100 Days of Pain: What it’s taught me [Part II]

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Life is a marathon, not a sprint. It took some­thing as severe as an injury and 100 days of pain for me to fully get that. The mon­e­tary, phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and men­tal price of not tak­ing care of our­selves is much steeper over the long-haul than any per­ceived imme­di­ate downside.

Perfectly Designed

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Pretty much the whole run­ning shoe indus­try is one big (and hugely suc­cess­ful!) mar­ket­ing spin machine. Pretty incred­i­ble. I think they’re play­ing to an inner voice in folks (me included, until I read Born to Run) that thinks, as humans, we are not ade­quate. Yet when you stop and think about it, man’s inter­fer­ence with […]

100 Days of Pain: What it’s taught me [Part I]

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Through expe­ri­enc­ing a 100 days of pain I have grown to real­ize that some­times you have to go back­wards before you can move for­wards. While I do feel sad, frus­trated, and remorse­ful, I also feel a renewed sense of hope. You see, I have redis­cov­ered the life within me. It’s the last thing I thought I’d get from pain and tragedy, but I wel­come it with open arms.

Homemade, Gluten-Free Granola with Chia Seeds

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This gra­nola packs a lot of energy, thanks to a nice blend of nuts, seeds, and whole grains. It is an excel­lent way to start the day, as it con­tains a good amount of pro­tein and nat­ural fats and sug­ars. It’s been a favorite in our house­hold for a num­ber of years now, in part […]

7 Ways Running Makes You More Creative

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The traits of highly cre­ative peo­ple are very sim­i­lar to the traits of run­ners. And this is not just a coin­ci­dence. In addi­tion to phys­i­cal ben­e­fits, run­ning pro­vides a num­ber of ben­e­fits to one’s over­all emo­tional and men­tal well being, all nec­es­sary for creativity.

Back to the Cutting Board

Cutting Board

There was an inner drive push­ing me to get out of bed and use my legs. I think it was the real­iza­tion that I was finally on the other side of the surgery and for the first time in over four months, I was in a posi­tion to start heal­ing! It had been the vision of this moment, after my surgery, that had kept me going all that time. All I had to go on was the promise that I would have my back fixed one day and would be able to start recov­er­ing. Now, that moment had arrived. Warn­ing: graphic image of back at end.

Getting the Energy Sucked Out

I am now into day four post back surgery. The surgery sure took a lot out of me. I lit­er­ally had disc sucked out and also feel as though they took with it a whole lot of energy. While I had lit­tle energy in the weeks before the surgery, the surgery left me com­pletely depleted. […]

Those Look Comfortable for Running

The nurse who took my blood today at UCSF dur­ing my pre-op noticed my black Vibram Five Fin­gers on my feet. With a sur­prised voice he said, “Oh, those are fancy shoes!” He asked if they were for swim­ming. When I responded say­ing they were for run­ning, it was my turn to be sur­prised. He […]

The Original Sin

I was lis­ten­ing recently to a pod­cast in which Bare­foot Ted was being inter­viewed. He was talk­ing about the argu­ments folks have against bare­foot run­ning and the men­tal­ity that the human body is bro­ken. It struck me how sim­i­lar this belief sounds to the Chris­t­ian phi­los­o­phy of Orig­i­nal Sin, that we’re all born defi­cient because […]

East vs. West: Caught in the middle of an age-old battle.

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I find myself caught in the mid­dle of a show­down between East and West. East­ern med­i­cine ver­sus West­ern Med­i­cine. Acupunc­ture against the upstart micro­surgery. Both are claim­ing that they can cure me of all the prob­lems caused by a her­ni­ated disc. I don’t want to be in this bat­tle. I didn’t ask for it. Or did I?

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