Posts Tagged pain
Another Weekend in Stockholm
It’s still doubtful that we’ll be able to leave again on Tuesday, but there is hope, since the Swedish airport authority said that they may allow flights into and out of Arlanda tomorrow. Furthermore, the BBC weather maps predict the volcano ash will pass to the south of Norway and Sweden by the beginning of the week. It’s a better than nothing chance that we could leave, but I’m not holding my breath. Furthermore, the air crews and aircraft all have to be in place by Tuesday.
Yesterday, we took a trip to the Vasa Museum, which houses an absolutely massive wooden warship. The ship was built by Sweden in the 1600s in its fight against Poland and sank as soon as it put out to sea. It was recovered in the 1950s and restored over a 20 year period before being placed inside the museum.
I’ve seen plenty of wooden sailing ships at home, most were very small, but the Vasa is a giant. Its size was probably part of the reason for its downfall — the prevailing argument is that it was too top heavy and did not have enough ballast. From the keel to the top of the mainmast must be well over 100 feet: the ship seems like the Spruce Goose of its time.
Last night I went out with more stuck conference attendees to a bar near the waterfront. The average price was about $10/pint, but “pints” here are a noticeably larger 0.5L (16.9oz), not 12oz as in the United States. The place I went to had a large selection of beers, but not too many I hadn’t heard of.
Today we went out to the Royal Palace, meeting up with Alexandra, but this time we saw the changing of the guard, toured the insides of the palace, and the crown jewels. Interestingly, the woman operating the ticket office commented on my William and Mary ID, for it seems the concept of royalty has a different meaning in places that have monarchs. The changing of the guard involved a military marching band playing a few songs and marching around. The Royal Apartments were ornate, but were no Versailles, although a room in the Royal Palace was modeled after the Hall of Mirrors. The Treasury, which contained some of the crown jewels, was most interesting, with a guide explaining the historical significance of different crowns, maces, and orbs.
Since Alexandra was also stuck here with a canceled flight, we walked back to the train station to see if she could get a ticket back in the direction towards her school. She estimated the travel time would be about 30 hours. The train station in Stockholm was packed, with the ticket office handing out numbers to those who wanted to purchase tickets. The line was probably several hours long, so we just left. More than likely, trains towards Copenhagen were sold out for several days. It’s fortunate that Europe has the rail system it does, for if air travel was stopped in the United States for more than a few days, it would be much worse.
Later, we went back over towards where the Vasa museum was to find the zoo. We circled around it but could not find a way in. Finally, when we reached the entrance, it was 10 minutes from closing. We walked back along the waterfront and I headed back to the hotel.
While I was out today, I ran into several people from the conference. I saw one guy from the hotel who mentioned that he knew of people heading south into Spain or Morocco to fly to South Africa and then catch a flight from there to the United States. I ran into some others from the University of Illinois in a grocery store who predicted the winds would shift just in time to allow their Thursday flight to leave.
At this point, we will wait and see what happens with our scheduled Tuesday flight. If it doesn’t go, then we will probably start to think about alternatives. A group from the conference is considering chartering a bus to Madrid, but their airspace has been closed intermittently and I’ve heard the hotels there are booked solid. There is also a ferry that runs from Denmark to Iceland: we could take a train to Denmark, take the ferry to Iceland, and fly back home from there. Surprisingly, Iceland’s airport is allowing flights to and from the United States.
If we do consider finding an alternate route home, we will have to consider the costs of leaving a city that we know well with residents that speak good English and are pretty tolerant of foreigners. We also have to consider the probability of something else going wrong when traveling overland long distances, connecting on different trains or even buses. Bus and especially rail routes are extremely packed because of all that’s happened, with many being sold out for days. By the time we travel a week and a half to get home via land and sea, the airspace may have opened up anyway.
At this point, time is starting to pass. I haven’t done any work and I really should, at least to keep my mind off of being stuck here. My adviser and I may go to KTH to find an office and get something done. At the end of the week I am supposed to meet with my fiancee and the pastor for our wedding but I might not be able to go. I wonder what would happen if I were stuck here for months or even for the rest of my life (I’m sure this won’t happen, but I am thinking hypothetically). However, my sister has lived abroad for quite some time, so I’m sure I could adapt like she has.
Another whirlwind tour
I’m glad to say that my second segment of travel this summer is over. While I like the concept of going somewhere different for awhile, I don’t handle it well. When I travel, I tend to have trouble sleeping and also usually have trouble with the food. If I was in one place for more than a day or two, I would adjust and it would probably be better, but the trips as of late have been too fast to allow me to get used to a new environment. I still feel like I’m recovering from last week.
