Laid up in dry dock with an Achilles knee

"Pain is just weakness leaving the body."

- Marine Corps drill instructor's motto during contestant Tony Wiszowaty's basic training

" … but then again sometimes pain is just illness entering the body."

- Dave Gathman's corollary during Fittest Loser Week 9

Last week's column - which I wrote on the Monday night after the end of Fittest Loser Week 8 - mentioned that I was in pain following an especially tough Saturday-morning boot camp followed by an especially tough Monday-morning workout. But I felt confident it would go away.

Twelve hours after writing that, my sore shoulders and back had gotten better. But my right knee was not only sore, it was hard to bend.

Then my wife, Patty, noticed that it had swollen to half again as big as the left one. I canceled the scheduled Wednesday-morning workout and went to a doctor.

She felt, probed and prodded the knee, said she didn't think any bones were broken and declared that I had probably just insulted it by doing those 55 weightlifting squats and 55 burpees on Monday so soon after I had done various squatting and running things the previous Saturday.

The doctor advised me to avoid "extracurricular activities" for a week and to keep applying ice packs when the knee hurt.

Knees have been my Waterloo through this whole contest.

During one of the first workouts with trainer Michelle Jeeninga, she had me try to shake a heavy rope while squatting with my knees bent. She didn't like my form, first uttering the to-be-often-repeated mantra "Dave, what are you doing?"

"Squat like you're sitting down on a chair," Michelle said impatiently.

"Doesn't everybody just start your rear moving in the direction of the chair and let gravity take it from there?" I thought silently.

She finally gave up on the rope thing and tried to get me to simply do a squat. First I failed to stick out my butt far enough. Then I did - but lost my balance and fell down on that butt.

Finally Michelle began a multiweek program of remedial butt pointing and knee bending involving various benches and supports. And gradually my knees got stronger.

Or at least I thought so until running into those 55 weightlifting squats and 55 burpees the previous Monday.

Part of the problem was that the knee had blown out in a journalistic wounding about five years ago. I remember exactly where it happened - in the Kane County Forest Preserve District. No, not in a forest preserve. In the district's central office in Geneva.

Having just finished an interview with the district's executive director, I squatted down like a baseball catcher, as I often and easily did back then, in order to get a closer look at the bottom shelf of a bookcase in her office. And wham - the knee hurt like heck. Ever since, I have not been easily able to squat.

Once or twice a week that knee would hurt when I climbed the stairs or went on a long walk.

Getting into my 60s, it seemed like one of those early-warning signs of an approaching Golden Age that isn't so golden on the physical level.

Actually, the pain in the right knee seemed to STOP hurting once I started doing these Fittest Loser workouts. Maybe they were enabling muscles and ligaments to take the strain off the bones and joint. Until that combination of a bad boot camp and a merciless Monday workout finally made the knee yell "Enough!"

Also on the plus side, I have begun to feel stronger in a way that's hard to explain. When sitting, I've always had a very slouchy posture. When standing up, I always have had a very erect posture. (In some photos, like one taken at Larkin's senior prom, I look embarrassingly like a soldier at attention.)

But after all this exercising, my back somehow has begun to feel more at ease. More able to easily hold me, even when sitting down.

God willing, I'll be back squatting like Randy Hundley come next week.

• Dave Gathman is a Daily Herald correspondent. He is undergoing the same physical workouts and nutritional counseling as the Fittest Loser contestants as he writes about their journey.