Passover

Long night waiting for election results to come in. This state has far too many of those things. But I had a good morning in the subtle saga of knee recovery (Yeah. I guess this is yet another one of those kind of posts. You have been warned.) Geoff told me there was a new Modest Mouse CD out, so I downloaded the whole thing and spent more than an hour listening to it, doing my PT stretches and riding my bike trainer. It was a good hour, mostly because of the music, but also because I rode three whole 20-minute sessions on the trainer. I've done this before, post-Susitna even, but this was the first time I made it through even 20 minutes without throttling the handlebars to displace pain. It's still a little hard for me to sort out good burn - like the kind in my seriously out-of-shape quads - from bad burn - like the kind that comes and goes in front of my knee - but I'm pretty sure today's riding was all about good burn.

And because I didn't want to overdo it, and because I had an extra hour to kill due to the whole election thing, and because if I spend too much time sitting at home I start to go nuts on the cookie supply, I went to the pool and swam a mile. It took 47 minutes. I'm getting a little (so very little) bit faster. I'm going to buy a swim cap and something that will hold my nostrils shut so I can cut through the water like a normal person.

Thank you to everyone who commented on my bike fit dilemma. These comments have been incredibly helpful. Not only have people provided good suggestions, but they've also helped keep me closer to the surface of reality when I wake up surrounded in sunlight and think "Today's the day to ride for four hours!" So thank you, again.

Chain reaction

These adventures in knee recovery are becoming really boring. I need to find something else to write about ... anything ... maybe tomorrow.

I went to visit a physical therapist for the first time today. She had some interesting theories about the origin of my knee pain - including a misaligned hip and an atrophied VMO quad muscle. She gave credence to my posthole overextension theory, but emphasized that weak leg muscles won't support shock on a weakened knee. This injury has been building up since the dawn of my bicycling, she theorized, since I first sat down on a bicycle seat that I never bothered to measure on a bicycle I never bothered to check to make sure fit. I just bought these things online. A bicycle is a bicycle, right? Right? They're not precision instruments so specialized for body types that the slightest diversion leads to a chain reaction of deterioration and degeneration that can not be recovered? Right?

So now I'm doing my prescribed stretching/ITB band strengthening exercises and staring in bewilderment at my bikes. Did they really betray me? I liked it so much better when I was the idiot that injured myself.

And the bigger question ... if I do recover from all of this, can I trust them? How can I really know that it's not just going to start all over again? Will every mile I pedal be another notch in my inevitable decay? Is there a way to get my bicycles ... you know ... tested for this?

I'm feeling a bit flummoxed by all of this. But at least now I have an excuse to sit on the couch with a pillow between my knees and call it "exercising."

Running start

Today I hiked up the Salmon Creek trail. It's of the few trails around Juneau I hadn't explored before - mostly because it was closed for several months during fall. By the time it reopened, I had enough time to learn it was an old utility road that meandered lazily up to a city water supply reservoir. It sounded painfully boring. But painfully boring makes for pain-free walking, so I gave it a chance.

Despite the wide road it follows, the trail itself was a narrow slit through the snow, so smooth and hardpacked it was like singletrack from heaven. Every step on it sounded wasteful and wrong ... crunch, crunch, wish I had my bike ... crunch, crunch. The mainland mountains towered overhead. Beyond those peaks is the icefield that separates the Alaska panhandle from British Columbia. Whenever I think about this precipitous geography, it reminds me how thin my sliver of civilization is in this vast and untouchable wilderness. I like this reality. It makes me feel so alone ... and so alive.

I was only about an hour up the canyon before trail use had dropped off so dramatically that I had to stomp my own path through crusty snow. I turned on iPod and turned around, pounding a little faster through the postholes until I made it back to the main trail. "The Bleeding Heart Show" by The New Pornographers started playing. It's the kind of song you don't even really listen to until the chorus suddenly erupts in a string of joyful "Hey-Las." I don't know what happened. I broke out in a sprint.

Even beyond the music, I could hear my steps breaking across the snow ... crunchcrunchcrunch. No thoughts about bikes or knees or active recovery. Just running because running feels good sometimes, because the icefield looms overhead and you are alone in front of it, because you have nowhere to go and yet everywhere to be. I didn't stop until I was back at the trailhead, about two miles from the last step I had walked.

I still feel like my body is trying to tell me good is good, but trust and truth are two very different things. I go to PT on Monday. I don't think I'll tell them about the running, but I do think I'll keep my options open.