Run or ride, it was a gorgeous morning.
Back in April, I was talking with a friend who happens to be a cycling aficionado, logging several hundred miles per week. “I want to find time to ride more,” I told him over lunch.
Dear universe: I meant in addition to running, not in place of it.
This marks the second consecutive week where my Saturday “run” with Team in Training turned out to be a lower-impact bike ride. My IT band issues haven’t yet resolved themselves, and a little self-diagnosis via Google suggests that my problem may also include biceps femoris tendinopathy. In other words, there are a lot of things that are jacked up in and around my thigh and knee, and fixing those problems is going to take time.
I am not a patient person. I want to run. Now.
I’ve been very good about doing my physical therapy exercises, which include bridging (with my glutes engaged, not my quads), squats, reverse lunges and planks. I’ve also been stretching and foam rolling like my life depends on it. Well, maybe not my life, but definitely my sanity.
Team in Training Captain bonus points: hauling 40-50 pounds of food and water to the water stop using an outgrown bike trailer.
I’ve also implemented a new pool-based workout plan. If the child wakes me up during the 4:00 AM hour (not as rare as you’d think), I’ll get myself dressed and head to the gym to use the empty pool so that I can flail through the water without disturbing others.* And I got to do just that on Thursday morning. I rolled out of the house before sunrise, wearing an unflattering one-piece swimsuit covered by yoga pants. I got to the gym, tossed my stuff in a locker, grabbed a towel and headed for the pool… which I quickly discovered was closed for maintenance until 6:00 AM.
Who out there heard me cursing? Go on, be honest.
I couldn’t wait in the locker room for 90 minutes for the pool to open. I couldn’t even pass the time by going to a coffee shop. I couldn’t go home and hope to get some sleep. A regular old workout was the only solution. And so, wearing a swimsuit, yoga pants and flip-flops, guess who ventured out to the elliptical, looking like a total dumbass? Yep, that was me. Let’s just hope that the next time the 5-year-old has a bad dream about black widow spiders, it’s not Thursday morning.
So… have you ever arrived at the gym pool half-dressed only to discover the rude shock of a locked door and an angry maintenance guy?
* Flailing is due to a semi-lethal combination of inefficient swim stroke and being completely blind without my glasses, and thus having no sense of where I am in the pool. This makes lane sharing difficult and more than a little bit dangerous.
Tags: bicycle, bike, cycling, injury, itbs, pool, swim, swimming, team in training, tnt, workout
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