My Leg Hurts…

Here's a funny story for you. When I saw my doctor last week he discussed the reasons for me to not run for four more weeks. Apart from giving my body more time to heal he was concerned that my right quad had atrophied a little spending most of the previous 7 weeks in the boot or on the dreaded crutches.

{Do you know what I hate more than the treadmill? That damn boot. It's the single most expensive shoe I own now and it doesn't go with anything.}

Did I mention before that Dr. Hines is the doctor that has done both of my knee surgeries? He is also the team physician for the OU Wrestling team AND he's the team doc for the US Olympic Wrestling Team. How cool is that. Sure wish he'd give me some good news once in a while when I go in to see him.

Anyway, he even measured my quads and he said there was about a 1 cm difference in the right and the left. I bet you can guess which one was skinnier. I almost asked him to measure my calf, but I figured I could do that on my own. I swear my right one looks skinnier. Might just be the angle. I don't think my ankle could get any skinnier.

So, I have to say that I didn't believe him. I thought he was trying to make me feel better about not running. For. Four. More. Weeks. Well, I believe him now. I have been working out like a mad woman. I have been so set on not losing my fitness level I have been spending major time at the gym, on the spin bike mostly. I thought I was keeping my legs in pretty darn good shape. Clearly it's only because Donna B. hasn't had her "friends" in her Wednesday afternoon Pilates class recently.

Her "friends", AKA ankle weights, showed up this week, and we did lots of leg lifts and all other kind of insanity that I think she just makes up on the fly. I am convinced she just does it to see if she can get us all to do it. For some crazy reason we always do.

Even without the "friends" when it comes to leg lifts it is almost impossible for me to stretch out my insanely tight hamstrings to hold my leg out perfectly straight and perform any lifting movements at the same time. I am a runner, after all, and my hamstrings hate me. The class was pretty darn hard this week and I was glad to have an excuse to skip out of spin afterwards and not feel guilty about it.

Yesterday morning when I got up to meet Ro at the pool my leg (just one) felt a little angry. I just chalked it up to the hard class. I got in the pool and this was my workout:

200 yard freestyle

200 yard freestyle with fins (trying to get the old heart rate up.)

200 yard with the kick board

200 yard freestyle

200 yard freestyle with the pull buoy

5x50 yard freestyle sprints with fins

50 yard cool down

It was a pretty good workout. My shoulders had been pretty sore from Tuesday's weight room workout brought to us by Ross. They were screaming at me at the start of the workout but they loosened up, and then were pretty mad about the 200 yards with the pull buoy. You can't make everyone happy 100% of the time. I rewarded myself with a little sauna time afterwards.

I ended up taking Camy to swim practice last night and decided to hop on the elliptical so I could sleep in this morning. After 35 minutes the walk to the sauna was hard. My quad was not happy with all of it. Today it's still pretty angry with me. It's weird to have only one leg be really sore, so I guess I'll have to believe what Dr. Hines told me and know that not walking like a normal person for 8 weeks will have negative effects on my muscles. I might have to break out the poor man's stick, the rolling pin and roll it out a bit when I get home.

I've got cupcakes to make tonight and tomorrow morning I'm planning on yoga and spin, or swim and spin. I can't decide. I am training for a Sprint Tri so I maybe should do the two parts of the race I am allowed to do right now. Yoga sounds so nice though.

BTW, anyone know how to convert my 500 yard swim time to a 500 meter swim time? I am gonna have to do that.