Relative Something

Not only was yesterday the anniversary of my flight to Lukla, it also marked 8 weeks since I injured my hamstring playing soccer. I haven’t played soccer since. It has been a struggle for me. For some pathological reason that I haven’t quite identified, I have undercut my own intense desire to return to playing soccer by entirely failing to maintain a rehabilitation routine. I’ve fallen off the wagon of muscle rehab.

In place of intense mental scrutiny over the reasons for my behavior, I am choosing to disregard my self-defeating behavior and pick battles that, for the time being, I feel up to. After an entire week in Florida, where I rested not just my leg, but my entire being, top to bottom, mind and body, I returned last night to my weekly floorball sport. I spent plenty of time in goal, where I noticed my reaction time is returning to my former productive performance, and I did a few successful shifts of running the floor. The next step in my plan of incremental return to activity is to try showing up for soccer on Friday morning. I will be far from full capacity, but I am interested to see what it will be like to run and try to control a ball with my feet. A pretty major test of leg control that floor hockey doesn’t require.

My inactivity over the last few weeks has produced remarkable results in terms of muscle loss and flab accumulation. It sure doesn’t take long to see the outcome of my slothfulness. This is one of the true injustices of our existence. It takes such a long time, and such extremes of effort, to produce evidence of positive results in muscle tone and reduction of love handles, when just a short period of neglectful power-lounging brings about immediate results. I shoulda been a sumo wrestler.