When in doubt...

"When in doubt, it's never a bad idea to train like a fighter."

I read that somewhere and thought it was cool, and it sort of leads into my post.

So, my knee feels basically back to normal now. That is, I don't have any pain / discomfort doing anything anymore. Of course, I know it's still not back to normal yet, so I'll have to continue to be careful with it for a while. At least I can start the process of ramping back up to a normal training level.

I rode Saturday and this morning (4:30am wake up time again! It's going reasonably well so far, but it is pretty darn early.) and felt good on the bike both times. I'm still riding in a very easy gear, and I'll probably stay there for the rest of this week, just to be sure. Hopefully I've learned all of the right lessons from this injury; clearly I missed at least one last year.

I did a bodyweight upper body and core session yesterday (I'm not going to do any leg strength work, except rehab-type exercises for a while). I finished it off with a few rounds of shadow boxing. I tried shadow boxing a few years ago and I guess I just didn't "get it". I didn't find it particularly interesting or effective at the time. After reading an article that Ross posted, I decided to try it again. This time, I did it in front of one of the doorwalls in my basement. Since it was dark outside, I could see my reflection in the mirror pretty clearly. That made it a lot more fun! Per the article, I also tried to really keep moving the whole time, which made it more effective. I was a little surprised at how tired it made my legs yesterday, but I guess I shouldn't have been, I've hardly been working them for a month or so.

Breakthrough!

The knee wasn't as great as I'd hoped for yesterday, but still not too bad. I had a funny feeling before I went to bed though that I was on the verge of a breakthrough. I got up early this morning and rode on the trainer (more on that in a minute), and, sure enough, the knee felt really good. It has been great all morning too!

This injury has been strange for me. In the past, when I've had problems, my knees would hurt while riding (or doing other activity), but they would stop hurting when I stopped moving. With this one, it feels better to do activity, and it gets achey when I don't move for long enough. It's also taken me much longer to get to the no-pain stage this time; hopefully, I've made it now though.

I've decided that, for the time being, I probably need to get my workout in before work instead of after. Everybody else is going to bed earlier than me now, so I tend to wake them up when I'm getting ready for bed. Waking a sleepy mom and baby is definitely a bad move! It means a really early wakeup time (4:30am today) for me, but I think I can make it to the basement without waking anyone else up. Then I can go to bed (early) at about the same time as everyone else. After one day, it seems to be working fine, but the first day is always easy...

Also, since I'm sure people are dying to know, my saddle sore is also much better. That's good, because riding easy on a stationary trainer is pretty miserable with a saddle sore.

Give Me a Break!

Seriously, how do you get a saddle sore when you're riding as little as I am? Actually, I know the answer, but c'mon, give me a break! Hopefully it will clear up quickly.

The knee is feeling really good again today. I'm going to do another super-easy ride tonight and see how it goes. I think I'm getting closer...

Probably a little more sleep would go a long way to resolving my knee issue, but that's just not going to happen. The little one has actually been sleeping really well at night, but the older one has been getting up early. She was up at 5am today and ready to go! Dad wasn't quite as ready to go but I managed to get the job done.

Mixed Results

I had some mixed progress with my knee over the weekend. At the end of last week, it had been feeling quite good, but still not perfect. On Saturday morning, I mowed the lawn for the first time this year. It was pretty cold on Saturday; cold enough that it was snowing a little while I mowed! Between that activity and the cold, it was enough to make my knee pretty sore for the rest of the day.

On Sunday, the knee was much better again. I rode the trainer briefly Sunday night at a super-easy pace. Once again, the knee felt fine on the bike.

Today, it actually feels really good; almost perfect, but not quite. If I can string together a few days like this, I'll think about riding a bit more. Otherwise, I just need to be patient. The only thing you get by rushing is a chance to start over again...

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...

Not So Fast!

Well, it seems like I was a little too quick to pronounce my knee healed (or, I was too quick to get back to pushing on the pedals). It never really bothered me on the bike, but it does bother me off the bike, and it started getting a little worse again. So, for most of this week I haven't done much exercise, just lots of stretching and icing. That seems to have made things feel much better. This time, I'll wait until I get to zero pain before resuming training; otherwise, I probably just get to start over again.

It would have been tough to do much training this week anyway. Nathan has been pretty easy so far (knock on wood), but it's still been a tiring week taking care of two kids. I'm sort of looking forward to going back to work tomorrow to get back to a normal routine.

I took Cora to the Rhino Training Race at Waterford Hills yesterday; we watched the "B" race. Even though it was a cool, windy day, she had a good time. At one point I commented that the race was a little boring; she said, "This race is fine."

