159 Days – Bike Test and Run with Crazies

Today I woke up earlier than normal. I woke up at 4 am to attempt to ride the bike. I have been battling a knee that continues to lock up in massive pain when I try to ride my bike on my trainer.I cannot get my bike retuned until Thursday to see if there is an issue since it was tuned a few months back. I need an answer, but in the meantime I will continue to be stubborn and try riding.

My knee felt really good after taking most of last week off completely from running, biking, and swimming. I was only able to bike 2 miles last week when I tried before feeling some serious pain in my knee. This morning I was able to ride a little longer. I was able to get in 9 miles in 31 minutes. I rode very slow and took it quite easy. The last 10 minutes my knee started to hurt. I had no intentions of riding more than 30 minutes so it felt good to finally meet a goal on the bike. I am still frustrated considering where I was in my bike training a few weeks back to now only being able to ride slow for 30 minutes and having pain. I think this aspect of my training is going to be slow and tedious to make sure I slowly build up the stamina in my knee and ensuring I don’t overdo it on the bike and cost me precious training in the other disciplines.

GU, feel free to contact me about a  sponsorship for my triathlon. I consume your products like water.

I finished up my ride at 4:46, quickly changed clothes for a run and headed to the Y to meet the Crazies for our usual Tuesday run. I was excited to be back in the company of great people after missing last Thursday and also not running with the Leadville crew over the weekend. I felt really good on the run. I took a Peppermint GU on the drive and around 5 am we headed out. Chad, Katie, Jane, and Nick were all set to head out. The weather was great.

We had another great run. We took off at a faster than normal pace and continue to chip away time. We averaged under 8 minute miles for the run. The great thing was that it felt easy. I never felt winded or that the run was too tough. I need just easy miles at this point in my training. This may have been a little too fast than prescribed, but I never felt labored. It is great to see my fitness really hitting some major strides. I hope to continue to make strides and really do some damage come race season.

After the run I did stretch out a little bit. My right hamstring feels a little tight/pulled and my knee is a little tender. I really pushed my knee today by doing two workouts, but I was curious on how it would hold up. I am back to the pool tomorrow so I can give the knee a rest.

Last night I came across some images of me running in my jammers at the Muscatine Tri. Whew! those are not some pretty images. However, I was able to gain some motivation to get back to some training of my body. Training as in weights. I am going to start to use my TRX again. I have a plan that I am going to follow. I hope this will help with my joints, staying healthy and injury free, and to help tone up the body a little bit. I hope to get a TRX workout in tonight. I will keep you posted on how this goes.

I feel good about today. Despite some soreness in the knee afterwards I feel like I am slowly getting back to normal. I am glad I have decided to take on a 31 week training plan where I am starting nice and easy to help get my body aligned with where I need to be.

I came across the following quote this morning. There is a lot of truth to the statement. My knee is a problem. I have accepted it and hope to remedy this problem soon. Without setbacks there can be no growth. I hope to have gained some valuable learning from my current dilemma. Otherwise, all this frustration is a waste. I just hope that all I burned off a few of the 200 cookies I ate during parent teacher conferences last night. Darn chocolate chip cookies!