Today, I saw the doctor for what is hopefully my last appointment. The doctor seems to believe the microfracture has stimulated some cartilage regrowth and is optimistic about me returning to recreational running. As I’ve heard before, he warned me that I will be susceptible to arthritis at an early age due to the procedure. He also suggested I try to find glucosamine in liquid form to help with the cartilage. Currently, I take the pill form, but he says the liquid form absorbs better and I can take it all in one go instead of three times a day with the pill. I don’t know as to whether or not glucosamine really works, but I figure it can’t hurt anything but my wallet. Better to try everything I can to help my knee.
The PT appointments have also come to an end and I am progressing with cycling to continue building leg strength. The weather has been warm on and off over the past few weeks, which really makes me consider going out on the roads instead of the resistance trainer. I’m confident about going out on a longer ride now and am pretty sure my knee could handle it. When I do decide to venture out, I’ll probably go when I’m in Williamsburg since it’s much more bike friendly.
Over the weekend, I was out walking around near the oceanfront for a few hours, which was by far the longest I had been standing/walking since the surgery. I got a lot more tired and the surgery knee seemed to stiffen up some as well. I also noticed my right IT band getting tight, but that might just be from biking. The same thing happened right after the cartilage tear — I was putting most of my weight on the good leg and consequently, my right IT band blew up. Now that I know the warning signs I can take care of it early with stretching and rolling on it.
The other weird thing I’ve been noticing is that the resistance trainer has a difficulty that is correlated with temperature. I had never used the resistance trainer much to really notice anything weird, but now that I’ve been using it almost every day, there seems to be a strong correlation between swings in temperature and difficulty. At first, I thought some days my body was just more tired than others, but I noticed that every day I felt more tired than usual, it was warm out. I used the same gear every time, so it couldn’t be that. With running, I always felt better when it was warmer, so this was definitely strange. The fluid inside must expand with the increased ambient temperature and cause more resistance.
I also notice that the trainer has some kind of warmup time, also correlated with temperature. When I first start, it seems really easy, and then after about 5 – 8 minutes, the resistance ramps up and stays that way for the rest of the bike. When it’s warm out, the warmup time is closer to five minutes, and when it’s colder, it’s more like seven or eight, and a few times when it’s been in the twenties (I use it in the garage with the door open), it seems like the difficulty increases only slightly in the first ten minutes. Again, this is probably the fluid inside the trainer warming up and reaching some threshold above which things cause a lot more friction.
Every time after I finish, the trainer is really hot to the touch. A lot of energy must go into that thing over the course of 45 minutes and it soaks it all up and tries to dissipate some of it with an attached heat sink. I know that every basic bike computer comes with a wattage computer, but personally I would like to modify the trainer into a dynamo and hook up a bunch of 100w light bulbs. I could see as I go how many I could light up (probably only a couple). Actually seeing the light bulbs come on would be a heck of a lot more motivation than some number on a computer. Of course, if I wanted to light up more bulbs I could just use 60 watt bulbs or even some CFLs. Or, I could see if I could generate enough power to keep a (low power) computer running. I could watch a movie, but it would only stay on as long as I was working hard enough. I could somehow integrate some of my research into this too. Not that I’m averse to suffering without distractions, but it’s just interesting to realize how much work goes in to keeping the lights and computer running.
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