December, December.

 I just found an old October blog which I didn't publish for some reason, so it's been sitting in draft. Presumably there was something else I was going to say or do but never got around to it.

I am still a bit gimpy but running about 15 miles a week, which is a whole lot better than where I was for much of the year - so I try to be grateful. My knees are swollen - or above my knees technically - which could be this or that. Having been to see my GP 2 years ago with a swollen knee I feel like there's no need to repeat that, although obviously I could be wrong. Don't you ever do this but I did take the course of Naproxen (I said earlier it was Diclofenac, but it wasn't) which my GP prescribed 2 years ago - and I think it helped my knee be less stiff, but didn't make a radical difference. I bought an expensive wrap thing which gives off near infrared light and is meant to penetrate into muscle and beyond and increase circulation and reduce inflammation and what-not. It did seem to help my calf heal as it had stayed the same for ages and then rapidly got better. The wrap thing was so expensive (I can't even remember now - like £250 or £300) that I found myself avoiding telling Peter - partly because I knew he would be snide about it but also partly out of some kind of archaic guilt. Then I remembered it was my own money and I could spend it however I wanted.

There is some research into near infra-red light and injury healing which I can't be bothered looking up. I think the story was that 'they' (the scientists of course!) were using red light to help plants grow in the space station and noticed that the astronauts skin was looking good afterwards - and looked into it and realised it did something or other. Elegantly put, I know.

I've still been going to see Steven McQuinn, and I believe in him. He is straightening me out. Thank God. I always knew someone should. I'll go back and see him in the New Year. I can't really begin to tell you what he does. I've tried already. He finds your sore bits and hurts them, and then you feel better afterwards.

Sometimes I think I have got it, like Eliza Doolittle, and I am running from my core - but it takes me 3 miles to warm up and by 5 miles I'm exhausted because I don't have any kind of a mileage base. So I'll need to be patient, which is not my strong suit.

Meanwhile we have just been to Tenerife again for 3 weeks. I had to limit what I did more than normal, which was a shame, but it was a nice time anyway. I have made you a ham-fisted slide-show because I'm generous that way. Music is Stan Getz/Astrid Gilberto "Girl from Ipanema" and I know - it might be a Portuguese - but you know, that's quite Spanishy.

Put the quality up to 720. Some of the photos from my smaller camera still look quite ropey at that.

It might be time to do a summary of the year because I may well forget to come back again until next year. It has been a funny old year and not always laugh-out-loud.

Some things have been outrageous. The outrageous thing for me this year is that Peter's lovely brother Neil has been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. 

He'd been having trouble with his swallowing and some trouble with his speech and had an initial diagnosis of myasthenia gravis. That's an auto-immune thing and isn't great but it can come and go and there are treatments for it. You can keep it at bay and sometimes it remits.

Motor neurone disease feels a lot more scary, and they've told him it's a terminal illness. I balk against that because they don't actually know that. It's not well understood, and sometimes it remits. So I guess you can say it's often terminal and leave it at that. It's affected his speech a lot, but he's still working because he wants to. Apparently it affects your metabolism so he's had to ramp up what he eats and limit what he does so as not to lose too much weight. He's being a star about it and tells me "it's reality" and shrugs. He's leaning into doing his music and art which he loves.

My thoughts about it are that life can fuck off with that shit.

My mum, who looked set to be leaving stage left is somehow or other still here. She had a stroke, recovered from a stroke, fell and fractured her pelvis, recovered from the fracture. It was her 97th   birthday back in April and we thought there wasn't much chance she'd make it to that - but she did - and now she could maybe make it to 98. Her take home piece about this is that she doesn't recommend living past 80 as it just gets worse from there. She doesn't suggest an alternative though.

On that happy note I'll wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

October

 It's a grey rainy Friday and it's Peter's birthday. I have been to the dentist and then me and PB have been a wee walk just to get us out the house. He has just a touch of sciatica, although it's better than it was, and my injuries were feeling better too. Not running better, but better.

