Day 9 – 73.5kg

I did a bit too much today and spent too much time NOT lying on the couch and so my knee suffered a bit. It wasn't as if I walked around all day, I was mostly at home, but I was active pretty much the whole day and so my leg wasn't iced or elevated as much as it should be. Yet despite all that and then going out for a few drinks with the Mavs this evening, my knee still feels and looks pretty good. I'm hugely encouraged by this.

What was interesting this evening was that my friends were trying to work out how I could be out and about without any crutches just nine days after knee surgery. We talked it through and we surmised that in addition to the relatively non-invasive nature of arthorosocpy, that being in good shape to begin most likely gave me a head start.

I knew I needed the op four weeks before it happened but Christmas and an unexpected but necessary week in Oz just after the new year meant the surgery was delayed until January 22nd. However, by visiting my physio pre-op I was instructed in a number of exercises that would help kickstart the rehab process before it even began. And touch wood, it looks like that decision is paying off.

Pre-op I had accepted that it would probably be two weeks before I could even sit on a indoor bike, but  when visiting my doc just five days post-surgery and  him noting the better-than-expected angle of my knee bend and minimal swelling, he gave me the green light to do some gentle spinning.

I had intended to do another gentle 20-minute spin on the indoor bike today, but an unexpected and time-sensitive family chore saw me have no choice but to get on my fixie for a short journey; Ruth had the car and it being Chinese New Year's Eve, it was proving impossible to call a cab. 

Being mindful of the knee I rode very cautiously. The end result was family crisis averted and my knee survived the ahead-of-schedule test. Which makes me confident that I'll be back on the road bike in anger (so to speak) a lot sooner than the original four weeks I could have expected on the most optimistic time frame.

So what am I trying to say?

By living a relatively healthy and active lifestyle, we're bettered prepared to cope with any unexpected blips that come our way. I discovered pilates, yoga and plain old stretching  in the  months following a bad accident n 2009, and I firmly believe the gentle program of exercises has helped me both physically and mentally. Not just then, but forever since.

And that's today's somewhat rambling update completed.

Day 8 – 73.7kg

Cyclists are obsessive about weight. Whether it's the bike, the number and size of water bottles (the optimal seemingly is one 500ml bidon even in the tropics), or of course their bodies. This is especially important for those that like to do their thang on hills.

I'm no different yet I've never been one to stand on the scales every day, preferring the morning look in the mirror. But now I'm excited tojump on the scales when I get out of bed in the morning as the weight keeps tumbling. It surely can't last.

I've come up with a theory for the completed unexpected pace of flab-busting. It seems that the key for me is calorie deficit rather than exercise. Ok, there's no rocket science there, as less calories should mean weight loss, but not this quickly. I've been averaging about 1,700 calories of food a day (300 less than the "recommended") since the op yet despite doing no cardio at all, I've lost 1.3kg in eight days. 

My weight had crept steadily up in the second half of the year despite averaging 15 hours of riding/running a week. I didn't know the number in kilos or pounds, I could just see it start to accumulate round my middle and then one of my rivals from another team called me "fat" at a race in November. While I was hardly chubby in the normal sense of the word, for somebody who is supposed to be a skinny climber, it was beginning to become a slight worry. 

Two hours of fairly intense cycling should burn up about 1,000 calories and surely there was no way I was consuming in excess of 3,000 calories a day, but the mirror wasn't lying and then a weigh-in a doctor's check-up confirmed what the eye was telling me. And then when my injury first reared its head in early December and started to seriously curtail my cardio output, an additional two kilos piled on in as many weeks. It was THE worst time of the year to be out of action.

But now with no exercise and only a moderately lower intake of food I'm losing weight and it's not all muscle wasting away. I'm quite fascinated by this phenomena.

The knee itself continues to heal. Today I gingerly attempted a cobbler's pose stretch (soles of feet drawn in and meeting each other with knees bent out) and was delighted when I completed it pain free. Failure to be able to do this was one of the first symptoms of my torn meniscus back in December. 

But I'm still taking it easy. I hardly broke a sweat with my little 20-minute tension-free spin on the indoor bike and I've been icing regularly and keeping my leg elevated as much as possible. There is no sign of swelling at all right now as I write this at 10:40pm, and I am stoked about that. 

I'm off to bed now and already looking forward to that moment with the scales in the morning.

Day 7 – 74.0kg

The most frustrating thing about not being able to ride at the moment is that it hasn't rained here in Singapore for the last 10 days and so the conditions are perfect. Especially for mountain biking, which I basically gave up in November after months of rain had left the trails impossible for someone like me with limited skills to ride on. But hopefully it won't be too long till I'm out there. 

