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Devora Mason

~ Single Mom. Blogging. Jogging. And lots of Snogging.

Devora Mason

Tag Archives: Exercise

Exercise and Injury

17 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by Devora Mason in Exercise

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Tags

athletic, Exercise, injury, klutz, klutziness, personal injury

Balance Beam

One, two, three...plop!

I have always been athletic. I love exercise in all shapes and forms: in water, on land, with wheels, running shoes, barefoot, jumping, bounding, stretching and more. In addition to my love for exercise, let me just mention the blunt fact that I am a klutz. A feet tripping, bench missing, pole bumping, flat on my face, klutz.

I started young.

I think it was at the age of 2. My sister and I were playing tag, while waiting for mom to give us a bath. I was running around with remnants of that night’s supper of spaghetti and meatballs in my hair. My sister ran out the door first and closed it slightly behind her. Without noticing…crash! My forehead collided with the door and off we went to the ER. A few stitches on my forehead and no hair washing for a week!

My mother thought (hoped) that this was a lone incident but as I grew things only got worse. I remember the time I had a gymnastics recital after a year of hard work and practice. I was so excited because my balance beam routine was so cool. I was already doing handstands on the beam and my dismount was a cartwheel doo-hicky that ended in a handstand-landing-feet-together.

Unfortunately, that day I was destined for another injury. At school, we were playing belts during recess. I backed up and started to run with great speed and gusto to jump over the two jump ropes lying far apart on the ground. I made it! The victory was short lived because the grass on the other side of the ropes was wet from the rain. I slid on my rear end down the slope. I could not move. I broke my tailbone and it has bothered me ever since.

But on that day I was determined, or should I say, I was stubborn and I refused to let my mother keep me from my gymnastics recital. I went. I told everyone in my group to let me stand up first, so that it would look like I was okay, and once I was standing, they could too. I didn’t want my mother to worry and to take me home. I did not do my beam routine that day, or the parallel bars, or anything for that matter. I paid the price later that day and I was not sorry one bit. I love gymnastics.

How does a person deal with the fact that most exercise may come with one sort of injury or another? When my great grandmother would hear of someone injuring themselves, she would always say, “Sports! They were doing sports!”. And she was almost always right. We hated that. My mother would always warn us not to tell her when we got hurt doing something athletic because she would look at us with her I told-you-so stare and say, :”Sports, that’s what happens when you do sports!”

If I see someone with a cast on their leg and they tell me that they slipped at work I look around quickly, pull them aside and whisper to them, “Skiing! Tell them it was skiing. I’ll back you up. It’s your pride at stake.”  There is a trophy-like feeling to walking around with a sprained ankle after going for a lay-up in basketball. When people ask you how you hurt you ankle, you can respond with your head held high. You were being a hero and you are paying the hero’s price. It is almost worth it to, always, be doing something exciting so that you have a news-breaking story to tell.

I will be the first to admit that there are people who have been injured while merely being spectators of some form of athletics or another. I am not only talking about being trampled by a soccer mob. For example, a good friend of mine, who has always been an avid cyclist and runner, was standing at the bottom of a ski slope and was hit in her calf by a snowboarder.  She has not been able to walk normally ever since. The pain of the injury is coupled with the agony of not being able to return to the activities that have been an essential part of her life for decades!

What would my great grandmother say if she heard about that? She would probably ban sports altogether.

Sometimes, the unfit people in the world benefit from good health. Take my Uncle, who worked in an accounting office with middle-aged men. They all seemed to cycle, run etc. and they were always talking about their aches and pains, knee replacements, muscle relaxants and so on. One day, he was sitting there listening to them complain and it occurred to him that although he didn’t exercise regularly, he didn’t have anything severely wrong with him and he felt fine, maybe even, dare he say, good.

I have started to jog again.

