I haven’t been able to straighten my left leg without a significant amount of discomfort (er, pain) all day. Two days ago, I met for the first time with a personal trainer, trying to kickstart my return to being a somewhat fit individual. She took me through a lot of leg exercises designed to be particularly good for runners–one of which I allegedly am sometimes–as well as a slate of upper-body and core-strengthening exercises. Basically, a nice, full-body workout plan.

In the course of establishing my baseline weight and resistance levels and showing me how to do a bunch of stuff I’ve never done before along with all the stuff I’ve been doing wrong my entire adult life, I realized just how out-of-shape I’ve gotten. “But Pj, you’re so skinny! And you run! And you eat right!” Yeah, but I’m apparently SUPER-WEAK. The two years I spent chasing entrepreneurial dreams pretty much wore me down, physically. I lost weight, sure, but I added gray and also shed muscle tone. Running has kept my cardiovascular system in great shape, but not so much the rest of me.

Of course, I was pretty sore the next day after that initial training session. I hurt in parts of my butt that I didn’t even realize had muscles. But I expected to be sore, and didn’t really do much to mitigate it. I went about my usual desk work/napping/party attending/show watching. I didn’t expect that this morning I’d wake up basically temporarily crippled, my calves sore in ways I’ve never felt before. But it’s my left calf in particular that’s sore as hell, with the left hamstring joining in on the overtaxed chorus.

I couldn’t exactly rest it, today, having to do that work thing. I tried walking it off (which usually helps), but that didn’t do much once I was back to sitting. I’ve tried ice in case there’s inflammation (which I can’t really tell) and tried a heating pad. I took a naproxen capsule. I consulted the usual gang of random people on Facebook. I can’t really stretch the leg, as noted earlier, so I’m going to try soaking in some epsom salt once I get to a stopping point in this assignment I’m working on and pray that helps.

Otherwise, I might be adding a cane to my Amazon wish list.