I'm super motivated to make sure I do everything right not to screw up this recovery process. I managed another 20 minutes on the spin bike today, same deal as yesterday, broken down into 10 two-minute segments, only using the "bad" leg every second interval. I felt no pain and there was no swelling, so I was tempted to add tension or extend the session, but I let my head rule my heart and stopped at 20 minutes then jumped straight on the couch with an ice pack. Small steps so to speak.

Speaking of which, around the house I'm not even using the single crutch, I simply don't need, but I'm walking very cautiously and deliberately and going up and down the stairs like a one-legged man, just in case.

The toughest thing today was with the food. I was starving all day but I'm determined not to "relapse" just yet. It's just after 8pm as I write this and I've still got my final intake of the day to come, a small bowl of cut watermelon and pineapple, followed by a single, solitary square of Lindt dark chocolate.

But these petite portions seem to be doing the trick so I'm happy to play the hunger games for now.

Day 6 – 74.2kg

There wasn't a Day 5 update yesterday as there wasn't much happening knee-wise … until just before I went to bed when I noticed it had swelled quite considerably. Just a few hours previously I had been glibly boasting to my parents on Skype about how well the process was going: "Look ma, no swelling!"

I guess that was tempting fate, but it was also a lesson to take it easy. Over-confidently thinking I was over the worst, I probably over-exerted myself yesterday, with not one, but three trips out of the house. I'm not even sure if I was supposed to be driving, but drive I did: to photograph some subjects of an article I've written; to lunch for a dosa and sambar (five days without a south Indian fix was driving me mad); then to my son's football match. To top that off, I hobbled around the kitchen helping to prepare dinner.

So I guess it's no surprise the knee cried foul.

When I awoke today to find it was still a bit swollen, it put me on my first downer since the op. Scheduled to visit the Doc for a follow-up this afternoon, I was hoping he'd tell me to throw away the crutches, jump in the pool, go for a walk. Fat chance of that now, I thought. Anyway, I iced it and tried to stay off my feet but I had a fairly busy day so that wasn't really possible. So it was with trepidation that I made my way to see the Doc at 2pm.

This guy is great, though. He's always smiling and over the many years of treating me for my various accidents and sports injuries, he's never ceased to bring about a reciprocal grin in me no matter how grim I've felt going in.


Today was no exception and that was before he even looked at my knee. And once he'd done that I was on cloud nine. He basically dismissed the swelling as nothing ("just keep icing it"), told me to throw away one of the crutches, and while he ruled out the pool for another week, he did something better … he said I could get on the bike. Today! 

So I've just spent 20 minutes on our spin bike, very gently, with the tension turned as low as it will go. Of that 20, only 10 minutes was on the repaired leg. And so now I'm feeling mighty fine as I sit here with a precautionary ice bag nicely chilling the creaking joint. So there you have it, a roller-coaster couple of days on the recovery train. 

I'm still counting the calories, I'm actually enjoying it, turning what should be a trying task into a challenge. My family think I'm mad, though, laughing as I weigh a spoonful of this and a cup of that. Sure I feel like I'm bloody starving half the day but when it's time to eat, the food all tastes magnificent. 


Maybe when I get back to full fitness I'll try and instill a bit of discipline into what I eat instead of gorging like a pig as usual. But maybe not :-)

Day 3

I awoke this morning after a great sleep and almost jumped out of bed before the sight of the adjacent crutches sent a sharpish reminder that I’d had surgery less than 48 hours before. But you know what, I reckon I could have jumped out as the leg looks and feels fine. I’m under “half weight bearing” orders, which means walking using the big sticks and only putting the toes and ball of my ailing limb on the ground, but I strongly suspect I could go “full weight bearing” or even without the crutches already. There’s zero pain and I don’t notice any swelling, although you can look for yourself on the photo to the right.

I took the bulky bandages off after breakfast (small bowl of porridge, a banana and a cup of tea, 383 calories; who’s counting? fat me, that’s who!) to leave just the bare dressing and I was pleasantly surprised to note the absence of swelling.  See for yourself on the photo. I’m also in zero pain, although that’s probably due to the meds. In any case, the recovery seems to be going remarkably well. I’m giving the knee as much RICE as possible but too much Resting, Icing, Compressing and Elevating is boring, and I so I ventured out for a hobble around the condo before lunch.

