Back To Running With Fingers Crossed
For those who have not been following my social updates on Twitter and Plurk, I was actually diagnosed with Pneumonia in my left lung in Nov last year after a long bout of flu, sore throat and a persistent cough. I really have to thank the Medical Officer during my reservist for referring me to Changi Hospital’s A&E. Else, I would have stubbornly stuck to the “miraculous healing powers of the human body”.
In the short few weeks of November, I lost a good 4kg or so.
After seeing a specialist once in December and in January, my lung was declared free of the disease and I even helped to complete my doctor’s sentence,
“Okay, your x-ray looks good. So I guess you are free…”
“.. TO DO ANYTHING I WANT!”
The doctor broke into a grin and knew I was referring to running.
It was really difficult to stop all the training. Besides the fear of wasting all the effort and improvement from the training cycle, it was painful to not sweat it out on the pavements and roads. I lost count of the number of times in the last 3 months where I would stare longingly at someone breaking sweat on a run. Any onlooker would have mistaken the stare for something else.
I finally got back to jogging last week and it felt so good getting my feet moving along that I was smiling to myself like a smitten puppy in love. Many have professed their admiration for my persistence in running but I have to say that I really have it easy considering how much I really, really love running.
Every setback is a lesson and although I might never pinpoint the reason why I acquired pneumonia, I am definitely putting more thought into the post-exercise recovery process. Downing myself with vitamins after hard workouts, eating healthier (not doing it for now. I blame the back-to-back festivities), rest and compression.
Compression is a sports science proven way of helping performance and recovery and I do have a full length compression tights but KuKuNehNeh forbids me to wear them for prolonged periods for fear of the death of my “soldiers” in the crotch area and so I have resorted to the following attire after workouts.
The black portion are are 2XU compression calf sleeves. The white portion are Phiten Knee sleeves that I doubled up as thigh compression sleeves.
The ugly red portion is just a pair of shorts that I bought many years back on a day with a bad taste in fashion.