That said, it was an interesting trip, or sequence of trips, covering Boston for a paper presentation and then to Charlottesville for a Wireless Sensor Networks “retreat”. The first thing that happened started several days before I left to Boston, tripping on a downed branch in the street which nuked my ankle and plantar fascia, as I later found out. I got up when it was still dark out the morning I left for Boston and went running only to find my foot in incredible pain. It was the worst plantar fascia pain I’ve ever had, despite having trouble in that area plenty of times. So after getting back I found myself unable to walk without searing pain in my heel and barely able to limp around. This, right before a day of airports, subways, and walking around Boston.
Fortunately, the flights did go well this time around. Everything was basically on time going out and coming back from Boston. I left last Monday morning, connected through Washington, and took a shuttle flight to Boston. I had to take a bus from the terminal to the T station which was tricky since there were several buses that all looked the same but went to different places. The subway was straightforward but I did have to change trains once. It dumped me out two blocks from the hotel and I just walked limped from there.
In an effort to save the department some money, I went a day late. It turned out that when I got to the hotel in Boston on Monday afternoon that there were no sessions scheduled for the rest of the day. I had hoped to sit in on a few to see what everyone else was doing and to be sure that I had about 20 minutes to present. Since nothing was going on, I dropped off most of my junk at the hotel and went outside to walk around, despite my heel pain. I figured I might as well take advantage of being somewhere else besides school for a change.
Clearly, people in Boston know a good day when they see one and get out when it’s nice. This was the first time in awhile that I had been there when it wasn’t winter. The previous times, the Charles was iced over, snow piled up, and winds whipped through the streets. Not many people were out then. This time, I walked through Boston Common and it was packed. I didn’t realize there was a pond that you could swim in. I went up and down the streets near the hotel, found some food, and went back to the hotel to crash. As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep.
My presentation was first thing Tuesday morning so I practiced the night before and hoped that the length would be about right. I wanted to get up early and run in Boston before I presented, but I realized that my heel pain was too great to do that. When I got to the conference room where I was to present, there was only one guy in there in charge of the projector. Nobody else came, not even the session chair, until five minutes before I was to start. After I got going more people showed up including another professor from William and Mary who also had a paper. Fortunately, everything went well and I handled the questions without any real issues.
The next trick was getting back since I had to go to UVA the next day. I was booked on a 3 PM shuttle flight from Boston to LaGuardia, but that would give me less than an hour to connect. If there were delays, I could miss the connection and get stuck, as I experienced little more than a month ago. I wanted to get on an earlier shuttle flight but when I booked the ticket, the system wouldn’t let me. Interestingly, the book I was reading had a character that took a shuttle flight to LaGuardia and then was able to return anytime without charge since it was considered an “open” ticket. I’ve also heard elsewhere that you could just change your ticket on shuttle flights if there was room. Since the flight out had few people on it and the Boston shuttle terminal was nearly empty when I arrived, it seemed that changing my ticket wouldn’t be limited because of full flights. I got the subway and bus back to the airport and got there early to see if I could leave sooner. Nope, the gate agent demanded 50 bucks. So much for all the hype over “open” tickets. Another guy asked the same question, but apparently arriving an hour or two early was worth the money to him.
I sat in the empty Boston airport for several hours while two other shuttle flights left for New York, both with very few passengers. Finally, when I got on my plane, I was assigned an exit row where the seat in front of me was removed. I had double legroom. I guess I was rewarded for waiting. The flight back to Norfolk was a little late and I managed to get home at 8 that Tuesday night. This time I really did crash and slept for over 11 hours. Yet another big day was coming up.
On Wednesday I left home for Charlottesville and picked up the other student in our group, Zhen, from Williamsburg. We got there Wednesday night and stayed at a hotel that was hopefully within walking distance of where the meeting was the next day and Friday. Since I couldn’t run and was still in pain, I took my bike with me so I could explore Charlottesville in the early morning hours before everything started. Biking was interesting since it was dark and there were a lot of big hills compared to Williamsburg. On Thursday morning, my headlight came off its mount and shattered all over the pavement. I had to get a new one.
My adviser told us that the retreat was to be held in the rotunda, which motivated the choice of hotel since it was within walking distance. I had been to the rotunda before and it seemed weird since it was only really one room where tours were given. I asked him several times if that was where it was, but when we got there Thursday morning the doors were locked and nobody was around. I had the number of a UVA grad student which told us that it was at the business school, which was nowhere near the rotunda or the Computer Science building. He couldn’t say where in the business school it was, and after looking at a map, the business school complex was huge. We might never find where we were to go. Somehow we managed to find the right room and building after running into a knowledgeable receptionist right after we walked in the door of the first business school building we found. We got to the right room 45 minutes late. Other UVA students laughed when I told them that my adviser said the meeting was in the rotunda.
