Back to biking: so far, so good.

Mono Cliffs PP - beautiful views, fun trails.

So it's begun. I have been able to ride my bike many times, since my last post, without too much pain. Truth: there are some times when my knee gets a bit sore, and I feel that weird tightening up my leg into my hip, but not so much that I feel the need to stop riding.

What has made the difference this year? Certainly the effort made at strengthening my hip flexors and leg muscles (particularly the good ole glutes). The work done with Steve Neal, I think, was vital - and if it wasn't for the need to purchase a new furnace ($: sigh), I would definitely still be doing (ahem, could afford) those awesomely fun workouts. But, interestingly, it's not as though I've had setbacks since stopping those workouts just about a month ago now. I make sure to not ride too long (so far, not over an hour). I make sure to moderate, if I can, my effort while I'm riding - which can be tough, when having trail fun. And I've been keeping up with weight training twice a week - doing deadlifts and squats and lunges and glute bridges and so on - and thereby staying strong for time spent in the saddle.

In more good news, I've also begun to run again. Short runs (nothing over 5K), and at an easy pace. Sticking to trail helps a lot, and again, not enough credit can be given to the strength work done since February.

Still haven't had the ultrasound/cortisone treatment that was prescribed when I went to Collingwood Sports Medicine - I did follow up with a phone call, thinking I had missed something, but they reiterated that they would call me when the appointment had been set up. Hm.

Next steps (pardon the pun): picking a goal for late summer, both for riding and for running. And maybe, the Stomp the Quarry run (I think the 5K) on July 28 as an interim effort. We'll see!

This one's for my dad.

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I was thinking a lot about my dad yesterday. This is because yesterday was the three year anniversary of his death. He died at age 64, from cancer, at Southlake Hospital in Newmarket. This year was the first year I was able to think about that time without being overcome with abstracted grief.  The kind of sadness and grief that made me, on the first year anniversary of his death, reverse my wee VW – at reasonable speed – into the back of a sturdy (and enormous) pickup truck. I was certain that I had checked and double-checked to make sure there was nothing behind me, but I was, more or less, blinded by sadness. One smashed taillight (mine) and dented rear-hatch (also mine) later, I realized it was probably not safe for me to be driving on that day. (There was no damage to the pickup truck that I could see. He or she never responded to my apologetic note, either, so I assumed my assessment was accurate.)

My dad was so proud of me, and he told me often. He was proud of me for getting my university degree, for finding a career that gave me both creative and monetary satisfaction, and for my general independence. But he was also so proud of me for being athletic. I was born quite premature, and the doctors (so my dad told me) said that even if I survived brain-intact, I would never be able to achieve physically.  Something about my lungs and their less-than-optimal functioning.  So he was always so thrilled to hear about how much I loved running and cycling, and would make a point of telling me that that I was never supposed to be good at either of those things.

I miss you Dad. Just so you know, I am working hard to get back on my bike. I’m keeping busy with working out, just to make sure these lungs of mine stay in shape for the moment my leg is ready to bike again.

Deadlifts, resistance bands and BOSU balls.

Because reading about workouts is boring, but mountain
biking is always fun. Plus, it IS the point of this blog.

Okay, so the Functional Movement Screen showed me to be ‘hypermobile’ and ‘lacking in strength’ – to which I said ‘bah!’ – as I may be particularly bendy but I would never say that I am not strong. Anyway. After a bit of back and forth in which I challenged the above assessment, I warily signed up for a session with Steve Neal, along with my good buddy Jodi.

And I know it’s super boring to read about other people’s workouts, so I won’t get into too much detail about the ins and outs of this one. There were (yep) deadlifts, resistance bands and BOSU balls, and a nifty ankle strength exercise and some neat kettle bell stuff and overall about 25% new-to-me stuff which was great. The rest of the workout was stuff I’ve done before, which was also pretty great – primarily because Steve is a real stickler for proper form and, it seems, for drilling the idea into your head that just because you’re doing, say, a deadlift  - doesn’t mean you’re only using your legs for proper form, you’re also using your core AND your cardiovascular system. This applied to (honest to god) every exercise we did. We paid a lot of attention to breathing. Which sounds sorta dopey, but I really was made to feel very conscious of taking a deep breath at the start of the exercise, and releasing it as I progressed through, particularly in the deadlift, where apparently it’s going to come in real handy when the weights get heavier and heavier. Woot.

The good news is, apparently I don’t lack strength after all. Or at least it didn’t seem so to me. I’ll have to ask Steve when I see him again on Thursday. And woohoo, in the even more good news department, so far, my leg doesn’t hurt any more than it usually does (which is always a teensy tiny little bit). Which is, you know, nice.

I love exercise. My leg – not so much.

Spin class - this time, it didn't hurt.
Next time, who knows?

Yup. That’s the totally ickily bummer thing about having such a bad old leg. It hurts - sometimes during exercise. Almost always after. Which, well, sucks.

I use exercise like a stress-relieving drug. I know now, after years and years, that exercise is the one thing certain to put me into a better frame of mind, no matter the circumstance. When my dad was sick and dying of cancer in palliative care, I am quite certain that exercise kept me from spiraling into despair. When I went through major life change after that, exercise kept me sane. Even now, when things are calm and settled – life still has its crappy moments, and exercise is still the thing I like to use to feel better. 

So when it just so happens that most forms of exercise that involve LEGS (sigh) tend to aggravate my right hip/thigh/knee – sometimes to the point of limping pain after, it can be a crazy upsetting, not to mention a real crap shoot trying to figure out what to do to get a workout fix.

This is all perfectly frustrating, too, as I’ve now gotten into a pattern, wherein I will get back into the gym (for example) for a good four weeks of strength training and lung/heart conditioning, with just twinges of pain. And then whoosh, all of a sudden, my leg will freak out, and then I limp around for a week, which seems to negate the four weeks previous, whereupon, at the end of the limping week, my leg seems okay, and then I tentatively get back into some sort of pattern, only to have it disrupted again. Profoundly annoying.

Anyway. I called Collingwood Sports Medicine to find out next steps, now that they have received the results of my x-ray, and I have an appointment booked for the end of February, prior to the as-yet-unscheduled MRI.

And next week, I will be doing something called a Functional Movement Screen with Steve Neal at his Crossfit Gym here in Orangeville. Steve did an awesome bike fit for me years ago, which resulted in instant and remarkable climbing improvement (it also improved just about every other darn thing I did on my bike). He’s also a great mountain bike coach, so I am really looking forward to hearing his impressions of how this leg of mine is working/not working.