Grappling With PD

[originally posted elsewhere on 4/11/23] As I begin writing this in mid-March, it has been six months since I broke my leg, and I've been reminiscing about the events of that day and since then. It happened just after we finished the Blue Ridge Relay (BRR), so first a little background on that. The BRR is a 208-mile relay race (for runners) held each September since 2005 in the vicinity of the Blue Ridge Mountains, including several miles along the Blue Ridge Parkway itself. Max team size is 12, but elite teams can have fewer members. With a full team of 12 the race becomes a series of 36 slices of the total course, with each of the 12 runners tackling an assigned slice before handing off to the next runner. Repeat twice for a total of three segments per runner. (More details are available at https://blueridgerelay.com/). My team 1) finished and 2) did not finish last. A rousing success! The race had ended (we ran from 7 AM on Friday until about 7 PM on Saturday). A coupl...

I took a somewhat nasty fall on a trail run last night. The plan was to go out about three miles, then turn around and head back to the trailhead. I was about 2 miles into it, maybe 2.1, when I stumbled over a rock. Unlike the fall at the beginning of the Sawmill half, where I could not move my foot and fell straight down onto the path in front of me, this time I was able to try to keep my feet. I think if the path in front of me had been sidewalk quality, I would have been successful. However, the trail was littered with rocks, and stepping on them did not help at all. Compounding the situation, the trail was curving left at that spot, so my straight-ahead movement led me off-trail to the right, into some biger rocks. By biggger, I mean one to two feet across, if memory serves. I rolled a bit to the right as I fell, resulting in the worst of the impact hitting primarily my right shoulder, and also ribs and calf. I got few other dings as well, including on my left hand, both k...

Kickin' it with Tim Lane, 10/26/20

Motorvation podcast, 5/30/23

Maybe I was in over my head from the beginning and just didn't know it. I had heard the name "Sawmill Ultra" at some point in the past, but I knew little to nothing about it. However, when I saw a post in my trail running group about a discounted admission, I thought I would take a look. If it had been nothing but marathons and ultra marathons, I would have been out of luck, but looky looky, they have 5K, 10K, and half marathon distances. I have a goal of running a marathon, and I've been working at the half marathon, so I signed up for the half and thought no more about it. Then came the Ragnar in early-to-mid May, and a whole new team of awesome runners -- and awesome people. It turned out that I was running the half with a teammate, and two others were running the 10K. Of the four of us on the mountain that day, two actually got on the podium, with a second place in the half marathon and third in the 10K. Go team! I did ok -- not great -- in the Ragnar . ....

Starting off with a little double meaning :) First, the posts in this blog are not guaranteed to record events in the order that they happened. On the contrary, it is pretty much guaranteed that the events described will be chronologically scrambled, at least a little bit. The second meaning? Having PD means being "out of order" in one or more of a long list of areas. We have to accept that life with PD is a life out of order. Does that mean we give up? No way! This blog is all about what I and others have done or are doing to live well with Parkinsons. For a simple analogy, think of the movie Rocky. Not the series, just the first movie. Rocky Balboa suddenly found himself facing a powerful opponent--Apollo Creed, the world heavyweight champion. Rocky knew he could not beat Apollo. Even so, knowing that he could not win, he fought hard. Destined to lose, he still did not quit. That is how it is grapping with PD. My philosophy is that, short of a cure, I cannot...