The retreat was more or less an informal series of conference-style presentations. Most everyone was a UVA student presenting on a work in progress. There were lots of unsolved problems which led to all kinds of nasty questions. It appeared as though some students didn’t practice since they went way over time or were cut off entirely with zillions of slides left. The few that finished early were given plenty of discussion to fill in the gaps. There were lots of interruptions, especially from the professors, and usually the adviser of the student would cut in with some difficult question about something that hadn’t been fleshed out yet.
The retreat went all day Thursday and then Friday until just after noon. There were a lot of demonstrations, including that of a fall detection system for the elderly where the user would wear several accelerometers and gyroscopes. One of the students with sensors taped to his shirt and legs fell down on the floor five or six times, which was pretty amusing, especially since the system didn’t indicate a fall until the last attempt. There was a breakout session where my group discussed future applications and system designs. An interesting thing that came out of that was the release of more iPhone/Google Maps-style APIs for third parties to make use of the deluge of data from sensor networks. Someone commented that very soon you’ll find a microphone, panoramic cameras, among other sensors on every street corner, essentially providing a live Google Street View. Imagine what someone could do with that: follow people remotely as they go about their day or generate a tag cloud of things people are discussing the most and break it down by location. When I got home, I noticed that Google Maps now has a traffic congestion tool that uses GPS and speed readings from mobile users to determine if a road segment is congested. Stuff like this that people currently consider to be invasive is going to be more commonplace and acceptable.
After all that I managed to get back home last Friday afternoon. Since the traffic was such a mess in the tunnels, I wound up going through some nasty parts of Portsmouth to get around everything, something I hadn’t done before. It took me as long to get from Charlottesville to Williamsburg as it did to get from Williamsburg back home.
Overall, the trip was probably worth some of the fatigue and heel pain since I gave a conference presentation and got a fair amount out of the retreat. With the start of the fall semester, most the travelling is done for awhile and it’s time to get going on work that I haven’t been able to get to since I was gone.
The mediocre call it obsession
But I call it passion.
Today, there was an article in the local paper about a guy, Paul Boyette, from Chesapeake who had a running streak that lasted over six years. He ran at least two miles every day, running through injuries, terrible respiratory infections, and all kinds of weather. His streak was finally ended by a torn meniscus which proved too painful for him to run through. Oddly, this happened last summer, within a month of the pain in my knee becoming too great to run. The article was really vague as to what happened after he stopped because of the torn meniscus, but one of the photo captions describes him running last month. So, it appears as though he is back to doing what he loves.
The author of the article really makes this guy out to be an eccentric, hounding him because of his massive music and beer stein collections. The author describes how Boyette’s family and friends gave him endless grief about maintaining the running streak and running every day though illness and injury. Boyette is compared with a drug addict, as someone who has to get his fix or else he can’t function. His stacks of meticulously kept running logs and piles of worn out shoes are referenced as paraphernalia, aiding the addiction. A few commenters for the article say the guy is addicted to endorphins.
It isn’t addiction. It isn’t obsession. It is passion. Over the years, I’ve been hounded by people saying the same things, over and over:
“Why are you running in this weather? It’s too [cold/hot/rainy].”
“If you’re tired, take a day off.”
“Why don’t you try doing something else instead of running?”
The mediocre, the average, the run-of-the-mill Joe Six Pack only cares enough to go through the motions with any activity. These people, which make up a large majority of the population, see those who put all their effort into something as obsessive. The mediocre only wish to do good enough and to quit early. They will never feel good about any of their accomplishments, yet they simultaneously envy and criticize those who work extremely hard and become successful. The mediocre are everywhere and would love nothing more than to witness the failure of those who actually try. To that end, the mediocre spread their negativity and criticism to those they know that are successful, secretly wishing their endeavors will implode and their work will be for nothing. The author of the article and the commenters that follow are prime examples of those who just don’t get it.
People scoff at Bill Gates for sleeping in his office during the early years of Microsoft, working at his computer until he collapsed onto the floor with exhaustion. Though the mediocre label him as obsessive and wish to see Microsoft wiped from the earth, every single one of them has used a Microsoft product. If it weren’t for Gates’s efforts, this large scale success would never have been realized. Computing would never be what it is today without those “obsessives” working until they drop on the floor. Still more people can’t believe that the efforts Adam Savage of Mythbusters undertook to recreate an exact duplicate of the Maltese Falcon. He spent months of work researching the prop from the film, drawing sketches, making several mockups, and eventually getting his hands on the original prop to create a near flawless duplicate. In the video, Savage’s passion for his work really comes out as he speaks quickly and excitedly about every last detail of his quest. You don’t see that with the mediocre. You can tell when someone is passionate about their work when they speak of it like Savage, and you can tell when someone really just doesn’t care. I’ve seen professors, other grad students, running teammates, and internship co-workers speak with the same excitedness as Savage when they speak about their latest accomplishments. The passionate can pull you right into the hype.
