Just a quick update. I ran Bay to Breakers yesterday, and I had an absolutely terrific time. The sky was blue, the crowd was raucous, the costumes were great, and it was such a warm and sunny day that there was sun by the finish line at the Pacific Ocean in Golden Gate Park. I also ran with a friend of my neighbor, Julia, so I had a running buddy for the entire race (he is pictured above, his name was Sushant). But the best part was not any of these -- it was the fact that I ran the whole 7 1/2 mile race without any trouble from my left knee.

Yep, it's been about eight months since that fateful day that I tried that shitty quadriceps extension machine in the Arrillaga gym, and woke up the next morning with a fat, swollen knee. (Like brains, knees aren't supposed to be swollen, and if they are there is something wrong.) That injury effectively knocked me out for an entire school year. Though I've come back slower, older, and less explosive than before, I actually feel great. I am definitely back.

If you want hard numbers, I finished in 1:11, which is eight minutes slower than my time last year of 1:03. I was 3,771 out of 23,000 (thanks to my Dad for bothering to look this stuff up.) Not bad for someone who still had intermittent knee pain a month ago, and whose only recent practice runs were a 5-miler and a 3-miler in the last two weeks. I can still remember when I couldn't descend a flight of stairs two at a time without excruciating pain.

Anyway, I have to go now. I am driving to Fremont soon and staying in a hotel tonight -- I have to taking the patent bar bright and early tomorrow morning. I don't know if I'm going to pass. if I could study all over again, I would have done about three times as many practice questions. But it's pretty difficult not to play around when you have no restrictions on your time..

This morning, I got an MRI on my left knee, which had been healing slowly. If you remember, I injured it back in August while doing leg lifts in the gym. Since then, I've re-injured it on three instances, each of which caused additional swelling and pain. The orthopedist I saw a month ago was concerned about the repeated swelling (apparently any swelling in a joint is really bad) and ordered a MRI scan. He suspected a tear in my meniscus.

Anyway, the knee has improved tremendously in the past month, and it actually feels great now. I want to start jogging again, but I really want this clean bill of health before I try anything serious. (I ran from the Oval to Memorial Church on Sunday night, a distance of about a quarter mile, because it was raining heavily and I was almost late for my reading. That was fine.)

In any case, getting an MRI is quite an experience. It really is a claustrophobic little chamber that makes a wide variety of strange, loud sounds. I think I did a pretty good job of lying absolutely still. I almost fell asleep in the MRI, in any case.

Good thing I signed up for Stanford health care this quarter, after not getting it the last two years. I hear MRI's run around $300-500, but there's no cost to me, except the 5 bucks I paid for parking. (There was no way I was biking to the Med Center this morning -- it was literally freezing outside: 33 degrees F, or 0.56 degrees C.)

...I am a gimp. Last Tuesday I went to the gym and did some leg exercises (quads, hamstrings, squats) for the first time this summer. Didn't feel bad at all. But ever since then, my left knee has been inexplicably swollen. It's very uncomfortable when even I bend it all the way or put weight on it, although doesn't hurt. And it doesn't appear to be getting any better.

I'd go swimming instead of jogging, since that seems to be sufficiently low impact, but the last time I did that, on Wednesday, I fell off my bike because my flip flops got stuck in my board shorts while I was pedaling home. Sigh..