Swarm

Last night as we were watching Olympics (I have given up on trying to avoid finding out who wins the track and field events; it’s still fun to watch even if I know who wins), Jose noticed that there was a dragonfly party going on outside my window. I wasn’t sure if it would turn out on video, but my little point and shoot did a pretty good job capturing the hundred dragonflies flitting back and forth. I have no idea why they do this, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen them off my balcony. Five minutes after I took this video, I went back outside to watch them some more and they had disappeared. Every single one of them was gone. Weird.

I’m on week 2 of the 100 Pushup Challenge and while I have not had too much trouble with the workouts thus far, I am doubtful that I will ever be able to do 100 pushups in one go, much less do it after only 6 weeks. Still, I can already do more than my initial 11 (I’ll find out just how many at the end of this week when we do the first test), and I can tell my arms are already stronger. So that’s cool. And maybe I can do 1 real pushup now, instead of the girly kind. I’ll have to try that this weekend. In any case, I have decided that I now need a similar exercise that targets the hips. That’s where I store my fat, and it refuses to budge even as I drop a few pounds. Stupid hips.
A couple of my running buddies are suffering from knee issues at the moment, so I was not excited when my knee started hurting this week. It’s the same knee, and the same kind of pain, that I had three years ago after I did the Houston Marathon. At the time, I went to the doctor who xrayed it and got an MRI and the whole sheband, only to tell me that he didn’t see anything wrong. He offered me a cortisone shot and did say there was some fluid on my knee, and that he could drain it via minor surgery. I turned down both offers, not wanting to start the cortisone shot process unless absolutely necessary (since in the long run it does more damage than good) and definitely not wanting any surgery, no matter how minor. I wore a simple knee brace for a while and got new shoes, and the pain went away.
Now it’s back, though not as bad as three years ago. On Tuesday night I rode on my trainer for half an hour and it was pretty sore afterwards. When I ran last night, it still was sore — and that’s the first time I’ve felt the pain while running in probably two years. It has actually ached on and off (mostly off) for the past few months, always while on the bike or just after riding. I’ve been meaning to take my bike over to Webster Bike to have them take another look at my setup for a while, but feeling the knee while running was the motivation I needed! It’s been almost 5 months since I got my tri bike, and I won’t be surprised at all to hear that things have gotten a little out of alignment since I was first fitted. I definitely want to get things back in line before the tri on Saturday.