OnePhatMan

The knee, it is iffy.

I wore my bright yellow Cascadias all day Wednesday, and went for a 2-ish mile hike in them, all with zero knee pain. Thursday, I wore my New Balance shoes for a 3-4 mile walk in the morning, with no knee pain (though there is a little rub on one of my pinky toes) all day.

The word “ecstatic” would well sum up my feelings, even though in the back of my mind I remembered that cutting back on the intensity of the elliptical had made my knee stop hurting for a couple of days. I was reservedly ecstatic.

Friday morning I woke around 3am, my bladder full. No knee pain as I took care of business. This is where it gets weird. I fell back asleep, and woke up at 5 to get up and go walking. And my knee hurt like the dickens. It hurt all day yesterday, to the point that I took a couple of Aleve (don’t bother leaving me a preachy comment, I’m aware of the recent media hype) and that knocked it out. It hurt when I got up this morning, and and it’s hurting a little right now. Definitely not as much as before, so I think maybe the new shoes are helping, but it doesn’t look like they’ll be the cure-all I’d hoped for.

The most frustrating aspect of the knee thing is that until I started using the elliptical trainer 6 days a week a few weeks ago, it had given me nothing more than the occasional ache if I overdid it. I don’t know if the elliptical sped up a process already in effect, or if it just inflamed something that will go away over time as I continue to not use the elliptical (I hope!), or if they’re not related at all. Remember, even though our brains constantly search for patterns, correlation doesn’t mean causation.

But it sure seems like it does.

Something for you to ponder.

How much time did you plan spending your last vacation? Did you pore over maps at the kitchen table, squinting at an atlas under bright overhead lights? Perhaps you’re a little more modern than that, and spent time plotting a route on your computer with the help of Google Maps, MapQuest, or some software you downloaded. Or, if you didn’t drive, what did you do to get airplane tickets? Maybe you called around to airlines to check, or maybe you used carrier web sites. You might have even let one place, like Expedia or Travelocity, handle that part for you.

What about hotels? Did you call many of those to look for good nightly rates or a discount of one sort or another? Did you surf to various hotel sites to check out the lay of the land, to get a feel for which hotel looked best for the money you were planning to spend? Did you look for places to eat or visit around your hotel, or maybe pick a hotel because of its proximity to an attraction you wanted to see?

How much time did you spend socking away money for the vacation? If you’re like most people, you don’t have that kind of money just laying around. Speaking for Robyn and I, we start setting aside money weeks or months (and in the case of our planned 10-year anniversary vacation, years) before we’re planning to go anywhere.

Vacations are expensive, and generally require a decent amount of time to plan, so that you can have a great time while you’re on it. Good planning for your vacation makes for memorable times, that’s for sure. Failure to plan out a good vacation would most likely lead to a not-so-great time, ripe for disaster.

How much time did you spend planning for your future health this morning?

Planning for your future health is arguably easier than even planning for a vacation, and the payoff is considerably greater. Most of the time, your plan only needs two key elements: what you plan to put into your body and what you plan to get out of it in the form of effort.

Do you already know what you’re going to eat today, or are you planning to just wing it and eat whatever’s laying around? Do you have a workout planned, or is it something you’ll do “if you find the time”?

If I may lapse into kitschy phrases, when you fail to plan you’re just planning to fail. It works the same thing in so many aspects of life, from vacations to our health. How hard is it to make a plan for what you’re going to eat? How hard is it to set aside time each day to work your body and make it stronger and healthier? Remember: there’s only one shot at life and if you screw it up the first time you don’t get a second chance. I’m not saying that to be negative, but to impress upon you the importance of the planning you do today and its effect on your way of life tomorrow.

As always, the choice of what you do is up to you.