It disappoints me to see that most others criticize the concentrated efforts of those like Bill Gates and Adam Savage while it is efforts such as those that keep the world in one piece. Without them, this world would be a bunch of slackers.
So why run until the pain becomes unbearable? Why work until you fall asleep at your desk? It is because not doing so would be a failure. I ran every day I could because I wanted to make the best of what I had. I ran every day and through all weather and many illnesses and injuries of my own because I knew there would be a day where the problems would be too great to run. On that day when I finally couldn’t run, I could look back and know that I had done my best. On the day I couldn’t run, I would have no regrets about the past. I would not have to wish that I had gone out for a run on a day that I was only too lazy to go. That day came last summer when my knee made running unbearable. Like Boyette, I had to stop. I had no regrets: I knew that I had made the best with what I had. Those who are mediocre will regret the day that they are unable to do something because of circumstances beyond their control. They had the chance to give it their all, but they didn’t make use of it.
I hope that I never again get criticised for biking or running as much as I can or for doing work when someone wants me to go out. It is what makes me who I am and it is not a disorder that should be treated with magic pills.
Today’s WTF moment: Running pain free
Posted by Matt in microfracture on May 21, 2009
So, this morning I went out on the bike and then came back and decided to have another go at running. I knew my knee would hurt, but I wanted to figure out exactly where the pain was coming from to see if it might be something soft tissue. I got back, and with dread, put on the running shoes I last wore in July 2008 for the last serious run I had. I walked out to the parking lot again, and started going. No pain. I went a good three or four minutes in the parking lot and couldn’t believe it: not a thing. How did this happen? I will count my blessings.
It could be that biking is just making things tight and that maybe I should run first. I also really shortened my stride so I didn’t have to bend my knee as much, which probably helped. It might be that bending it too much is causing the pain in the damaged area, so I might be constrained to shuffling around everywhere. If my body permits me to go more, maybe that will work itself out. Regardless, it was the best four minutes I’ve experienced in quite a long time.
Pain is a weird thing. When you don’t have it, you don’t think about it, but when you’ve got it, it makes things miserable. I remember my high school coach giving a speech about pain before a workout. It was during the first few weeks of my freshman year. He asked how many of us had older siblings in our families. A lot of guys raised their hands. He then went on to say that our minds don’t remember pain and if our mothers had remembered the pain of childbirth that many of us who were second or third children would not exist. The point was to illustrate that though you’ll be suffering through the workout, an hour later, you’ll be fine and you’ll be willing to do it again a few days later. The same thing goes for injury pain and illness: it’s hard to concieve what it’s like when you’re healthy, but when you’re down, it really sucks.
An interesting study/article points this out: that the little things like pain are what make or break our lives. People believe that it’s the big things that really make us happy or sad, but it isn’t. It’s not the new and exciting job, it’s not the move to sunny California, and it’s not winning the lottery that makes your life better. People who survive natural disasters and other traumatic incidents and those that even lose their vision or hearing don’t report that they feel any less happy than they were previously. However, those that develop strong ties with family and friends report being happier, while those that develop chronic pain or discomfort never adjust. It seems that indeed, pain is something that can never be adjusted for, and it’s probably some kind of evolutionary survival mechanism. Without pain, I would have run even farther on my knee last year and probably to the point where I would become unable to walk.
For now, I’ll get while the getting’s good and try to run in real small increments all the while being on the lookout for any serious problems.
Microfracture: +9 Months
Posted by Matt in microfracture on May 18, 2009
Today marks nine months since my knee surgery. After some cycling, I put on my running shoes and shuffled out in the parking lot for a few minutes.
All I can say with certainty is that my knee hurts when I run. I went about twenty or thirty steps before pain started somewhere around the joint. I went about a minute, stopped and stretched, and then walked for a few more minutes before going again for another minute. It wasn’t any better the second time around, and the pain seemed to get worse. I haven’t had any serious knee pain in a very long time. It doesn’t hurt when cycling: I can mash the pedals and ride up hills out of the saddle or sprint to beat a light and I have no pain at all. It doesn’t hurt when I climb stairs, nor do I feel any popping or locking that I used to. It still doesn’t hurt when I put in the clutch to shift in my car.
While running for the first time since November or December felt awkward, the pain eclipsed any biomechanical weirdness. Run enough, and the biomechanics will smooth out. Oddly during a recent practice, one of my old teammates told me that my coach gave me as an example of good running form. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone comment on that. It’s like saying I’ve got great coordination — I struggle just to get my feet in the bicycle clips.
