Learning to Trust

As an athlete, I see my body not as "me," but as a means to an end. For example. I want to run 7 miles. My body is the tool which allows this to happen. In this dual perspective, I envision my body as the "other." Like my car, or my vacuum. "Sophie" is not running, so much as Sophie's Body is running, and Sophie is just along for the ride.

For my whole life, I have been able to trust my body. It hasn't let me down. Even when injured, even when injured through my own stupidity, it has picked itself up, dusted itself off, and kept going. Grade 3 ankle sprain in the middle of marathon training? No problem, bump that date back a few weeks and lets rock n roll. Broken toe and 8 horses to ride? Let's drop that stirrup and giddy up.

Now, though, after taking time off and getting a professional bike fit and enlisting the help/support of friends, family, and a coach, I'm still not ready to trust my body. I don't feel like it's going to be there for me. I still feel every twinge or tweak in my knee as a prelude to relapse. I"m still hyperaware and sensitive. My brain practically lives in my right knee, poised on edge for the other shoe to fall.

This week has been my first real week back on the bike with any sort of meaning. I'm wearing a heart rate monitor (super strange but super cool) now, and I'm tracking my progress through time, not distance. The progression looked thusly:

Tuesday: 60 minutes with hills
Wednesday: 90 minutes no hills
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 60 minutes hills
Sat: Rest
Sunday: 90 minutes hills
Heart Rate: Between 135-145

This was the run down. But the low down, what I was feeling, was more like this:

Tuesday: Did my knee hurt? What about now? Does my knee hurt now? What was that?
Wednesday: Hmm, ok, it seems to be ok. It seems to be fine. Maybe it's fine. I don't feel anything, but maybe I'm just getting lucky.
Thursday: I think I'll rest today instead of ride, it's going to rain anyways and I just felt my knee hurt for a second.
Friday: Oh god, what is that feeling? Why isn't it going away? It's not getting worse, but it feels weird. Why is my knee feeling weird? Is it going to hurt?
Saturday: My knee has felt fine all day, but I know it's going to start hurting any second.

Today was perhaps the worst of it. After arriving at my start location, not more than two minutes into the ride I started to panic that my knee was hurting again, leaked a few tears, and turned around to get my brace. After strapping my patella into place, another two minutes into "take two" of my ride, I decided that the brace would just make things worse, and that I should ride without it and just see what happened.

What happened?

My knee never hurt. Not once. I never felt my knee hurt once on the entire ride. In fact, where my knee SHOULD have hurt the most (i.e. climbs, once or twice when I put the pressure down and sprinted), it felt the BEST. Also, my knee never hurt AFTER the ride either. I've been on my feet literally all weekend at work, 11 hour days, moving bikes, walking around, carrying things up and down stairs, and I"m fine with zero aspirin or ice. Plus, my knee never actually hurt ONCE all week on ANY ride. Clearly, I am ALL BETTER.

But.

I didn't feel "normal" either during my ride. There was always a slight pressure above my kneecap, a feeling that had never been there pre injury. A feeling of a bump or a hard spot in my tendon. It's not a knee that I know.

And I don't trust this new knee. I don't trust it to hold up and not start hurting again.

Most likely, this is the knee I will have to learn to live with. Most likely, all my years of running and dancing and riding have finally caught up with me, and whatever I DID do a month ago (still a mystery) resulted in some scar tissue, or a decrease in elasticity, that now results in a feeling of pressure above my kneecap.

Hopefully, over the next week, I will pry Sophie's brain out of Sophie's Body's right knee, and back into Sophie's head where it belongs, actually ENJOYING Sophie's ride. NOT waiting for pain, or relapse, or injury. But just reveling in moving my feet in circles in Greensboro along the open road.

Hopefully, I will once again trust my body.