Tag: knee

Wet run?

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Full disclosure: I’m writing this yesterday. Otherwise I’d already know the outcome of this situation, see?

The story goes that I was given a rather nice, rather smart waterproof running jacket for my birthday. My birthday was a little while ago, but what with one thing and another, it’s taken a while to source the perfect jacket. After a few false starts, it arrived this week, and it is, as you will have deduced by the previous sentence, perfect.

Sadly, so is the weather, meaning that a run in a waterproof running jacket is sheer folly, given that there is no water to be proofed from.

But now here comes the good and the bad news.

A rogue October cold front heading into Cape Town today (tomorrow as I am writing this), is bringing with it several (or more) millimetres of water, in the form of rain. And this provides an ideal opportunity to test out the jacket. I was absolutely ready to go on a literal test run until last night (well, the night before last as you’re reading this) at about 10pm, when my left knee made at least some degree of contact with the corner of a rental trailer. The only real detail you knee-d to know about this encounter was that it was a genuinely unfair contest, with the few hundred kilos of steel trailer seemingly almost completely unharmed, and my outraged kneecap almost immediately pumping out an egg-sized haematoma in response. Was it my bad knee?, I hear you ask. Yes, of course it was.

Ice and rest and painkillers probably helped, and it’s just a bit stiff and sore. But while I managed a gentle gym workout yesterday (today as I am writing this), it does feel like any sort of impact work might be a bit much for the next few days.

And that’s sad, because the rain is very much just visiting for today and a bit of tomorrow, and I really want to test this jacket.

Watch this space. And avoid banging your joints on big chunks of metal.

Sound advice.

Big fall

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A great weekend with friends in Agulhas. Braais, games, laughs, drinks, beaches, walks… all of the good stuff. The only thing that marred it slightly was me taking a heavy tumble on Struisbaai beach during a last-batsman rush to save the game of beach cricket.

You wouldn’t think that sand could be so hard.

I now have a large knee, a bruised shin and my dysesthesia is back with a vengeance. Walking is fine, running is a non-starter and I’m feeling rather foolish and more than a bit pissed off about the whole thing. And so we concentrate on the positives, which are plentiful and include:

1. The fact that I made the run, before retiring hurt and successfully avoiding vomiting in the Indian Ocean. Much like the contents of my stomach, I was not out.
2. The fact that otherwise, the weekend was a proper jol, and
3. The fact that we got back to Cape Town just in time to see this guy…

… brilliantly slot home the winner against Bournemouth.

I’ve always been a fan of his.

The Blades up to fifth, looking properly good, and the press now talking of Champions League footy at Bramall Lane next season. And for once, they don’t mean just on the big TV sets in the Blades’ Social Club.

I’m hoping that we’ve just about done enough to avoid relegation at this point and while the actual Premier League title seems just out of reach, I’d be very happy with any finish in the top half of the table. I’m not sure we have the depth of squad to take on the rest of Europe right now.

Still, that league position is fantastic (and actually, totally justified) and the attention is flattering (and actually, totally justified).

Missed ann-knee-versary

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I missed this.

It was a year ago last Saturday that I had my knee op that didn’t go very well. Actually, I say “didn’t go very well”, but it was a wholesale disaster and has caused no end of problems since.

Still, all’s well that ends well and I’m now fitter, happier, more productive than for a long time. The knee, rather than being a pain when I exercise, tends to get more grumpy when I don’t. Which is no problem, because it encourages me to exercise, and that’s no bad thing.

In fact, the only issues I’ve had this morning have been entirely unrelated to my knee. A lot of people would consider their garage door literally falling off its tracks and knocking a can of blue spray paint onto the garage floor so hard that it exploded (the can of blue spray paint, not the garage floor) to be a bad thing, but compared with where we were this time last year, I’m pretty happy right now.

All about perspective. Right?

Positive news

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Last night’s Premier League matches were amazing:

(I’m only putting this here because I will wonder what was so good about them if I look back at this post in a few years. Now, I’ll remember.)

But that wasn’t the best football stuff that happened last night. I also played football yesterday evening, and despite running around like a mad thing for several (or more) minutes, I appear to have come out of the whole experience without any immediate serious damage. Even my knee, which has a habit of being a bit grumpy after such exertions, seems to be cool with the whole thing.

And we won.

It’s actually almost the ann-knee-versary (sorry, not sorry) of the op which went wrong last year, but regular readers may recall that obviously, I only had the op because my knee was causing me so many problems. All of that meant that I hadn’t played much competitive footy since Autumn (that’s Autumn down here for all you Northern hemisphereans) a couple of years ago.

It also means that our resident statistician [nerd emoji] was able to work out that this was my first win since 21st March 2017. Yikes. Although, given that I literally played one game last year, and very few the year after March in the year before, this stat isn’t actually as bad as it seems. Really.

Anyway: next week, I aim to make it my first win since this week.

Positive news from the Physio

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The last time I went to see the physiotherapist was probably sometime in May was this morning.

The time before that was probably sometime in May. That time, I was still using a crutch to get around, whereas this morning, I positively bounced into his treatment room, fitter, happier, more productive, many kilograms lighter, and actually feeling pretty good.

I left 45 minutes later, wondering where I could find my crutch again.

OK, it wasn’t actually that bad. But I got worked HARD.

The idea of seeing him today was to work on some more knee strengthening exercises. My leg is much, much stronger than just a few months ago, but all the work I have been doing on it has involved medial, rather than lateral movement. That’s great for road running and cycling, but not so good if you want your leg not to snap when you try a trail run or go and play footy. And so those are the exercises I need to do, but I needed to make sure that it was sensible to do them, and so professional guidance was required.

Now I have a month to work on these new exercises, before in the first week of January (all being well), we move on to “explosive jumping”.

And with that sort of reward dangling like a carrot in front of me, I’m 100% committed to kicking some knee ass. However that works.

Tonight though, a brandy and a couple of anti-inflammatories. Baby steps.