I’m in great spirits today but it’s Saturday tomorrow, which means another big bike riding day missed, and with it a further loss of fitness. Roll on Monday when I go see Doc and ask if I can get on the spin bike. I’ve already made an appointment to see the physio straight after Doc :-)

Recovery from a torn meniscus can mean a complete return to full physical activity or sometimes it doesn’t. My good lady wife Ruth reminded our son this morning that she too has had a meniscectomy (some 10 years ago, the result of cliff jumping in Jamaica going wrong) and she’s since taken up triathlon, so let’s hope I’m handed a similar fate. With 50 percent of the meniscus gone, though, I'm going to be realistic and I’m willing to sacrifice future running, just as long as I can get back on the bike.

Day 2

About six weeks ago my left knee started to experience some strange sensations. There was pain on the medial side and the whole joint felt thick but didn’t seem swollen. I found that a bike ride or even a run temporarily got rid of the problem but it always came back. Some days were worse than others, but after foolishly hammering it one Saturday morning with the Mavericks, I awoke the next day to a different picture. The knee was swollen, stiff and it seemed to buckle under me. I bought a thick brace and this seemed to give me some stability until I got to see some medical professionals on the Monday.

I saw my physio first and he straight away feared a torn meniscus and when I saw my GP the next day he concurred and so we ordered an MRI, which confirmed the diagnosis, along with revealing a stress fracture along the face of my tibial plateau. Hmmm, not a great Christmas present. Next I saw a specialist, the same Doc who’d taken the metal out of my rebuilt left leg in 2010, so he knew my story well. Straight away he said surgery to remove the floating piece of meniscus was probably inevitable, but with the Christmas break almost upon us, he recommended just resting it to see if it would settle into the new year.

Nothing really changed. I couldn’t ride anyway in the frigid realm of Scotland where we went for a week, so I just ate, drank and merrily got fat. Upon returning to Singapore in the first week of the new year, I sought a second opinion, and his diagnosis was the same, get the surgery.  With any luck I’d only be out of action for a few weeks before restarting a program of with gentle spinning.

With a big season of riding and racing coming up I was keen to go under the knife as soon as possible but my chosen knifeman, Dr Chong, was overseas at a conference and then we had to rush to Sydney to deal with a family situation for a week. But by the marvel of modern communications I managed to set a date for the op to take place, January 22nd at Gleneagles Hospital. The proscribed arthroscopic procedure promised to be a short but relatively simple one, although going under general anesthetic is always slightly daunting.

Anyway, after a few hours in a ward coming down from the drugs of unconsciousness, I was out of there on my trusty old crutches, which saw very good use in the aftermath of the notorious Genting incient. Dr Chong said the op was a success and showed me the attached pictures of the inside of my knee as proof. I was a bit alarmed when he told me he’d removed 50 percent of my meniscus, which is a cartilaginous mechanism that acts as a buffer between the femur and the tibia/fibula, but he said not to worry. I think. I was still a bit woozy at that time. Guess I’ll find out more on Monday.

Yesterday I vegged out on the couch and drifted in and out of concsiouness in front of the TV. Today, I feel great, no pain from the knee and I’m only taking one tab of Arcoxia a day. I feel like I could walk on it, but instead I’m following doctor’s orders by putting half weight on the offending leg using both crutches when I occasionally get off the couch.

I’m also doing the leg raises and ankle rotations that the nice but over-cautious hospital physio instructed me to do. My regular team at Physio Focus know my broken and rebuilt body well so I can’t wait to let them loose next week.

I’ve also started a calorie counter. Pathetic, yes, but I’m already at 75kg, which is a 4kg heavier than I was at the Tour de Bintan in mid-November and my ideal climbing weight for April’s Tour of Friendship (where I have a title to defend) is 70kg. Cycling and eating are my equal passions and they have served each other well, but now that I’m severely limited in what I can do for a few weeks, I’m going to attempt to not-quite starve myself.

And that’s it for today. I’ve had a productive day and I’m feeling upbeat. Mentally, some days are always better than others during a recovery process, but even if I wake tomorrow feeling slightly down, I’ve got to remind myself that it’s just a sports injury. There are people out there in far worse predicaments than me. As the father of a friend told me just before Christmas, if you’re feeling sorry for yourself, go and visit a children’s ward in hospital. Just the memory of that statement is enough for me.

Hobbling out, Alan.

Day 1

I'm lying here on my couch some 12 hours after undergoing surgery to fix a dodgy knee, specifically a torn meniscus. I've already been curtailed riding wise for the past five weeks and it could be that long or more before I hit the road in anger again. I'll get fat, nay fatter as I've already gained 4kg since mid-December, and unfit in that time. But I've recovered well from past injuries and so hope to do so again. Tomorrow, I'll start a detailed and daily account of my journey.

Cheers,
Alan