Saturday, February 11, 2006

Back on the Horse

It has been a slightly worrying past few days with my back. I was getting really bad twinges in that lower left lumbar region on Wednesday night. I think it was brought on by all the sneezing associated with my cold. Twenty years now I have lived with this bastard of a thing. There have been times when it has left me near debilitated, the most recent lasting from mid 1999 to late 2001. I remember one episode a couple of years before that trying to walk the 300 m from our place to the doctors, and just about collapsing with the sudden whang! that would hit every couple of slow and precarious steps. I was 34 going on 84 (the age my dear old dad actually did turn yesterday, the same day I turned 43). I first got it as a recent university graduate doing some work on a field research station extracting soil cores with a hydraulic tube coring machine mounted on a tractor. We had to push the cores out of these stainless steel tubes and it was quite a vein-popping job. Soon after I was hobbling around with this crook back. And though I got better I have never really gotten better, and despite a few x-rays over the years, the closest thing I have had to a diagnosos is a herniated disc. Abdominal strengthening basically keeps the conditon, and pain, under control. But some pain and discomfort is still a constant companion.

Anyway, after a couple of days off it was feeling a lot better today, and despite still being sniffly I went out for a run in the afternoon. My 13 year old son Kohta accompanied me on his bicycle, which was a pleasant experience. The temperature was a positively balmy 12 degrees. We covered a bit over 10.5 km at a shade slower than 5 min/km. A nice cruisy run. My back felt a bit uncomfortable, but not sore. At one stage running through a populated area Kohta, riding behind me, cam up and said he'd overheard a woman say that I looked crooked. Bloody hell, it's that bad?  The crooked old bastard of a marathoner. That's me.

The beer mile got accepted as official. Gareth is going to be insufferable.


4 comments:

Katie said...

I hope your back settles quickly!!! It is such a awful thing to live with... makes your running achievements all the more impressive!!

Clairie said...

Well that means it was your Birthday!!! Happy Birthday Cobber!!

Hope you had a good one and drank enough to drown the pain of the back out.

Like Kit said - I hope you get it sorted out, though not likely if it has been troubling you for so many years. At the very least I hope it becomes manageable again and does not prevent you from doing anything - most especially running!

2P said...

You can take the boy out of Aussie - but you can't take the Aussie out of the boy - at 43 (Happy Birthday BTW) and an Australian male - a crook back is de rigueur ;-)

Seriously mate - hope it gets better soon.

Tesso said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEVE!!!! Gee, you almost got away with that one.

Fingers crossed the back improves soon.