Back From Hiatus

Well it has been a long time since I have posted anything due to a number of varying factors but I will try to get some more news flowing for the next while.

Two weekends ago I entered the first O-Cup mountain bike race at Mansfield in the Master Sport category. It was nice to get back to a mountain bike race although I didn't feel too great on the day. Due to a lack of sleep and a sore knee, I came away feeling as though I could have performed better but I finished 12th out of 40 entries so I guess that is not too bad all things considered. At least there is lots of room for improvement. The picture below is from the race on the final steep downhill into the finish area. The course was fun but a little dry and dusty and the weather was ideal with cool temps and no rain.



I am looking forward to doing some more races and I will try to remember a camera so I can capture a bit of the race day atmosphere while I am there. One thing I found interesting was that I found myself on one of the cheaper, lower range bikes in the field which was crazy since it is a relatively low level of racing and my bike is not a piece of junk. Obviously there are a lot of people out there with more money for bikes than I seem to have.

The news on my knee is that I have had a couple appointments at the Barrie Sports Medicine place (Thanks Car) and am getting some Graston (sp?) treatment done on the muscles and tendons in the area around the sore spot. The funny thing is that a week and a half ago my knee hurt from riding so I laid off for the 4 or 5 days leading up to the appointment last Friday so the swelling would go down and not obscure anything. The diagnostic tests didn't really show up much of anything so it was suggested that I go out for a hard ride to aggravate it before the next appointment which was yesterday. So Saturday I did an hour and fifteen minutes of hill intervals with very little warm up and then on Sunday I did a really hard 2 hour solo ride with no warm up at all thinking that I would barely be walking at the end of it. Nary a twinge was felt after either effort in the sore spot on my knee although my muscles definitely got their best workout so far this year on a bike. It is kind of crazy that I couldn't get it to hurt when I wanted to and previously it hurt when I tried to just nurse it through a ride. Maybe it sorted itself out a bit.

Anyway the doc was able to find a few spots to treat with the graston stuff right in the area that used to hurt, so hopefully I will be able to see it improved for future seasons as well as right now. I am supposed to test it again before my next appointment on Friday and I can't ride tomorrow due to some of Jodi's obligations so hopefully on Thursday I will be able to go out for a good one.

I will post some more news about the knee status as it becomes available.