It feels as though the pain is in a different place than last July when the knee pain took me out. Since it’s been so long since last July when I experienced the knee pain while running, my perceptions of how things feel have been invalidated. That said, last July, I could tell that the pain came from a very specific place right next to the kneecap and that it was deep in the joint. This time it seems more spread out, more to the surface, and more lateral in its location. I had occasional pain similar to this at PT when the leg brace came off, and the PT told me it was my IT band. It could be my IT band, but when my teammate who eventually had microfracture first started feeling pain, he thought it was his IT band too.
The pain really comes down to one of two sources: either the microfracture failed to produce enough fibrocartilage to protect my knee from the impact of running, or it’s something soft tissue that I can deal with. Since the doctor and PT were extremely optimistic that the microfracture worked and that the cause of my pain was most likely from my IT band, I will first try dealing with this as a soft tissue problem. That means loads of stretching to try to smooth stuff out. I am not without precedent: when one guy with torn cartilage and microfracture first started running in the early winter, he experienced a lot of pain like I am now. Now he is running six, seven miles a day and the pain is much more manageable or even nonexistent on some days. Initially, I thought he was crazy the way he talked about running in excruciating pain, but it appears as though the pain wasn’t from the torn cartilage. At least not if he is feeling better while running more.
I can say that I am feeling a lot better overall than even before the surgery. I can go harder and longer on the bike than I could before. I can go almost two hours before I start to feel tired, while last summer I would be exhausted if I went that far. I can now power up hills that previously left me in the lowest gear and I can take on someone who passes me, when previously I would struggle just to stay on their wheel.
I will try to run small amounts as much as I can and see if this pain is manageable, while hopefully not making things worse.
Ubuntu 9.04: Rough Upgrade
I recently upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 on my desktop machine, and so far, it’s been a mess. This was not the painless upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04 or from 8.04 to 8.10. So far:
1. ATI/AMD is no longer providing drivers for my X1900XTX video card, so I’m using the free drivers. The problem is that I can’t use two monitors without the mouse flickering like crazy and some strange window focusing problem where an unfocused window “jumps out” at me occasionally and then reverts to normal. Disabling compiz and visual effects didn’t solve this. Only when I disable the second monitor do the flickering and focusing issues go away. I’m still messing with this one to try and find a solution, but there isn’t anyone else on the internet that’s complained about this. I find it funny that people switch to Linux so they can run older hardware, but without driver support, that can’t happen. The free drivers work well, but only if you’ve got one monitor.
2. Something hosed my ability to play MP3s with Amarok. From this thread, I learned that running the following solved the problem:
sudo apt-get install phonon-backend-xine
3. Flash stopped working in Firefox. Any page with Flash would crash Firefox. This can be solved by uninstalling and reinstalling Flash:
sudo aptitude remove flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-installer
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
4. My Eclipse installation randomly crashes. Also, the splash screen never goes away after starting up. I’m in the process of reinstalling Eclipse to see if this does anything. Edit: reinstalling appears to have fixed the crashing and splash screen issues.
This hasn’t been an enjoyable experience so far — I was under the opinion that Linux is reaching maturity, especially Ubuntu, but this is definitely not the case. The problems I’m experiencing seem to be a step backward from the last upgrade cycle. As I just mentioned, the ability to run fast on older hardware is a huge enticement to switch to Linux, and if my three year old desktop can’t handle it, there’s a lot more work to be done. I’m certainly not going to buy a new video card that’s worth much more than the rest of the computer.
This weekend I…
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on April 5, 2009
… rode outside for the first time since the surgery. This was a huge step forward and I had been waiting too long.
Over the past week or two I had been getting really restless. The hour on the trainer every day gave me a workout, but the weather was starting to turn. Spending nearly 95% of my time indoors over the past seven months was starting to really get to me. As goes the quote from “Office Space,” “Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day,” which was pretty much what I have been doing. I would walk back and forth from the Computer Science office and that was about it in terms of getting outside. Something was about to give.
It gave this weekend. The Colonial Relays was this weekend, and on Friday I walked over from the office and watched some of the distance races. The hour or so that I was out there had been the longest I’d been outside in quite a long time. That night, I went back and talked to a few of my teammates and alumni that had come back to watch. It was a great change of pace and was good to see everyone run. I talked to a lot of people that I hadn’t talked to in months, some even longer than that. A lot of people asked me when I would try running again, since the doctors have given me the okay to start. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but it would be soon. In talking to my old teammates, I had forgotten what I had left behind. For quite awhile, I’ve been in my own really tiny world, working on my projects.
Until now, the only times I would be shocked back into reality was when I would be having a discussion with my adviser in the late afternoon. We would be having a discussion on the whiteboard in his office and I would happen to glance out the window and see all my teammates run by in a blur. It’s a real kick in the butt to see that and remember what I used to do. In the world of computer science, the atmosphere is mellow, but determined. In the world that I came from, it’s about getting on the track and suffering. Unfortunately, in the context in which I live now, I don’t think anyone says, “I really dominated in that conference paper.” You don’t sweat and breathe hard while thinking up and coding a slick algorithm.
