Thursday, February 11, 2010

Jail Break!

February 11, 2010 -

I have been in the prison of my body the last few months and my left knee and right ankle are the warden. I decided yesterday that enough is enough and I escaped by means of swift biking and running. I only hope to stay ahead of the warden before I am caught and brought back to jail. I only have to elude him for six more weeks so I can race Ironman 70.3 Oceanside with my Dad on March 27.

It started with a wicked ankle sprain where I came down on a rock at full stride and rolled it all the way up and under...ouch. That took about a full month of healing before I was running pain free again.

In December I started to get back on my training program building my bike up to two hours, my runs up to 10 miles and my swim up to 2500 yards. Not a bad start in December for a successful 70.3 race at the end of March.

In the beginning of January my knee tweaked. I couldn't bend it. It was locking up swelling up and generally doing all sorts of weird things. This would go on for a couple days and then back to normal...for the most part. After this happened a couple times I finally went to have it looked at. An MRI revealed that I have a piece of tissue that broke off from somewhere (yet to be determined) and is floating around my knee. I'm guessing this little sucker floats into a place causing the pain and mobility issues and then after a couple days floats on somewhere else getting me back to normal. This problem took me out for an entire month.

Ultimately I will have to deal with this, but after a few test runs with no problems I decided, if I am going to attempt to pull off a 70.3 on six weeks of training I better start hitting it and see how it goes.

I started with my jailbreak yesterday. A very freeing and liberating, yet short bike/run brick. It had been so long it felt awesome! I hit 15 miles on the bike at a 19.4 mph and then transitioned into a four mile run at a 7:45 pace. Other than it being 38 degrees and raining, everything went really well, pain free and left me wanting to do more.

This is a good base to start trying to kill it as much as I can over the next six weeks... so barring any knee issues...I can come up with a respectable finish.

I'll try to keep posting on the progress build and the race.

2 comments:

  1. Wahoo! You "kneed" to stay pain free.

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  2. Good luck with your training! Hope your knee stays sttong (awesome that you're doing it with your dad).
    I'm training for my first 70.3 in September. Bit scary- doing olympic & sprints thru the summer.
    Can't wait to see how the race goes!

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