Recovery Week #10

Monday: Very, very tired from the weekend. Napped when I got home. Did my standard PT stuff at night.

Tuesday: .25 mi walking warm-up. 1.5 mile jog at 8:20 pace. .25 mi cool-down. Longest jaunt yet! Then, weights! Tried some new stuff... seated snatch, seated forward press, standing front and back, lateral and forward extensions, shoulder extensions, and some other stuff I don't know the name of. My back muscles are pretty weak at this point so I kept the weight light and just focused on form.

Wednesday: Nada.

Thursday: standard PT. Knee was inexplicably sore. Guessing it was the lack of activity yesterday causing it to stiffen up. Plenty of icing.

Friday: 2 mile jog followed by PT. Ice.

Saturday: devens disc golf and PT. Ice.

Sunday: 3 mile run in 24:00. Felt good! I'll be keeping it there and no farther for the time being. My VMO (medial quad muscle above the knee) is still atrophied and needs to be the focus for now. 3 mile runs every other day or so should be long enough to give me a sense of how I'm progressing but short enough not to cause a set-back.  Day 1 lift (chest and tricep) in the evening with Alex. Ice.

Week-in-review:

Well, I ran a whopping total of 6.5 miles this week. That's a pretty big leap and I need to continue being cautious as I enter week #11. PT continues to cause some soreness and irritation, particularly where the major incision was. I'm told by the surgeon this is normal and if PT wasn't making me sore that I wouldn't be doing it right. I should probably be spending more time on the bike than I have been, particularly before I do my PT. I've been told I'm ready to do some leg press on the sled at the gym as that should help me target the VMO so I'll be starting that up on Monday. In the meantime, I need to get on top of my diet in a real way as I'm at my lifetime heaviest and that can't be good for running. I eat healthy, but I generally eat like I'm running 60 MPW and obviously that hasn't been the case for the past 6 months. I want to be running lean by the summer. Time to buckle down!

Entering Week #9.

Saturday: Put new tires on the road bike and took it outside for the first time this year. Rode 9 miles nice and easy. It was beautiful out!

Sunday: Played a round of disc golf with my dad. We estimated the course at a tad over 2 miles with a lot of vert (for a 2m walk). I used trekking poles for the downhills. Knee feels great.

Monday: Spent the day in Boston working on my sunburn and probably walked about 4 miles. Evening lift with Alex. Hit 175# on the bench but only made 1 rep. Guess I know my max bench now! Did a few sets of 5 at 155# which is where I'll need to stay for a little while. Knee feeling very good.

Tuesday: I ran one whole mile on the track in 8:20 or so. It felt good!

Wednesday: Standard PT exercises but otherwise took the day off.

Thursday: I ran one whole mile on the track in 7:30 or so. It felt good, again. Lifted with Alex in the evening. New stuff... seated cable rows, lat pull downs, straight arm cable pulls, hammer curls, straight bar curls,

Friday: Drove to Acadia. Knee gets stiff sitting in a driving position. Set up camp, did a small hike by the water. Amazing crew up there for the weekend. Very rare to gather ~15 friends from the college days in one place, especially northern Maine!

Saturday: 5 mile hike in Acadia. Used terkking poles which we very helpful for the downhill. Knee felt excellent.

Sunday: Return trip from Acadia had the knee feeling a bit stiff but I wanted to do something so Alex and I played a round of 18 holes at the Pines up in Amesbury.

Jogging in week 8

On Thursday I hit the track for a little test run. I walked half a mile to warm-up and then I alternated walking and slowly jogging every 100m for 1 mile. It was awesome. I was grinning ear-to-ear basically the entire time.

The knee felt very good. The middle quad muscle (rectus femoris) is tight. I think it's due to shortening as I haven't been able to adequately stretch my right quad for 2 months.

Friday will be a day off and back at it on Saturday morning!

Total distance 1.5m / running distance .5m


 

Cleared to jog!!

The doc was very happy after examination of the knee this Wednesday. The swelling has reduced significantly and he felt no grinding as the leg extended or contracted. He said I was "one of the lucky ones".

He cleared me to jog every other day so long as the knee continues to respond well. We're talking about a walk/jog ratio of about 100m on/100m off. He told me a track is the best place to do it because it's a neutral surface with fewer variables and the moment the knee gets sore or stiff I should stop and allow the body to respond.

So, I'll be hitting the track this afternoon. 1 mile of total movement on tap... I'm guessing it should take me about 12 minutes after warming up... maybe more. It's a start!

Week #8-9: Getting back

I didn't blog this past week or even really track my moves so I'll be summarizing week 8 here. I finished a round of ibuprofen after 5 days and noticed modest but steady improvement over the week. Sometime mid-week I hit the gym once and warmed up a little on the bike, and hit a new PR of 155# on the bench. Only managed 4 reps so at this point it's time to buckle down and spend a bit more time in the 130-140 range. I also handled high reps of 80# on the standing shoulder press. It's cool to have progress although I reluctantly admit, I'm not looking or feeling much like a runner at the moment.

By Friday my knee was feeling pretty good. Over the weekend I mostly took it easy except for a long walk through the woods with my cousins at a dog park in southwestern CT. There was some decent swelling after, but 2 1/2 hours of walking around should probably do that. Felt great the following Monday and warmed up on the bike. Afterwards I got on the treadmill and... jogged! 4 MPH for an entire minute. It was euphoria. Pain-free jogging for the first time in about a year. I was tempted to continue for a few minutes but my brain overruled that notion pretty quickly and I did my PT exercises instead.

I re-visit the surgeon on Wednesday. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about where I'm at in the healing process and what he thinks about the generalized welling I sometimes get.

That's all, folks...

A "Rocky" Week #7 in the rehab process

Monday: 15 minutes on the bike, MYRTL, icing in the evening. Standard PT exercises.

Tuesday: 20 minutes faster on the bike, standard lift at the gym and brought Alex which was fun. PT afterwards and got ultrasound, e-stim and learned a few new exercises. I did far more leg extensions  and quad contractions than ever. Best range of motion yet!

Wednesday: HURTING. pain directly behind the knee-cap. Can't walk down stairs. Keeping a positive attitude about it as you never know where the line is until you cross it, but on the same token it is a bit frustrating as I was trusting the lead of the PT and clearly overdid it. Took the day off from all activity and iced a lot.

Thursday: Feeling better but not 100%. Visited PT and we established that I am having a tendonitis reaction in and above the patella. It was actually relieving to know what I'd done as I feared I had really screwed something up with the incisions or... who knows what else. I also learned a little more about the anatomy of the patella, where the tendon runs from the bottom of the knee all the way into the quadriceps muscle. OK, so maybe I should have known that already, but how I'd imagined it in the past was two separate patellar tendons connecting to either side of the kneecap and not one larger tendon throughout. It makes more sense to me knowing that as I was really concerned that the patella itself felt sore. Didn't do any exercises, allowing the tendon to heal.

Friday: Started a round of ibuprofen. Sore but seeing more improvement. Quick lift after dinner.  Hit 145# on the bench.

Saturday: Completely off. Resting everything. Iced regularly.

Sunday: "