Short Ride with Cora

So, I asked Cora if she wanted to go for a bike ride on Monday night. "Yeah! We can go fast! Go ride bikes!" Cool. I got ready and got Cora ready. I told Sarah that we'd ride for as long as Cora wanted, then come back. I figured it would be at least 15-20 minutes, like we'd done last week. Certainly not a great ride for me, but I thought it would be good to at least ride a little. Besides, it's fun to pull Cora around.

I had made it only to the end of the driveway when I heard, "Go back home!" I asked if she was sure, and did a couple laps in the driveway. Nothing doing. "Go home! Go home!" OK. Sarah was surprised to see us again so soon.

She told me to go ahead and ride for a little while anyway. So I rode about 40 minutes; still not great, but it was good to get out. I popped over to Waterford Oaks and got a little dirt under my tires.

New Addition

Well, after teasing us for a few days, my son Nathan decided to arrive on Saturday. Everything went pretty well. Sarah opted for a more natural birth this time around and really did great. Us bike racers like to talk about pain, but I think a bike race is nothing compared to labor.

So far, my son has been a great sleeper; even better than my daughter, who was also very good. But, it's only been a few days, so we'll see what happens.

A few pictures...

I'm home for the week; hopefully I can get in a little training. So far, I haven't done anything except stretch and sleep. Maybe I'll pull Cora around in the bike trailer a little bit this afternoon...

Back in Business

Still waiting for the new baby... should be any day now.

I seem to have nursed my knee back to health quickly, although I'll still take it kind of easy for a while. Mostly I rested, stretched and iced. I got back on the bike last night for a relatively short spin and everything felt pretty good. I didn't have any discomfort later in the night or this morning, so that's a good sign. The weather is supposed to get nice this week; I told Sarah that if it gets over 70F, I'm going to go ride outside.

There was a nice article at Cyclocross Magazine recently. Sort of nicely sums up why we race and train.

My Dad raced Barry-Roubaix this weekend. (Picture here.) Unfortunately, he had a crash just a few miles in and ended up breaking his arm. He didn't know it, so he finished the race! Riding for 20-some miles on gravel roads with a broken arm sounds pretty rough to me... Anyway, so he's in a cast up past his elbow now. So, he'll still be in a cast for the inevitable pictures when my son is born; I'm looking forward to telling that story. ("See your grandpa's cast? He broke his arm in a bike race.")

Hill Ball

Still nursing a sore knee today. I had thought about riding a bit today, but I decided against it. Lots of stretching and icing today.

I was a little bummed about not being able to ride, especially since some of my peers are racing at Waterford and Barry-Roubaix today. It's been a sunny day, so I decided to get outside and play "hill ball" (I just invented it today). Hill ball goes like this: take a medicine ball and chuck it up a hill for a couple minutes, rest, and repeat. I decided to throw it up the hill so I didn't have to chase after it (easy on the knee that way). Although, as it turned out, catching a 12lb medicine ball rolling at full speed wasn't always so easy. Anyway, it was fun, hard, nice to get outside, and I felt better afterward.

Maybe if this whole bike-racing thing doesn't work out, I can take up throwing stuff... probably not...

Knees, Karma

So, I did something last weekend to aggravate my knee. I'm hoping it was some new off-the-bike movements I was working on. I'm going to stop doing them, and we'll see what happens. I've been pretty careful about ramping things up on the bike this year, so I'll be disappointed if I hurt myself doing something off it.

I've been practicing my Gene drills pretty diligently. I'm getting excited to ride out on the trails and see how much I've improved. Tonight, I got a little bound up in my switchback drill; because I ended up leaned over so much, my foot closest to the ground came out of the pedal, and then I was able to pop my other foot out and run out of the crash. I started thinking about how great I was and everything,, and then I finished my practice.

So, I picked up my cones to go back in, hopped back on my bike (with the front tire in the soft grass), clipped one foot in, and went nowhere... then I tipped over in slow-motion. Nice. Karma strikes back... at least I fell in the grass instead of the driveway.

Sushi Rice Bars

I rode the trainer for two hours today, which is pretty close to my limit for trainer time. The weather was cold and crappy today, so I wasn't at all tempted to go out. I'm still healthy, so the plan to not ride outside until the baby is born is working so far...

I watched the movie Pro while I was riding. It had been a while since I'd watched it; still one of my favorites. I get something different out of it every time.

I also made a batch of sushi rice bars today. I started making these last year, just to get a little more variety into the food I eat when I'm out riding, and they've always been pretty good. I think this batch is my best one yet though. They're also considerably less expensive than commercial energy bars, although probably not as calorie-dense.

(A full pan. It tastes better than it looks...)

The recipe can be found here. I've always made them with prosciutto rather than bacon. I found that it helps to cut the prosciutto up into really small pieces; you need a sharp knife for this. Also, it seems to help to put the prosciutto in with the eggs before they're quite done cooking.

(A bar, unwrapped. They stay together pretty well.)

