Monday, June 20, 2011

injured knee

I've had a problem knagging at me all season long and seeing as there might not be any races until August I decided now was the time to address it. A tendon on the back of my right knee has been bothering me basically every time I ride and desite my attempts to fix it it basically never went away. I was still able to race pretty in spite of it but I kept hoping it would go a away with a week or rest and maybe some tweeks to my seat position. Unfortunately it didn't so I decided to take advantage of my teams new computer based fitting system to reassess my seat position on my road bike. It turns out that basically where I had my seat at the very beginning of the season was correct. So I have no idea what caused the tendon pain in the first place but I'm giving my self 2 weeks of total rest (no hiking even) with lots of stretching to try to let it heal before trying to ease back into some easy rides. Hopefully I can get this problem figured out. It took me 10 years of bike racing before I had a bike fit issue that actually caused me a real injury or problem so I guess I am paying for 10 years of being lucky now! Its not like I can't ride but I don't want to have pain or the risk of injury when I'm riding. The 2 weeks will be up next Monday so I will post about how the ride goes. Up for this weekend is a trip to Ocean World (the biggest water park in Korea) with my bike team.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

last weekend

Since there are no races im gonna be doing for a little while ive taken a little bit of a break from riding a lot. Last weekend went hiking friday and then went on a trip with Yujin to Ganghwa island. Which is in the north east part of Korea. It was really beatiful and had lots of historic relics from wars and from being a former capitol of Korea. The best part was taking a boat ride to another small island that had no bridge connecting it to the mainland. There were 2 schools on that island. I wonder what its like to live out there!? I even got in some bikeing. They had made parts of the island really bike friendly by building huge (2 meters wide) bike lanes that block cars with cement blocks seperating the bike lane from the car lane. It was a pretty good idea and way safer than the bike lanes in the US (at least for every day people who aren't very fast bikers). This past weekend I went camping friday night with 3 other guys. It was great and we grilled a lot of meat over the camp fire. Sunday my bike team had a sports day with another team (yongsan mtb from Seoul). It was a lot of fun we played soccer, kickball, had a relay race and had a barbeque out side next to a small river. It was a lot of fun but im really sore from not playing soccer (or doing any kind of running) in a long time. Good team bonding and a lot of fun! this week i plan on trying to ride a little bit more and I don't have any big plans for the weekend yet except for a school barbeque party on friday night. Im antsy to do some more racing but there arent' too many races in teh summer here because it normally rains a lot of july and august.