Thursday, March 13, 2008

Well that was interesting...

I woke up this morning with a much happier knee. It still hurts, but not nearly as bad as yesterday...thank goodness. I was actually able to walk without tremendous pain (knock on wood) and the stairs are getting much easier to deal with.

I've been focusing on proper alignment when I'm walking up and down the stairs and I think that's been helping a lot. I know that my alignment is way off because I can barely balance on my injured leg but the balance on my non-injured leg is fine. Suspicious.

Tomorrow I'm going to call up the rec center's physical therapist and see if I can get an appointment with her, just for an opinion and maybe some exercises that will help me out.

Anywho, despite the fact that it's beautiful out (warm, sunny, wonderful) and I would love to be running right now I still managed to get in a good workout. I headed to the gym (woe is me) and lifted weights for about 30 minutes (I'm guessing, I don't know what time I started). I only worked on arms so I wouldn't aggravate my knee and I'm definitely going to be sore tomorrow. But I've decided that free weight are much better than the machines. Not to mention the fact that there isn't really a wait for the free weights.

After lifting I jumped in the pool for a 45 minute swim. Getting back in the pool after a long break is always such a strange feeling but enjoyable none the less. I started out with freestyle only to learn that it, in fact, really irritates my knee. So I switched to breaststroke and continued to swim pain free. For the last 15 minutes I grabbed a kickboard and did some kicking drills just. Honestly, I was shocked by the fact that freestyle irritated my knee while breastroke didn't; I was expecting just the opposite.

Following my workout, I sat in the hot tub for 10 minutes. That really helped to loosen my legs; I will most definitely be doing that again because I felt such an improvement.

It's funny how my least favorite tri leg (swimming) is very much growing on me. I never expected this one bit.

2 comments:

Mnowac said...

well then there is hope! I sure hope that swimming grows on me. I was just thinking I hate it this morning. I bet it's nice to have a hot tub after you work out. My gym has one, but you have to pay more to use it! No way!

Patricio said...

Good luck with the physical therapist...
You wearing anything on it at this point? some sort of brace? or it only hurts when u run?
Hopefully the PT will show you a few stretch exercises that will help.... who knows, you might be back on track before April? Let's all hope :)
PC