Thursday, March 13, 2008

Swim a little (whew) run a little (ow) knit a little (yay!)

Tuesday night Claudia and I met for our usual swim. We decided to finally swim the complete 4 sets of drills that comprise the first week's workout on the official schedule. Yep, took us this long to work up to the first real workout. After his amazing century ride over the weekend, Phil joined us for his first swim in a couple of years.

It turns out that swimming 4 sets of drills, plus warm up and cool down, is pretty tiring! Phil didn't do the entire workout since he was pre-fatigued from his ride, but he did a great job for the first time back in the pool. I'm working hard at correcting my form. I'm good at either breathing, kicking or pulling with my arms, but not so good when I throw all of them in together. I also have a tendency for my legs to sink and I'm working on keeping them at the top of the water instead of deep down and dragging. We're all trying to find the most efficient way to swim and get a good workout at the same time. When we finished we were all tired. My legs were wobbly when I left the pool, just like the first swim a few weeks ago.

After eating dinner and doing all my leg exercises and stretches, and icing my knee, I picked up some knitting. My arms were shaky from the swim but I wanted to at least get in a few minutes of knitting. I'm working at finishing my beaded silk shawl and I'm just about to attach the 4th and final skein of yarn. This is the pattern where you increase 2 stitches every row and now I have a bazillion and three stitches on the needles. Really, I counted! It takes forever to do one row now. I was thinking of ending the increases but I like the shape that I can see and don't want to square it up. So one more skein should be about 3 rows. Heh. No, it'll be more, but I don't feel bad about only knitting a couple of rows each night when I only have about 45 minutes to knit.

Last night I attempted the treadmill again, with 4 minutes walking, 6 minutes running. It went fine, my knee hurt no more when I finished than when I started. I did 3 sets and quit, just like I was supposed to, then did all my exercises and stretches.

At PT today I told the therapist about my Saturday run fiasco and last night's run. My knee was hurting but not horribly. He did some ultrasound on my knee (ahhhhh) and some deep tissue work on my IT band (ouch). Then I mentioned the odd fact that when I was doing one of my exercises I noticed my left leg doesn't turn out as much as the right. That got me some deep tissue work on my hip and ooh boy, that hurt. Still hurts. There's lots of tissue to get through before he hit the muscle and every bit of it feels bruised.

My instructions for the week are to slowly increase my run to walk ratio while still only doing 30 minutes, and to do the run part a little slower. Also to add a couple of stretches, continue the exercises, continue swimming and pay attention to my knee. If it hurts, stop running. Pretty sensible, right? I think this time I'll even follow the instructions!

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