On Saturday, I got up, ate breakfast and prepared to do what I had done since before Thanksgiving: get on the trainer and pound away for about an hour. I would open the window, turn on the fan, and listen to music while I looked outside at the law students coming and going from the library. But on Saturday, the sun was shining and it was getting warm. I couldn’t take it any longer: it was time to go out.
It was about the best feeling I’ve ever had. I was uncaged, released into the wild, my natural habitat. I hauled it out past the state park at York River. The weather said the wind was blowing 30 mph gusts from the west, but I didn’t notice a thing. I powered up hills where over the summer I remember being exhausted and downshifting into the lowest gear. I remember trying to upshift, only to look down and see there were no more gears to use. A dog bolted out from its house and chased after me for nearly a quarter mile, but I kept it at bay. I turned around right before the road ended at the river. As I got closer to home, I never got tired. I looped around campus and got to the track just in time to watch the 4×800.
Yesterday was the first day in months that I didn’t do any work before dinner. I still did a little before I went to bed, so I couldn’t call it a complete day off. I was outside at the meet all day and got a nasty sunburn. I guess that happens when you don’t have a built up tolerance from running or biking outside every day. I watched all the distance relays and hung out with everyone some more. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. On the bike, I’d gone 45 minutes over an hour, and despite feeling much easier than the trainer, was enough to make me not want to move for most of the afternoon.
Today I went out again, but took it easier. I was definitely more tired today and felt more normal as compared with pre-surgery rides.
As for my knee, I was out of the saddle several times and really hammered up some hills without any real discomfort. I might have felt something this afternoon walking around, but I can’t be sure. I do know, that if my knee could handle what I did today and yesterday, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do at least some running. Sometime soon, the same thing will happen with biking outdoors and I’ll just start running on a whim. It won’t take much to push me over the edge.
I finally broke down and got a new bike. For awhile, I’ve been worried that the rear cogs are so worn that someday I’ll go up a hill and the chain will just rip off. I tried a few new bikes out at the bike shop, the first one being a Specialized aluminum frame. It felt like my old one, nothing really special about it. But, I tried a Giant TCR-0 with a carbon frame and it felt like a rocket. It was an unused 2006 and I think I got a pretty good deal on it since equivalent new models of just about every manufacturer go for about $1000 more. I’d been to bike shops quite a bit in the past few years and I don’t often see anything older or discounted. It seems most owners keep a limited stock. The components had been switched up and have a combination of Shimano Ultegra and 105. I really don’t need the way high end components since I don’t care too much about saving some fraction of an ounce of weight. As it is, the bike feels like a feather compared to the steel Bianchi. Since my shoes and pedals were a mess, I went ahead and replaced those. Hopefully I’ll be able to try out the bike before the weather crashes this week.
If I can bike or even run outside more often it will provide more of a balance to my life. I really can’t just hole up and work all day — there’s got to be a balance to the equation. The recent discussion about goofing off boosting productivity probably has some merit in it. Biking or running isn’t really goofing off, but it provides the same release.
Microfracture: +7 months
Posted by Matt in microfracture on March 27, 2009
It’s been over seven months since the surgery and there are days I don’t think much about my knee. It just works like it’s supposed to. No more painful popping. Sometimes it does pop on the inside, which I think is some kind of compensation due to the new tissue growth on the outside, where the damage was. It probably isn’t very smooth in there.
I still haven’t tried running yet. With a lot of work for school, the immense overhead of returning to running is just too much. With past running injuries, there is so much time that is needed for walk/jog, cross training, and way more stretching and icing to deal with potential comeback injuries. When work subsides some, hopefully within a month or two, I should have more time to try running again. With the biking that I’ve done, I’m fairly confident that my knee will tolerate some running. Otherwise, I’ve got a feeling that I would have some pain on the bike.
My bike got a flat from the resistance trainer this week. I find that odd. The tire rubs against a smooth surface on the trainer, so it wasn’t punctured. I have a feeling that the rubber tube degrades over time and eventually the glue and seams that hold it together come apart. It was probably a pinch flat: as air slowly leaked out, the underinflated tire was pinched by the rim, causing a small tear in a seam. I did notice this week that the resistance didn’t seem as much as usual although I had recently put air in the tire. This morning it was flat, and five minutes after putting in more air, it was flat again. After a tube change, the resistance seemed more normal, but I always get real paranoid about stuff like this when biking. Sooner or later, something’s going to give. It’s why I like running: no equipment to rely on.
