I felt confident enough in my knee’s recovery this morning, to try an easy bike ride on my trainer.  I hopped on the bike after lunch and it made me very happy.

I have finally gotten enough work done on my cockpit upgrade, that I was able to replace my old road bike, with my triathlon bike on the trainer.  To ‘celebrate’ this, I decided to try an easy effort ride to find out if I could do it, without hurting or aggravating my knee.

I started off the ride at very low power and gradually increased my cadence.  I figured, that if my knee was alright after 20 minutes or so of spinning like this, I could gradually increase the power. 

While the knee was not pain free, it certainly wasn’t painful.  In fact, it seemed to be getting better as the ride progressed.  I flipped to a harder gear after about 30 minutes and was OK.  So then I went a little harder still and held it there for another 30 minutes. I then eased off a little and rode with a high cadence to finish out a 90 minute ride.

I wasn’t breaking any records today, but I was happy, because this is a significant step forward in my recovery.  As I write this, I am icing my knee to try and reduce any inflammation. I really won’t know if there are any lasting effects from this ride until tomorrow morning.  Right now all is good.

Baby steps forward in a recovery process are huge motivators.  Fingers crossed that I am still feeling good tomorrow.