I've been walking but not too much and then cycling on Zwift to keep some fitness going. I still have to discipline myself not to try too hard because that's how I did whatever I did to my calf and that's what I'm still trying to get over.

Happy Birthday PB

I've been trying a few new things just to see if I can't rehab myself better, although I really think the most important thing is trying to be patient and not overdoing things. I am most at risk when I feel like things are getting better because I feel like just trying a bit harder will maybe do the trick, but it generally just sets me back.

I quite like trancing out on Zwift for an hour or two, cycling in a world with no traffic and no brakes and no headwind. I have a slightly uneasy feeling that it's morally wrong or antisocial or something. I went out in the real world the other day on my bike though and cycling in the traffic is not pretty. I came out a side road at the WGH, with the traffic lights, and a car that was coming along the main road must have gone straight through the red light without even seeing it - it never even slowed down - suddenly we were in the same space and should not have been - happily I got to the far side of the road before it cut through the space I had just been in. I don't know if it ever saw me. It pulled into the next road on the right, so maybe it did and had just gone in there to hide. I was left with an uncomfortable amount of adrenaline, wanting to beat on the car and say "you just nearly fucking killed me you pill", but there was no opportunity.

So cycling in the city sucks, and I can't get excited about flying about the East Lothian roads. Not at the moment anyway. Somehow I can't bring myself to go swimming either. I did quite a good stint in the last couple of years of going and putting in the lengths - but sometimes - especially at Leith Victoria - it's more like swimming in a supermarket queue than anything else - and I really like exercise for being a chance to let my mind roam free....

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Anyway, I was going to tell you about what I've been trying that is new. Well one thing is Steven McQuinn, pain medicine man. Well really he's a massage therapist. I had heard of him from a couple of Carnethies and also Nick Williamson. I had heard that he does some extraordinarily sore things but gets some quite amazing results. I was gimping about the place and thought it was time to try something different, and also I wanted to test how manly and brave I am.

At the time of going to see him, not only was my right calf sore but I had either a sciatic pain or a hip muscle pain that was really excruciating at times. Having to sit for long periods of time - especially driving, was really pretty awful. My left knee was giving me gip too, so walking up and downstairs was a problem.

Steven gives you a bit of talk at the start about what he's setting out to do. If I've understood him aright, it's something along the lines of...as we get injured and compensate we get misaligned and our core stops working properly. We should be working explosively out from our core but if the core isn't working then more distal groups of muscles try to compensate and do a job they're not really built for. Then they get injured and even more distal groups of muscles kick in to try to do the work. Something like that. So he tries to straighten you out and then works on the more distal muscle groups.. Also that we store old tensions and traumas and memories and they can release too. I'm interested in the parallel between this and therapy, because generally it's our compensations that get us into trouble. Something happens and we find a way of surviving and coping with the situation - but then we continue to do whatever it was past the time it still serves us and becomes something we are stuck in - like being too independent, or working too hard, or not working at all, or...you name it. There have been various therapists who have tried to work with peoples' personality structures through their musculature and how they hold themselves - anyway - I digress.

The first time I went nearly everything was exquisitely painful - he shows you how to breathe through it. Some of it I could nearly not stand. Some of it wasn't so bad. The most obvious immediate benefit was that somehow, amongst other things, he had got my left knee working properly again and I could go up and downstairs  on it. The stuff on the right hand side had eased a bit but hadn't gone away. He said my fibula wasn't tracking properly and did something to that.

I went back in 2 weeks and he worked me over again. Some of it was easier to take, which I presume means that I was carrying less tension.

He does some muscle testing before and after he's worked on you to see how easily you can push back with your quads and glutes and also tests how much your hamstrings will release, and both times there was a big difference by the end.

So what's next? That was a couple of weeks ago. He says go back in 4-6 weeks and we'll see where I'm at. I think the idea is that once you are working from a core that's properly released, any injuries you have will clear up. So actually a lot of it is doing quite well - the calf thing is the main thing