Fitness assessment, sports doc and personal training

Today was the last session of the Outdoor Group Fitness Challenge. It always starts and ends with the fitness assessment. I missed the first session because I was sick and I was seriously thinking about missing this one and going to the triathlon training program running session instead. I really love the whole challenge, so I was lying in bed trying to work out what it was that I was dreading today. I figured out that it was the beep test and the 1 km time trial. The last few times I've done these I've ended up throwing up. Evidently that hasn't killed me so I figured it wasn't a good enough reason not to go. I was also bothered about the fact that I've been running slowly lately. I remembered that my running goals don't include running faster, so I managed to relax enough to get over the whole time trial anxiety.

When I was cycling to the challenge it was struggling to rain. Of course I'd left my rain jacket at home. Fortunately it never got past a light sprinkle. I practised some of the stuff I learned on Friday, like looking where I was going on the curves instead of at the ground. It's amazing how the bike goes in the right direction when you do that. I'm riding much faster so I have plenty of time now when I arrive at Lennox Gardens. It's good to have those few extra minutes up my sleeve.

We started off with a warmup. Brad makes them different every time even though we do the same things, which I think is a pretty impressive thing to be able to do. After that we had the beep test. I ended up baling out at 3-4, which was disappointing. I just wasn't running fast enough to stay with the beeps. At least I was in no danger of throwing up though.

We then did the pushup test. Last challenge I managed 34 on my toes in one minute. Today I did 42 on my toes. Yay me! Mind you, some of them were pretty shallow pushups. Still, I did them. After the disastrous beep test I was determined to work hard on the agility test. I didn't get my time for it, but it felt really good. I'm looking forward to getting the results on that one.

Then it was the 1 km time trial. I wasn't quite sure why I'd been so worried. I knew my PB was 5:41 and I was hoping to get somewhere close to that. I set off running quite well but my pace ended up being all over the place. I managed to finish in 5:53. I would have liked to be closer to my PB but it was still better than the 6:20 it took me to run the first km in the Parliament House relay.

We were awarded certificates and had our photos taken. I forgot to wash my orange top after the relay and so I was wearing the wrong top. I'll have to be more organised next time. Either that or I need two t-shirts. By the time we were finished it was getting close to 7:45. I had to get home, showered and to the bus stop by 8:40. I wouldn't have been able to make it a few months ago, but I knew I could cycle home in about 20 minutes. I made it to the bus with time to spare. :-)

After a meeting at work I headed off to the sports doctor. I've been trying to work out how to explain what was wrong with my knee. Anyway, it all seemed to make sense to him. He asked me a stack of questions, then looked at my knees while I was standing, got me to do some squats, then one-legged squats (yep, I could do them), watched me walk, then pressed a few places on my knees. Now, I've been pressing my knees to see if I could find a spot sore to touch and I haven't been able to find one. He managed to find two in no time. Ouch! I guess he has an advantage though, with all those years of looking at knees.

He then got a model of a knee out and showed me what he thought was wrong. I have to have an MRI next week to check it out in detail, but apparently I have two things wrong - a worn knee cap and a potentially torn cartilege. I'd been hoping that I just had a bit of knee strain and an overactive imagination. I was really concerned that he was going to tell me to stop running. In fact, I started the whole conversation with "I'm here so that I can keep running cause I lost lots of weight and I don't want to put it back on". I used more words of course.

To my utter delight I can keep running as long as I listen to my knee. And swimming. And cycling. I have to stop doing leg extensions and I can only do squats, lunges, leg presses etc to 30 degrees. I'm not supposed to do breaststroke. I am supposed to avoid hill running. I'd worked that one out for myself. You might have noticed that I haven't been running to and from work. My knee was always really tired after I ran the hills so I stopped. I just didn't talk about it because I was feeling guilty about it.

We didn't discuss treatment options today, but I'm seeing the doctor next Thursday so I'll find out what can be done then. In the meantime, I can keep running and I can keep doing the triathlon training. I'm really pleased with the outcome.

This evening I had my personal training session with Julia. I explained what the doctor said so we skipped the squats today. As an aside, my knee never hurt doing squats, so it seems strange to me that I have to cut back on them.

We did chest presses, 9 kg, and triceps pushbacks, 4 kg. I've only just moved up to the 9 kg weight. I managed 15 presses in the first set, with help from Julia on the last three, and 10 in the second. The triceps pushbacks were easy. We then did 2 sets of 15 reps of the bent over row. I was trying to imagine my hips as a hinge to get the form right. It seemed to help.

We then did some abs exercises. I was lying on my back and had to lift a medicine ball from the ground over my head and sit up then roll back down. The weight of the medicine ball helped with the sit up. After that I did that one where you sit and move the ball from side to side. We were out of time then, and so finished with stretching. The session just flew.

Tomorrow I've got the cycling training session in the morning and then a lawn bowls and bbq Christmas party.