Jiminy Cricket

My ultimatum of Friday has come and gone and the verdict on my knee is it’s better but it’s not healed. While pondering why my hip and back got better but my knee didn’t, I remembered an innocuous incident getting out of the shower. A small little slip as I was transferring weight caused my left leg to slide and twist away from me. That was Friday morning when the knee pain became constant. I feel better knowing the why. It’s not some phantom injury sustained just because I’m old.



My knee is still sore so I’ll stay off the running for another week, but I refuse to spend another week just sitting. I didn’t even go to dance last week and that irritated me to know end. I have a few low impact (i.e. no jumping and very little squatting-type motion) at home workouts planned as well as a couple of longer walks. If the weather stays like it is today, I’ll need very little convincing to get out for my walks!


In my exercise boredom of the last week, I started looking around online for group sports to possibly join over the summer. Initially my plans had been for a recreational soccer or baseball team. Usually, I’m out doing something physical by myself or doing something social involving sitting and beer. It would be nice to have a healthier balance of the two during the beautiful summer weather. Somehow I ended up on the cricket website.


I say ‘somehow’ but I know exactly how. I went to see Out of the Ashes at the Victoria Film Festival (excellent film by the way) and ended up sitting beside a few cricket players from Australia. Hunky men with accents can pretty much cajole me into doing anything so I sent off this email to the women’s team:

I know the upcoming season is a few months away yet but I was just looking for some general information about it; mainly, if someone joins and has no experience, do you teach them what the heck they should be doing or do you enjoy just watching them flail about while taking bets on how long they'll last? Also, costs, equipement/outfit requirements. You know, things that a complete novice should probably know before joining. I'm a thirty year old girl who just thought learning to play cricket would be a bit of fun. I think I held a cricket bat once. I was about 8 so my memory is a little hazy. I think my dad was trying to teach us about cricket but making daisy chains was much more interesting. And I occasionally drink at the Sticky Wicket. Obviously, if those are my cricket qualifications, I really do mean 'complete beginner' when talking about my cricket level.

If that doesn’t have them beating down my door to get me to join, I don’t know what will!

Question: Do you enjoy team sports?

To Knee or Not to Knee...

I am once again handicapped in my workouts because of my knee. I slept badly one night and woke up with a sore back. When my knee and hip on the same side of my body started to ache later that same day, I figured it was because I was walking oddly because my my back.

The back pain cleared up within two days, the hip around the same time, but the knee pain lingered... and lingered... and here I am one day shy of two weeks later and my knee is still very sore. Last week I pushed through it because it was sore but it didn't hurt. I went running on Tuesday morning and Thursday evening (with the Swede) and although it felt a little sore the day after, it always felt great during the run and immediately after.

Saturday, however, I cut my run short because my knee didn't feel right. It didn't hurt, but I didn't want to push it any further. I ended up just going for an extended walk.

Cut to Monday. I treated myself to lunch at Pig as I hadn't been to their new location (although I was a very regular customer at the old hole-in-the-wall). While waiting for my to-go order to be called, I dropped my key pass on the ground. I squatted down to pick it up and the pain was so intense that my eyes welled up with tears as I gasped loudly enough for a few heads to turn towards me.

Tuesday, the same thing happened when I squatted down to check on my cat who was having some problems coughing up a hairball. I think the noise I made in reaction to the pain scared the hairball out of her.

Today, well today it aches every time I stand up. This is not good.

Dance and running are (temporarily, I hope) cancelled while I ice like crazy. I'm giving myself until Friday and if it's not better, I'm making a doctors appointment for next week. This is something that needs to be solved, not just for running but for for life in general.

Sport-tastic Weekend

This weekend is a huge one for sports: Six Nations Rugby!!! Oh, and apparently some thing called the Super Bowl is happening this weekend as well. Beyond the occasional game of flag football, I am not an American football fan. Rugby, hockey, real football soccer, those are sports I follow.

That's my baby brother holding the ball. Bloody knee and two guys hanging off him,

his tenacity ended in a try and then he converted it. That's my sport.

