Bike to Work!

I had my last PT appointment yesterday! Todd seems to think I'll be fine on my own from now on - though he said I can definitely come back if I feel like I need to. A lot of what we do, I can do on my own now that I have gym access, so that is good. I've made sure to write down what we've been doing just in case I forget. He warned me that I'd definitely be sore from this last session, though . . .

So what do I do but head over to the Fitness Center and do some upper body lifting since my PT focuses on legs and core. I've already been able to up the weight on some of my exercises but I'm still hanging out with the bare bar on the bench press. It's 45 pounds - that's a lot! Yeah. I've at least been able to up the number of reps in a row I can do of them.

Up next is home, eat food, and eventually, get back in my car to head to work only to find that someone (that someone might be me) seems to have left the headlights on and the battery is now unwilling to start the car. Well, I've been wanting to bike to work for a while but have had no idea how long it would take. Call work, let them know I'll be late and get dressed for biking!

Turns out it takes under 10 minutes to get to 24th Ave and about 20 minutes to get up the hill to LSC (jutting over to Piedmont on 10th St) much of that being walking up the hill. I did manage to make it further up 24th before walking then I thought I'd be able to but that's a brutal hill and I'm glad I chose my road bike since it's lighter to push. Then a final 10 minutes or so to get to the mall. So about 40 minutes from front door to work. Not too bad. Probably not a doable thing once it starts getting hot since I don't have access to any sort of showering once I get there but definitely workable in spring/fall. Biking seems to make me kind of hyper once I get to work, too, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So. Hard PT + upper body lifting + unexpected uphill bike to work = rather stiff and sore today. My neck especially from biking and my hamstrings also. So when my alarm went off this morning to get me going to the pool, despite being rather tired, I was ready to jump up. Nothing like a nice swim to work out those sore muscles, right? I got into some really good rhythms and felt smooth despite the frustrating goggle issues I kept having (I think I need new ones as I've either completely lost the ability to put them on right or the seals are leaking). I haven't done any workouts in the pool for a while, now - today was just a straight mile. I've been following my swimming with stretching in the sauna more, too. It's funny, when I first starting going I could barely stand to be in the sauna. Now I go in, throw a cup of water on and hit the top bench. Rock. Here's hoping this does something to my summer heat tolerance :)

On board for the rest of the day? Finally ordering my Dirty Girls and going for a lovely trail run in the rain with friends and hopefully doing some organizing of my computer room tonight.

"Long" Run!

So PT has been going well - I've cut down to once a week, now, though I'm making sure to do what I can on my own, too. On Tuesday, Todd (my PT doc) told me I could run 4 times this week! Huzzah! Also that I should start structuring my week like I would normally be doing, ie a long run, a more tempo-y run, etc instead of holding around 4 miles. So today I did my long run - 8 miles. It felt quite great - the weather was beautiful and called for shorts and a t-shirt. I did the first two miles on my own and then joined up with the usual Wednesday group and did the last 6 with Leslie. It's really nice to be able to run with my friends again! I'll probably hold at 8 miles another week and then try 10.

I've been trying to maintain a good weight lifting schedule, too, under the thought that if I'm going to be injured then I'm at least going to get good arms and abs from it! Hopefully I can keep it going as summer comes since I love having weight room access again and I've always been very lacking in the arm strength side of things. On a side note, when you start adding weight to your lunges, you start to feel it in your butt . . . Actually, Todd added the weight in PT yesterday, but I added some lighter weight to my second set this morning, too.

I'm also getting stronger and smoother at swimming, too, which is fun. On Tuesday I forgot to bring my watch to the pool with me (I like to leave it on the pool edge so I can check in on the time every once and a while - no timing repeats for me, yet) so I decided to just swim a mile and see what the wall clock said then. So I start slow and then pick up the tempo and just see how long I can go a little faster for. I hit my mile and check the clock and it's just around half an hour! Now, I have no idea in the scheme of things what kind of speed that is, but it feels really fast! It also makes me wonder if I lost count in there somewhere but, ah well, it feels pretty cool right now. I'll give it another go Thursday night and see where I stand. Theoretically, I'd love to do a triathlon this summer but I have no idea where I'm going to find the time to shove that in (especially since the main one in town here, I'm doing as a team with my team from last year) so maybe it will have to wait. Actually, a friend of mine (part of Team MegaTough) is directing a triathlon in the UP, which would be fantastic. However, it's a 1.2 mile lake swim, a 56-mile bike course, and a half marathon. I think that's probably too ambitious for me right now. I'm trying to keep my focus on two (well, three) main things: A) get that mileage up and keep it up ALL YEAR B) first ultra!! and C) Wave 1 for Boston 2011.

