Finding new ways to hurt myself...

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ve noticed that I tend to injure myself on a regular basis. When I do, I can typically look over my log and figure out what led to the problem. A week ago I went to bed feeling pretty good. I got up in the morning and my left knee hurt like hell. When I reviewed what I’d done since my last workout, the toughest thing I could target was…getting up from my recliner. It was that or sleeping…but neither is something I’m not well conditioned to perform. Maybe it’s an overuse injury.

Anyway…I’ve been ignoring it for a week figuring if you hurt yourself sleeping, it’ll probably go away quickly. It didn’t. It wasn’t debilitating…but it was annoying.

I was driving to the Metropark for a run last night because I’d convinced myself it was too cold for a ride. I had called John and was complaining about the rain and cold and how little riding I’d been doing and he said it was 45 degrees on his car thermometer. “But it’s cold as hell. Maybe one day in the 60’s got me soft,” I said.

As I was pulling into the park, I saw a girl running in a tank top. “Is she cute?” John asked. “You’re missing the point…I’ve got on a long-sleeved t-shirt and she’s running in a tank top. I’m supposed to be the tough one…sweaty and running in shorts when it’s ten degrees. What’s up with that?” I asked.

I parked and got out of the car. The sun was shining and there was a beautiful, deep blue sky overhead. It looked warm so I stripped off the long-sleever and grabbed a light-weight, short-sleeved t-shirt. And I was fine. The bridle trails were actually in pretty good shape, but the hiking trails were still muddy as hell. I put in 50 minutes of running with about 15 minutes of it on the road. It was slow and ugly, but I got it done. I drove home, plugged in a ‘Lost’ and rode another 40 minutes. I would have gone longer, but I was bored out of my skull.

Things went well for the remainder of the evening…I spent some time with my legs propped up and watching the Tribe beat the Red Sox. When I finally got up to go to bed, my knee reacted violently. I hobbled to bed, but had trouble getting comfortable…it hurt that much. I don’t know what’s happening to the body, but I’m thinking I really need to get younger. Soon.

Run duration: 50 minutes. Bike duration: 40 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 145 bpm running, 130 bpm biking.
Calories burned during workout: 850 running. 600 biking.