Friday, June 29, 2012
Sometimes I really don’t know how to define myself with regards to my exercise. I think I identifiy equally with cycling and running and go through times when I am clearly more one than the other. Before I had done either competitively, I rode pretty much everywhere. Even after getting my first car at age 16, I continued to look for opporutnities to ride, taking my first long ride to visit a girl in Brunswick…about a 50-mile ride and then on to visit my grandparents in New York…a trip of over 1,100 miles. In between those efforts, I began to run track and cross country for my highschool team and had images of myself standing atop the podium in the Olympics, having won the 1.500 meter race and earning a gold medal.
The triathlon came along and I was able to channel my love and energy for both sports into the same event. I was never really great at either, but good enough in both so that I never really focused on one over the other.
Flash forward to knee surgery three weeks ago. I’d stopped running when I’d hurt my knee four weeks earlier after climbing in the Adirondacks and with the surgery and recovery time, had missed 7 weeks of running. Which was okay since I could ride without pain and was allowed to ride again one week after surgery. Three weeks following the surgery though, I was cleared to begin running and here we are.
It was nasty hot as I slipped into my running shoes. I was planning on running a mile only which I figured would take me between 8-9 minutes. Since I didn’t really have an exact mile marker, I compromised with myself and decided to run an even 10 minutes. I entered the shade of the trails and was immediately greeted by some familiar friends…about 20 deerflies. They accompanied me for the first three minutes and encouraged me to up the pace in an effort to lose them. I was running smoothly and easily, feeling absolutely no pain. I reached Clear Creek in a little over 5 minutes, turning around there and heading back. I knew I could easily run further and was sure my knee could handle it, but for once I stayed sensible and stopped at exactly 10 minutes.
No pain. I returned home, jumped in the neighbor’s pool and headed out with Holly to an art show Heidi was doing in Akron. Neither of us had eaten anything and I knew that meant I was likely to eat something crappy at a restaurant after the show. I was right, of course.
We ended up in a bar/restaurant in downtown Akron and were on the second floor of the establishment when I felt nature calling. I was walking down the stairs to the Men’s Room when I experienced my first knee pain since before the surgery. It wasn’t too terribly painful…but it was there. It continued to hurt throughout the rest of the night and told me that my return to running was either too soon or that I’d gone too far. In any event, I’m going to shelve it for another week because I’m riding strong and enjoying it.
We were approaching East Coast Custard on our drive home, but it was after 11:30 and I was pretty sure they closed at 11. I mentioned this to Holly and that I would have liked to have stopped.
“Wouldn’t it be like a sign from God that we should have ice cream if it was open?” she said.
I agreed with her, knowing that God just filled his days an evenings with such signs. It was open and we did pull in and I did get a strawberry milkshake. It was the perfect cap to a dinner that included a large burger and a bunch of greasy fries. Oh well…I had big plans for a long, long ride the next morning. Good time to load up.
Run Duration: 10 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 130 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 150.
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