injury & recovering.

July of 2022 and after nearly two and a half years of generally slouching, working from home, catching (and mostly recovering from) COVID, discovering a knee injury, and slugging out a lazyaf training plan (just barely) with the excuse that world had gone to shit, I decided I needed to turn it around. For reals.

This is what I am doing to get some...

active feets.

... a kinda blog about healing, restoration and recovery.
1 year 4 months ago

It was backwards day yesterday, it seemed.

After being unable to run without pain for over two months, I smacked a two and a half klick knee test run around the local park and felt good afterwards. A couple hours later I went to the pool, and after fighting with the crowds I bailed early when they called a code brown and vacated the lanes.

Good run. Bad swim.

But it begs the question: what now?

I'm loving the swimming routine. I'm feeling stronger, I've lost about five pounds, and it's kinda this forced solo activity. It's great to run with friends, but you can't really chat and swim (at least not effectively) so it's perpetually going to just be my own thing. It relies on having an active rec centre pass, of course, but that's a low bar right now.

I haven't replaced running with swimming, but running has been my go-to fitness routine for over a dozen years... except when it hasn't, like for a month after covid and then a sequential couple more months with a knee injury. I'm still imperfectly aware that full recovery from wrecked MCL could last a couple more months, but that run yesterday gave me hope that I could at least start the long slow climb back to recovery after an effective three month break.

So it begins.

Right?

Um. Right?

This means I need to plan out a new plan, and climb back onto the platform upon to which I'd climbed a couple months back when I declared on this site that I was going to "refresh" everything... just before that plan refreshed me right in the knee.

A regroup is in order. But a carefully planned regroup.

here's the plan.

1 year 5 months ago

Somehow it became September and the summer is basically over. The Kid is back in classes. The weather is still hot, but we’re starting to talk about snow in a couple months. And I still haven’t really run much more than a few trials of my knee sturdiness for a good two months. Ah. Summer. Uh.

I have been swimming and doing pushups tho.

And speaking of pushups, I’m really just dropping a post here so that I can post the next month of tracking on my daily increments of daily pushups. I’m starting the month into the 40s per day. Yikes. That means if keep this up I’ll be up in the 70s by the end of September. Double yikes.

So here goes. Let’s just keep pushing it.

The full accounting of this challenge is also available.

summer "refreshed" pushup challenge

Date Complete Goal Notes
2022-09-19 59 59 i heart mondays
2022-09-18 58 58 on puppy birthdays
2022-09-17 57 57 weekend vibes
2022-09-16 56 56 week's end
2022-09-15 55 55 on we go
2022-09-14 54 54 another after swim go
2022-09-13 53 53 knee'd
2022-09-12 52 52 here we go.
2022-09-11 51 51 month 2
2022-09-10 50 50 party time
2022-09-09 49 49 that thousand threshold
2022-09-08 48 48 royal push
2022-09-07 47 47 run. swim. push.
2022-09-06 46 46 day off off
2022-09-05 45 45 labour daze
2022-09-04 44 44 last minute mountain reps
2022-09-03 43 43 can-do-more?
2022-09-02 42 42 the meaning of life
2022-09-01 41 41 month two, ish
950 950
1 year 4 months ago

The title just about sums it up.

I was lamenting to myself as I walked the dog this morning that a month and a half ago when I kicked my own ass into gear with the intention of revving my fitness back into gear for the fall, I would never have suspected that my running distance total for August would top out at a single klick. One kilometer. And only that much because I dared to do a lap around the park the other day to test out the knee recovery.

Yet here we are.

So. Now what, huh?

I've balanced things out a bit and cranked my swimming distance up yet again on Sunday (though I think that long one might be a Sunday morning thing and not an every swim thing, at least for now.)

I've been doing my push up challenge consistently and I'm starting to creep up into numbers that are actually worth posting about. I should hit forty reps by the end of the month. I had set that up as an "August" challenge, but I think I'll keep going with that (and post an update on the first with a new chart.

But still. Now what, huh?

I wasn't expecting miracles, but I was expecting to have logged some serious klicks this past month and maybe be ready for a winter in the trails. Now, with the uncertainty of a knee that feels, well, great... except when I run... I could be setting down aquatic klicks more routinely while I watch my run crew dash off into the woods these next couple months without me.

I'm hopeful but only because I am forcing myself to be hopeful.

More walking. More swimming. More cross training. It's better than nothing. Maybe it's even (physically) better than doing a few more runs this past month. I just know that it's not feeling (mentally) better right now.

That's what.

here's the plan.

and more.