Another torture session

This morning I had my weekly date with the Torture Master (who is more professionally known as the physio).  A good thing because last night's run / walk session was rather hard work. 

Almost instantly I had this burning sensation on the side of my right leg - the very same spot I've been struggling with for a while now.  I kept at it because that's what the physio wants me to do and I kind of signed up for this event, so kind of don't have a choice..., but it was hard work and my session wasn't particularly good.  At times (or most of the time really) it feels as if I'm making no progress at all which is a rather frustrating feeling.  But then if I look at last Saturday's session where I first did a 6km bike ride and then a 4km run / walk straight after then I am actually making progress and I have come much further than ever before in my life.

I've never been very good at sport and this is the first time in my life where I'm actually willingly going out for these run / walk sessions.  At school I played some netball, but wasn't particularly good and didn't enjoy the positions that ran a lot.  In my one high school all the kids were very much encouraged to participate at the start of the athletic season where the two house teams would take each other on.  There were two teams - the Kudus (my team) whose colours were red and white and the Gemsbok team whose colours were blue and white.  Every day these two teams' flags flew alongside the South African flag and the school flag.  So when these two teams got together kids could earn points for their participation.  So usually my choice was to do long jump (and no I wasn't very good) and discus (which I only chose because I had a bit of a crush on the teacher) and once in a fit of madness I did a 400m run (I mean really how hard can that be?) and I started off really well and really strong and within 2 seconds was left behind and came dead last.  In front of the whole school.  Of about 900 kids.  But hey, I tried and I earned some points for my house team and after all it was about participation.  For me anyway.

The only other time I've ever done an event as such was when we were in Auckland and they had some or the other 5km event where people could run or walk and the school would get a percentage of every entry that came from their particular school.  So I entered Bianca and myself to walk the 5km.  What I failed to keep in mind was that Bianca was on her monthly 5 days of steroids at the time.  And steroids (Dexamethasone) is probably the most hated drug in the childhood leukemia world.  With side effects which will cause your child to become all puffy, have an appetite that would put a grown man to shame, or no appetite at all (just to make things interesting), can cause tummy pain, mood swings, sadness, depression, cause cravings (like the time Bianca craved wild boar like they have on Asterix and wanted to send her dad to the shops at 9pm at night to go buy her some wild boar) and some kids get terrible temper tantrums (or 'roid rage as it is known in our world).  So why I even thought we could walk the 5km event I have no idea, but I thought it would be fun.  And it was.  For the first few hundred meters and then Bianca started getting all whiny and sad and complaining her legs were tired.  I ended up carrying her for 3km of the 5km.  And it took us well over an hour to finally complete it. 

So yes, willingly going out and attempting to run / walk is quite a big step for me and significantly more than I've ever done to date.

So this morning as I sat there in the physio's waiting room with the kids, Bianca read the Guinness Book of World Records as she usually does, I couldn't help thinking how stupid some of these records are.  Like the person who held the most rattle snakes in his mouth (I would have thought that 1 rattle snake was too many...) and the person who pulled a car or something with their eye lids (why???).

The session today was pretty painful.  Still the same problem, but the pain has now moved more to the back of my leg and it was another session I spent saying "ouch!" pretty much the entire time.  Sigh!  I can't wait until this is all fixed...