She's baaaack!

I can kick when I swim again! How good is that?! (Answer = "FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC".)It's been a bit tedious not being able to make the most of my adult swim squad classes over the last few weeks since stuffing my knee. While I could sense the knee was always improving slightly, the progress seemed snail-paced, and I was getting a bit frustrated having to hang back and just swim sedate laps up and back while everyone was doing the drills, getting the workout that is the whole reason for us doing the classes. (Classes I'd paid for - so, yes, there was a financial imperative in the mix!)

I'd never really thought about it before, but kicking yourself along in the water when you swim actually puts a pretty big stress on your knees - almost hyper-extending that joint - so while I've been able to ride a bike (a more controlled action), flinging my knee joint up and down wasn't the mildest kind of exercise I could have been doing.

Today, somehow, I finally reached the turning point, and, crazy as it might sound, I was over the moon when I found I could thrash up and down the pool doing the various drills, and laps of freestyle at a speed that gets your heart rate up.

I'm not sure what the difference was over the three days from Friday night's class, but 77km on the bike on Saturday (road tandem into town, community ride and back) and then 63km on the mountain bike yesterday, must have done something other than leave me with a bit of general muscle soreness over the rest of this creaky body...

Yes! We got a leave pass from the visiting grandparents, and so had the luxury of getting up and disappearing out of the house without having to organise children, and to enjoy an adults only day out. For some mad reason we agreed to join another couple riding an extra 15 km each way to the start of the BUG ride - 30 km that included a few ups along with the downs! Twice the distance we would have done otherwise!

The area we rode in was called the Promised Land. Perhaps that is significant! The promise of the 'better' knee, and the feeling that I am getting so much fitter from all the bike riding - aerobically I'm finding the swimming much easier you see!- has me feeling more alive and kicking than I have been for quite some time.

Now the challenge is to sustain that and turn it to other areas.

(Don't hold your breath!)

Labels: bike riding, daily, go me