I'm not so sure how C is going to go now that my main chance isn't even going to happen anymore (Eau Claire Marathon) but I still have Grandma's in June (maybe, depending how happy my knee stays and what kind of condition I can be in by then and whether the weather cooperates this year) and if that fails, there's others in the summer I could try, I'm sure, it would just mess with some of my shorter race plans.

Also - with the exception of the yummy chocolate milkshake I just made for dessert - everything I ate today was breakfast food. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

From NR: Swimming

You know what's great about running? You can breathe whenever you want. No, really.

So I've been trying to swim since I can't really run but I haven't been able to go very often. I've been hitting Morgan Park when I can but that's only Thursday nights. I decided to join a gym, since that will also give me access to ellipticals and treadmills, which will make it easier to test running. I decided on SMDC'S Fitness Center since they have a lap pool that's always open (not 24 hours always, but during the center hours, always). They're pretty expensive for a day pass, though, so I'm raring for March 1 when I can get a month pass and get there on a regular basis.

Today I did my first 'workout' in the pool. It's taken a few times in to get used to how to breathe without thinking super hard about it and such so I've generally just been swimming laps and figuring things out. I can only really do the crawl or the backstroke, which is super sad since the breaststroke is my favorite but my knee is most certainly not okay with it. So today I was swimming along and decided it was time to do some sort of intervals. So I went hard for 2 lengths of the pool 4 times, with 2 lengths of easy in-between, then hard for 3 lengths of the pool with 3 lengths easy, twice and another set of the 4x2 lengths. Keep in mind that I don't know how to turn underwater so I'd have to stop briefly after each length. I think that's next on my list of things to learn, it seems as though it would make things much easier and let things flow better.

Let me say, though - it's hard to swim easy after swimming hard. You're breathing hard after finishing but launch into easy laps and thus aren't coming up for air as often. At least it forces me to swim the easy laps at a not absolute crawling speed since I have to breathe more. Or, anyway, something that's not an absolute crawling speed for me.

So, yeah. A workout of sorts! Yay! And then I used the sauna to stretch out some, as someone recommended to me and that was quite nice, too.

Next update will be about some awesome new running clothes that I have. A team I'm on has become sponsored by Icebreakers and as a previous SmartWool lover, I was very interested in trying everything out.

Bummer

Last Wednesday, I went on to the group run at the lakewalk and all was pretty good, until that last 'downhill' that was the ramp at the end of the detour. Then my knee spoke up and reminded me that it wasn't happy. It wasn't far to the end of the run, so I figured I'd be fine. After all, it didn't quite hurt enough to make me limp on it. Of course, as soon as I thought that, I realized I was already limping on it. Lovely. Happily, wildknits was willing to walk the last 4 blocks or so in with me.

So I went swimming the next day and really enjoyed it! I was really in the need to do something until I was exhausted. I'm sick of these slow, short runs. I haven't been swimming for fitness since college, which made it tough to keep a good rhythm going but I was able to tire out nice. I plan to do it on a regular basis as cross training and hope to continue once my knee gets better. I even went out and bought a swim cap so my hair doesn't die. Also so I don't keep breathing my hair.

It's really hard to go for a run in the winter when you might have to walk home. Or maybe I'm just making it out to be worse that it is, but I really don't want to be very far from home and have to walk back when it's cold and I'm probably sweaty and dressed for running and not walking. Today I decided to run in the land behind our house - some guy has been out three-wheeling and snowmobiling recently and the trails are mostly well packed. So I figured I could run around back there and never be too far from home if things went awry.

I could have made a loop out of it, but decided to do a horseshoe around my house since the trails were starting to deteriorate at the close of the loop. My knee was also hurting after a mile in and I could have just headed down the hill and finished the loop but I figured since I was never far too from home, I might as well turn around and go back the other way, so I did 2 miles, which is better than nothing. I got home, ran through my short pilates DVD, showered and made dinner. Half way through dinner, I realized my knee wanted to be iced NOW. No, it wanted to be iced half an hour ago. In fact, standing on it at all was rather painful.

Sigh. Looks like more swimming and pilates are in my future.