It’s almost as if with biking, some of my stress-induced injuries that would occur with running get transferred to the bike. With running or biking, there is a single entity performing the activity with the same probability of some kind of failure. With running, it’s just me, but with biking, the bike and I are sharing the task. Sometimes I break down, and sometimes the bike breaks down. In most cases, the bike can be fixed a lot faster than I can.
I’m still considering getting a new bike, but haven’t looked into it too much. I would like a carbon fiber frame, but that jacks up the price significantly. I know Trek has a fairly wide range of relatively affordable carbon fiber bikes, but it seems that some are better than others, so I’ll have to do research. The aluminum frames I’ve ridden feel kind of twisty while the steel-framed Bianchi I’ve got is solid. The components on the Bianchi are about ground to dust so I’ve got to get something that’s fairly robust. I figure that shelling out a bit of dough will be worth it if it’s something I’m going to use every day. Like the computer monitor, I would rather pay a bit more for something that’s good and that will work well and hold up than get something cheap that will break down. If I start running again, I’ll probably not bike as much, but I would probably still do it to help ease the impact of just running and doing nothing else.
For now, I’ve got no reason to rush anything, and when the time is right, I’ll look more into running again. I do think that time is coming soon.
One year ago today…
Posted by Matt in microfracture on January 30, 2009
The day that my knee gave out. It was the day I went out on a freezing cold morning run and five minutes down the sidewalk I took a step and it all went wrong. It felt like my whole lower leg and quad just exploded. It was definitely a scary moment and I thought for a few seconds that whatever it was wouldn’t allow me to even walk.
Now it’s one year later on a similarly cold day and I’m on the other side. After a long period of pain and wondering what I had done to my knee, to the cartilage tear diagnosis and buildup to the surgery, the weeks of non-weight bearing, the months of wearing a brace, and finally biking again, I’ve come nearly full circle. A few of the guys on the team asked yesterday when I’ll be tying up the ol’ running shoes again. One even asked about racing plans. Not so fast…
My goal is to start once the weather gets warmer — the cold is probably one of the factors that led to my problems in the first place. The worst of all my previous running injuries started in the winter. I really also don’t care for freezing my butt off outside when I can bike inside. A part of me doesn’t want to start at all in fear that I’ll be in pain. I would almost rather just have the hope that I can run again versus the fear that I’ll never be able to.
I have a hard time believing it’s been a year since all this went down. I feel a lot better now than I did then, especially knowing what was wrong with me. I waited for months until the pain and irritation got so bad to go to the doctor, but there wasn’t a day that I wondered why my knee gave me such trouble. I remember clearly the day I hurt it, getting into the car and feeling unbearable pain each time I put in the clutch. Stairs were a nightmare, and even extending my leg when sitting down was pretty bad. At the least, I know what happened and I’ve tried to get it fixed. It’s possible with advances in stem cell research that I could get an injection that would regrow my lost cartilage to its pre-tear state. I could go back to running as if nothing ever happened. Now, I’ll be satisfied if I can get out the door a few times a week for a couple of miles.
I’m really starting to face the reality that I’m getting older. I know I’m not that old, but most of the doctors I’ve seen for various running injuries have told me that I’m not an invincible high schooler anymore. Stuff is going to wear me down more than it used to and I’ve got to pay attention. My coach calls them “old man” injuries. I even get called “old man” when I occasionally drop by at practice.
I guess this just boils down to the fact that I wish that I didn’t have to worry about coming apart at the seams. Ray Kurzweil goes on about how much of a PITA it is to give our bodies constant attention and to still have them break down on us — that a better solution is needed than just advances in medical technology. I really can’t stand to have to dedicate so much time to bodily upkeep when I could be doing something else. Imagine how many more interesting things we could be doing instead of having to sleep, eat, drink, brush our teeth, and handle other annoying bodily functions. They always seem to get in the way when I want to put my attention elsewhere.
Though uploading my consciousness into a computer as a program sounds like a radical idea, it would certainly take care of most of these annoyances. The question would then become one of experience: would existing as a computer program provide the same sensory experience, satisfaction, and overall quality of life as in a real body? I’m not sure. At this point I would have to say no, but maybe a few more years of aging will change that.
PC vs. Console: I think I’m crossing over to the dark side…
Over the past few years I’ve lost some of my interest in gaming and as a result my desktop PC is several years old and rusting under my desk. I don’t use Windows for anything anymore and I’ve heard so many bad things about Vista, so I’ve been using Mac and Linux exclusively for awhile.
I would really like to get back into more games, but I just can’t see myself throwing out $2000 for a computer that I would use exclusively for games and be unable to carry around anywhere without a lot of effort. It just isn’t worth it anymore. So, I’m pretty sure I’m going to get an Xbox.
