Plodding along...

Something must be working in spite of the heat, in spite of fibromyalgia kicking in with barometric changes, and in spite of the move because I am managing to lose weight rather painlessly. None of this would have been possible without a training group and without an athletic rheumatologist. Almost everyone else has recommended doing, basically, nothing except perhaps some mild yoga, but my rheumatologist told me to fight fibro with running. I think he thinks I'm going to become flooded with endorphins and thus be able to leave off medications.

Well, the endorphins are there but they can't hack the work, and when I tried to leave off one of my medications, after about a month I noticed that my aches and pains began slowly to increase in intensity, so I went back on the medication. Now I'm back to my usual level, some days bad, some days good, but familiar.

There seem to be a considerable number of people running with injured knees, more than I have seen before for some reason. The vast majority of runners appear to have healthy knees, but there are a lot of people running with tight bands below the kneecaps to keep them from moving down, a few with complete knee support with only the kneecap exposed. I was sure that my knees were going to act up when I began trotting because they have been banged up over the years--falls, slipping in the bathroom, being hit by a running dog right on the kneecap, tripping over sleeping black dogs in a dark hallway, you name it. More than once I've had a hugely swollen knee bandaged in order to manage to walk. And yet, for some wild and incomprehensible reason, the old knees have held up just fine, thank you. Not a twinge, not a single groan, nothing whatsoever. If this keeps up, lordy, what tremendous luck.