The only downside to these bars is that you can't expect them to keep as well as a commercial energy bar. If you take a couple out with you on a Summer day, you need to eat them all, or throw away what you don't eat, because they won't be good later. Also, they don't last more than a couple weeks in the fridge (Sarah would no doubt claim they shouldn't last that long either!). I'm freezing half of them this time, so we'll see how that works out.

(Wrapped up and ready to go!)

Water Heater

So, in place of my regularly scheduled workout tonight, I got to clean up a basement full of water. As a special bonus, I get to take an icy-cold shower tomorrow morning... sweet.

(The enemy...)

New Bars

So, I mentioned that I bought a few new things for my mountain bike. One of them was a set of 26" wide riser bars.




I'd cut down my old flat bars to about 21". I've ridden on a setup like that for years. (Why? I'm not completely sure... I think I read somewhere once that your handlebars should be as wide as your shoulders. Besides, lots of XC racers use bars like this.) When Gene saw my setup, he was like, "Dude, your bars are so narrow. How can you ride like that?"

Well, part of the answer was that I couldn't ride well like that, which was the reason I was at his camp. So, on his advice, I got some wider bars. Actually, he recommended at least 27" wide, but it's pretty hard to find reasonably light bars that wide. As it is, going from 21 to 26 inches feels like a huge change... makes me feel like I should go huck off something... OK, not really.

The trails are still thawing, so I haven't been out on them yet, but I already notice a huge difference when I practice my figure-8 drill. I'm just much, much more confident leaning the bike over at speed. I think it comes down to how the bike responds to your inputs (the input being movement of the hands, not force at the hands). Basically, small movements at the hands translates into relatively small angle changes with wide bars, whereas with narrow bars, the angle change is bigger. So, reduced "twitchiness". That said, the wide bars also make me afraid for the health of my knuckles once I hit the trail and start squeezing between trees, so we'll see how that goes.

Riding, A Little

I've been riding the bike a little, still on the trainer. I ended up adding an extra day on the bike last week. I had a weird shoulder pain on Wednesday; my best guess is that I slept on it in a strange way and somehow tweaked it. It was very painful on Wednesday, but completely gone on Thursday. Anyway, since my scheduled strength workout had a decent amount of overhead lifting, I decided that I shouldn't do it, and I put in a pretty easy hour on the bike instead.

I rode some both days this weekend too. I'm starting to feel a little better on the bike, but respectability still seems far away. I'm pretty happy with the position tweaks I made over the Winter. I moved my saddle back a little, and I've been working on keeping my back straight. At first, I felt like I had to sit very upright to be comfortable in this position, but now, I actually find that it's more comfortable to be lower. It seems like my position is getting closer to one that I've admired in other people.

The big event this weekend was my daughter's second birthday party. It was fun, but kind of crazy to have 6 kids in the house. I made a sheep cake for her, so if this whole engineering thing doesn't work out... kidding. So far, I seem to have made it through without getting sick (nothing like a toddler's birthday party for making you sick!), so I feel like I have a good chance of avoiding getting sick before the new baby comes.

Good Bounces

I played hockey again last night and got some good bounces. I ended up with one goal and two assists. Not bad for only playing about every other week. I had gotten my skates sharpened, so that helped. I did a strength workout earlier in the day too, which also always seems to help, even though my legs felt pretty worked over by the time I was done skating.

Sarah got me a book about "The Zone" for Valentine's Day. It took me a while to get to it, but I finally finished it and tried to apply a few of the principles last night. The one that seemed most immediately applicable was trying to just focus on the next shift while sititng on the bench. I tried to just let go of whatever mistakes I might have made on the previous shift and tried to think about making the next shift my best one. I also tried to relax a bit more on the bench. It seemed to help.

One of the other suggestions that the book makes is to keep a dream journal. I find this idea more than a little strange, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. What I can say so far: it's surprising how much detail I can remember from my dreams later if I write them down as soon as I wake up (even if I didn't originally write down the detail), and the things I dream about (and write down) are not what I expected.

(That's so me, dude...)

I rode the trainer again on Saturday, even though it was beautiful outside. In my effort to stay healthy, I've decided to not ride outside until after the baby is born. It's hard to describe the way I feel on the bike right now. I actually feel reasonably strong in general, and not totally out of shape, but I still don't feel like I'm strong or fit on the bike. It's like there's a lot of raw physical ability that I just need to tap into. I'm not really concerned about it, it's only March, and I've just started riding, so things will come around.

Pain Management

In preparation for the coming baby, Sarah and I practiced some pain management techniques last night. She has been doing some practice on her own, but last night was the first time I tried it too. (We've been doing some other practice for labor positions together.) So, one of her books suggested holding an ice cube while you practice. After holding that ice cube for our first 1 minute "contraction", I decided that Sarah was way tougher than I was; I started checking my watch after 30 seconds! The subsequent ones weren't quite so bad.


