Waiting

Good news/bad news: I am very nearly off of prednisone. The "good" portion of that is self-explanatory. The "bad" part is that I am broken down, a few steps slower, not healing, and in general, in the dumps a bit. I have had problems with my IT band (a common but persistent running injury) since the beginning of the year, and now the other one has decided to flare up as well. After a few disasterous long-distance trail attempts in the last several weeks, I have decided that I cannot continue to move forward without taking a few steps back to try and get this stuff healed. It's a good thing that it's summer time and a little bit of a slower pace, because there don't seem to be enough hours in the day to ice, massage, stretch, strengthen, and repeat. It's like an obsessive-compulsive routine on a daily repeating loop. And it still just seems to get worse. I ran 6 miles last week. Total. Ouch. I have been riding my road bike in hopes of maintaining fitness, and as a last holdout of physical activity, but I am about to hang that up as well so that I can say that I am truly doing everything that I can to try and heal this IT misery. I've had my heart set on the Midnight 50K in late July, but it seems to be slipping away quickly with every day that goes by with the same knee-to-hip pain. I can definitely see the addictive mechanisms of steriods... what we hear about in sports is a different type of steriod, but the same psychological addictions must be at work. When you're on them, energy is high, body recovers quickly, and mood is good. It's tough to come down from that, you know? Plus, my poison ivy doesn't heal as quickly... ;-)

(patience is a virtue... too bad I stink at it!)