Challenges in training, and that old chair. 11/23/10

Every week is a learning experience for me.
With every injury an athlete endures, they become 2 steps closer, then they had ever planned, to becoming a therapist someday. Each injury is a new learning experience. You become a student of your own body. Which proves to be more complicated than you could have ever imagined back in high school biology.
Major challenges for me over these post collegiate years have revolved around the absence of medical insurance. Its amazing how resilient your own image of the human body becomes when you don't have the option of going to the doctor. Not to mention how creative and motivated you become in solving your own healing needs.
Off the top of my head; since I have been out of college I have broken my left hand, had calcium deposits cut out of my right hand,  separated my left AC joint, torn major ligaments in my left ankle, dislocated my left knee cap, tore my left groin, ruptured the fascial tissue in my right wrist that holds a major tendon in place (still unrepaired), and pulled my right bicep tendon. Each injury came with new training, therapy, and patience. But when you love something this much, any hurdle can be overcome.
As annoying as all those injuries were, they don't hold a candle to the barrier placed before me with the discrepancies in my spine. I have already written, scribbled, typed, and retyped about 6 training programs since my first injection in early September. I write them in 2 week cycles in an attempt to make the next two week cycle slightly harder with an unofficial goal of gaining enough strength and recovery to return to the runway by late February or early March 2011. In all of the weeks of programs I've written since September i have only been able to fully complete 1 week of training, the way I wrote it out, without too much pain. Thinking I finally had it figured out, I attempted the same workout the following week and failed. I was so excited and had that joy ripped right out of my hands only 1 day into the week. That was last week. I took 3 days off and then started over again. New workout, new exercises, cut this, add that.
So here I am. Guess and check, guess and check, guess and check. Just like in high school biology, only this time I'm the frog pinned down to the table and the results are whether or not I can sleep at night, or function the next day. I sit here by my window, watching the snow come down, in the same chair where my father wrote for countless hours of his life in a place 700 miles from here. Funny I can't help but think about the the old man, his stiff shoulders, cramped neck, blood shot eyes, pounding away at his laptop with such passion and determination. We're so different and so alike. Buried in a pile of notebooks, spread sheets, and legal pads all full of my own scribbling and thoughts about my body. Somewhere in that pile of  fire starter holds the key to my next two weeks of successful training. Patience and pain for now. Triumph will come.