Thursday, April 15, 2010

Revenge

The knee is definitely getting better. I still get some occasional soreness, but it's mostly all gone now. I'm back doing some super-easy rides on the bike. Generally, I feel better after I'm done riding than I did when I started, so that's a good sign. Still, it will probably be a while before I can get back to proper training.

I went back through my training log to try to figure out why I've had problems the past two years in the Spring. I think the answer is that I didn't ride enough over the Winter. Here are my average bike hours for January and February over the past several years:

2006 - 3.4 hrs/week
2007 - 2.8
2008 - 2.1
2009 - 1.2 (injured in March)
2010 - 1.5 (injured in March)

So, for next year, I'm going to try to average about 3 hours per week (riding) over the Winter. The change from 2008 to 2009 was basically that I added more cross-training at the expense of riding. I think this means that I'm relatively strong when I start riding more in March, but the cycling-specific muscle/tendon strength is not there which leaves me vulnerable to injury. I would still prefer not to ride any more than I have to in Jan-Feb though.


Last night, I spent some time working on cleaning up a tree that had fallen in my backyard. There's a huge vine in that area of the yard that knocked it down. So, as part of my cleanup, I'm also trying to kill and clear out this vine. I thought I had found the root over the Winter, but Sarah found a different (and much bigger) root. When I cut through it last night, a bunch of water started dripping, almost pouring, out. I found it very satisfying...

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