After hobbling, and after having to make myself totally stay out of the gym: I’m back.

Granted, it’s tough to go from being in great shape to being feeling like I have to start over fitness-wise post-injury. I had a great workout today, yet I could feel where exercises felt challenging with lower-than-usual resistance. But, that’s okay; it just shows me where to do the most work. I’ll get back to as fit as I was before my wreck last year.

(Sidebar: it was a year ago Thursday, that car accident that started this whole mess. )

So, in summary: I feel  the lost time for which I need to make up from being largely on the fitness sidelines this past year, but my head is in the game to get back that smart and fast.

Who knows, maybe I’ll come back better than I was before. That would be ideal, fer shur.

I ditched the cane three days ago.  Apparently, it takes three days to really see what’s what, but I think I’ll keep it at bay. I wasn’t feelin’ it, that cane.

The good news about that, though, is that I immediately felt like my injury rehab was back in my own hands. Funny how jettisoning a stupid piece of metal can do that.

Now, I just need to remember to not get frustrated by starting from scratch, fitness-wise. I’ve gone from what I would classify as “extremely fit” to “strong as a garden slug” in a matter of months. So, that part should be interesting.

I’m heading to physical therapy tonight. Again. And, I’m dreading it. Again. There is something in the athletic mindset that fight physical therapy’s gentler approach. We push ourselves, we want results. Physical therapy, at least my experience of it, is an exercise in patience and trusting that things are improving, even wen absolutely nothing feels different or better at all.

Granted, I’m rehabbin’ my hip/lower back still, but I spent this past weekend in Bozeman, MT and Yellowstone National Park walking around, breathing good clean mountain air, and hanging out with my brother.

I really must get back there to do some serious hiking sometime soon.

Feel free to check out my Flickr set from the weekend.

I’ll be at the Chicago marathon expo tomorrow to check it all out. Follow me on Twitter for info in real-time, or check-in next week for my Chicago marathon expo post here on Bonkless, where, just like last year, I’ll check out all the gadgets and vendors and report back with everything.

Two recent posts I wrote on ChicagoNow’s Sports community blog:

How to navigate water stops

How to get a kick-ass finish line photo

Have a great race everyone!

So, Bonkfighters, what do you think about having the Olympics in Chicago? Thumbs up or thumbs down? Let’s hear it.

What I dig about this article from Runner’s World is that is gives options for varying degrees of greening up one’s running. For example:

Hydrate

Good: Buy powdered sports drinks and mix them yourself.
Better: Wave away plastic race cups by carrying your own water in a secure container (like Amphipod’s Hydraform Handheld Pockets).
Best: Use reusable bottles instead of throwaway plastic water bottles.

See the rest at Runner’s World.

In Chicago, many runners are rather peeved (to put it quite mildly) about the lakefront parking meters which are about to be installed at lakefront parking areas.  Some are calling it a class issue– that installing the expensive meters along the lake which line the rest of the streets in the Chicago will serve only to limit lakefront recreation to those who can afford to feed the meter– while some call it just a matter of the city’s enthusiastic efforts to generate a lot of revenue from parking and ticketing, while many say it’s really a bit of both.

But for my parking quarters, my first thought was about my running route, I’ll confess.

Let’s say the meters allow two hours of parking at a stretch. To a runner, that means we can run only an hour away before we must loop back to feed the meter. Which might be okay for elite athletes and shorter-distance runners, but for those of us who aim for longer mileage in our running, this is going to make for some boring runs in the same circles over and over and over. Ugh.

And what of bicyclists? I know a ton of cyclists who park, then ride for hours out, then back. Or parents? I know parents who opted to bring their children to the beach during the summer for little more than the cost of a mid-day cooler picnic. Are they going to leave their children unsupervised on the beach while they go plug the meter? Of course not. They’ll pack the kids up and head home after only a short time. Great.

I can’t help but wonder how the new parking meters will challenge the fitness and recreation of Chicagoans. And not in a good way.

Daydreaming on the train home tonight, I thought of organizing a group of runners and bikers to stagger our take-off times in order to feed meters of the group, but then I returned to daydreaming about open parking like we have for a few more weeks.

I have a ton of race t-shirts. I purge my pile of them fairly often, but the collection grows. I was looking at a brochure recently from Campus Quilt, a company who will sew all of your race t-shirts into a quilt, and it occured to me I don’t recall ever having discussed the matter of t-shirts with another runner.

So, let’s hear it: what do you do with your race t-shirts? Has anyone made a quilt from them? Or something else? Let’s hear it.

In a previous post, I discussed the Pace Tat, a pace temp tatoo. Well! I’m now happy to report that I have six shiny new Pace Tats in my possession to try out. I’ll report back when I know more.