I’m muddling through this blog post on Sunday night after a very long day. I got up yet again this early this morning and rode my bike, which henceforth with be called “The Velocipede” – for about an hour this morning. I’ve actually gotten used to riding this distance, by which I mean I’m not longer suffering through a lot of muscle soreness afterwards. Now cycling just wears me out and leaves me with slightly, but not unpleasantly, aching leg muscles.
In fact, I’ve gotten so used to this morning ride, I’m actually looking forward to it AND once I get on the bi- er, velocipede, and get going, I don’t want to stop. Even after an hour of cycling most mornings, I still want to keep going. And you have no idea how amazing that is to me. After every run, after every karate class, after every session in the pool doing water aerobics, I’m always eager to be done so I can go collapse somewhere and play dead for a bit. Not with cycling. I get going and I want to keep going. It’s peaceful, it’s quiet, it’s honestly and truly time for just me, and it doesn’t hurt, except to leave me with slightly sore legs. Sure, it wipes me out, but in a nice way that sort of has me energized in the morning after riding and then slowly winding down until I get to the evening and I want to collapse face first in bed.
But that’s not why I love my bi- er, velocipede. No, the real reason why I love the VELOCIPEDE is because of my knees. I’ve been having really bad knee problems all summer long. In fact, I’ve had problems with my knees since Princess was born 8 years ago, but this summer they’ve gotten worse. It was too the point where I was going up and down the steps like an old man or a toddler, taking each step one at a time, sometimes bracing myself with my hands. And it hurt! It just jurt for me to take the stairs. My knees where killing me and even a double dose of Aleve wasn’t getting rid of the pain.
But now that I’m riding the velocipede? Things are a little different now.
You see, the problem with my knees is that my outer thigh muscles pull so strongly on my knee caps that they are actually pulling my knee caps out of place. The solution is to strengthen the inner thigh muscles, but that involves a lot of physical therapy exercises, up to half an hour of exercises each day. That gets time consuming, not to mention boring, and I get tired of trying to keep up with it.
Well apparently riding the velocipede manages to work my inner thigh muscles enough that my knee caps are being pulled back in place. At least that’s what it feels like to me. All I can say for certain is that I can now get up and down the stairs like a normal healthy adult, I’ve got almost no knee pain anymore, and I can barely hear the sound of gravel crunching when I bend my knees.
So huzzah for cycling and huzzah for my knees!