Suck it up, whiney baby.

I went to see my regular doctor today and she too had received the results of my MRI.  Long and short of it is that she told me not to run for a month.  Biking, walking and swimming are okay, but no pounding.
I've never not run for a month.  This is going to be a very big physical and (mostly) mental challenge for me.  I have an addictive personality and I am very addicted to running.  It moderates my mood, my stress level, it keeps my fitness up, it's my "me" time and it's a weight loss regiment that works.
Stop running, eh?
It's all coming together though.  Tomorrow is my first Aquafit class with R and I hope we both enjoy it and make it routine.
Michael and I actually walked up to another rec centre tonight to check out all things aquatic.  I was perplexed by the swim schedule which has a "public swim" for a couple of hours during the day and an "adult swim" from 9 - 10:30pm each night.  I don't want to swim at 9pm at night.  I looked at the people in the pool at 8:30 today and they were no great shakes, so I really felt I was missing a greater understanding of the swimming situation here on the shore.
Because I have a horseshoe up my ass, we subsequently bumped into Sammy in London Drugs who is running the Fat Dog 120 Miler this upcoming weekend.
Sammy is one of the most positive, hard working, dedicated, accomplished and enthusiastic athletes I have ever met.  He runs at an elite level and is always supportive and encouraging to everyone around him.  If I ever managed to reach the level of accomplishment that he has, I could only hope to be as kind and gracious as he is.  He is incredibly inspirational.
And he answered my swimming questions!  Apparently you can swim whenever you want, more or less.  Be wary of classes and swim meets, but other than that it's a free for all.  Nothing like randomly bumping into your local elite athlete to put things to rights.
I hope he has an excellent run this weekend.
I can't believe I'm lucky enough to know people like this.