After 5 babies, and 10 years of being out of shape. I love the feeling of running far and long. I love to push myself to the limit and then to push myself that little bit more. I sometimes feel stiff the next day. I wake up with an intense need to stretch myself out before starting my day. I know that the chances of injuring myself (God forbid, ptooie, ptooie, garlic on my neck and all the rest) are greater when I choose to exercise. But I also know that I will lower the chances of other ailments, have better bone mass, muscles, energy, strength etc.

I have war wounds and I am a survivor. I stretch my leg and see the scars on my knee, the swelling in my left ankle, I flex my arms and I notice the scars on my middle finger. I bend forwards, my back creaks and cracks, I move my head and my necks tenses up. I feel alive!

I am woman. Hear me roar!

Hold the Bus!

31 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by Devora Mason in Exercise

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bus, Buying running shoes, Exercise, Frisbee, Nike, Physical fitness, Running for the bus

I was walking down the street with a million thoughts going through my head. Just strolling along (lah dee dah) enjoying my day in the city. When suddenly,  I feel this nip at my leg. A dog! He almost bit me! And now this mangy mutt is barking his head off at me! I yell- Aaaah! Now what? I know I shouldn’t run, he will chase me, but what else can I do: Fight or flight? I am a Canadian for goodness sake! RUN!

And as I am running and trying not think about Rabies and my own funeral, I see the bus coming. Yay, the bus! I lift my knees up and run, damn it, I run! I am quick!? I even shock myself. Even when a person is running for the bus yelling, “Hold the Bus” they are usually ignored as the bus drives away. My theory is that if you look like you are moving quickly, then sometimes the bus driver has the patience to wait. That old woman with the heavy grocery bags has very little chance of making it. Trust me.

This time, the bus driver sees me coming and actually keeps the doors open for me.  Was I fast? I get on the bus and go to sit down. And that’s when I notice that I am barely out of breath. I am comfortable and I don’t have pains in my sides and everywhere else in my body. Wow! Am I in shape?

I used to run every day.

I am not talking about the kind of running people pretend to be doing because they are busy, like when you are talking on the phone and you have to hang up so you say, “I have to run”. I am talking about exercise. The good, ol’ fashioned, put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-move-your-butt, running!

And then there was this large span of time, let’s call it life, that came between me and the world of exercise. I wouldn’t say that I became a couch potato since I was busy doing things like going to school, raising kids, community service, moving etc. But exercise was one of those things that I always planned to do as soon as I had a free moment, which by the way, never came.

Until now.

Today I played Frisbee with two of my boys. It was such great fun and it brought back memories of my years as a kid playing Frisbee tag in the school courtyard. We were good! We could slice someone in the calf with a Frisbee like nobody’s business. And here I was running back and forth, shooting the Frisbee, catching it, laughing with my boys, and not feeling even the littlest bit like I wish I were back at home lying on my couch. I am physically tolerable (I try not to use expletives when describing myself).

I am slowly trying to build up my stamina to be able to run a half marathon in January for Chai Lifeline. It’s not easy but I am working hard to succeed. I even set up my profile in order to get donations and I am determined. But people, you should know that no matter what the world of athletic wear and power drinks tell you, there are still some advantages to not exercising which are  sometimes overlooked.

You don’t sit around complaining about knee pain and joint stiffness.

You sleep more hours.

You don’t have to replace your running shoes very often if they spend most of their time in your closet. Between the time I bought running shoes in the 90s until I replaced them this year, so many things had changed in the world of running shoes. You cannot buy a plain running shoe anymore.  I found myself in the Nike store being told by the salesperson about all of the advantages of buying a shoe like the Pegasus or Arch Fit (which all, by the way, looked the same to me except for the price tag on the sole of the shoe.). I tried to justify my purchase by figuring out how much money I was saving on chiropractors and podiatrists by buying these shoes.

But the real truth is that getting in shape is liberating. I want that freedom.

I run, therefore I am.

 

About Devora

Devora Mason loves to speak about herself in the third person while writing about her social life and the social issues that she encounters in Jerusalem. She is a mom, dancer, prancer, jogger, blogger and snogger who works in SaaS and is studying law.

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