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I seriously cannot concentrate tonight.
Short-attention span theater girl, that's me.
I've been hacking away at Part 28, and I think a big part of my problem is that I'm not keeping it simple like I should. (Duh!) I've been staring at this mess for four days and it's not resolving into anything resembling coherency.
I wonder if my issue is that I've just radically changed my schedule to accommodate hitting the gym after work. Let's hear it for flex time! If I can keep up the 7-to-4 schedule all week, I'm going to ask to make it permanent. Besides, in exchange for getting up an hour earlier, I'm getting home something like a half-hour earlier than I used to (at least going by today).
The thing is, I'm one of those people that need cardiovascular exercise. Changing my eating habits (which aren't bad to begin with) doesn't do shit for me. Thanks to genetics, I can eat rabbit food from now until doomsday and if there's no exercising, I will just about manage to maintain. Bleh. Some people just need to cut back on the soda (lucky bastards) to drop 10 pounds. Me? I don't even drink soda more than once every other month.
See, back before I tore my ACL in my knee, I exercised a lot. I had taken up running and dropped quite a bit of weight and everything. I'm not someone who'll ever be skinny (some of us have hips and tits even when you can count our ribs), but I can certainly do a size 8 hourglass.
The sad thing is: I didn't even tear it running. I tore it out because I stepped into a pothole. No lie. The second I heard surgery, I basically told the osteo, "In your dreams, pal." Plus, my health insurance was on the verge of lapsing because I was unemployed at the time, so it wasn't like I could even pay for the procedure.
I tore the ACL something like five years ago. It took three years to get to a point where I could to flex it without the threat of my knee giving out. Then it took abother year for me to be able walk without the threat of it giving out. Glucosamine/Chondroitin Complex has helped tremendously in the past year with the whole chronic pain thing. Now my knee actually feels like a knee.
Naturally, I ate like I was still working out. *rolls eyes* We all know how well that works. So I altered how I ate. Not much help on the dropping weight front, but at least I didn't gain.
Anyway, I've been trying to change my schedule to get up at 5 ayem or so to go to the gym before work. I used to do this on a regular basis. However, these days I can't break through the 6 ayem wall, which means too late to hit the gym before going to work. Roll over, fall asleep, sleep till 8.
Yeah, not going to happen when you have to be to work by 9 and don't leave until 6.
Anyway, since my company is cool about flex time, I decided to try get up at 6 ayem, be to work by 7-ish, and then go exercise after work.
So, this weekend, I was up at 6-ish to "train" for today. End result? "Running" using the elipicals three days in a row for 50 minutes each session for a total of 11 miles so far and I feel better than I have since I last exercised on a regular basis.
Bonus, I'm actually home earlier than my previous schedule.
I figure I'll spend a month getting the cardiovascular system back up to snuff and then add weights.
Small problem: My body is now trying to play catch-up and I'm crawling into bed a wee bit on the early side, so gym time has cut into my writing time a little. Not a problem, usually. Until you get a fluffy-bunny-scatterbrained-night like tonight when you can barely stay in your seat. *bleh*
On a postive note, after three days the clothes are already fitting better. So, yay me!
Short-attention span theater girl, that's me.
I've been hacking away at Part 28, and I think a big part of my problem is that I'm not keeping it simple like I should. (Duh!) I've been staring at this mess for four days and it's not resolving into anything resembling coherency.
I wonder if my issue is that I've just radically changed my schedule to accommodate hitting the gym after work. Let's hear it for flex time! If I can keep up the 7-to-4 schedule all week, I'm going to ask to make it permanent. Besides, in exchange for getting up an hour earlier, I'm getting home something like a half-hour earlier than I used to (at least going by today).
The thing is, I'm one of those people that need cardiovascular exercise. Changing my eating habits (which aren't bad to begin with) doesn't do shit for me. Thanks to genetics, I can eat rabbit food from now until doomsday and if there's no exercising, I will just about manage to maintain. Bleh. Some people just need to cut back on the soda (lucky bastards) to drop 10 pounds. Me? I don't even drink soda more than once every other month.
See, back before I tore my ACL in my knee, I exercised a lot. I had taken up running and dropped quite a bit of weight and everything. I'm not someone who'll ever be skinny (some of us have hips and tits even when you can count our ribs), but I can certainly do a size 8 hourglass.
The sad thing is: I didn't even tear it running. I tore it out because I stepped into a pothole. No lie. The second I heard surgery, I basically told the osteo, "In your dreams, pal." Plus, my health insurance was on the verge of lapsing because I was unemployed at the time, so it wasn't like I could even pay for the procedure.
