Starting From Scratch

2 more days of work for me!  Today and tomorrow and then that's it until 2016!  WOOHOOO!  Truthfully my brain has been in vacation mode since Friday, ha ha.   I'm sure these next two days are probably going to drag as well.

Tomorrow is G's birthday and we're headed to Canoe for dinner.  Can't wait for that.  We started his birthday celebrations this weekend.  We went out to dinner at our local favourite restaurant with a few of our close friends.  It was a blast.  I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard.  Good food, great company and lots of wine = a super fun evening.  Friday night we stayed in and watched the latest Mission Impossible movie (Rogue Nation).  That was amazing.

Starting the birthday celebrations early!

Saturday was a pretty busy day.  I got a ride in and then went and got my road bike fit by Scott Judges at Fitt 1st.  Holy smokes what a difference.  My saddle was too low and my seat was too far forward so I was creating a fair bit of strain on my knees (SURPRISE!).  My cleats were also not quite in the right position.  Scott also added shims to my cleats.  That is something that I had done with my very first fit and I'm not sure why I never kept them.  Given the amount of riding I did on my road bike this year, I'm not surprised that my knees are messed up.  It kind of makes sense because I raced all summer on my tri bike and my knees were totally fine.  I piled on the mileage on my road bike in the latter half of the season.  Riding outside was a lot more forgiving than riding on the trainer and I think I paid the price for it once I started riding inside.  There were a few other fairly dramatic changes, namely in my handlebars and the stem.  I need a much shorter stem and new, smaller handlebars.  I can manage without the shorter handlebars for a bit but I definitely need the shorter stem.

I'm going to get him to take a look at my tri bike at some point in the new year.  For now I'm going to stay on my road bike to work on developing my leg muscles a bit more evenly.  On my tri bike I'm in a quad dominant position.  On my road bike I'm using both my hamstrings and my quads.  Given my knee situation, I think this is a better choice for me right now.

I went and saw my friend Lauren (the physiotherapist I mentioned) and she's getting me to start from scratch with my running.  I basically have to walk 5 minutes, then run 1 minute, walk 1 minute then walk 5 minutes.  I need to do this every day, gradually increasing the number of times I run and walk.  I was supposed to start at 3 intervals yesterday but did 5 because I forgot to turn around after the second one.  My knee hurt on the first one but I think it was because I was so tense when I started running.  I was anticipating the pain.   Lauren told me that if I felt pain, I had to stop but I'm a bit stubborn so I thought I'd give it another go and try to run relaxed.  The second one was fine.  So I did the rest of the workout.  My knees were a bit tender after but that was it.  I got on the bike later in the day and a did a 45 minute recovery ride.  No knee pain what so ever.   My knees felt tight but nothing hurt.  This is HUGE. 

I've got a little routine that I have to do every day to help improve my ankle mobility and work on strengthening my calves and my quads, specifically my VMO.  You can't target that muscle on it's own so I'm working my entire quad with a very slight movement.  It's tedious but I know it's going to help me.  And it's simple enough I can do it in the gym if I bring my band with me.   Here's to a speedy recovery.

Once again I had every intention of going to yoga on Monday but that got derailed by work.  So much for putting my one month unlimited pass to good use, ha ha.  I should be able to make up for that once I'm on holidays!  Anyway, I got a few workouts in this week but again, it was a relatively low volume week.  My work party was right smack in the middle of the week so I didn't do anything Wednesday night OR Thursday morning, ha ha. 

So Festive!

 This is what went down last week.

Monday: 1900m swim
Tuesday:  60 minute strength session
Wednesday:  2650m swim
Thursday:  60 minute ride in p.m. including a 5 minute time trial.  Average watts for that 5 minutes: 240.  BOOYA! 

Friday:  OFF
Saturday:  60 minute ride
Sunday:  2.47km run + 45 minute recovery ride

Total time:  5h 36 minutes.

I suspect this week will probably look much like last week with the exception of a few more running km's and a lost less swimming, ha.  As much as I wish I was able to get out and run for hours in this amazing weather, I'm kinda glad I'm sidelined.  It's really forcing me to take things easy.  And I'm not stressing about finding the time to get things ready for Christmas because I have LOTS of time, ha.

Are you ready for Christmas?  Do you have any time off during the holidays?