Nooooooooooo!vember

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

When they were the age I am now, both my parents had serious arthritis. They were permanently on medication, my mother for her hands which became increasingly disfigured as the years progressed, and my father for his knees, both of which were eventually replaced with titanium versions. My arthritis is in my toes, and doctors have spoken in hushed tones of its likely impact as I get older.

Over the years it has flared from time to time, but as long as I kept running, the instances of it were minor annoyances only and quickly abated. This latest case of it however has lasted over a week, and made running impossible. For a couple of days I even seriously thought about using a stick to walk with.

Both my parents were of the opinion that you 'use it or lose it', and kept the inflammation at bay as much as possible through action and activity. The worry with arthritic toes is that it gets so bad one can't run any more, as was the case for a few days, but it has slowly improved, and this morning the pain had subsided to a dull ache, so I donned the shoes and tentatively headed out the door. I just did laps of the block in case any hobbling home was required. This wasn't the case however. The toes were sore, certainly, but the pain didn't get any worse, and so I plodded out a stubborn, slow 3.3 kilometres, just enough to classify as a 'run' but not placing too much strain on the recalcitrant appendages.

Afterward, the feet felt pretty good, all things considered - no worse, no better. After the half hour train ride to work however, I 'alighted' from the train (do we 'alight' from anything else, or is it just trains?) and felt immediate stabbing pains in the toes again. This was a little depressing, but after a few minutes of hobbling, the pain quite suddenly vanished and reverted to the same, tolerable dull ache again. I'm taking this as a positive sign and remain hopeful that the running regimen is once again under way.

We shall see what tomorrow brings before becoming overly optimistic, but I am quietly confident.