I tore the ACL something like five years ago. It took three years to get to a point where I could to flex it without the threat of my knee giving out. Then it took abother year for me to be able walk without the threat of it giving out. Glucosamine/Chondroitin Complex has helped tremendously in the past year with the whole chronic pain thing. Now my knee actually feels like a knee.
Naturally, I ate like I was still working out. *rolls eyes* We all know how well that works. So I altered how I ate. Not much help on the dropping weight front, but at least I didn't gain.
Anyway, I've been trying to change my schedule to get up at 5 ayem or so to go to the gym before work. I used to do this on a regular basis. However, these days I can't break through the 6 ayem wall, which means too late to hit the gym before going to work. Roll over, fall asleep, sleep till 8.
Yeah, not going to happen when you have to be to work by 9 and don't leave until 6.
Anyway, since my company is cool about flex time, I decided to try get up at 6 ayem, be to work by 7-ish, and then go exercise after work.
So, this weekend, I was up at 6-ish to "train" for today. End result? "Running" using the elipicals three days in a row for 50 minutes each session for a total of 11 miles so far and I feel better than I have since I last exercised on a regular basis.
Bonus, I'm actually home earlier than my previous schedule.
I figure I'll spend a month getting the cardiovascular system back up to snuff and then add weights.
Small problem: My body is now trying to play catch-up and I'm crawling into bed a wee bit on the early side, so gym time has cut into my writing time a little. Not a problem, usually. Until you get a fluffy-bunny-scatterbrained-night like tonight when you can barely stay in your seat. *bleh*
On a postive note, after three days the clothes are already fitting better. So, yay me!
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Hearing something like this, that the lack of story is being balanced by something so great/with such potential in your personal life, certainly makes any small wait on this end totally worthwhile.
Go you!
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Meantime, it's not helping with the concentration at all.
Still, it feels good to sweat and not worry about my kneecap popping and my leg looking like the bonest aren't connecting. Not to mention the weeks of pain that follow.
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I had the full reconstruction surgery - a day in hospital, a fortnight off work, six weeks on crutches, a year in rehab. Australian healthcare works differently to the American variety, so while it was murderously expensive it wasn't completely unfeasible, despite my lack of health insurance. One thing I did learn though, is that there's a very variable set of side-effects to the injury itself. I had a pretty severe set - the snapped end of the ligament got jammed in the joint, restricting my range of motion to about a third of what it should be. But a friend who suffered an identical injury a couple of years later got off relatively lightly. Once the swelling went down, he could jog, dance, etc, etc with no pain or restriction whatsoever as long as he didn't change direction too fast. The snapped ACL itself doesn't leave any lingering pain or restriction at all - it's the collateral damage to cartilage, capsule, bone, and muscles that do that.
My surgeon offered me, as an alternative to reconstruction, an arthroscopy, which is a (relatively) cheap procedure to stitch a few things up and clean all the various shrapnel out of the joint, so that I would regain motion and be able to walk without pain faster. It wouldn't repair the ligament, but it'd get me back on my feet and only require about a month of recovery time. From the problems you had after the injury. it sounds to me like you also had problems with bits in the joint. If the knee still bothers you, arthroscopy might be an option worth checking it out even now.
As a side-note, exercising before breakfast is most efficient way to do things from a weight-loss point of view. Since you have no carbohydrates in your stomach/bloodstream at the time, if forces your body to burn fat for energy. Not than knowing that makes it any easier to get up at 5am, of course!
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So, yeah, I had debris, but it appears that a lot of it has worn down. Now it's just a matter of me moving again.
And, yup, I know "before breakfast" is better for exercise, although I noticed that when I was running on a regular basis, it didn't really matter what time of day I ran, I still dropped weight pretty fast. So I decided to go with the theory, "after work is better than nothing at all." :-)
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Anyway, between that and starting a new job I gained a crapload of weight too. I have since lost it all, thankfully. I'm amazed that you were able to do that much running so quickly. Overall my knee feels great, but I still have issues with anything that places too much steady impact on my knees, and I have zero endurance for running. The most I could ever do on an elliptical was 30 minutes and that was when I was already in shape. I could walk for hours though.
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Might as well add that good exercises for bad knees are swimming (if you have access to a pool) and biking.
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Hope your knee continues to support you well!
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Hope the new routine continues to deliver for you!
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Congrats on getting yourself to wake up early!
Congrats on better fitting clothes!
Yay you in deed!
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Don't worry about the story - we can wait. :)
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I haven't been to the gym in about a month - I've got to start that up again.