I am two days short of 33 years old. As I mentioned last Tuesday I seem to have strained a knee ligament. In classic overly focussed fashion I’ve been ‘training’ through this. Mostly concerned that I’m losing fitness or not building enough for the impending key races. I’m posting so soon after the last one simply from the frustrations of today’s ride.
Thursday and Friday I took relatively easily. Kept the swimming up, minimised the biking to my trips to the lake and admittedly stuck to the running. Sometime on my Friday run to masters swimming the knee hurt a little more than I liked. I was close though and figured a swim would do it good. Bad form in some fly kick sets didn’t help though and the run back home was quite sore too.
Still Friday night I iced, compressed etc. Woke the next day and felt it wasn’t too bad though worse than it had been the day before. Rode over to the lake for yet another swim! To be honest it didn’t feel too bad and the extra levels of rest meant my cycling was starting to come back to form.
The swim was uneventful and I decided to go ahead with the plan to ride that day and try and get back onto plan. My mistake was arranging to ride with others rather than at my own very easy pace. My mistake entirely. For the first 30 minutes or so things were OK, but after the easy ride had turned more towards tempo my knee really started to ache. By the end I was relying on my left leg for most of the work!
I got back to my mate’s house and opted to take his very kind offer of a lift home rather than face a slow and painful bike home! Since then I’ve iced and rested and just hope it improves. My plans for tomorrow have changed, no more bike for sure. I still however will do an extra long swim.
Whilst my birthday is Monday my family is having a small party on Sunday. Lots of food and a little bit of relaxing on the diet front. To kick celebrations off though my plan is a two hour swim! Actually to be honest I’m aiming for ten laps at the lake which will be at least 8000m. I figure that should help with the food intake that day!
So I’m getting older and feeling a bit decrepit right now. And I have a dilemma in front of me. I started my 30 runs challenge a little before the first of June. Which means I have two runs to go… What to do? On the one hand the bigger picture calls for resting the knee. If I do that and keep it up tomorrow there’s a good chance come the good weather next week things might be working better. On the other hand two more runs!
We’ll see, either in my Twitter feed or the next post. Look out for my cheesecake too!
