It’s been very difficult to get motivated to write when you are spending so much time not really doing anything. So I need to do a quick catch up. It’s just shy of 8 weeks since I had my knee fixed and things are kind of back on track. Depending on you’re value of ‘kind of.’
4 weeks are surgery I started exercising, just a few 5 minute sessions on the turbo trainer. My knee felt better the more I was using it, with impact being the issue so a little work made things feel better. I also started some aqua jogging in the pool in the mornings. Normal swimming was out as kicking was still a no no, but a little back-stroke was getting the heart rate up and then for the remainder of my time in the pool I was ploughing up and down, in slow jogging.
At the end of that week I went to see Chris my physio. Despite being given a few exercises from the hospital (which were about mobilisation post op) I wanted to get a grip on what I could and couldn’t do before I started getting back into it. After a prod and a poke he seemed to think that I was good to go, on the proviso that I listened to my body and eased myself back into it. Running was good to go and parkruns would be perfect, as long as I didn’t try and smash a PB, or go to slow and ploddy.
Later that week I headed to the rack for a club running session, planning to run well within myself. I found a few of the technique drills I couldn’t do (bum kicks, oh the pain) due to pain, but running was fine. The biggest issue was despite running at a much, much, MUCH slower pace than normal I was shattered. Never before have 800m sets been so painful! The next day my leg was tired but okay so I hit parkrun on the Saturday. I took the littlest in the buggy to slow me down and stop me getting carried away and I completed it in just over 26 minutes. Once again I was utterly shagged by the time I finished.
The following week was more of the same, an easy track session and then a buggy assisted parkrun.
The the trouble started, last weekend I tried to do parkrun but there was a pain in my knee. Bugger. Not in the same place, this was a result of muscle wastage. I had been given a load of exercises by the physio to try and prevent injury caused by the quite bad muscle wastage in my legs(s.) So running is off the menu for a while, loads of physio exercises and trying to get in some biking to strengthen the area before I start up again.
The one good thing to come out of this is I have increased the amount of core work I am doing. I was previously doing yoga everyday and some press-ups/sit-ups/triceps-dips, however my injury stopped me from doing the yoga. To stop myself from going crazy through inactivity I started doing a tonne of press-ups, at least 80 a day. Everyday. And shortly after I nabbed some small dumbbells from a friend and was doing all sorts of upper body exercises with them. The result is that in the pool, despite not going faster over the longer distances due to lack of fitness, I have managed to get my 100m sprint time down from 1:24 to 1:21. Okay we’ll ignore that I’m still unfit and can only do 5×100 off three minutes rather than 10 sets, but it’s an improvement. although today was a disaster with regards to consistency with my times being 1:21, 1:25, 1:28, 1:28, 1:30, yesterday I managed a much more respectable 1:23, 1:24,1:24,1:24,1:29.
So while I strengthen my leg and work on trying to regain so fitness I’m left with a slightly better swim caused by my time off, and the increased core/strength work. This change might be just what I need to boost my swim and reminds me of the old saying from Henry Ford;
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”
Blue Cloud Triathlon 