Senior Olympian Sprinter

Finally, we get to race again! As many of you know, I was injured last April 4, 2024. I had a disk at L4 vertebra collapse and pinch a nerve in my back that caused over half of my lower leg strenth to disappear. I had a lot of atrophy in my right leg quad and I have been recovering ever since. I am close to 100% on strength and the right leg looks like it is very close to normal size again, but it has been a battle. I have been working in the gym, doing pilates again and also running. All of these things must be done in balance so you can get the proper rest and recover. I still do full body massages every two weeks and I also have been working with a Cox Technique Chiro since the injury on a weekly or biweekly basis. The chiro has gotten me stretched back out and the pressure off the nerve, that treatment has been the real source of healing in my opinion. MY normal doctor was not any help, but this is not what normal doctors do--naturally healing. The first meet of 202...

 On December 13, 2024, Riverview High School athletics department invited the boys AA High School Basketball State champs back for a little celebration and recognition of our achievement.   We won the title in March of 1975 at St Johns Arena in Columbus, Ohio in an overtime thriller against Dayton Stivers.   Riverview was not favored by any stretch , but we had only lost once previously in a game we just forgot to show up and play after we won the league title a couple nights earlier--we knew what we were doing.   The Riverview team prevailed and we took the big gold trophy that sits proudly at RV today, and it set off an incredible celebration.      Coshocton County has three high schools--RV, Ridgewood and Coshocton.  Coshocton is the city schools and the other two are the rural schools.   All were good at basketball in that era and we had some great games among these schools.  No Coshocton County high school has wo...

 Hello to all the faithful readers out there is the ethernet.  As you know, I have been dealing with an issue with a pinched nerve in my back that has been affecting my right leg strength.  My leg strength is back to 85% according to the squat machine at the gym.  I use the type of machine that has belt around your waist and you hook up to an arm that connections to the weight rack. This machine does no put any weight on my lower back and allows for leg strength development.  Progress has been made and I am also running a couple days a week at the Pettit Ice Center in West Allis as well.   Things are coming along.    About 6 weeks ago I began doing weekly pilates classes.   The pilates has been very helpful in generating flexibility and strength in  my lower body.   The sessions are around one hour and they are very intense and I am enjoying the improvement in my body strength and movement. I plan on continuing these ...

 Curiosity is a very important part of our lives.   I would not be an engineer if I did not have sufficient curiosity to go into buildings with production machinery operating and try to figure out what they are doing.... Without the curiosity to look into the next chest of pulp to try and figure out what is happening to that material.....To challenge your body to find its limits and short comings ....   I am curios by nature and I like it that way.   My chiro work is proceeding and next week we will cut back to one visit per week from the current two visits.  He works on decompression and also lower body flexing near the bad vertebra to get pressure off the joint and relieve the nerve pinching pressure.   We are getting some progress in his opinion and he is my major care giver at this point.   We have discussed what I can and cannot do in terms of exercise.   High Jumping is a definite No No at this point.  I ju...

 It has been about 10 weeks since I pinched the nerve in my back causing the muscle control issue in my right quad.   I am seeing my chiro twice a week for treatment and we are gaining on the process--s. l. o. w  l.  y.   I did visit my regular doctor who prescribed some steroids and also discussed some surgery technics.  I took the steroids and was superman for 4 days and but I wrote her a note about the other procedures and told her I would wait for Fall until thinking about that stuff.   I want to run out the chiro work first.   He said it could be up to 9 months for a full recovery and I got the time.    I am making progress, my lower leg buzzy feeling on my right side is basically gone.   But the quad control is still muted, with an occasional problem with my right leg just giving away for a split second and then I catch myself and keeping on trucking. Those occurrences are becoming less and less. ...

 As you get older, you understand the aging process from first hand knowledge, your body lets you know you are aging through its queues and hints.   Sometimes it is subtle and other times it is sudden.  On April 4, 2024 I received a  queue from my body concerning my back.      I had severe pain in my right leg and lost about half of the strength and function in the leg--just like a door had shut.  Bam!  I could not really walk, had a miserable time getting comfortable and could not sleep worth a damn.   Life had changed very suddenly for me.    The message was delivered on a Friday and I got to my chiro-- a Cox Technique Chiro- on Monday and he started the procedure to decompress my L 4 vertebra which had a disk that had collapsed and was pinching a nerve causing the loss of muscle control and strength in my right outer leg.   Inner leg was good, as was my left leg.  I also have nerve related feelings i...

July was a very busy month in terms of my track and field. I ran a regional meet at Time check at the finish Pretty much the entire meet at Spire Spire Institute in Geneva , Ohio followed by the Senior Games Nationals in Pittsburgh and followed by the USATF Masters Nationals in Greensboro. Three road trips in one month was a lot, but I got in some great racing. The meet at Spire was a regional affair where I ran the 100, 200 and high jumped. This meet was a prep for the two National events that were looming on the horizon. I stayed with a college friend while in Geneva, he lived 15 minutes from the track and that made for a great visit and saved some hotel cash as well. The meet was about as wet as I have ever been involved. I jumped first and finished the day with the 200, which was the last event on the track. It rained, not hard, but with an unbroken stream the entire meet The rain finally quit during the 200 meter heats. Just wet the entire meet. I did bring my tent a...

