MCL, ACL Hell

I work in advertising technology in beautiful San Francisco, California and recently tore both the MCL and ACL in my right knee while playing soccer. This blog is an effort to not go crazy for the next two months and to reflect on all of the lovely things I miss about the city or life in general.

[mclhell-blog]

About

I just realized there is a typo in the "About" section for this blog.   <------ I wish this blog were only for the "two months" it was going to take for this knee thing to go away.  Maybe that was when I thought they could both heal in parallel... and they say I'm not an optimist. 

It is really so much longer than that.  I met a server at Park Chow this weekend who told me about his, and how much of it was mental and that he was finally going to run a half marathon years after his surgery.  

I think I'll opt to leave the typo.

[mclhell-blog]

ACL Surgery

annnd I'm back.  Back to crutches and not being able to walk, hopefully for the last time.  My ACL surgery was September 5th and to say the days following that were shitty would be an understatement.  Excruciating pain and horrible sickness -- the idea of voluntary surgery makes absolutely no sense to me.  

Today, exactly two weeks later I am doing better but am already tired of not being able to get around, do things for myself, sleep comfortably, etc.

At least one day in the future I will have a cool looking and not too big scar.  

[mclhell-blog]

These Coffee Places

In the weeks leading up to my injury I was on a mission to never go to the Starbucks located conveniently in the lobby of my office building ever again. I find their inferior coffee to be a waste of money.  Instead I found these three spots relatively near my office and planned to be a regular at the third:

1. 111 Minna Gallery - Red Door Coffee.  This Art Gallery by night also makes for a super hip coffee shop (pictured). I'll definitely be back to visit the non-coffee part of the bar too.

2. Trou Normand - restaurant/ bar by night but also serves Four Barrel in the AM

3. Special Xtra at John Colins - this is a pop-up-ish coffee shop inside of John Colins, a bar that people from work frequently visit due to it's proximity to the office.  Blue Bottle, directly on my way into the office = we have (had) a winner!

[mclhell-blog]

I went from Calvin Harris ‘Summer’ to the Lana Del Rey version.

[mclhell-blog]

The General Weirdness of SF

I am kind of using "weirdness" interchangeably with "unique personality" ... you just never know what you're going to get in this fine city. 

I do miss that on a typical walk to and from work I would hear several conversations going on in different languages.  Or I'd see a guy on stilts in a clown costume for no apparent reason or girls from out of town who underestimated how cold it would be in July at 6pm, or this kinda thing:

I don't necessarily miss seeing people peeing in public or passed out on the sidewalk after a Giants day game... ok even passed out guy was pretty entertaining.

[mclhell-blog]

Running

I'm not a marathon runner, I run more for sanity and maybe even more so that I can eat delicious foods (as I may have mentioned in a previous post).  It's going to be months before I can go for a run again and this is perhaps the most depressing part of being stuck in MCL & ACL hell.

Saturday's are the worst when it's a nice day in SF because all I want to do is throw on my hot pink Nike's and go for a long run in golden gate park. :(

[mclhell-blog]

Eating Delicious, Unhealthy Food

I really only work out so that I can eat whatever I want.  Almost 4 weeks into my recovery now and celery and green tea are my best friends - boo.

At the office I get free breakfast, lunch and dinner every day (plus catered happy hour and free beer Friday's!) so that is pretty awesome and definitely something I am missing right now.

I rarely every take pictures of food at work but this was my first ramen burger and it was the epitome of delicious, unhealthy food (L) some more fried delicious-ness aka Lobster tempura in the middle with BEER which I can no longer drink and of course good old pizza and wine on the right.  Ok, I'm still drinking wine with my celery...

[mclhell-blog]

Watching Big Games at Bars

Like today's big USA world cup game for example.  I'm just not able to get there easily, plus drinking, rowdy crowds and crutches don't really mix. Yelling at my TV alone is not nearly as fun.

(Also the irony of tearing my knee playing soccer and then proceeding to watch pretty much every single game of the 2014 World Cup is not lost on me.)

Reminiscing, on the left, the pac 12 championship game last year featuring my beloved Sun Devils at Tope and the right a 49ers playoff game at Mad Dog in the Fog, sigh.

[mclhell-blog]

Stairs

Who in their right mind likes a stair workout?  This girl.  Real world stairs though, not the boring gym stair stepper.  The great thing about the cool, and often steep staircases in SF is that they usually lead to an amazing view, like Grand View Park which is only a few blocks from my apartment. 

This was from my most recent hike up the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps

I also used to run stairs in Buena Vista Park, and the vistas were indeed buena:

These were fun too:

Hell, right now I am missing and even the (dreaded?) Forest Hill Street Station stairs.

[mclhell-blog]

Pretty Plants

SF has so many beautiful flowers and trees and I can't see many of them from my couch.  Here were a few recent pictures from my phone.  The top left is a blooming tree in Golden Gate Park near the Academy of Sciences, the pink tree was on my walk home from the train station in Forrest Hill and these beautiful purple tulips were on 24th and Douglass near my beloved Philz.

I am also really missing my runs through the rose garden and Conservatory of Flowers:

[mclhell-blog]

Some people have fitness blogs and go into detail about what they eat and how much they work out.  I have never been one of those people, I barely have time to work out, let alone the time to also document it in detail.  But I did work out, a lot, and in a very structured fashion - boot camp, personal training, bikram yoga, occasional 3 mile runs on the embarcadero and 6 mile runs in golden gate park, 3 miles of walking every day in my commute to and from work downtown, countless hills and stair cases in and out of train stations...

Two weeks ago I thought it would be fun to play soccer on my coed work team. I played for 12 years and have played pick up games in recent years so this should have been fine. But this time for some reason just a quick change of direction caused my knee to go one way when my body went the other.  The result was a torn ACL and a level 3 MCL tear on top of that. For someone who works 11 hours a day and then tacks on workouts on top of that, being sidelined and off my feet for the past two weeks has been extremely difficult.  A test of patience for quite possibly the most impatient person in the world. I thought it might help to reflect on all of the things I loved to do before the knee injury while I wait out (what feels like a punishment) until I can do them again in a few months.