1/19/20 Sunday Thoughts

The Knee:
Hopefully almost recovered from the knee incident of 2019. Been doing a lot of what I call pool trotting these past few weeks and — don’t tell Coach — but I’m actually learning to like it. Wearing an old pair of shoes in the pool sure helps, a tip I learned from Coach after I rubbed skin off the bottoms of my feet on a long run. Ewww…

For the longer sessions I [carefully] wear some bluetooth headphones for music and run a backwards lap every 5 or so. And I count the laps. And I do weird math in my head working on converting 18 meter lengths / 36 meter laps to feet or yards or miles. Yes, it can be a little mind-numbing… but music helps a lot.

For mid to high Zone 1 work that surely is building strength you can’t beat it. I can’t really push much into Zone 2 without adding knee stress which would defeat the whole purpose. And I do it in the warmer lap pool so that’s pleasant too (our normal lap pool is cold. Plenty tolerable after a few laps but getting into it about stops my heart.)

Last week I tried some shorter runs outside and had some knee stiffness afterwards. Not a lot of pain and didn’t see any swelling, but I may have just a bit more pool trotting to do yet before I can get back to running like a normal person.

The shoulder. Eh, it is what it is. It still ain’t great, but it no longer holds me back from swimming. I can’t throw a tennis ball across the room but thankfully that’s not part of my current chosen sport(s).

Two months in:
I’ve been doing this training for about 2 months now and I am happy to say I am already seeing some results in spite of my various injuries. Swimming is progressing nicely and bike endurance is coming up. Looking forward to FTP testing on the bike soon to see where I’m at compared to where I was last year. Hope to get actually running soon but at least cardio is coming along.

I am no longer very low carb / keto and that’s been an interesting adjustment. Probably more on that in a future post.

Scheduling all the training is a bitch. Definitely more on that in a future post.

Updated Pain Cave:
I posted pictures a while back about my indoor bike training setup (aka the Pain Cave). With the new bike I had to make some changes — in particular, the TV had to be lower to be watched from that changed riding position or I’d ruin my neck. The tablet running Zwift is right in front of it. Works out great. I have a small stand to my right that I keep nutrition, TV remotes, phone, and tablet on for convenience.

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