Acute compartment syndrome, among other things

I was cycling along on a bicycle lane 25 ks into my 33km ride to work last October when the semi trailor next to me swerved into the bicycle lane and hit me & my lovely bike. I came down hard enough to have several fractures to my r knee cap, couple of broken ribs, broken scapula, lots of abraisions on both legs, deep cuts around my l ankle and the main artery supplying blood to my lower right leg was not working. Pain was bad in my r thigh. The artery problem played a role in acute compartment syndrome developing in my r leg. Needed emergency surgery to basically save my leg. They had to restore blood supply to the lower leg (via vein graft from my left leg) and releive the pressure in the calf muscle compartments. The pressure was releived by creating a couple of gaping wounds on each side of my calf. These wounds are called fasciotomies. The wounds were left open, only covered by a transparent dressing. You could see the calf muscle moving. After a couple of days, once they were satisfied that my leg was viable, they closed the fasciotomies using skin grafted from my left thigh. Also had surgery on my patella. Several wires were put around and across it to hold it together. The patella seems to have healed so the wires (which are a pest) are coming out soon (that'll be my 5th surgery related to this incident). I don't have enough bend in my knee to ride a bike or jog. I can walk quite well but I can't change directions very well and 2ks is more than enough. Hopefully the removal of the wires will give me more bend. I can swim OK and have been doing that twice a week. Recently bought a cheap kayak which I've taken to the river nearby a few times. Still lots more physio ahead to get the knee flexing more. Bravo to the surgeons and nurses at RMH. My bike is ruined as it was run over by the truck. Luckily I was thrown to the left, away from the truck.

What articular cartilage?

Ended up having another arthroscopic clean-up in Feb 2010, this time on my left knee. Surgeon’s quote after looking around was ‘it’s not a happy knee’. His long-term advice was:
- don’t ever get fat
- stop running
- ride a bike a lot
- swim

The stop running bit is depressing. I’ve been bicycling about 50km per week all year. Recently got a new road bike & have bumped up the cycling to about 100km per week (cycling to work a bit).

I had about 6 sessions with a physio after the surgery. He had a look at the photos and the surgeon’s report & I think he was pretty amazed at how pain free and functional the knee is. I got sick of doing the physio so a few months ago I abruptly dropped the sessions without communicating with them.

In the last month I have done about 6 run sessions, all within the 1.5 to 3.5km range. These have been laps around a gravel track which is 2.5km from home. I do these sessions at about 9pm (once the kids are sound asleep). What happens is I pick one of my bikes (the old MTB or the new flat bar roadie) put on heaps of warm gear and ride to the gravel track. Start doing laps (according to the Aldi bike computer its 345m circumference). After a couple of laps I ditch some gear. After about 15 min of running I ride home.

Hoping to get to the point where I can run up to 5km 2-3 times per week (always on soft surfaces). These runs are being done on an ‘I’m an experiment of one’, ‘listen to your body’, ‘running is important to me’, ‘my knee feels ok’, ‘hang the surgeon’s advice’ basis.

The other exercise highlight that’s taken place this year has been regular summer swimming in the Werribee river near home. On Jan 11 I tentatively did a little swim. I had no Ill effects and really enjoyed it. I announced to my wife that I will make a point of having a river swim any day the temp is above 30. I quickly became addicted to/obsessed with the pleasure I was deriving from the swims, to the point where I was forced to revise my policy to ‘must swim when ever the temp is 25 or above’. All up I had 23 river swims last summer. They were decent swims too, usually 3-400 m upstream and return. There’s a lovely song by The Church called ‘Tranquility’ which has the line ‘….summer in the river…..’. This was often in my mind as I swam.

I’m sure the people who saw me swimming thought I was strange. I like the concept that people think I’m strange.

Easing back in

Ks in the last qtr have been:

Oct Run: 146 / Cycle: 30
Nov 148 / 0
Dec 112 / 137

I was on track for >150k of running in December but took a break as my left knee pulled up a sore & a bit puffy from a run on 22 Dec. I've been cycling a little as an alternative which has been quite fun. The knee seems to have settled down but is still a bit sore (like the top of my femur is bruised). A 3k test run last night went better than I was fearing. I'll do a couple more test runs in coming days. If I'm not happy I'll make an appt with the sports physician I've seen before.

Geelong run done

I finished the Run Geelong 12 k fun run in very wet weather in an official time of 1:00:47. My first k was probably around 6 min as I started towards the back & got a bit held up. Apart from walking for about 30 secs while I drank I ran all the way at a pretty consistent pace. Going by the 8, 9, 10 km markers I thought I was looking pretty good for a sub 60 min finish time. The last km was downhill and I tried to speed up by leaning forward and increasing the stride length.
I remembered to stop the watch as I crossed the line and I saw the 1:00:xx time. I was a little surprised I didn't see a 59:xx. Shortly after, when I was standing around a guy asked me what the time is. I had to switch the watch out of stop watch mode to answer his question. I was wearing my $10 Aldi sportswatch which has no memory so when I switched modes I lost my self-timed race time. I'm not sure, but I think the xx in the 1:00:xx was something beginning with a 1.

I'm not sure if the official time of 1:00:47 is gross or net. Also I read on the event brochure that the distance is actually 12.1 km. The conclusion to all this is I was bloody close to 60:00 for the 12 ks.

The new shoes & the old body performed well on the day. No joint or shin troubles during or after the run. The aformentioned $10 Aldi sportswatch has a little problem. It's still working but water got inside and now there's condensation inside the watchface. The numbers are barely visible. If anyone notices and asks me why there's water in there I'll just tell them it's a watersports watch!

