I didn’t want to put too much stress on my knees, so I hit the fitness center at the hotel on Sunday morning. The goal was a low impact, easy workout.
20 minutes treadmill (15% grade, 3mph)
20 minutes elliptical (random program, level 15)
20 minutes stationary bike (random program, level 15)
Maybe too easy.
My wife and I flew to Aruba for a quick vacation on Friday. We arrived in the evening and just got settled and had dinner. No training
On Saturday, I slept in pretty late, only waking up around 9:30. I went out to scout up some breakfast and then we got down to the serious work of laying around by the pool.
By noontime, I was feeling a bit antsy just sitting around and I decided to go for a quick run along the beach. I really like running barefoot along this beach. The sand is nice and firm, and there are lots of people to dodge and stuff to look at.
My HR was pretty high, which I think had a fair amount to do with it being 86F, humid and very sunny. It was a delightful workout.
So, my flight to Boston last night was cancelled because of winter storm “Niko”. A huge Nor’easter that is pummeling the northeastern United States.
(side note: One of the main online weather services in the US, weather.com has taken to naming major storms, not just hurricanes. I like it. It solves a referencing problem and it’s fun to talk about storms by name…back to the narrative)
So, I am stuck in San Diego until my rescheduled depart, tonight around 9pm. I had a conference call at 6am, so I was unable to go to Crossfit Del Mar today. I was relegated to using the hotel fitness center.
I decided to just do 60 minutes of aerobic maintenance.
The treadmill felt like hard work, the elliptical felt easier, but my HR was a bit higher.
Tomorrow: I arrive (hopefully) around 8 am. I plan to work from home and get in a marathon plan workout.
| M1 | 4 x 15′ / 4′ | 6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP | 92.5% | (172) |
Still in Korea. I’m writing this in the KAL Lounge prior to my flight to Tokyo, and then on to LA.
I had a conference call at 2am local time this morning, I slept from 10pm to about 1:45, so almost 4 hours (plus almost 30 minutes in the car on the way home from the restaurant). After the call, I did some email and called some other folks to get some work going while I am on my flights. I wrapped this stuff up around 5:00 or so, and decided to head down to the gym.
The objective today was to do another marathon training session, this one is 3 – 20 minute intervals at different intensities. I decided to do them on the elliptical to avoid too much stress on my knees. I also didn’t really feel like doing this session on the bike.
Since the power ranges on the erg are not applicable, I did this session to heart rate. The HR cap is 167, so I wanted to stay under 150 for the MP piece, get my HR up in the mid 160s for the 10KP piece, and then choose a level between those two for the HMP.
This turned out to be level 17 (of 25) for the MP section, level 21 for the 10KP and level 19 for the HMP. The 10KP felt very heavy, like I was working in molasses, but it sure was hard work. My HR ended up a little below target, but not too far off.
The last 20 minutes felt like forever. I guess that’s the whole point.
I will now fly east, so I’m going to land at LAX about the same local time that I’m leaving behind in Seoul. I will probably hit the hotel fitness center Wednesday morning, but I might get ambitious and drop in at a local crossfit to use an erg for a 2×30′ MP session.
Wednesday: First teleconference at 7am. Then another at 8. Then off to the airport to fly to LAX, then more meetings and dinner with the team from our facility there. No time to train.
Thursday: It was going to be another long day. First teleconference at 6am, which lasted until 8. I had a bit of time before I needed to drive to San Diego, so I went to the hotel gym. This session was more about stress management than training. I just wanted to do something.
I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike (rollings hills, level 15). Then 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer (rolling hills, level 15). It turns out that rolling hills are easier on the elliptical.
After that, I showered, hopped in my car and drove down to San Diego. Straight in to a prep meeting for 3 hours, then a meeting with our customer from 6pm until 8:30. That left me just enough time to drive to the airport and catch the redeye home. Well not quite home, I am now in Charlotte waiting for my connection and writing a journal entry.
After I get home, I think I’ll take a nap, and maybe do an easy erg session.
Friday: No training
Saturday: No Training
Sunday: I was down on the cape, it was too cold to ride a bike and I didn’t want to pound my knee by going running. So, I decided to just take a nice long walk around the island.
It was about 3.5 miles and I was out for about a bit more than an hour. It was cold, windy and sunny. I loved it.
I feel like I’m falling apart. Maybe it’s psychosomatic. My knee is clicking away, over the past few weeks I’ve been bothered by some kind of a pinched nerve in my neck that hurts when I try to twist my head around (like to back up a car), and when I sleep. My most recent complaint is my lower back. I must have tweaked it when I did my “bumps” workout. It was a little sore yesterday morning and I ignored it and rowed anyway. Big mistake. The rest of the day, I had a constant lower back ache, and if I twisted or leaned wrong, I’d get a sharper jolt of pain.
Anyway, it hurt enough that I had trouble sleeping. Rolling over was pretty painful. And I have a lot on my mind. So, I felt pretty lousy at 5:15 this morning when I got up.
I decided that rowing was a bad idea. So, it would be the tedium of the stationary bike this morning.
The plan:
The first 30 minutes, I just set the machine to manual and pedaled at level 14. The second 30 minutes, I did “rolling hills”, which was less scenic than the name implied.
