I've been mostly just bobbing around in the water these last couple of weeks, but today was beautiful and sunny, and I wanted to get in a good swim. I met a few friends a the beach, we chatted for a little bit, and then it was into the water! I've been wearing just swim cap and swim suit, but today I decided to go for the gloves as well, and it made such a difference! I got in and, memphremagog style, just went for it, with the plan to swim a quarter mile. The first length was hard as my face got used to the water, but from there it felt good. The sun was warm on my back and the swimming felt fine. After the first lap I started thinking about doing a half mile, and by the third I was sure I could do it. And I did!
With my apple watch on I've noticed a few times that I was just a little short of the planned length, so when I thought I was done I looked at my watch, and sure enough I was at .47 mile. The last .03 mile seemed the longest because I was just killing time waiting to be done. It was the slowest part of the swim. In fact, when I look at the first split it was crazy fast, and then I realized that I needed to slow down, as I always do. I kind of stabilized at a 3'21" pace, which isn't fast at all - when I was pool swimming I was doing about a 2'25" pace - maybe I need to get back to the pool a little?
After it was so nice out still, we hung out and chatted and ate hummus with carrots. I got a nice chill going, but not to the point of being shivery. A really nice fall day!
My knee has been really painful lately, so I went to a sports medicine person who said that I have runners knee and need to strengthen my gluteus medius and stretch my IT bands and quads/hamstrings. Which means more boring PT exercises. She also gave me a cortisone shot in my left knee, and wow is it amazing. I hadn't realized how much I was just feeling this low level pain until it stopped. It's pretty motivating to actually do the exercises!
I though about the other PT attempts, and feel like it's the intense boringness of the exercises that keep me from doing them. So instead of going to a PT I did some research on what can help with these areas and wrote out a list of things that I don't totally hate. It may not be the 100% most effective exercises, but if I actually do them it will be better than not doing the perfect things. Today I wanted to take a kind of gentle day since I don't want to disrupt the cortisone from doing its thing, and so I did a 20 minute yoga for runners and a few leg lifts. I will keep doing this stuff, I will, I will....
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