Anna Bligh Australian Story

I was disappointed the story didn’t focus more on her passion for running. I thought the story of her family was interesting, but the focus on Queensland Politics just didn’t fascinate me at all. 

Just did 8.2km on the bike. I was pedalling at 17km/hr and it was easy. Today my knee seemed to take another leap forward to recovery. The VLAT muscle is loose and soft and stretched. There is starting to be more muscle on the medial side. There is less lateral nerve pain. Apparently this is lateral branch stretching said my physio, and I am over it.

Lenny the Cockatiel

Lenny the Cockatiel is getting all clucky at the moment. She comes up under my chin making baby bird noises as my chin gives her a back massage. She sits on an instruction book that she has chewed to bits, spreading little bits of paper like a nest. She defends this like a nest. When I go to put a blanket over the mouse cord and keyboard cable that she can’t resist chewing, Lenny launches herself at my hands. When I am typing she paces back and forth beak agape.  I wouldn’t be suprised if she lays an egg very soon.

Yesterday

I have a new TV. A 32 inch HD Digital. Took me a while to get it going and to set up Austar on it. ABC and SBS Digital have great pictures, but NBN and Prime seem pretty dodgy. A lot of interruptions to the picture quality.  

Megal Gale is going to play Wonder Woman in the Justive league of America films. I used to have a crush on Linda Carter. Something about a strong woman with a lasoo, did it for me as a teenager.

Yesterday started positively kneewise. I did a 6 k walk along Coffs Creek, the first the half  felt really good, the second half not so good at all. I tried taping the knee more loosely, I put the patella tendon strap on as well as the ITB strap.

Lenny’s collar chewing habit is getting out of control. She’s wrecking the collars of my shirts.

Spoke to Dad he is recovering well. He’s been out to Cottlesloe and Claremont on the Bus. A big improvement. He wasn’t able to make it down to the dining room last week.

Cockatiel Sports

Lenny has discovered some new sports. Collar chewing, mouse cord destruction, towel fibre plucking, licorice bullet plastic packet entry and retrieval, and computer keyboard walking. She’s a champion at them all. She likes to sit on my thighs, when I’m typing, and her sharp little claws dig into my quads. I wish I could say it is a good massage for my biomechanically dysfunctional lower limbs but it isn’t.

Look mum I can swim

I think I’m getting the hang of swimming. In today’s pool session I started to pull more deeply in the water, I was looking at the bottom of the pool, and rotating on my side,  and I got my arms going closer to the side of my head. I also tried to kick  a bit better. There were a few laps that felt easy. It was a cloudy day today and there weren’t many people at the pool, which was good. I had a lane to myself.

Today I’ve spent2 sessions of 15 minutes on the exercise bike, about 7.6 km. The exercise bike really wakes up the VMO. I like to think that I am tipping my quad strength in favor of the VMO. However, when I put the tape on I get the nerve pain, which drives me crazy.

Tomorrow will be the last day that I look after Paully the Cockatiel. He ’s a champion bird, I think he believes that he is Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo. He does and excellent impersonation of one. He also does a Whistling Kite. He says lots of words too like Night, Night Paully, Hello Paully, Ref, Ref, doing it all day ref, give me red wine.

What may never come back

Tell me who doesn’t love

What can never come back

you can never forget how it used to feel

I can tell by your tears you remember it all.

The Blood The Cure Head on the Door

Just spent 10 minutes on the exercise bike, about 2.3 km. The nerve pain was there for a little while, but not so bad. My VMO ratio was pretty good too while doing the exercises.   Hopefully the knee cap will shift over a little more  today. The VMO is stronger without question.

The two cockatiels are out together. It’s fun to watch them interact. Lenny has shown Paully that she is boss a couple times. This is my patch she says and chases Paully away nipping at his tail. Paully is settling right in eating stuff, chewing things. Sitting on the keyboard. He hasn’t tried to bite since the first evening.  

I’m taping the knee like I originally did. My theory is that I reinjured my knee in March this year making it maltrack worse than ever. The tape is pushing on this roughness as it pushes the  knee cap over. This will hurt less as the knee cap shifts medially. Perhaps I will eventually get to almost pain free level I had in February.

I’m starting to enjoy the swimming. I was doing nice relaxed laps today. Really get long in the water and turning on my side to breath. I regulate the breathing out of bubbles much better too, because I feel more relaxed. I think I probably did about 30 laps all up. My knee hasn’t settled down, the nerve pain while less still bugs me. I think the knee cap is pulling over I can feel it shift under the tape.

I was driving through Sawtell, wondering how I went from running a fun run in January 2006, to barely being able to walk in April 2007. After that fun run I was pain free, I walked back to my car on top of the world. I remember thinking this is great I can actually run, I’ll really get stuck into the physio. I remember doing a squat, and my knee sheared in a awkward direction, there was pain on both side of my knee.

In hindsight I believe it was the exercises the old physio had me doing, that was exacerbating my injury. The injury caused by those squats with poor tecnique and without my knee taped led to the worsening of my injury. Added to this I was not doing anything effective to keep my ITB loose, it was like a rock. Of course I should’ve rested up, should’ve listened to my own body, not the faulty words of the old physio who said you’ll be running in 2 weeks. Bollocks!

