jimmy buffett meets occam's razor

jimmy buffett walked us through it.

although everyone claims that there's a woman to blame... it's nobody's fault... hell, it could be my fault... it's my own damn fault. at first, we want to blame someone else, and then we want it to be fate or luck, and then we begin to realise we may have played a part in it, until we finally run out of excuses and have to admit - it's my own damn fault.

don't act like you haven't been there.

after my last 20-mile run, i did several things wrong. first, i didn't stretch. like, at all. then, i played soccer the next day with little warmup and no cool down. finally, on the third day, when i was already feeling the effects of all this poor behaviour, i ran again and didn't stretch.

but above and beyond all this negligence, the most egregious action i took was on the fourth day, when i knew that something was wrong and did not have the sense to recognise what has happening.

here's the thing: my right leg is an inch shorter than my left. this means my entire portside lower body maneuvering mechanism -- hip, thigh, knee, shin, ankle, foot -- is highly susceptible to injury.



up until a few years ago, i was blithely unaware of this discrepancy, but as the therapist who helped me get back on my feet explained, it's like a house of cards. you can go for years with nary a smidgen of an issue, but then one day the house of cards falls down and boom, issues galore.

stress fracture. tendonitis. runner's knee. back pain. hip pain. foot pain.

if i want to run marathons with a skewed anatomy, then i have to pay attention to stretching, warm ups, cool downs, and core strength. so, it's bad that i was neglecting all that.

but what's worse is that when i started to have trouble, i didn't immediately say to myself - leg length discrepancy! i mean, did i seriously believe the pimento cheese had cursed me? or, to put it differently, did i seriously believe that some random act of the universe had struck me down at random? i mean... SERIOUSLY??

occam's razor, anyone?

jeez.

so here i am, having lost a good couple of weeks of training because i did not recognise and address the problem immediately. the best thing would have been to have not neglected the good behaviours at all, but MY POINT HERE IS that even with neglecting that stuff, THE DAMAGE WAS STILL REPAIRABLE. i didn't have to wait all this time, moaning about always getting hurt during training.

hello? hello? anyone home? think, mcfly! think!

in conclusion: i am my own worst enemy and it's my own damn fault.