Saturday, October 15, 2011

I am one happy hummingbird

Happy because I talked to a friend today and he told me that he had ITB problem 2 years ago while training for a marathon. He said that he had weak hip flexors and his ankle was not flexible enough thus he was bending his knee inwards with each step and that aggreviated his ITB. I was like, that's ME! I have exactly the same problem. So my problem is probably indeed ITB and nothing more serious.
And he told me that it took him over 5 months of physical therapy (3x/week with a PT and other days on his own) to solve the issue. So there is a hope for me. 1 month of PT won't cut it since I have had the issue for over 2.5 years now so it is really messed up. I cannot expect to solve it in 4-6 weeks like different "clever" websites discussing ITB say.

This made me super happy. It means that I can resolve it, I just need to be patient! Super duper happy. Couple months is a long way but I am thinking long-term.

And I am hummingbird because well, I am. I am like a F1 engine, HR is 200 while sleeping. I finally got powermeter hooked up today and I have changed the battery in my HRM (by the way, I went to jewelry store and they ask $8 for battery change. What?!? So I just went to hardware store and bought a set of jewelry screw drivers for $3 and a battery for another $3 and changed it myself. That's $2 savings:)). I have been struggling keeping my HR over 140 laterly. Well, now I have realized that it was not me really. It was HRM. Because now when it works properly again I got my HR to 140 within 1 minute and had to do a sighseeing ride effort to keep it there and not to go over 150. Now that's more like me. 150 is really low for me. I blink and my HR shoots up. I am definitelly not an endurance athlete....YET!

So I did 3 hours on trainer today. Fun:) I am moving indoors. It is dark by 7:20pm now and it is just more efficient that riding on Michigan roads. So hometrainer tire is hooked up and ready to go.
Average HR 147 and average power 152 (wow, that's pathetic, but as I said I need to keep a very low effort in order to keep HR that low). I have a lot of work to do to become an endurance athlete...
Although that power, who knows whether it was correct. Because I got CPU receiver unit from a friend today (in exchange for a beer boot and babysitting services) and we had power outage when I got home with it thus I could not go online to read a user manual. So I played with the buttons until I figured out how it works (I am a genius I know, although there are three rows on a display and I have no idea what the second row shows and I do not know how to reset the unit to zero). So who knows whether it was showing correct numbers. Maybe it needs some kind of calibration. I need to read the manual.

I was able to stay in aero for almost whole 3hours with only occasional sitting up for a few seconds. It was not too bad but I might give a chamois butter a try:) And my shoulder muscles are kind of sore. But I am already half way there to survive the whole IM ride.

3 comments:

  1. SO happy about the ITB. I had it too a while back, did I tell you already? Anyhow, I think figuring that out should be your nr 1 priority. And then you can go pro and fly to the top:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is my number one priority. I know that I have been saying that forever now but this time I am dead SERIOUS. I cannot go pro abd fly to the top if I keep having to take a month (or more) off every few months:)

    ReplyDelete