Geek girl gets fit

Geek girl gets fit: A year in review!

Well strictly speaking, I guess it is half a year! Inspired by the London 2012 Olympics, and keen to get fitter I embarked upon reminding my limbs that they used to be attached to an athlete. Two occurrences of flare-ups to my left knee, symptomatic of issues elsewhere, and I find myself yo-yoing in and out of rehab sessions, but there is a lot to be happy with this year…

Tennis in the Dark

Perhaps one of the more surreal things to come out of this effort has been to take up tennis. Last time I played properly I was in school, but thankfully the group is small and made up of people of the same age. But it has to be said, it is weird to be playing, togged up in all my golf waterproofs, under glaring floodlights.

In my head, I am the queen of cross court forehands, pin-point precision backhands down the line and sharp punchy volleys at the net. In my head….

Toys

No geek girl review is complete without the toys that make me the geek girl that I am!

If it hadn’t been the fact that I turned the house upside down to find my old pedometer, only to lose it on the day I went to watch the Olympic tennis third round, I would never have found a FitBit. Well actually, that is not strictly true – I was astounded at how many friends I knew who used the My Fitness Pal website or smartphone application, and from there I saw that they link to this uber-shiny toy.

A pedometer, that also tells you how many calories you have burned, was a useful thing to have in the gym, as I started to draw more of a correlation between calories burned in exercise, versus monitoring my intake and working to a daily deficit. For machines like the treadmill and elliptical, it is great. For a stationary bike, rowing machine and the pool (not waterproof), not so much!

So Santa bought this geek girl a Polar Heart Rate Monitor – so excited was I, I even did a Wii boxing game workout on Christmas day. Only to find I hadn’t actually read the instructions and so 15 minutes of boxing in front of my bemused mother went to waste!

Add to that the use of a pull-buoy that helps me build up the strength of the muscles around the knees, as well as giving me a decent cardio work out. There is method to my madness – an early new year trip to the GP resulted in an initial x-ray on both knees, and will more than likely result in an MRI and possible arthroscopy operation(s). If running is ruled out for a while, then I need to learn to love the bike and the pool, instead of having just a passing acquaintance with them!

But just what little I have been able to do (injuries notwithstanding) has seen a loss of 9lbs so… I must be doing something right!

Roll on 2013, older generation inspired!

Geek girl gets fit: They tried to make me go to rehab and I said…

“Well OK, if I must!”

It had to happen.

At the end of October, after a long drive home, I felt an exceptionally sharp pain in my knee.

But I have had this before, and ran on it at the gym with no issue, so I told myself sternly to get over myself.

Yet the session at the gym, in a month where I was already behind on my sessions, after a cold, was inhibited.

I felt I was lumbering (well… even more than usual) and later that day meeting a friend in town, I could hardly walk on it. I lasted a couple of days, having joyfully (?) found my ice packs from days of yore, but had to resort to a call to see the physio.

The news was not great, but it certainly could have been a LOT worse.

The problem was my iliotibial (IT) band which was as solid as a rock, along with a combination of hypermobile kneecaps.

The ever-present crunching in my knees had lessened on the left knee (ironically the one causing all the problems) and was a lot worse on the right.

And I seemed to have developed the start of a Baker’s Cyst (a build up of fluid behind the knee) on the left side.

Ugh.

But, the physio was encouraged that I had actually managed to build up to seven minutes of running on the treadmill in the last three months.

Then came the words that felt like a bit of a sledgehammer: “Dial it back and start the programme AFTER rehab from the start.”

Wait, what?

I am a former sprinter, I had spikes, and lycra stuff and… everything!!?

I am (comparatively speaking) leaping about like a gazelle, and you want me to crawl again?

Firstly, my stretch routine in the morning, consisting of about 10 minutes of bleary eyed bending of limbs now is a 15 minute routine of crunches, pilates stretches, knee and back stretches and hip exercises.

Sounds ok but when you are leaving for the gym at anywhere between 06:15 and 06:30 in the morning, it makes for some planned organisation.

Then there was the return of… THE STICK OF PAIN!

One of the main ways of releasing a tight ITB is use of the foam roller along the muscle, and in fact I normally use it on my Friday Cardio and Strength session.

But I also have a smaller roller stick of my own, bought back in the day, but it is strangely hard to want to inflict actual pain on yourself in the early hours of the morning.

Yet now, I do. And it has helped as my rehab has progressed over this month.

Rehab started with only the stationary bike and elliptical, and LOTS of icing my knee at any available opportunity.

The next week I reintroduced walking on the treadmill with the promise that if the striding caused any pain, to stop right away and do another week of bike and elliptical.

Then I would be allowed to add a minute at a time of running, and again any pain would send me right back to the start. It was beginning to sound like an obscene game of snakes and ladders!