Seeing as Six Nations games were all played on Friday and Saturday, I figured I'd use the Super Bowl as an excuse to head to my local coffee shop and sit for five hours in relative quiet and just read. I mean, isn't every one else at a Super Bowl party? Apparently not. I forgot that I live in an artsy-fartsy community. Everyone and their dog was at the coffee shop, so I grabbed a coffee to-go and returned home.

On the workout front, I kind of fell of the wagon this past week. Whereas the week before was off the wagon because I actually had other priorities, this past week was off the wagon because I was lazy. Lazy is what got me into this mess in the first place so I'm going to have to work on that. The upside is that my new (possible) running partner told me why he didn't follow the path to professional soccer: knee injury. Hopefully that keeps him running at a slower pace.

Here's to a better workout week and Ireland taking France by five points next weekend!

Run It Like Beckham

I think I may have found a new running partner. I say 'may' because he offered to join me but he also hasn't seen me run. I have informed him that he is in no way going to be held to his promise of running with me more than once, but secretly I hope he will continue to run with me because I miss having a running partner. Plus, running with an in-shape Swede will help me feel like I should be out there when I see tiny little girls prance by.

For some reason, people always think I meant to say 'Sweden' when I tell them I lived in Switzerland.

Just so we're clear, I have never lived in the land of the Swedes... only the land of awesome chocolate.

That's right. I'm importing my running partners now! That's how I roll. Who doesn't want to be friends with someone who might possibly have a couch I can sleep on in an awesome not-here location in my future travels? The Swede and I met at dance class and over the past five months have become friends. He found out about my running goals and kindly stepped up to help me. Awesome! Well, kinda...

See, the Swede was on track to become a professional footballer (soccer player, to most of you) when things didn't work out and now he travels instead. Let me repeat: PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLER. You know, like these guys:

This is the only time I have looked at the Italian soccer team with something other than disgust.

I dislike the Italian team. As I drunkenly told an Italian one night "the Italians are the biggest opponents to soccer becoming a Summer Olympic sport because they'd never be able to field a soccer team and a diving team."

Something tells me that he and I probably have different ideas about what it means to go for a 'run'.

At Least I Danced

Despite only having one formal day of work this week (today), it has been a long week. Physically, I didn't do a whole lot. Of course, BFSD (Bad Fish Sunday Dinner) really didn't help as it took until Wednesday to feel normal, but if I'm being honest it was a combination of laziness and other priorities. I am on the board of a non-profit and we have our annual weekend retreat up to Shawnigan tomorrow. I'm on the planning committee which is organizing and facilitating this event, Exciting? Yes. Stressful? Only when I stop to actually think about it. I still made sure I got out for longer walks but I was okay with letting the running slide this week. The deal I made with myself was to get back to it on Sunday and I know I'll stick to that.

I did, however, make it to dance on Wednesday. I know I say this at least once a month on here, but I can not stress it enough. I LOVE my West African Dance class. I loved it even more when another student cornered me after class for a quick comment. "I wanted to tell you that I love watching you dance. There's just something about the way your body moves, like there's a joy in it or something. I love the cross floor work because I really get to watch you and I could watch you do these steps for hours."

How could I not love that comment? It still has me smiling. My body loves to move so much that other people can see it. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that.

Life Lessons

Lesson #1: If the fish seems like a little sketchy, don't believe "it will be fine once we cook it." It won't be and you will spend what was supposed to be a productive day, well, not being productive.

[Source: NBC]

Absolutely Nothing To Do With My Goals

One of the things I've really enjoyed about blogging finding other blogs I enjoy reading. When I started doing Chilkoot Chubby, I stumbled into the new-to-me world of healthy living blogger and was amazed how many there were. Initially, I really did stumble. I'm still not totally sure how I ended up even finding the first dozen although I do believe that too much coffee and a twitter feed may have been involved.

One of the earliest blogs I started following was the Great Balancing Act written by Susan. I've been stalking reading her blog for roughly a year now and it's been a great source of information as well as a great jump off point for other blogs to read.

A while back Susan mentioned in her comments that elephants were her favourite animal. Someone else said something about them being gentle giants. Having been in a car when an elephant started to charge it, I had to chime in. I told Susan that I would tell her the story some day. Today is Susan's birthday. If that's not as good a day as any to tell this story... you can find it here.