This week's prompt: What has been your greatest physical or athletic accomplishment? An endurance race, a difficult hike, a personal health goal? How did you stay motivated to reach the finish line?
I overcame chronic pain, and somewhere in the process got muddy. I am so, so very proud of that.
I have experienced sharp pains in my neck and shoulder since my early teens. Sometimes it made me not want to do things or to socialize. Sometimes I couldn't focus at work, in the grocery store or sitting at church. My father was an acupuncture practitioner and a medical doctor; I tried all of his suggestions and treatments, as well as medications, chiropractors and steroid injections. There was never any permanent relief for my pain. I wondered if something was wrong in my head. MRIs at ages 35, 40 and 45 have revealed disc degeneration, disc herniation, spondylosis, and stenosis. Looking back, I believe the pain was exacerbated because I chose to play the piano instead of doing sports for many years. I had never seen myself as athletic. I would get picked last for every team in Physical Education. I was just a skinny girl. Trying to be athletic was just one humiliating experience after another. Instead, I spent long hours at the keyboard, which was not good for my upper back and neck, though it did teach me discipline and beauty.
In adulthood, doctors kept referring me to physical therapy. In PT they teach you exercises to help strengthen the muscles between the shoulder blades. This is supposed to alleviate pain. But the minute you say the exercises are working they stop PT and leave you on your own. If you don't keep exercising the pain returns and becomes harder to treat the next time. I had never seen myself as athletic, so I had not developed any habits related to regular exercise.
In 2013 I hired a personal trainer after I got kicked out of PT again for improving. I hoped paying a trainer would motivate me to continue to strengthen the targeted muscles. For a year the workouts seemed to help and I felt strong; but then something went terribly wrong and I was in excruciating pain, worse than ever before. I have since learned that planking isn't for everyone. I gave up training and went back to my pain doctor. I was hoping for some steroid injections and medications, but instead he sent me back to PT yet again.
About that time a friend was putting together a team for a 5 mile mud run called Mudderella. Impulsively, I volunteered to do it. Despite my pain issues, I was as strong as I'd ever been after my personal training workouts. The mud, the climbing and crawling just looked fun and I forgot momentarily that I had chronic pain and that I was not athletic.
I've never been able to run any distance. In elementary school the lunch ladies made you run laps around the field during recess if you were rude to them. I was never rude, but some kids were and one day they made all of us run for the entire 30 minutes of recess. One of the recess monitors grimaced at us the whole time. I was breathing so hard I was sure I would die, but she didn't let me walk. We didn't have gym shoes at school back then either, or gym clothes or sports bras. I ran in my oxfords and bell bottom pants, and got them very muddy. My mom was angry that I came home muddy and she yelled at me. From that day forward I never liked running.
But look at me below. 35 years later, I got muddy while running again!
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| From left to right: Molly, Amber, Andrea and ME at Mudderella 2015. |
-- plantar fasciitis, IT band syndrome, piriformis syndrome, shin splints, chrondromalacia patellae, bunions, arthritis. My legs hurt, my butt hurt, my lower back hurt, my knee hurt, my ankles hurt. I was in pain all of the time from running injuries; this was on top of my constant neck and shoulder pain. I would get very out of breath after just a few yards of running. But I didn't give up, because I didn't want to humiliate myself at Mudderella. Running eventually got easier. I learned new stretches to prevent and heal every one of those running injuries. I started doing yoga. I got better shoes and supports. Over time, all of the injuries healed and running didn't hurt much anymore. Then the miracle happened. My neck and shoulder pain went away too! IT WENT AWAY! It was just gone. Running and yoga were the key.
Three years later, I'm pain free most of the time. I have crossed the finish line of 5 mud runs. Big smile here. People that do mud runs aren't any more athletic than I. We walk a lot of the course. Some of us enjoy the climbing and crawling and mud more than we enjoy running. I have pushed myself to run some of it, though. Feels good.
Whenever my shoulder starts hurting, it's usually because I haven't run in a couple of weeks. My remedy is to go to the gym and do 3 miles on the treadmill. I walk about half of it and run as much as I can. Today, people see me as athletic for a 50 year-old. It is a wonder and an amazement to me, because until 5 years ago I had never seen myself that way.
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My earliest memories of athletics. In elementary school we didn't have a gym teacher. For PE our classroom teacher would take us outside to play kickball, dodgeball or softball. Typically they would pick two boys to be team captains (never girls) and the captains would go back and forth choosing people to be on their teams. I was always one of the last ones picked. For kickball and softball they placed me way in the outfield. Whenever a ball came to me, I would put up my hands to be ready to catch it, and a boy would push me out of the way and catch the ball himself. The schoolteachers did not interfere much, which left me feeling like girls, me especially, couldn't be athletic. We didn't change shoes for gym, so I was trying to run or whatever in my oxfords. In junior high school we started wearing gym clothes and shoes, but we didn't have sports bras. The bouncing around that resulted from wearing underwire bras reinforced my distaste for athletics throughout my secondary education.
Once a year they'd line us up and test us for the Presidential Physical Fitness award. Running, situps, pullups. It was a requirement for the public school system, I believe. The teachers weren't very encouraging though. Few kids did well enough for the award. I wish teachers had set goals with us and trained us so we could be as strong as we needed to be for the award. Many of us kids could have gotten the award if we had trained for it.
On the positive side, I excelled in the gymnastics section of junior high PE. No balls or running were involved. As an adult I studied karate for a few years and did well up until my 9th month of pregnancy with Aaron. I earned my blue belt in Shao Lin Kempo. Currently, I ace my yoga class, as I manage poses few others can do. It rocks to be 50 and to be discovering new talents.
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