I suffered my first running related injury this weekend--that is, if you don’t count the time in high school when our cross country team went on a road trip and we ate at a Burger King and the pecan pie made me sick.
I didn’t break anything but I wrenched my foot pretty badly. A long, narrow bruise begins near my toes and swoops all the way back to the corner of my heel, like a blueberry-colored racing stripe.
I’ve been dreading this. It’s the start of the diminishing returns for exercise, when you’re old enough that trying to stay fit does more harm than good. For example:
Exercise is for chumps, as that wise philosopher Denis Leary tell us: “Have you seen these people who are using the stairmaster? What’s next, the chairmaster? I sit down, I get up, I sit down, I get up, I sit down, I get up! The doormaster: I open the door, I close the door, I open the door, I close the door! Folks, you wanna go up and down steps, move into a 5th floor walkup on the lower east side.”
The worst part is arriving at work on Monday and seeing all the vacant, beautiful handicapped parking spaces right near the entrance to the building. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to walk those few extra steps? But no. You have no right. You have no blue card. You may be tempted to tape digital pictures of your bruised foot to your windshield with a note attached that says “JUST RETURNED FROM ABU GHRAIB, I HAVE THREE STARVING CHILDREN,” but the fact remains: there are others who are just a little more “differently abled” than you. So you park in the lot and get out of the car and hunch along with a noticeable limp, until someone says: “Oh, my cousin has the exact same condition. He eventually went to work in a church clocktower.”
My biggest fear is that I’ll die while anything by Britney plays in the background.
my dog and I take the same medicine - glucosamine chondroitin. He’s been sick lately and the vet discontinued his G-C pills; I figured I didn’t need them either. I figured out this weekend at the furthest point of a run across the GG bridge that I was wrong. Stupid decrepitude. And I don’t even get a racing stripe - though I do have a jaunty limp and and endearing groan when I straighten my leg.
Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. That’s truly the beginning of the end.
I just started running at age 33. I run to the store for beer. I am so not kidding. I don’t even run to the nearest one either.
I think parents of big babies should get handicapped placards. It’s a lot easier now that he can walk on his own. He just doesn’t usually want to walk in the direction that I’m going.
aren’t assassin ninjas and “toxic” playing redundant as deadly devices?
Ah, good old Quasimodo…
I gave up running at 22. I couldn’t deal with the short shorts. Or the shin splints.
Also, thanks to you, I now have a Britney song stuck in my head. No, not “Toxic”. The sappy love song. God, make it stop!
Wow, you signed up for that assassin ninja aerobics class too? That was when I quit all that “exercise” bullshit for good. Who needs it?
dude, i’m older than you are, and i just started running (you know, for real) this winter. if you need to take time off from it, take time off, go swimming, biking, whatever, but don’t bitch about age because that just seems insulting.
on a not-at-all-related note, last night was the fête de la musique and i heard “toxic” played by an all-brass band. it was slightly weirder than “hit me one more time” played by a brass band, but actually way better than the original.
Am I the only one who thought it was cool that Denis Leary managed to conceal a veiled Yes quote in his joke?
Leary: “I get up, I sit down, I get up, I sit down, I get up!”
Yes: “I get up, I get down, I get up, I get down, I get up.” And then a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really make any sense unless you’re on a LOT of drugs.
Damn, I guess I probably am the only one who thought that was cool.
Continuing your theme: Yesterday, while moving my (unusually heavy) exercise bike, it slipped and ripped loose a quarter of the toenail on my big toe.
old sucks.
but still, i can do everything now better than i could when i was 22.
i just can’t do it as often.
i think roseanne (when she was funny) said it best “don’t go on any goddamned diet cause your never gonna lose any goddamned weight and it’s never gonna make any goddamned difference. if you’re fat, be fat, be happy and shut up. and it you’re thin, fuck you.”
I feel your pain. No really, I do. I’ve got the one-crutch limp today from crunching my ankle something good. Sucks, huh…