I haven't posted much lately, mainly because I haven't had much interesting to say. This blog, while about me in general, has, in the past, tended to revolve around my running and biking. So where have I been? I've been nursing a bad case of Patellar Tendonitis. What is that? Well, in short, it's an injury that means no running and biking. I'll summarize it (I'm no doctor, so if I get something wrong, feel free to let me know) The Patellar Tendon is a tendon that stretches over your Patella (knee cap). It connects the bottom of your quad (front upper leg muscle) to your shin. Are you sitting down? Good. Now stretch one leg all the way out. What you just did was contract your quad, which pulled on your Patellar Tendon, which pulled on your shin, lifting the lower half of your leg. I'm sure I've over simplified this, but that is basically what you just did. You can lower your leg now. What my body decided to do was replace some of my left Patellar Tendon with scar tissue. Thus: Tendonitis. This meant any time I flex my quad, to, you know, do stuff like move, my knee was filled with pain. The solution? Don't move. For a long time. That's pretty much it, or so I've been told. Basically, the solution is rest it so it can heal while trying to break up the scare tissue. How do you do that? Well, you take a chunk of ice and massage the tendon. Every day. So my running has been replaced by rubbing my knee with ice. Directly. Which, in case you couldn't guess, is uncomfortable.
So that was last August. The good news, I've started to run again! I'm slow. I can't run far. I gained 25 pounds. Not, unfortunately, the good, "welcome to the gun show" kind either. Sigh. I started "running" again about 3-4 minutes at a time, at about 5.2 - 5.5 miles per hour on the treadmill, followed immediately by ice massage the knee. That was in January. I've since dropped about 7 of those 25 pounds, and have slowly started extending the runs, speeding them up, and moving them outside. It's a long way from there to where I am now (I've posted my last three runs here), but I still have a long way to go.
Saturday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
My knee doesn't hurt all the time now. But it's usually some small shade of sore. Sometimes a stronger shade than others. After yesterday's run, for example, it was pretty sore. It was the first run since I've been back that I've really tried to push the pace. But it rarely inflicts massive pain on me anymore. So that's good.
However, I had a major setback last week. I tried playing softball and found that I'm a long ways from recovered. Fielding involves squatting. Squatting involves a lot of strain on the Patellar Tendon. I couldn't walk the next day. I'm going to try again tonight. Hopefully I can hide in right field.
