Can I Get A Bubble Over Here?

I'm 34 days away from Dopey-ness. This is the part of training at which you try to be hyper-vigilant about, well, everything. The thing you dread more than almost anything else is getting injured so you see dangers everywhere you look. Following is a partial list of things that I thought might constitute a danger to me in the last several weeks:

• An icy parking lot
• A dusting of snow on a footbridge 
• A stretch of gravel 
• A pile of leaves

Add to all these dangers lurking about in everyday life, there is also something else you start to fear at this point in your training: sickness. If you are coughing, sneezing, have interaction with a quantity of germ-factories (i.e. children), or live or work within a 3 block radius of a hospital, I will probably be keeping my distance from you for a while. Please don't take it personally. I'm considering attending Christmas gatherings like this:

 

So that is what we want to try to avoid. But anyone who has been putting in the miles a marathoner in training does, is bound to have a crap ton of some aches and pains. Looking around my house, I've discovered somewhere along the way, it started to resemble a cross between a physical therapy office and a pharmacy. Let's take a little tour of Raegan's house of ailments.

Deep Blue Rub is a lotion made with essential oils that is supposed to help with sore muscles. Not sure how much it works because, let's face it, my muscles are pretty much sore all the time. But I think it might help. Even if it's a placebo effect, I don't care - it feels like I'm doing something and that makes me feel better.

I use Perform when I'm experiencing something that is not so much soreness, but more outright "what the hell is that?!? pain. What I always seem to forget is that a little dab will do ya. So minutes after I've rubbed this on, my skin is on fire. I actually think that's how the pain relief of this product works - make something else hurt so much that you forget about the first thing.

They cylinder of death and its little friend

Let's face it - the topical stuff is really like putting a band aid on a bullet hole. It covers up the problem but doesn't really deal with it. So a runner's best friend - and worst enemy - is the foam roller. Putting all your body weight on this torture device and rolling back and over your sore muscles is pretty masochistic. It hurts like crazy but helps if you can stand the pain. The foam roller's younger sibling is the orb. It hurt only slightly less than the cylinder of death.

Here we have an assortment of tools used to make some thing or another hurt slightly less than it did before. The Stick is great for self back massage. This is often necessary after runs of more than 15 miles because as soon as I stop running, my back normally decides it is done too. The Moji hand massager is great to use on muscles that are too sore on which to use the cylinder of death. And the lacrosse ball is used when the cylinder of death doesn't hurt quite enough.

These 2 items are used for my legit injuries, as opposed to my whining over sore muscles. The Moji foot massager is to work on my plantar fasciitis. Try rubbing a sore heal on a group of metal balls and see how it feels (spoiler: it doesn't feel good). The therapy band can be used in a variety of humiliating and painful ways - the most recent of which is strapped around my thighs while I do a toe-tap number that looks like a spastic dance routine.

But let's not forget the best tool of all. The friend to marathoners world wide. The miracle product that I keep in my bag, my purse, my bathroom, and my linen closet. And recently, I've started buying in bulk...

Yes - each of these contain 500 pills