A failing body, a broken soul

The last couple weeks have been fairly uneventful, athletics-wise, due to a few things. Apparently, that little crash landed me harder than I thought. For weeks after, I felt like I constantly needed to crack my back and stepping in a certain way made my hip crack loudly and grotesquely. For a while I felt like someone had given me a dead-leg-punch right in my quad and removed a few key stabilizer muscles from my groin, giving me the slightest of limps walking down the street and keeping me listing to the side a bit while biking.

With stretching and exercising, I feel I've gotten over some of those things. The most important now is the kneecap issue, which the doctor said would have pain when touched for three months. No, I won't just sit here and poke it, but when muscles get pulled tautly over it, it hurts. So that's my main obstacle now.

Or so I thought. A week and a half ago I broke my rear derailleur and it had to be at the store for a week waiting on a part. Got a cold in the meantime - of course. Sore throat, tired eyes, the whole bit; always happens when I stop working out. Major lamesauce - so I started running a bit to keep the plant of fitness from dying completely. You gotta keep the roots alive in order to nurse it back to health. The bike is back home now.

The main danger of injury is a broken soul, and every man has his breaking point. Sports doctors often caution patients to rehabilitate gradually and carefully, imploring them to "listen to their bodies." If you listen close enough, you're bound to always hear something, and Sam and I listen so closely to our knees we practically hit ourselves in the face, so to speak. Worrying, hypothesizing, self-diagnosing, backing-off, adjusting, building confidence, self-Advil-medicating, icing, stretching, wondering, wishing, losing confidence all over again, getting back on the bike... this is the dark side of the mental game, and when have nothing else to do, this headgame is a mind job like none other. Inevitably, you throw caution to the wind and either come up rich or empty-handed, poorer than before. Each of these cycles is more painful than the one before.

"Is this fun right now?"
"It would be fun if I weren't thinking about my knee."
"What would you say you're doing more of right now? Pedaling, or thinking about your knee?"
"Thinking about my knee."
"Exactly."