Ten days ago as I got up to leave Church I had a huge pain in my right knee. I had ridden to Church on my folding bike and planned walk home with my family. I rode home slowly since I would get to coast part way. My knee was swollen and sore. I tired to do the Sunday ride, but only rode the three miles to the start and turned around. I went to the doctor the next day. No knee damage he could see, my lack of stretching just caught up to me and pulled a tendon called the IT band on the outside of my right leg. The doctor put me on physical therapy with my old friends at Lancaster Orthopedic Group. I was back to riding and running in two days.
But I have actually been stretching since and will have to keep it up. In the last three months I have been riding less and running more. In fact, it is likely I will have fewer miles on the bike this year that last year. I’ll have to ride almost 600 miles in December to match the 7133 miles I rode last year—mostly in Iraq.
It’s not that I don’t want to ride, but I have been working longer hours which makes it more difficult to ride with just nine hours of daylight. And I have been running more—just over 60 miles each of the last three months. And I have been at the gym more consistently, so in October, I did the most pushups (1115) and situps (1403) I have ever done in a month and it looks like 2010 will be the year I do more pushups, situps and pull-ups than I have ever done in a year.