Covid is not as simple as you may think to shake. My last blog had me recovering quickly from my Covid exposure. With Paxlovid, there is a very high chance of a rebound or reinfection and that is precisely what happened to me. I tested clean , for 48 hours, and then got the crap again two days later. Not as severe, but some fever and general tiredness. I had another doctor appointment via the computer and got a script for a steriod and some really bad advice from a Nurse Practioner. She claimed I was safe to be out in public even though I was testing positive. Wrong, just bad advice. I stayed home for another 10 days and part way through this period Linda got the covid from me! I was told I was not contagious, wrong again. Just a lovely husband thing to do. She did not us Paxlovid, she had another script that cleaned her up in about two weeks. But this Covid crap has been a very long slog. Hopefully good bye at this point. My daughter talked me into a 5 K next...

 It was inevitable, during a pandemic that I would get in the fray with everyone else and I finally did. Linda and I have been amazed that it took this long to get exposed to Covid and actually get sick.  Linda and I have both very diligent on getting our shots and staying out of risky situations. Last Saturday morning I was hot and feeling rather poorly and I tested for Covid and it was positive in 30 seconds.  Time had ran out on my luck and Covid had finally tracked me down and caught me.   Linda is in the medical field and knew of some new Emergency Use Authorization  drugs that were on the market  for treatment of people in my health category of high blood pressure and age.    We set up a urgent care video appointment and the nurse practitioner prescribed the medical treatment Linda was suggesting I do--Paxlovid.  This stuff is free and used under the Emergency Use Authorization rules.  We picked it up at Walgreens an...

 I have blogged for several years and  Joe Ford is a very dedicated viewer of my work and I would see him at various events and he would inquire about my lack of blogs in recent years.    He was quite dogged in his follow ups, so here we go again.   The picture is Joe on his event, the pole vault in Louisville.    Thanks for the reminders  and patience Joe! I think my last post was about Donald Trump being an asshole about losing the election and what he would eventually do, he is a predictable loser.   Lets talk about something positive.     I have moved to Brookfield, Wisconsin since my last entry and we will be here for a long time.  I have retired and may work some part time in the future,  but currently I am not doing anything that makes us money.   We have three kids and a grand baby in the area and they are why we moved here, plus Wisconsin does not levy state taxes on my social security....

 After what seems like months of counting, the Presidential race has been decided.   Biden is the new man, unless you are Donald Trump and his minions.   They think the race has been won by them and with some shady lawyering, they will get to stay in the White House--no chance.  They are operating like they live in a dictatorship and their wish is everyone's command and that is just not the case.   Bully away all you want, you lost a clean fight.  It was basically a knock out and the smelling salts are not going to save you for another round.   What happens next??   Thousands of people will get sick and die from Covid as the lame duck Donald plays golf, yells at his lawyers and staff, fires more staffers and hires the yes people he so loves.   It will be a useless parade of the soon to be fired, getting their 5 minutes of glory in DC.  And the entire time, the states will certify their vote count and the Ele...

 I have been voting in Presidential elections since I first cast a vote for Jimmy Carter.  In that election cycle, the country was trying to get the Nixon residue off and Carter was something different and hopefully better.   He was and still is a wonderful human being, but his Presidency did not go well.   Oil shortages, inflation and huge unemployment figures and he was a one termer.  He was not able to make any headway against a very stiff headwind.       I am at the point of this election cycle I cannot wait  to cast a vote against the worst President of all time..  The first Tuesday in November cannot get here soon enough.     I do not think we will ever elect anything as bad as this again.  We will not survive a country if we do.    Is Joe Biden the candidate of my choice--probably not.  Is a mafia Don like we have in place now?? NO!  Does Joe have some seasoning as a leader?...

Post race along the Potomac Our daughter and grand daughter came for a visit last week and we finally got to do some visiting during the covid pandemic mess we have been experiencing.  The  grand daughter time was a lot of fun and the high light of the visit was a trip to the National Zoo in DC.   The pandas were inside and we missed them, but there was plenty of other animals to watch.  Everyone was masked up and it was not too crowded and this is way life is going to be for a while.   A lot of strollers and babies were in the zoo that day.   Betty and I had planned a 5K event that we could run while she was in town.  She does 5K's on a regular basis in the Milwaukee area and I do one a year.  The Steelers were doing a virtual 5K to support their charities and I thought it would be something to do in terms of racing.  My last race was in October of 2019 and it was a qualifier in Tennessee and the 2020 time sheet was still blan...

I have been wearing an Oura ring for several weeks.  It is basically a small computer/body sensor on your finger and it uses blue tooth to connect this data to your phone. I wear it all the time and it needs charged about every 5 to 6 days.   Oura comes from Europe and they cost $300 currently.  Originally, I purchased the ring to study my sleep habits and see if I was sleeping well.    Oura is designed to measure your heart rate, body movements, and temperature and with that data it will develop a graph   to log your sleep and body recovery.     After a few days I started to realize how the data is designed to function and the program will start giving feed back on your sleep quality and let you know if you actually recovered from the previous days activities.    If I do two really hard days of climbing in a row, my sleep patterns will so different from days without a heavy work load.  The program will suggest a day ...