I'm on track....

...I realize it's been a while....all right it's been more than a month! But! I'm still here, and I'm on track. I've hit quite a few forks in the road in the last month but I'm doing really good again. I'm back on program, back to exercising and doing my best.

If you remember, I did the Weekend to end Women's Cancer's last year for the 2nd year in a row. Around Km53, I got a very sharp pain through my right knee and that pretty much ended the walk for me. It was to painful to walk and I hobbled my way to the medical tent and then took a sweeper van to the finish area where I hobbled down the last 500 meters of the walk to cross the finish line.

Well, I finally got my appointment with the specialist. I'm still on the waiting list for an MRI but with my leg giving out on me constantly and me actually falling off of exercise equipment and hurting my self, may family doctor sent me to see the specialist.

Dr. Rose was very nice, he sent me for a new batch of x-rays and two weeks after our initial consultation my husband came with me to see what the good Dr. had to say. Turns out, he can't quite diagnose me without the MRI. He thought I may have a stress fracture in my knee but the x-rays just couldn't see it clearly. He didn't want to send me for a bone scan as he didn't feel that would help us with the issue.

So what the doctor suggested is that my knee could quite simply be giving out. I'm very active and as he put it, I've got "extra load factors" on my knee. He told me to stop walking, stop stairclimbing, stop ellipticalling and get in the water!

Yes! Me! In water!!!!

To be perfectly honest I was upset! I haven't been in a bathing suit in too many years to count. I stopped swimming when I was about 16 years old and other people at the pool (kids mostly) would call me names as I was swimming. You can only handle being called a whale so many times before you stop going.

So here I am for the first time in over twenty years, donning a bathing suit and going into the water. I did have a bathing suit, it's hardly been worn but I wasn't comfortable with how it looks. It's a tankini, and the top is very nice but my concern is the that the bottom doesn't cover everything that it probably should so I found a pair of shorts I could wear and I've gotten into the pool.

It does amaze me that even though I haven't swam in over 20 years, it all comes back to you pretty quickly. Swimming is like riding a bike. You just remember how to do it. It's amazing isn't ithow our little kid just wants to come out and play? I have to re-learn the breathing techniques, I would love to be able to swim under water again but I'm enjoying my swimming. I try to go the pool at least four days a week for length swim. I'll be heading there tonight when I'm done work.

Question for the day....do you Swim? How do you measure your exertion level when swimming?