This past Monday was a great day for me because I once again took my (at one-time) usual 3-mile run for the first time in nearly a month. Just a short time earlier, I had finished up my hour-long  boxing class at a local (Blue Boy Boxing) club, a great class that is another wonderful cardio workout for me and the other men taking it with me.

The reason that I mentioned running in the opening sentence because it is something that I have been doing regularly for around 30 years, and that I have come to really enjoy.  However, because I had a strained meniscus in my left leg, I went to my doctor to see if anything could be done to reduce the stiffness and pain. I succeeded as I was given a medication that I took twice a day for around two weeks. As a result, I’m feeling much better and decided to try running again. By the way, I knew it was my meniscus because I had torn it once before.

Needless to say, I was pumped up both physically and emotionally once I had finished my run yesterday. As usual, I ran at a turtle-like pace but kept myself moving for the entire run. More importantly, I stretched before and after running, something I(and most runners) usually do to keep from cramping up.

It’s amazing how exercise can change one’s emotional state so quickly. While I was quite tired after my run, I just felt so much better overall because I was back to doing something that I loved doing. Of course, physical exercise is a very important way for people to feel better about themselves. On top of feeling good physically, there is another, even more important way that my workouts have helped me: I haven’t had any seizures in nearly a month. Trust me, with the way seizures hit me, sometimes with multiple seizures on consecutive days, possibly going one whole month without one seizure would be the closest thing to a miracle that I would’ve ever experienced.

Though I ran on Monday, I plan to take a couple of more days off before I run again so that I don’t put too much physical pressure on my knees. Something tells me that if I began to use my old schedule-running every other day- there’s a strong possibility that I would soon have another torn meniscus to deal with. Therefore, I’ll be patient.