Return to the woods...

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

I keep forgetting to ice and stretch my elbow.  It doesn’t hurt and if it doesn’t hurt I don’t think about it.  If I don’t think about it, I don’t stretch and ice it.  Anyway, the surgeon had said I could do push-ups since that motion does not irritate the problem.  I wanted to wait until I was pain-free to start any kind of lifting and since I was, I drove to the park planning an abbreviated Survival Workout to be followed by a bike ride.

I started with 70 reverse plank push-ups.  I was happy to not have lost much since I’d done very little in the previous three weeks.  I followed with dips but avoided pull-ups.  Any motion that had me pulling weight towards me or involved the shortening of the biceps muscle would lead to irritation and pain and needed to be avoided.  Anything I did where I actually pushed weight away...push-ups, dips, and overhead presses did not cause any pain.

Somewhere during the workout I decided since I had to skip some moves, I’d just do twice as many of the ones I could do.  It was sound thinking...for a psycho.  I did extra push-ups and dips, overhead presses and extensive core work so by the time I made my way back to the car, my arms were shaking from the effort.  It’s a good feeling, but one that will certainly bring next day soreness and probably pretty extreme.  At least I broke a good sweat, hiked a couple of miles including climbing the steep, challenging hill behind the pavilion and ended up with arms and chest swollen from the effort.

I returned home a little late to fit in a ride, but that was probably a good thing.  I’d be riding long with Kim...home from Florida for a couple of weeks...the next evening and my knee needed that break.  I did return to the park just before dark to hike for an hour with Holly, though.  During that hike, I felt some soreness in my knee and when I returned home again, grabbed my ice wrap, put it around my knee and watched a little TV.  After 10 minutes of this numbing cold, it dawned on me that I’d wrapped my right knee...surgery had been done on the left.  My lack of exercise is affecting my mind.

Survival Workout: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100-150.
Calories burned:  600.