Previously in The Captain: Rebirth....I lost a lost of weight then had knee surgery and spent an entire year feeling sorry for myself. An. Entire. Year.
Issue #3 - 2014: The Captain vs. The Baby
In the later part of 2013 I decided I was going to get back on the horse and try to do an obstacle course race. I even thought if I signed up for one and spent the money I would be motivated to actually go through with it. Guess what? WRONG. I estimate that I have spent about $200 in races I have never actually run. I had these grand ideas of running all these races and did not do a damn thing to make it happen.
In January 2014 I got this wild idea that I was actually going to stop feeling sorry for myself and do what I set out to do in 2012 and run an obstacle course race. As I laid out in a previous post I got REALLY ambitious and signed up for 3 races that year. 1 got canceled, 1 I bailed on, but the 3rd I actually did. Out of shape, in now way prepared for it I ran Survival Race Dallas on April 27, 2014, with a time of {around 1 hour 30 minutes. I can’t find my finisher dog tag with my time on it}. It was really difficult but I was very proud of myself. I met some awesome people that helped me through the course and had a great time.
I had hoped that would have helped me move forward and kick start things but as the song says "life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything's okay and everything's going right." It turns out my child hated sleep. For those of you unaware, babies and toddlers are the enemies of everything. They are the enemies of sleep. They are the enemies of productivity. They are the enemies of EV. RY. THING. I had a number of false starts on fitness and such because I was always so frakking tired. I even had to convert my desk at work to a standing desk because I kept falling asleep. Seriously, this child never slept. It was awful.
Needless to say I was more worried about getting as much sleep as possible than anything else so I really did not get much else accomplished in my life. The one thing I DID do was persuaded my wife to buy me a Groupon for Title Boxing Club. It was 2 free weeks and a personal training session. After my 1st 2 weeks I signed up for a 3-month membership. I was going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6am for a one hour boxing/kickboxing class. I LOVED it. I tried boxing many, many, many years ago and fell in love with it. I have tired to keep it as part of my fitness routine ever since. The only issue was the longer I went the less I was able to go because again babies are the enemy. The simple act of going to the gym at 6am 3 days a week was clearly not that simple. Despite my desire to continue going I was missing too many days to justify the cost. Though it was not sustainable it was the best I did all year and actually starting making decent progress. Somewhere in all this I got a Fitbit Zip and started working on tracking my steps. I was really enjoying it and was even doing step goal competitions with my friends. However, having a Fitbit and not actually doing anything kinda makes you a poser.
The summer was more of the same as I had to work for the 1st summer in 7 years (usually had the summer off as a teacher). Summer came to an end and we had to start looking for a new house because our super old landlord was selling our rent house out from under us with almost no notice. Other than the stress of having to move and the WORST time of the year* this move created a new problem. I was lucky enough to have a man cave at our old place and a big field out back to work out. Our new place was going to be quite limited on space. So of course I made the best of it and was that much more dedicated, right? Not so much. Just another excuse.
As we approached the last quarter of 2014 things got SUPER awesome. I was shopping with my family and all of a sudden I was on the floor. My right knee had given out on me and it hurt very much bad. It was a different kind of pain than I had with my left knee back in '012 but it was a much more intense pain. After I fell a few more times over the course of a several weeks my wife and I decided I needed to go to the doctor. I suspected I had psoriatic arthritis as I have suffered from the heartbreak of psoriasis for many years. I went to the doctor and he almost immediately dismissed that theory. He sent me for an MRI and I was referred to another ortho specialist. As the deja vu really set in I was told, almost exactly 2 years after the left knee, I had a torn meniscus in my right knee and would once again need surgery.
Here is the cliffhanger panel of the comic. Stay tuned for the final issue where we find out how I reacted to my surgery and how 2015 went. Spoiler: not well on either front.
\m/ THERE IS NO TRY \m/
*My wife is a band director and we were moving during marching season which is the busiest time of year for her.