I decided to do my next long drive with soft supports on my knees, and it seemed to help.

In my last week of November, I am still on target to get up to five minutes of running, and then I will be able to start back on the sessions as they were.

Every time I take to the gym, I have to tell myself it could be worse, I could have been told to stop indefinitely, to spend a lot on regular physio, to give it all up and admit that middle-age was coming to get you.

With all that I could have been told, is a month of strict rehab THAT bad?

No, No, No.

Update: Sadly in a freak turning-over in bed accident, I appear to have re-damaged/torn my meniscus in my knee.

My Personal Trainer at the gym specialises in pain management (good job really) and I am now armed with a load of new stretches to add to my morning routine.

Seeing my physio early next week, and suspect that the last tennis lesson of the month is a non-starter!

The focus now has to be on some diligent rehab, and perhaps it is fitting that I will hope to start the new year with picking up my sessions again in January.

Geek girl gets fit: The gym-witching hour

Not that I am referring to myself as a witch, I hasten to add, but as we gallop headlong towards November, and my morning trips to the gym are in the wind, rain and never ending darkness, I thought it was a pretty apt image to include!

October was a weird month – after finally completing a part time diploma, it was like all my resources had deserted me for sunnier climes.

I got hit with a cold bug that seemed to be doing all the rounds of offices – which would be fine, except I work from home most of the time!

I did at least try and keep going with stretches, while keeping a well-known tissue-brand with balsamated tissues in business, but I was itching to get back to it.

But thank heavens for friends who are personal trainers! Because I was all gung-ho about what I intended to do the next week, and she gave me a bit of a reality check!

So… a quick adjustment to my plans – instead of launching myself straight back to where I was before I got ill, I picked the lightest of the three sessions I do, and just built up slowly from that.

In the last two weeks of October, it meant I could get myself up to my target speed on the treadmill.

The only real casualty of my cold was my hopes of starting some of the C25K (Couch to 5km training plan). This will have to wait.

But the sessions I have been doing I like to call “Mini-Tri… with pampering”!

It consists of Walk/Run/Walk on the tready, ignoring my indignant quads on the spin-cycle, and then a bit of a splash in the pool with 5 minutes each in the Steam Room and Sauna.

As a former hurdler, all I had to worry about was not clouting bits of wood and metal. In the pool, however, I resemble a blind seal, generally flailing about for a mere smattering of lengths until I can go collapse and bake in a moderately heated sauna, before leaving to stand in a shower for 10 minutes.

Psychologically, I wanted to get to at least 14-15 minutes of the combined walk and jog on the treadmill, before I started deconstructing the C25K sessions for a bit of variety.

In even this short space of time, I have seen that once my body gets wise to the sessions, and the duration, weight loss plateaus slightly. That is not necessarily an issue for me – I view this as a marathon more than a sprint… which is a little ironic given my previous events!

So that’s been October. Next time – it’s all about the perils of tennis in the dark!

Till then…

Geek girl gets fit: One woman’s quest for fitness

It has been 13 long years since I have actually been in the routine of doing anything, with my knees and back wrecked by years of hurdling.

The stress of grown-up professional life and wrangling a mortgage all made it exceptionally easy to let it all go. I convinced myself that I had had a good run (no pun intended).

But the injuries caused longer term pain, and I gained three stone over those 13 years.

Horrifyingly when I found myself out of puff trying to climb to the top of the stairs at the Olympic swimming venue, something had to change, and smartly.

When I started in athletics, at the age of 14, the most up-to-date bit of kit I had were my spikes!

Now, there are all manner of gadgets and websites to help this not-so-young former athlete get back into it all.

That’s not to say I haven’t tried to get back into some routine – but for some reason trying to fit in a session in the morning before leaving to get to a client in the city at 6:20am was unappealing.

Constantly tweaking my knees, and an ever shifting sacroiliac joint, recently saw me back on the physio’s bench and wondering if I would ever do anything active again.

The physio laid out a rehabilitation programme involving conditioning exercises to be done daily, and built up a cardio programme to start with building up to 10 minutes initially on a treadmill, elliptical trainer and some splashing in the pool.

Being a girl-geek at heart, I started logging my exercise in My Fitness Pal (a free online calorie counter, food and exercise journal).

Then my magpie-geek eyes were drawn to an uber shiny pedometer and calorie counter – The FitBit.

I know I will never regain my former sprinting and hurdling glory, and I am over that.

But armed (well actually “legged”) with braces to hold both knee patellae in place, I can now run, cycle, swim and I am even eyeing a parkrun 5K with friends next year.

It’s not just about the exercise, though and I plan my meals a lot better now, not necessarily cutting anything out, but everything in moderation.

Can a three-stone heavier former athlete, crocked with pieces falling off really do this?

Watch this space!