Some knee taping, and effective exercises in February, and I’d be looking at 2 months to recover, not battling to save my knee 2 years later. And I went to see the physio for a niggle in my left knee! And finished up with a chronic right knee problem.

How can I face the fact that my knee might never get much better? Face it and move on in a positive direction? One door closes on running and walking and another opens on swimming. I’ve always had a fear of water, now I can swim laps of a pool.  Stick that up your arse adversity.

Lenny and Paully

Looking after two cockatiels at present. Paully the  Cockatiel is in the house, while his owners are away. He is a male Cockatiel and is quite a character. Very hard to get back into the cage when I let him out. Paully has a deep melodius call, which started at 5:41am this morning. Hope it woke my neighbours up, call it karma after all the times they have woken me.

I have used the exercise bike for five minutes for the last few days. The nerve pain was really strong last night. That is the most annoying thing about this injury. The knee felt good in the morning just a little bit tight, then it started to feel great, and I thought I’m beating this, then the nerve pain kicked in until I went to bed. Last night’s respite was so brief.

I looked at the knee cap last night and it hasn’t budged for the last week or so. This caused me to despair for a moment, then I just got more determined to get it strong.

Cunninghamia

Today wasn’t a bad day.

I found out that I had a paper accepted to be published in Cunninghamia. It is based on  a survey  I did in the Gibraltar Range National Park. I’ll post a link when the paper is published.

The Far North Coast Vegetation Survey report is starting to take shape. It will be a reasonably weighty tome.

It is raining heavily outside. There was a blackout earlier on and it scared Lenny. She was sitting on my shoulderand flew off into the darkness when the lights went out. When the light came back on she was clinging to the door frame. Poor little bird.  

Lenny

Lenny the Cockatiel is mischeivious in a nice way. She knows she’s not supposed to chew the mouse cord, but whenever it sneaks out from under the shirt I have it covered with, she sneaks over to bite it. She gives my ear a peck every now and again, and my lip, but these are only gentle pecks. Do you think she will let me take a photo of her? No. As soon as I pick up my camera she bolts.

I had a caffiene withdrawal last night. A nasty headache, tiredness. It’s really addictive that Pepsi max. Last year when I was just drinking water I felt much better, I’m going to try and get back to that if my knee will let me. I haven’t taped it yet this morning.  Right now the blister from hell is causing me to limp. It is on the bottom and back of my heel, very hard to put a bandaid on.

I’ve just finished the most remarkable walk. 6km laong Coffs Crrek trail in 60 minutes 49 (30:50; 29:59). At about half way after a stretch, my leg felt great, almost normal. My back, my quads were swinging through much more smoothly. Just loose, and strong.  Like the balance between VMO and VL is on a knife edge, but tipping in favor of the VMO.

Walk rating: 9/10

Perhaps a turning point?

I was going to go for a walk this afternoon, but the blister on my heel stopped me. I did fifteen minutes on the exercise bike instead. It felt pretty comfortable.

Sand

Muttonbird Island Looking south

4km Walk 39:40 (20:11; 19:19). The good news is that the walk was pretty much pain free. Not unequivocally better, but heading in the right direction.

Lenny the Cockatiel has had a busy morning eating newspapers, and chewing bandaid packets, and is having a snooze on my arm.  

This afternoon I bought a digital camera, a Nikon coolpix. This afternoon I did the Muttonbird island 6.6km circuit in 66:31. That’s 3 minutes faster than last week. I’m not sure my knee is feeling it, but my foot is. I wore the Nike Air Pegausus with orthotics. I took a couple of photos of Muttonbird Island. I’ve been trying to take a photo of Lenny the Cockatiel but she is scared of the camera.

The Sharks lost 23-12 to the team running second last. A team that lost 56-0 last week. The Roosters. This is looking like being as bad a year for the Sharks as 2003. They just can’t score tries.  

Look mum no tape

I walked for a hour this morning without tape. 43:50 (21:58; 21:52)The knee only tightened up after about 40 minutes.  Perhaps the anti inflamms I took last night made it hurt less.Towards the end it really tightened and then it caught like it was starting to sublux on me. Still, it was a better walk than a few months ago. The damn knee is still matracking after 16 months. I reckon I’ve got months and months to go before I get a functional leg back. I’ve just retaped my knee, very lightly this time.

Last night I got really frustrated with the weak VMO, and got stuck into the pillow squeezes. Where I lie on my back, with knees bent. I put the pillow between the inner thigh and squueze hard. I did 200 last night and 150 this morning. I also did 20 glute squeezes and wall squats without tape. My knee might be fiery, but I cna’t tell until the anti inflamms wear off.

Lenny the Cockatiel sleeps a lot at the moment. Perhaps it’s the cold weather?  She must like my body warmth. She’s sitting on my thigh as I type this. She just ate a licorice bullet. I’ll have to stop her eating them, but she steals them right out of the packet! Better yet, I should stop eating the things.

This afternoons walk, I did in 43:31. The light tape seemed to really help, I felt some pain in my shin and the outside of my ankle, nothing in the knee. The knee got a bit fiery, on the warm down walk along the mangrove boardwalk, and driving home in the car.