Surprise & Wonder

One of sport's great appeals is the ever existing possibility of surprise. No better reminder of that than Germany's dismantling of Brazil in the World Cup quarterfinal match on July 8th. The game statistics are outlandish beginning with the simple fact that Germany scored five goals between the 11th and 29th minute of the first half. It's safe to say that pretty much everyone watching was surprised at what unfolded.

The cycling world is certainly surprised today after Chris Froome, the defending champion of the Tour de France and this year's favorite, crashed three times in two days and had to drop out of the race on Day 5. No returning champion has done that since 1980. A surprising turn of events to be sure.

To behold the surprise is often to look on in wonder. We all stared in wonder at the Brazil/Germany match (except the Brazilian fans who stared and wept).

Surprise and Wonder

Self-referentially, I'm surprised at how quickly I became incapacitated without warning and I wonder what the fuck triggered it.

Though today I feel better. Probably 20% better. I can almost sit normally in an office or dinner chair, with bent legs. I am able to follow through a little bit more on my step while walking so I don't have to hump it around so stiff-legged. Psyched!

But not surprised. Not in this case. Master Yang, at the end of yesterday's session, said I'd feel better today. I have now almost complete trust in him, in his diagnosis and his ability to treat me. He is convinced that I have a pinched nerve in my lower back/butt area. He worked on me feverishly for 30 minutes, at one point climbing onto the table beside me and digging his elbow into my butt like someone trying to grind bone to powder. He focused on the left side but also worked the lower back, the spine, the neck. If his touch caused me to wince or recoil (not unusual) he would chuckle and say "gentle, gentle" and then go right back to pressing and probing.

In my mind, he is not just physically working the hyper-tightened ligaments and muscles up and down my left leg, he is acting like a spiritual bellows, a chi herder driving the chi through my body, endeavoring to breech the blockages, those places within that have frozen up and that impede the flow of the Life Force through my whole physical self. I've been astonished at what he's achieved in a single session. By the end of yesterday's, he had my left leg 3/4s of the way bent and was rotating it as is part of the method of Chi Pumping (my term).

Besides, so far Western Medicine hasn't offered me a better diagnosis or treatment. The blood test for Lyme Disease proved negative, though it was suggested to me that I undergo the Lyme treatment anyway, a cycle of antibiotics. Not psyched about that. I was prescribed some pain meds. I'm fine with that, but it's not treatment. Am going to follow through with a rheumatology appointment on July 18 to see what that branch of the Western tradition has to say. But for now, I'm betting on Master Yang.

I'm more hopeful today than I was yesterday morning when I had a hard time driving to work; using the clutch with my left leg was not fun. But sometime during the morning I began to notice a slight loosening of the tightness in the knee and quad. In the afternoon I had the Qi Gong session and felt a little better physically but a lot better psychologically. Being able to accept a diagnosis and start thinking of what's happening as something known was a big boost to my morale.

I'm definitely some time away from riding again, but then again I can't be sure of that. Maybe I'll be surprised. Maybe this will abate as quickly as it came on. The good thing is that my base level of conditioning was rock solid when this occurred so if I can get back on the bike within a couple weeks, I feel like I won't have taken too many steps backward. I'm confident that a mountain summit loop will still be a routine ride and not a suffer fest.

Dub in a pot top
wearing the neck tube that Scrod sent
as a pirate hat

The First Setback of the Season

Following last week's epic Drumlin Wachusett summit loop, I took the weekend off to attend my own 9 month belated wedding reception and in so doing stood around a lot. Too much as it turned out because between the reception itself (a daytime luncheon) and the evening after-party, I managed to aggravate my hips and lower back. My whole pelvis area ached at the time but I didn't give it much thought.

Fast forward two days to Monday and I noticed a slow, nagging pain just below my left knee cap. I ignored it. On Tuesday afternoon, a beautiful day, my knee still ached but I figured I'd ride through it. Wrong. I got on the bike, tried to peddle and instantly realized it wasn't going to work. Too much power and energy have to surge through the area that was becoming more painful.

By Tuesday night, I couldn't bend my left leg. The slightest movement caused searing pain to shoot across my knee cap. And just like that, I'm injured.

Eschewing the usual round of primary care doctors, clinics, specialists, orthopedic oncologists, MRI and XRay technicians, I went right to the man that holds the power of Healing in his youthful yet powerful hands: Master Yang, the medical Qi Gong specialist.

"Is not your knee, is here!" he said and pointed to his own lower back. Then he went to work on me. Half way through the session, I was crying. Not exactly from pain but from the intimacy of his touch and the sense of caring and wisdom that came through his Herculean fingers. He dug into my thigh, my pelvis, my sciatica, my hips. By the end of the first session, he had my left leg bending fully, though only with his assistance.

I had a second session with Master Yang Friday, June 27th. Fewer tears but deep probing. He dug his steely elbows into my butt cheeks, he probed bands of tendon and muscle along the hip and outer leg, he manipulated my right leg, pumping it like a water pump and pressing on various pinpoint areas of pain within my pelvis. By the end of that session, I was able to do knee bends without pain.

But I am not through this. Far from it. Today, my beloved ND and I are off on five days vacation travel so I'll be folding myself into airplane seats, shuffling through airport terminals, trying to walk as normally as possible but failing because I can't push off on my left leg still; I have to walk stiff-legged and ascend stairs one leg up at a time. I am visibly hobbled.

So for the foreseeable future, I am off the bike. The very next time I can have a session with Master Yang is July 9th. In the meantime, I'll be stepping carefully, wincing, hoping for the best.  The thing is, when something goes wrong like this, when a body part doesn't work, you think it will never work again. How will the pain ever go away? Ah, but it will. That's the wonder of the human body, the ability to recuperate. I just have to keep believing.

Post script: Really bad timing on the injury too because the 2014 edition of the Longsjo Classic is going on this weekend in both Lemonstar and my future home, Wormtown. I saw just a little of the downtown criterium last night and wished I could have been pedaling around the periphery of the scene in my own bike gear checking it all out. Cha.