Progress and Failure

First, I'm a bit conflicted.  About what?  The weather, or course!  It's been absolutely fabulous to run with temps in the lower 60's (in the morning) to mid-70's (evening).  But (says in a very small voice)...I kinda miss the 80's!  Where is my summer!  It's only August!  Now, before you all start beating me over the head and replaying little recordings of me saying how absolutely miserable I was running in June and July, it was in the upper 90's to about 103 degrees!  I just miss the 80's!  Can't we have a happy medium??  Ok, that's about all I have to say about that.

Progress:  My shoulder is doing pretty well.  I have gone to a physical therapist and my range of motion has improved dramatically.  But it's not without pain.  My physical therapist told me that the pain is the last thing to improve (range of motion and stuff will all improve first). I was very sad to hear this considering he puts me in a lot of pain while I'm there.  In fact, my therapist (PT for short to protect the innocent), doesn't really care about my pain at all.

PT:  "Oh!  This hurts?  Great!  Let's do it more, deeper and with greater force to see if we can really make those tears come out!" 

As long as my shoulder doesn't feel as though it's going to pop out of the socket, the pain doesn't matter to him.  It matters to me!  But who cares about me!  But all in all, big improvements.  I'm happy with that.  I wish it was 100% percent better but I'll take what I can get.

My shoulder blade when doing normal arm stuff still isn't great.  It still wings out and doesn't stay flat.  But when I contract it (example: doing rows), it does what it should be doing.  Not sure if that will get better with time??

Fail:  What did I fail at??  Actually I got yelled at by PT today.  At the end of the session, he wanted to test my arm strength.  It's one of those where you don't let him move your arm down, out , whatever....    I FAILED!!  MISERABLY!  And it didn't help that he started making me laugh.  It went like this:

PT: "Ok...start...start...start...start"  ... As he is easily moving my arm down, or out, or whatever direction.  Maybe you had to be there.

But I chalked it up to the fact that my shoulder and arm was tired from the exercises I had just done and the pain he just put me through.  So he decided to try the other side...you know, my good side.  I thought, "OK this should be MUCH better!"  FAIL!!  How is that possible?  I'm really not that weak!  He is appalled at my lack of strength and beat me with a stick.  So he wants to incorporate more of that into my exercises.  He said to do it once a week.  I told him I do...sometimes.  But it's very lacking.  It's about 10 minutes and I'm done.  I'm not sure what once a week is really going to do for me anyway!  But yes, I totally got yelled at.  Now wait until he finds out how much weaker my hips are!  I have about ZERO strength there!

Dinner with runner friends:  Yesterday I had a mid-season dinner with my Yankee Runner group that I run my long runs with.  I didn't go last year, not sure if I was busy or didn't really feel I knew people well enough.  This year I went and it was a lot of fun.  It's always strange to see runner friends (who you usually ONLY see in run clothes, sweaty, with their hair up) looking all nice and fancy!  Afterwards there was a huge raffle with gifts from Turkey Trot entries, boxes of GU, a book, and lots of CARA t-shirts.  They even raffled off the remaining cases of beer that we didn't drink.  Before the raffle, a guy named "M" gave me his ticket because he had to leave.  Um..."M" has had a run crush on me since last training season (I mean, who doesn't??  I'm super sexy with sweat all over me and my face is bright red!)...but I'm not really interested so I kind of felt bad even taking the ticket from him.  I figured if I won with his ticket, I would get something he might want so I could give it to him.  And I actually did win with his ticket...near the end of the raffle.  The only things left were the T-shirts.  And only XS and L.  I picked the Large but it's not large enough for him to wear...so I guess it's mine!  Hey!  My intentions were good, right?