wasn't going as slow as I was yesterday. I even had the energy to try different ways of jogging--short, fast steps, or slower, longer strides. In a fit of frustration, I picked my feet up and actually ran the last third of a block--shooting my heart rate up to 153 but feeling absolutely wonderful. It was then I noticed that I had lost track of the time and had gone ten minutes past my 30 minute session. Hope springs eternal!! And when this birthing process is over with, I won't have to stay up nights for weeks on end feeding a colicky baby!

Advil days

In a short while, it's out to the jogging path for me. Again, my knees do not hurt! But at the moment, I'm waiting for my Advil to kick in. Okay, this theory that jogging would flood me with endorphins doesn't seem to be happening, but my women's running book states that it takes a few weeks for one's body to adjust the these new demands. Until then, "...a few aches and pains are normal.."

Well, my fibromyalgia has decided to respond to that remark by indicating which body parts are, let us say, aching and paining as they adjust to new demands, and these random parts seem unrelated to jogging, folks. Following is a brief list of said aches and pains:

My back, between my shoulder blades.
The right side of my neck.
My lower back.
Both hips.
Temporarily, the balls of my feet (only for a few minutes) and the underside of a single toe which is not injured in any way--it just decided to join the party.
And last but not least, my teeth.

I'm used to this, and my legs do not hurt! It's the rest of me that seems to be about to fall apart, but that business about the teeth really has me stymied. Am I gritting my teeth with the effort of finishing my jogging program each day? No, that can't be, my mouth is wide open in order to get as much air as possible into my lungs. It's my jaws that should be aching as I stretch them beyond human endurance trying to get oxygen.

The only thing I can figure out is that they are the final resting place of the jolt as each foot hits the ground during my jog. This is absurd--are we going to need running shoes that claim to protect your teeth??? Well, whatever the reason, we are just going to put up a headstone on my molars because final resting place or not, my teeth had better get used to the ride. So there.