Back In Training

Having turned out to be a lot worse than I thought my knee injury is now beginning to recover. I have spent the last five weeks resting. Funny really, I spent 20 years resting followed by ten weeks training and then more resting.


So today I got back into things and tried to run. I managed a whole two minutes before the knee began to feel uncomfortable again. Fortunately I have a Plan B - Cross Trainer. The Cross Trainer is a low impact exercise machine that is meant to simulate cross country skiing. I was initially unsure about approaching this machine as my only previous experience of skiing wasn't something I look back on fondly. Anything that simulates it has to be bad.


It was whilst Andrea and I were on holiday in Colorado that our friend Erika offered to teach us to ski. Now, Erika is an accomplished skier and highly qualified teaching professional so I thought if anyone could teach me to ski, this was the woman to do it.

The difficulty I have is the fact that I am so tall. At 6ft 6 it takes a lot longer for the brain signals to reach my arms and legs. Often the instructions produced by my brain never actually reach my arms and legs. They simply dissipate somewhere along my nervous system.


I never really took to skiing because I never really got to do any of it. Every time I tried to get off the ski lift I would end up in a crumpled heap, trapped under the chair with emergency buzzers going off. There is nothing more sobering than a series of derisory comments from a group of under ten year olds - yes, I was on the nursery slops.


Maybe now you have an insight into why I haven't previously warmed to the idea of something that simulates being on skis.

I have read that when injured, if you cannot run then you need to train for the same length of time on other equipment rather than the same distance. This makes sense so I set out to cross train for 40 minutes. Having not trained for 35 days I expected to have lost fitness. Yesterday I went out to buy two new T-Shirts, size XXL, a testament to the fact that again I had probably eaten too many chocolate biscuits.


So now it is time to really take this seriously. No more chocolate or fried food. Only Super Foods from this point on. Breakfast was Super Food Muesli, lunch was raw Super Food veggies.


The good news is that although I have lost fitness, the completion of the Leeds 10k has obviously changed my mindset. Rather than feeling miserable and wanting to give up after the first 10 minutes I have obviously developed a new threshold. Forty minutes of exercise with my heart rate at the target of 161 bpm seemed easy, if not gentle compared to double this time on the roads in Leeds.


Inspired by this success I will continue to cross train, loose weight and strengthen my knee