Three Things Thursday - Paint, injections, and exercise plans

Preface: As anyone who's ever been benched due to injury or illness knows, it's hard to blog or read blogs when benched. I'm trying to find topics that might be vaguely interesting and avoid getting trapped in the "woe is me" space. Please bear with me as my blogging and commenting may be sporadic for another month or so.

1) Last weekend I painted the kitchen. This is something I started, then stopped almost 5 years ago. During that time, the color that I picked out no longer was available at the place I buy paint. So I had to choose another color. It's all done except for some touch ups and a small area on one wall that I will take care of on Friday. Next on my list is the great room. I've been struggling with color selection for that one. I think I'm going to get some color samples to paint onto the wall to help make the final selections in there. The little swatch cards just aren't big enough. Anyway, it's a big room with some complicated surfaces (adobe bricks and lots of wood detail) so I hope I don't stop mid-project for five years again.

2) Yesterday I received my second injection for my left knee. Apparently I didn't look so good when he came into the room because he asked what was wrong. Last time, the injection really hurt (not the needle so much, but the pressure in the joint from the gel). He quickly said "Let's try it with numbing medication this time." This involved an injection of numbing medication immediately preceding the HA injection. MUCH BETTER. I think I will ask for numbing next week as well. Right now I'm icing my knee. I think it should be good enough to finally be able t get out for a walk tomorrow.

3) I have been reading A LOT about arthrosis of the knee aka osteoarthritis aka degenerative joint disease. One of the things that strikes me is that when it comes to exercise, the experts recommend "short and frequent" stressing the importance of finding the right balance between rest and exercise. What strikes me most about this, is that I have been approaching running in a "longer and less frequent" manner. When my knee is run-ready again, I just might try something on the order of 5 days per week with runs in the 2-3 mile range (long runs maybe 5-6) at first and see how that goes. I had been running 3 days per week with runs in the 4-6 mile range (long runs 6-9). If more frequent shorter runs works better for me, I may also need to change my focus to 5Ks and 10Ks instead of half-marathons.