We practiced three techniques: focused breathing, non-focused awareness, and "edges of pain". It was kind of interesting, they all sort of worked differently. The first two kind of make you not notice the pain as much (and after a little while, that ice cube really burned!). With the "edges of pain", you focus on the pain, how it actually feels, what the details are, etc. With that one, you certainly notice it, but you also realize that it's not actually as bad as you think it is. I can understand how having a variety of techniques might be nice.

It was also interesting that Sarah and I had different experiences with each technique. Some worked better for her than for me, and vice versa. We also tried a few variations on most of them, again, some working better than others.

Totally unrelated: I also finished building my mountain bike back up last night. I've got a bunch of new bits this year (bars, stem, brakes, chainrings, etc), it almost feels new! I rode it around a little bit in my driveway, practicing some of Gene's drills. It got me all fired up to really get out and ride! But, it will be awhile before the trails have thawed and dried out enough to ride on...

Base Building

Well, this week "officially" marks my return to the bike. I've done a few, relatively short (1 hour) easy trainer rides. It's kind of funny how crappy my legs feel after so much time off; I've only been riding about 1-2 times per week up until now.

I decided to stop going to the indoor training session at the shop after last week; they're going just a little too hard for me right now. I don't think my ego could tolerate riding easy when everyone else is going hard either. This time of year, I'm a little out-of-sync with most other racers. A lot of people will start racing later this month or in April, so they need to be thinking about going hard, but I'm not planning to race until May.

So, the first step is to just get the legs used to being on the bike again and prepare them for the harder work to come. I always think that I should try to maintain this level over the winter, but when the time actually comes, I'm happier staying off the bike (and off the trainer!). Once that's done, I want to focus on developing threshold power a bit more this year. It was something that I didn't do until late last year, and it ended up being a weakness in the races. Bike handling skills will also continue to be a big focus for the year.

This next month or so will be a good test of how deliberate I have become about my training. It was about this time last year when I effectively threw away three months of good training by riding too hard too soon, and with a too low saddle.

Weak Points

Grey Cook has a comment in his book that goes something like "Training is the time to work on your weaknesses, not your favorite movements." I've had my best successes and breakthroughs by stepping back and evaluating where my training program is weak, and then correcting it.

Lately, I think my weaknesses have nothing to do with training per se, but some of the rest of my lifestyle. One is that, for sure, I'm not sleeping enough. I'm getting away with it now because I'm not training very intensely or at a high volume, but once I start ramping up the training, I know it will become a problem. The new baby surely won't improve my sleep situation, but I can try to control some of the other factors.

The other weakness seems to be my diet/nutrition. I've been sticking with the Paleo Diet for Athletes plan, but I seem to have drifted away from some of the details that seem to make a difference. So, I'm going to try to do a better job of keeping track of what I'm eating and making sure it fits the plan; at least until I feel like my habits have been adjusted.

FMS - Passed!

I finally passed the simplified Functional Movement Screen today. It took me about two months of consistent work to pass all of the movements. I thought I'd quickly share my comments on them.

Deep Squat: Even at the beginning, I had no real problems with this movement. As a result, I've not done any of the breakdown exercises. Now, that I've done the exercises for most of the others, this one doesn't feel quite as solid as the other movements. So, I'll probably work on it at some point. Especially now that I look at the picture, I see that I could improve my shoulder mobility.

Hurdle Step: (I set up the picture without the tape "barrier" to step over.) This was another one that was pretty solid for me right off the bat. I just needed to work on keeping my back straight when I stepped forward.

In-line Lunge: Here's where I started to have trouble... the first few times I did this test, I thought that, surely, the description must have been written incorrectly. I just didn't see how you could do it and keep your hands behind the doorframe. I eventually realized that you could do it if you kept your back straight. Once I corrected that, I had to work a little more on doing the move without wobbling.

Straight-leg Raise: I couldn't pass this one the first time either. I had (wrongly) assumed this exercise was about hamstring flexibility. Really, it's mostly about getting your muscles to fire correctly. With just a little work, I was able to pass this one. (Note my state-of-the art craft room / movement testing training facility! It has a good doorway, what can I say?)

Seated Rotation: Working on passing this test took the longest for me. I think that it hit a number of points where I had trouble. First was hip mobility. You have to be reasonably comfortable in that cross-legged position, otherwise, the rest just isn't going to happen. The second part was mobility of the trunk. I'd never realized this was a weak point for me until I started working on it. This was also one of the few areas where I had pretty a significant left/right difference.

Anyway, this whole experience has been very positive for me. I definitely notice a difference in my flexibility and in my ability to control my movements. The best way I can describe it is that my athleticism is just better now. I haven't really been riding enough to see if it will make a difference on the bike, but I should find out soon enough.