Tag: Knee

Kneed to know

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Well the prognosis from the lovely – if quite headteacher scary – physio is that I’ll probably live. I much prefer her deep knowledge of all things mid-leg bendy, than the doctor whose diagnosis could best be summed up as “you’re old, now get out and stop wasting my time”.

It’s not all beer, skittles and bikes. Apparently the muscles surrounding the knee are weaker than a metrosexual southern cup of tea. This is probably due to the complete lack of conditioning I undertook after beating it with a spiky rock a couple of years back. I idly wondered if treating the inflammation with lager, and then riding the crap out of it while pretending it didn’t hurt counted.

Apparently not. Anyway I’ve a whole load of silly exercises to do, many of which I’m performing at my desk much to the amusement of the rest of the office. You see, to tighten all the appropriate muscle group seems to require a full on “pushing out a big turd” facial malfunction. A gurn if you like, but even more comedic.

Anyway dignity is nothing more than a long discarded relic of younger times, and if this means that I’ll be avoiding the man with a drill and a huge invoice, I am prepared to march naked around the office while sexually troubling the photocopier*. The next set of exercises are allegedly even sillier but I’m struggling to see how. Unless it involves the aforementioned photocopier.

To celebrate, on Friday I’m going to go and ride a mountain bike. First time for three weeks, but I’m sure I’ve lost none of my fabled fitness or awesome trail skills. You never know, I might even find some. This evening I indulged my other passion and walked up a big hill so I could park my glider in ANOTHER tree. Hawthorn if you’re interested.

The kids seems to think this hobby is actually nothing more than travelling the county to fall out of difficult trees. Still the bleeding will likely stop before the weekend, and to show my luck is on the turn, my other – newer and rather expensive glider – disappeared downwind before arriving at ground level well out of sight, but with an expensive crump.

Amazingly it survived unscathed which I am taking as a portent that in terms of divided medical opinion, I’m on the righteous side of the undrilled. At least for now 🙂

* I may have slipped this into my objectives for a bit of fun come year end.

HONC’d off.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding5 Comments

It’s official. The left knee of an aging Al is going to require all sorts of external help, with the worrying possibility of being holed below the water line by a man with a drill. Deploying a displacement approach of “not asking a question you don’t want the answer to”, I’ve been avoiding doing anything about the increasing soreness for a few months now.

It’s always been a bit wonky. Made more so by that high speed impact with Chiltern flint, and a somewhat slower speed impact with a surgeon’s knife and much stitching. From then on, there was a low level background twinge, occasionally upgraded to a sharp “arrrghhh“.

Ironically, as my fitness has gone one way, the knee’s gone the other. And after a gentle commute home last night, I was pretty sure that any sort of riding was at the mercy of someone else’s diagnosis. Right now, that’s just the Physio and a bikey curfew which I am going to break. Unless it doesn’t improve, in which case it’ll be balancing a need to ride with the increasing likelihood of the aforementioned scary drill.

I’m understandably pissed off about it. Missing HONC after working so damn hard over the winter is one thing, the prospect of not being able to ride for … well … let’s not go there eh, has subdued even my normally optimistic – if naive – view of the world.

The only good to come out of this, is it has allowed someone else to participate who was desperate for a HONC entry, and he was good enough to chuck some cash at the CLIC-24 fund. That event is six weeks away, which doesn’t feel long enough.No way I’m missing that though. Even if I have to hop round.

If you’ll excuse me I’m going to go and drown my sorrows 🙁