All up it was a nice run. Pretty tough course really. It had just about every hill in Geelong covered. I'd predicted that there'd be delays in collecting race packs but I was wrong. All went smoothly. It's good to be part of the inaugural running of an event. I did the first ever 'run for the kids' too.

I had mobile entertainment with me for most of the journey. A guy near me was constantly doing stuff like cartwheels, hurdles, zig zags and star jumps. He also briefly joined a kids aerobics class and stopped to dance and do pushups in front of the brass band at the 9 k mark. He still beat me across the line!

Check in

Since 5th August (when one of the worst drivers in Melb put me out of action for about a month) my weekly ks have been:

6/09/2009: 24.9

13/09/2009: 14.3

20/09/2009:22.2

27/09/2009: 31.6

4/10/2009: 36.3

11/10/2009:16.2

18/10/2009: 48.8

25/10/2009:29.1

1/11/2009: 34.7

8/11/2009: 39.6

15/11/2009: 29.9

so far this week: 22.8

My current weight is a steady 87kg. Current resting heart rate is 48.

Since 5th August I have done 5 'long' runs, but these have only been in the 11-13k range.

I haven't done any dedicated speed work. This is because I don't think there is any point in me doing it until I am consistently churning out 55-70 km weeks (a volume I'm yet to ever reach).

I've been too lazy/scared to do the 5k time trial I mentioned earlier so I've no idea what sort of race pace I'm currently capable of.

Unfortunately 80% of my runs have been rather blah since 5th August. Feeling slow and unfit and having unwelcome quitter thoughts entering the 3kz (head). Dunno why. Just ploughing along hoping my 'tude'll pick up soon enough.

I did manage a cruisy 12.7k run on the evening of Friday 13th November which has given me relief and belief. At least now I'm confident I can complete the 12k run Geelong funrun on Sunday.

Given the lack of time trial I probably don't have the right to list target times but:
62 min will be OK
60 will be great
58 will be amazing.

You never know with me, on the day I might be content to start off plodding along at 5:40 pace and only start putting in over the last 2ks. Anything's possible.

The hills at the Geelong botannic gardens are in the back of mind. We had a picnic there a few years ago and I remember it's hilly, just not too sure how bad.

I'll be wearing new shoes on Sunday. Adidas Supernova Sequence. $110 from the adidas store at the new DFO at South Warf. Seems like a good price. That run on Fri 13th made me realise that the old Loco Xpressos with 800k on the clock were just too worn out for a 12k race on hard surface. I've worn the new shoes on 2 runs & they seem OK, except I'm noisy in them (flap, flap flap). Normally I'm very stealth-like. Maybe I should've got the size 12.5s instead of the 13s.

heatwave wtf?

We're up to day 5 of a predicted 9 day heatwave in Melbourne. Coming outta nowhere as it has, this heat has knocked my running about. The worst of it was yesterday. Tried to do a 10k lunchtime run but ended up doing about 6k including a 1k walk at the end as I was really sapped.

Ks run in Octiober 2009: 146. Spinning this stat, I can say that this is my biggest October ever! This is due to the fact that October has traditionally been a month of running the Melb half marathon early on, followed by a break and/or a month marred by injury.

Things for me to lok forward to:
Run Geelong 12k on 22nd November.
The Church in concert at the Corner Hotel on 5th December.

I've bought some more Church cds in the last few months & keep discovering that they are wonderful to my taste. Their 2003 album 'Forget Yourself' is a masterpiece. The tracks Telepath, Maya, June, Appilatia and Summer are soooo gorgeous and others like Sealine, Song in Space, Lay Low, Nothing Seeking rock in very interesting ways.

Also recently got:
Scott Walker's 'Scott 4'. Very good stuff. Along the lines of 'scott 3' but with a bit less orchestra. Lots of lovely, if slightly warped melodies. It occured to me that Dennis Walter's voice may be quite similar to Scott Walker's. I wonder if he's heard of him? I might email him & suggest he do a SW track at Carols by Candlelight this year. That would spin a few people out!

Nick Drake: Pink Moon. Haven't done it justice with a good listen yet, but the early impressions are not good. Having trouble coming to terms with his very light vocal style and not rapt in the way he plays accoustic guitar either. This is not good 'caus this album is basically all acoustic guitar & light vocals. I'll keep trying.

David Bowie: platinum collection (1967-1987). I'm a casual fan. This is my first DB CD purchase. 3 cds for $15 at JB can't be wrong. It's got all the stuff from the late 60s & 70s that I know & love. And bonus, it's got Under Pressure with Queen. I had a good listen to that the other day for the first time in years. What a killer, left field, surprise hit that is! It's a real mini-epic with it's weird structure and the vocal performaces from freddie (who I can only take in small doses) and DB are absolutely outstanding.

Have enjoyed some from the succinct reviews on rateyourmusic.com. For example, someone's review of Lilly Allen's latestet album was: Hateful, cockney scrubber.






Well, I found it funny.

Fun Run Coming Up

I've entered the Cotton On Foundation Geelong 12k fun run on 23 Nov. I checked out the course map & it looks great. It takes in the foreshore and the CBD. There'll be some up and down hill work to be done too.

I've been running consistently lately but haven't done anything over 12k since my broken shoulder on Aug 5th so Nov 23 is going be a bit of a challenge.

I'll try to get 2-3 12+k runs under my belt before the race. I had a thought of getting up early & doing 4 laps of The Tan before work. Maybe 2 in one direction & 2 in the other for 'variety'. That would be 15k with (what I regard as) decent hill work.

I'm thinking about doing a 5k time trial sometime soon. Once I get an idea of my current 5k form I can decide whether or not a sub 60min target for the 12k is realistic. Only trouble is, I find 5k time trials scary.