Week in review Sept. 16-22: Hopefully back into a routine

Half trainer rides, half other.

I’ve been lying low this past week, and haven’t had much to write about anyway. After some knee pain late last week/early this week, I was just thrilled to get back into something resembling a routine and run a few miles without having to stop. Hooray, small victories!

I took Monday off training to let my knee recover and I don’t remember what else I did that day, which means I probably sulked around the house all evening. I did get back into it with an easy trainer ride Tuesday and an easy run Wednesday, and by then most of the leftover pain and inflammation was gone.

I’m still not sure what happened, but my best guess is that I just overdid it on my bike ride last Saturday. Which is kind of depressing because it was only a bit longer than 2 hours on a not-very-hilly route. I hope this doesn’t mean I can never ride for longer than 1.5-2 hours again, because I do like longer rides once in a while. I don’t know what to do about it right now except continue to strengthen my legs and keep working on the trainer. I really don’t want to think about chicken cartilage injections yet, ugh.

Anyway, after a day off the rest of the week turned out to be:

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer, for 50.5 fake miles in about 3:33. This included one very easy and one pretty easy ride during the week, and a longer trainer ride on Saturday. I slept in too late to make it to my usual Saturday route after errand, but it was hot anyway and I didn’t want to re-aggravate my knee, so I’m fine with how it played out.

Run: Three times, all on the road, for 16.25 miles in about 2:46. Not bad! This worked out to be an easy run on Wednesday after my knee was feeling better, half-mile pickups for a Fast Friday run, and a long-ish run Sunday during which I hit 6 miles running, for the first time since February. For both Friday and Sunday’s runs, I felt like I was working HARD without the paces to show it, but it was pretty hot both days and especially humid on Friday. I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm just yet, as it’s probably just a running fitness issue. I had a few knee twinges Wednesday at about the 2-mile mark but everything else was pretty unremarkable.

PT: I only managed one PT session this week of about 30 minutes. I totally forgot to roll my quads and calves afterward.

Yoga: I dusted off the mat for one 15-minute session of mostly hips and downward dogs. I felt a little less stiff afterward, which should be the smack in the face I need to make this a regular thing.

Total: 8 sessions in just longer than 7 hours. No complaining here, especially with a day off. I am grumpy with myself that another week has gone by without any weight training. I also had good intentions to get to the pool on Saturday, but I got delayed. Harumph.

I’m still a little stiff and sore to kick off this week but I think that is just normal aging/training/sitting at a desk all day rather than inflammation from overdoing it. It is doing to be a VERY busy work week later in the week, so I’m going to try to front-load some workouts and get up early a couple of days. We’ll see. My main goal is to survive but if I can do that AND get in some decent training, well, that will be icing on the cake.

I hope you all are having a great start to the week.