It seems that a real shift is taking place with developers placing emphasis on console games over PC, making most PC games a buggy port of their console counterparts. Most new PC games are packed with nasty copy protection rootkits that are nearly impossible to remove. Finally, new PC games all seem to have extremely steep system requirements, meaning you have to undertake a massive and expensive upgrade in order to get acceptable performance. All these are things I don’t want to deal with, especially when I can get a top of the line Xbox for less than the price of a halfway decent video card.
My main concern over console games is the controller. I started on PC games and feel natural with keyboard and mouse. At my height of gaming, I became one with the computer, leveling the crosshairs on an opponent and blasting away without the slightest thought of what keys to press and how much to move the mouse. I’ve played on a fair number of consoles and I’ve never adjusted to the controllers. I always feel sluggish and usually have to remember where the buttons are and what they do. Because of the controller, many RTS and simulation games are exclusively developed for the PC, which is a drawback in and of itself.
Regardless, I think I’m going to make the switch anyway. With enough practice, I can adjust to the controller. It’s also going to be a huge cost savings since it’s far easier to shell out $400 every four or five years for a new console compared to several thousand for PC upgrades. The additional money for PC upgrades would be more justifiable if I were to use the computer for work, but Windows is useless for development and the lack of portability is also detracting.
This leads into my proposed setup: get a new monitor with DVI and DisplayPort for my laptops and HDMI input for consoles. This way I can use the monitor for computing and for games. My current external monitor has a 4:3 aspect ratio with only one digital input and I would also prefer something widescreen. With only one digital input, it’s a real pain when I want to switch the Mac laptop for the Linux one or on the rare occasion that I want to boot up the desktop.
It seems that 16:9 1080p monitors are rare and are pretty limited in terms of functionality. The only one that remotely interests me is the Dell S2409W and I’ve it uses the poor quality TN panel which gets a lot of complaints. It may be okay for the Xbox, but I don’t know about using it with the computers. So, it seems 16:9 monitors are out since all the other ones I can find are also TN panels. Larger 30+ in TV-style monitors are also out since the cheapest of those runs about $800, which is out of my price range, especially for something that may not fare well as a computer monitor several feet from my face.
So, this means PC-oriented 16:10 aspect monitors. I would prefer something at least 24 inches and I can’t really get anything with a resolution greater than 1920 x 1200 since my laptops have terrible video cards. Being 16:10, it means that when I plug in the Xbox, I’ll get 100 pixel black bars on the bottom and top of the screen, but that’s something I can live with since the screen will be large enough. Two 16:10 monitors interest me: the Dell 2408WFP and the HP LP2475W. Of those, the HP seems the better buy since its panel is the highly coveted IPS and it also seems to be nearly $100 cheaper depending on the vendor. Both have an HDMI input, two DVI inputs, and a DisplayPort input.
Then, I can pick up a Pro Xbox for about $300. I can’t see the advantage of the Elite except for the 120 GB hard drive (vs. 60 on the Pro). Games are a bit more on the expensive side compared to the PC, but it’s probably all worth it not having to worry too much about endless installs, wasted hard drive space, and hardware-specific bugs.
So, I get an XBox Pro for about $300 and a 24 inch monitor for about $600, which is quite the savings over a massive PC upgrade. But there’s one problem: sound. Consoles are oriented towards those with dedicated 7.1 surround receivers to make it sound like a battle is being fought in the room. I don’t have that — I would prefer to just plug in some headphones, but the Xbox doesn’t have a headphone jack. This leaves me with three options, none of which I really care for:
1) Get a receiver. My dad’s got an old receiver that could handle the analog AV from the Xbox. I would really like to avoid this because it means yet another large piece of electronic junk sitting in my room. Furthermore, it would do nothing except provide me with a headphone jack for my games. This seems like a waste.
2) Connect the analog AV cables from the Xbox to a pair of headphones with some adapters. This isn’t really a good option either since there is no way to control the volume. I’ve heard of at least one person doing this and having it work, but as he said, there’s no volume control. You’re just stuck at whatever volume the Xbox puts out.
3) Connect the analog AV cables to the line in on my Macbook. I can also do this with some adapters and then plug the headphones into the Macbook and use the laptop as an amplifier. I’m not sure how well this would work either in terms of losing signal clarity and whines from the laptop making their way into my headphones. Also, I’m not even sure if the line in on the Macbook is stereo. I really don’t care about surround on headphones, but I would at least like to have stereo.
At this point, the third option is probably the best bet, and if that doesn’t work, try the others. I can’t seem to find many others on the Internet with this kind of setup. Most who use a PC monitor with their console still connect their sound to a dedicated receiver or a powered set of PC speakers.
I’ll probably wind up doing more research before I settle on something. Or, I might just forget it if it really looks like this won’t work.
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