Wednesday, July 24
When I was a kid, they didn’t have organized sports for girls until you hit junior high. That’s how my first introduction to the concept of “getting in shape” didn’t occur until I was in seventh grade, and I went out for the basketball team. This was something I had wanted to do ever since I learned that my mom was an all-state basketball player in her day. I’m not sure I ever thought about a possibility that didn’t include playing basketball; I wanted to match what she had done.
That first year must have been brutal; I think I’m kinda glad that I don’t remember the pain that came with getting in shape that first time. I know that we did the fun stuff of basketball practice: shooting hoops, dribbling the ball, practicing passes. But I also know that we did the hard stuff: running laps, doing pushups and situps, and - oh the pain of it all - running line drills. Line drills were the things where you started at the baseline of the basketball court, ran to the free throw line, then back to baseline, then to the half court line, and so on, until you had run the entire length of the court, all as fast as you could. They were killers. And we all had a love/hate relationship with them. We all raced each other to be the fastest. We all complained about them before and after (we were too out of breath during to complain then). We all knew that the good practices were the ones where we ran line drills, because we knew they were helping to keep us in shape.
Those first few weeks of basketball practice were, I came to learn, always killers. It all hurt. In the days after basketball practice started, we were all sore and stiff, nursing muscles that we didn’t know we had. We hobbled around. We wore the pain as a badge of honor.
But then after a few weeks, we were well on our way there. We felt our muscles get hard and lean, it took longer to run out of breath. Sure, when we had a really hard practice, we all might be moaning and groaning again the next day. But nothing like those first few weeks.
I came to love that feeling. The feeling of getting into shape, of being in shape. Of strength. Of fitness. Of health. This sequence of events happened every fall, and then again in the spring when track season started. Spring soreness was never as bad as fall soreness, since we were usually coming off basketball season, and didn’t start from so far back. We became perpetually fit during the school year. We were defined by the seasons of fitness all through junior high and high school.
When I went to college, I lost that. And missed it immensely. I gained my Freshman Fifteen, and felt miserable. By my third and last year of college (I did the fast track thing), I was ready to do something about it, and enrolled in a Personal Fitness class. It may just have been the favorite class of my college career.
In Personal Fitness class, I learned about fitness. About nutrition. About aerobic exercise. About weight-bearing exercises. I started running - just a little at first, and then longer and longer, until I was stringing together a mile, then a couple of miles, then three miles. I went through the “getting in shape” phase, and oh, how I had missed that soreness, that proof that I was actually getting strong and lean.
In the intervening years, I’ve pretty much perpetually stayed “in shape”, at least in some small way. There have been times when I’ve had to take time off (other surgeries, other illnesses, a few broken bones), or times when I ramped things up (like doing marathon training), or times when I’ve done new things that exercise muscles that haven’t been getting used in other ways (like weight-lifting or Pilates or my-very-limited-attempts at yoga). I’ve always welcomed the chance to feel like I’m getting in shape again. The soreness - that bit of pain - has always been the confirmation that I’m working hard enough, that I’ll get back to some level of fitness.
This knee thing changed all of that.
Before surgery, my running had come to a stop. My knee just wouldn’t allow it. So I was walking, but even then, my knee sometimes rebelled. I kept up with Pilates classes until the bitter end (my last Pilates class was two days before surgery), and I did some easy weight-lifting to try to stay in shape as best I could given the circumstances. But I knew that going through recovery was going to feel a lot like starting from scratch. Just like that first day of basketball practice.
I was down with all that. Really. Remember, I love the feeling of getting into shape? I was ready, eager, and willing, just as soon as my new knee could take it, I was going to be on it. That pretty much describes my first three weeks of recovery.
But then my setback - that damned tendonitis - changed everything. When the PT advice was “do nothing”, it was probably the worst prescription I could ever be given. I almost forgot that I would ever be able to get in shape again.
But then, this happened. A bunch of doing-nothing time. A new anti-inflammatory drug. A cool little TENS unit. A new PT who gave me new exercises. A surgeon who said “I want you to walk! I want you to ride a bike!”. More icing. Fewer and fewer pain meds. Building up some walking distance again, block by block, day by day. Building up my cycling time, one minute more each day on the stationary bike.
Which is how it came to be that yesterday at lunch time, I decided to go for a walk around the block. Ed was out, so I went solo. I walked up the block, going south - it’s a tiny incline, you can’t really call it a hill - then turned east, then turned back north again. I had the weirdest sensation, and I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was. After all, I concentrate hard when I walk these days, trying to get my leg extended as far as I can, trying to remember to go heel-toe in my foot strike, trying to remember to let my arms swing naturally. It’s a lot to think about, which seems very weird for something that is such an every-day, matter-of-fact act for most people.
Then I figured it out. It was my leg muscles: they were complaining. They were not complaining about surgical pain. They were not complaining about soft tissue inflammation. They were simply complaining because I was using them again. They were giving me that old “hey, you’re making us get in shape, and well, it’s a bit of a pain” message.
Nothing has ever hurt so good before. If I could run or skip or jump the rest of the way home, I would have. But I’m still working on walking, so I did just that: I walked the rest of the way home. With each step, I couldn’t help but think how good it feels to be getting back in shape again. Even if it is a bit of a pain.
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