Mission accomplished.
Tomorrow: Knee Surgery. Guess we’ll call that a rest day.
I really shouldn’t complain…but I will anyway.
I finished up my last meeting today around 4 and was dropped off at the Movenpick hotel at the Stuttgart airport. I thought it would be a great thing to go work out. I had noticed when I checked in that the fitness center had a Model D rower, and I was itching to do some long slow meters.
So, I suit myself up, put on some nice podcasts, sit down on the rower, adjust the foot height, and pull on the chain. It was bad. Really bad. The clutch was going on the erg, so it would lurch and grind on the pull. I thought it might calm down over a few pulls, but no, it was entirely unusable.
If there had been no erg, I would have contentedly toddle over to the bike and just gotten going, but my shuffle to the bike after failing on the erg was quite depressing. I hopped on the bike and watched the minutes pass glacially toward 30. At 30 minutes, I had had more than enough pedalling, so I moved over to the treadmill. Here I cranked up the incline all the way to 15% and walked briskly (at 5km/h) for another 30 minutes.
By this point, I was tired, sweaty and bored, so I decided to call it a day.
Tomorrow morning I have a 7:10am flight out of Stuttgart through London back home to Boston. It will be good to get back to a working erg!
So, I don’t really know what to think about how things are going with my knee. There is no doubt that the MRI showed an damaged area of the meniscus cartilage, but right now, it is hurting a lot less. I still get clicking and I am treating it very carefully, but I am worrying about whether getting it scoped is the right thing to do.
The thing is that I would not be able to row well the way it is now. I would be constantly worried that I would over compress and lock it up in the boat. This would be painful at least and could be potentially dangerous, if it was as bad as when it happened in Vermont (or numerous times the following couple of weeks).
Anyway, this morning, the plan was for a 60 minute endurance session. I was originally planning to just do another boring ride on the stationary bike. I started there, and did 30 minutes that way, and I got really bored. My knee also felt perfectly fine.
Hmmm. Maybe I could do a little erging. Either it would go OK, or at least I’d be more certain about the procedure.
So, I toddled over to the erg. I put down a bandaid on the rail to give myself a reminder to not compress too far. I dialed up 10km on the PM5 and started rowing.
At first I was very tentative about stroke length, and the time off the erg was definitely having an effect. But over the first 10 minutes I got more comfortable and confident and lengthened my stroke a bit. I’m still not squeezing hard into full compression at the catch, but I was going an inch or so past the bandaid. As this happened I was able to bring the rate down a bit too.
The HR response was pretty poor for such a slow piece, but it was great to get back on the erg and my knee is showing no ill effects afterward.
Workout Summary - media/20161209-181650-sled_2016-12-09T07-29-45ZEST.strokes.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|10000|41:28.0|02:04.4|181.4|19.0|151.2|160.0|12.7 W-|10000|41:28.0|02:04.4|181.2|19.0|151.5|160.0|12.7 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|160.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 01|01000|04:05.0|02:02.5|185.0|20.0|137.1|146.0|12.2 02|01000|04:05.5|02:02.8|189.1|19.9|148.8|152.0|12.3 03|01000|04:07.3|02:03.6|185.2|19.5|150.5|152.0|12.4 04|01000|04:07.3|02:03.6|185.5|19.2|151.4|153.0|12.6 05|01000|04:10.1|02:05.1|178.8|18.9|152.6|154.0|12.7 06|01000|04:11.0|02:05.5|176.9|18.7|152.7|154.0|12.8 07|01000|04:10.4|02:05.2|178.3|18.9|153.3|155.0|12.7 08|01000|04:10.1|02:05.0|179.1|19.1|154.7|157.0|12.6 09|01000|04:10.5|02:05.3|178.0|18.2|155.5|157.0|13.2 10|01000|04:11.2|02:05.6|176.6|17.2|157.6|160.0|13.9
Here’s a quick plot showing how I extended my stroke length over the first 10 minutes or so.
Here are HR stats for the whole workout from Wahoo fitness.
Gotta say, I feel a lot better for having done it, but the worries about doing the wrong thing with the surgery are unabated.
Tomorrow: Probably another easy erg session and some strength work. Maybe I’ll try some kettlebell stuff for fun, plus push ups and chin ups.
30′ warmup on the stationary bike. Manual setting 15. This felt harder and my HR rose faster than yesterday’s 60′ session. That’s what I wanted.
Then a quick shirt change and on to strength training.
Deadlifts with our brand new Trap Bar!
The thing weighs 75 pounds!
Bar only x10
165lbs x10
255lbs x5 x5 x5
(That was really fun. Never used the trap bar before. I got more confident in each set. I think I could go up in weight a bit)
Chin ups
Unassisted x6
Red Band x5 x4
(felt weaker today than on Tuesday, might have been the deadlifts. They were a bit tough at the end)
Push ups
x12 x12 x7 (fail)
(felt really spent on these, my arms were shaking all over in the last set)
I’m thinking that getting 2 rest days between strength sessions might work better for my purposes right now.
Tomorrow: 60′ Endurance Session
Quantified Rowing 