Two Weeks Ago

Two weeks ago, I was at the gym with my family, and I was feeling pretty grumpy.  Things at work have been kinda ticking me off, so I figured it was a good time to blow off a bit of steam.  Normally I try and walk for around 45 minutes, which ends up being around 4k.  Some days I'll push a bit and go to 5k.  That day, I decided to run a bit.  I've run a bit here and there, but not so much because of my knee.  I felt pretty good, so I ran a number of laps at a pretty good clip.  I found that running slow was worse as I bounced up and down more, so running faster seemed to stress my knee less.

Well, that was sort of true.

It turns out that my gait is still pretty off, and running ended up really hurting my left knee.  My right knee is the troubled one, so that was a bit surprising.  It seems that all this time of over-compensating, combined with then running hard really stressed my left knee.  I spent the next seven days or so doing very little else other than laying/sitting in bed with my knee up, and for the first few days, with ice on it as much as possible.

When last week rolled around, I was getting pretty sick of just laying in bed, but I couldn't exactly pop down to the gym for a walk.  Walking around the store was enough to send me back to bad with an ice pack on my knee.

I was talking to our PM at work Geoff, and he suggested swimming.

Swimming and I have had a love-hate relationship since I learned to swim when I was less than ten.  I learned to swim fairly young, and had some good training in basic swimming, diving and rescue techniques.  One of the schools I went to growing up had a nice pool, and swimming training was part of the core curriculum there.  I did basic diving, then retrieval from the bottom of the pool (it was a fairly deep pool), and rescue techniques: how throw a line to someone properly, how to reach someone with a pole and ultimately how to tow someone in the water.  Then I hit my mid teens, and I started to really hate the pool.  Kids would mess around in the pool, and splash water, and I really really hated that.  It led me to abandon swimming entirely.  I didn't get back in a pool until about five years ago.  A guy I worked with had a pool in his back yard that was a good size rectangular pool, so we hung there a few times, and I swum a bit.  Then again, no pool until maybe this summer I think.

Last week rolls around, I'm getting cabin fever, itching to do something active, and I really have no choice other than swimming.  I grab my swimming trunks and head to the Y near us with the best pool(s).  I couldn't swim for long, and I sucked way more than I remember sucking, but I really enjoyed it!

Since then, I've been going down to the pool almost every day.