Climb every mountain....

The hills are alive with the sound of Carol huffing and puffing...Isn't that how the song goes????

I made the comment several entries ago about how I wasn't going to be coming back from zero, I was going to be coming back from -100.  I didn't really know what that was going to mean to me physically, but I knew it wasn't going to be pretty.  And I was right, ugliness has ensued...

I'm alternating days with physical therapy exercises and cardio.  My muscles aren't sore, and I can do about an hour of cardio (made up of elliptical, bike and arms) at a shot.  But after I'm done with the exercising is when the true ugliness begins.  The physical therapy exercises aggravate my hip.  I'd be aggravated too if I hadn't been used, and didn't have connection through the nerve, forever and was all of a sudden asked to do workout stuff.  Yeah, I'd be pissed.  And my hip is.  After a great p/t workout, I have a hitch in my giddyup for the rest of the day.  And we know that I am also working to get rid of the hitch in my giddyup.  So I'm getting a temporary hitch to get rid of a permanent hitch.  Head exploding yet???

While the physical therapy exercises exhaust me and my limbs, at least I do them in the privacy of the therapy office or my own home.  My cardio ugliness takes place on a more public stage.  The gym.  My place of refuge is also my place of laughable movement.  I usually start on the elliptical for 10 minutes or so.  Then I hobble off of that, trying to get my legs under me without tipping over into the elliptical next to me or wandering into oncoming treadmills.  Then I go to the torso cardio machine where I can sit and pedal with my arms for 15 minutes.  By the time I'm done with that my legs have turned into lead and getting up takes two hands and a heavy dose of relief that this machine is bolted to the floor.  I attempt to walk around a bit and end up at the drinking fountain to refill my bottle.  I then hobble off to the bikes where I sit my ass down on a seat and start pedaling for 35 minutes or so.  Removing myself from the bike resembles more of a slither off the side and then, by any means necessary, I get myself into the locker room having made it through another day.

This is not hard work for me.  I love working out no matter how hard or just stupid looking it is.  But it's afterward, when the pain and aches set in, that I have a hard time.  While I'm working, I can forget how it feels.  There isn't pain, there is just achievement.  But afterwards when I ache to the very quick of my being, when every movement brings discomfort and laying on my back is the only position that is comfortable, I realize that this is what the -100 is.  It isn't sore muscles or physical exhaustion.  It's something completely different.  It's anguish.  That's the only way I can describe it.  It's nothing I've ever experienced in all the crazy workouts and events I've ever done.  It's -100.

This too shall pass.  My body will work it's way through it.  I can't go faster to get it over with, and I can't go slower to make it better.  It is what it is.  The important thing, the only thing, is to keep going.