so it’s come to this.
i was thinking today about the old days and how some guys would do Really Bad Things to their bodies in the name of training. one of those things was DMSO.
DMSO was a horse linament that you could buy at the feed store. it was said to have magical healing power, and a lot of runners swore by it. drug testing was a bit more lax in those days, as was common sense about allowing your body to absorb stuff you didn’t understand. oh, those wacky ’70s.
fast forward 30 years, and here i was staring at the Dr. J.H. McLean’s Volcanic Oil Pain Relieving Linament i had just bought for mo in an effort to kill her in her sleep.
LINAMENT! it had to be a sign. you never know.
So i doused my left knee and waited. and waited. to be exact, i waited till the brady bunch was over. priorities, you know. i had a hunch this group would somehow form a family. and then i went out to run.
except i didn’t, because it still hurts. a lot. horses much have a much higher threshold of pain than me. or possibly i need to be spurred a bit.
it was an ok stroll with a little jogging thrown in. the first sub-80 day in about 12 years. sad to have wasted it.
bottom line: although this stuff smells just horrid, it appears to not solve my problem, the problem being that my knee has no cartilage and i will never run again.
so tomorrow we try the Great Tempo Only Experiment of 2016. maybe after a swig of the Dr. J.H. McLean’s Volcanic Oil Pain Relieving Linament. because you never know.
even when you do.
i like margarine 
Ew, you definitely know you don’t want to take a swig of that stuff. Whiskey with a horse drawing on it, maybe.
The knee sounds like it’s in bad shape. Is that my future?
nah. it’s common knowledge now that you only need to increase Skittles intake to compensate for increased mileage and lessen the wear on the body. we didn’t know that in the old days (and they weren’t available in the u.s. until 1982, at which time i’d been running three years and the damage was already done.) you should be fine.