6 to 8 Weeks
Wednesday, 02 December 2009
That's what the doctor said before my surgery. "You'll be back full training in 6-8 weeks." Tomorrow will be 13 weeks, so I guess that was way off the mark. Of course, that was before she got in there and saw how #*@*ed my knee was. "I don't know how you functioned with it that bad." Well, you suck it up and go. Plus, it never did hurt to ride the bike. In fact, riding made it feel better. But honestly, right now I'm not so happy about the whole thing and I wish I'd never had the surgery. It doesn't hurt now to ride or with basic walking around, but the physical therapists (yes, more than one as I am frustrated and got a second and third opinion) are counseling a very conservative rehab. Those who know me know that patience is definitely not my best feature.
So there's really not a lot new to tell. I've only ridden outdoors a handful of times and nothing over 90 minutes. One time on the track for about 30 minutes in a small, warm-up gear. That felt great! The rest of the time it's been trainer or roller riding, no more than 30-40 minutes, plus some upper body weights and some quad exercises with the muscle electrical stim machine that the second PT has me doing. I can feel my fitness sailing away and it's especially frustrating when everyone else is out riding 3, 4, 5 hours or racing cyclocross and I'm not. But I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And I've been working on cadence on the bike. I've been able to get up to 135-139 a few times for a few seconds. Now I just need to hold that longer.
But, in the past 10 days, I've decided that I need to get walking more and since I was in Arizona for IM AZ last weekend, a lot of walking was necessary. That was a fun short vacation as I got to watch friends race and I ended up working one of the penalty tents which was a fun and sometimes frenzied way to watch the bike part of the race. Being there rekindled that Ironman bug and like Kenny and Scott both told me, never say never.
I've also been traveling a lot for work. Usually we spread out the travel over the year, but due to the surgery, some of the trips got postponed and in October I was in Los Angeles twice and in November it was Orange County (1 day), Silicon Valley (1 day), Houston (2 days), Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia (4 days), Arizona (5 days) and finally New York (4 days). In fact, I'm writing this on United #5, wireless internet in the air! It makes the JFK-SFO trip so much more fun. I'll have been gone 17 days in November. I'm ready to stick around SF for awhile!
Here are a few photos from NYC. Thanksgiving is a great time to go as everything is so festive. I went and saw the show "Burn the Floor"....really good, very high energy, full of dancing and music. And Maks and Kym from "Dancing With the Stars" were in it. Really fun time. My co-worker Germán and I went out to a Brasilian restaurant and the food was great! Impanema Restaurant on 46th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Fifth Avenue. Very highly recommended and not expensive.