INJURY #4,972

I haven't been on a spin bike in a solid 3 month. I hadn't exercised the month prior to my fall, and then I couldn't exercise for the 6 weeks after. But now I'm back in the gym and have a personal trainer who's helping me rehabilitate my knee(s). It's great. I usually count my Professor walks as cardio, since we're out for a solid hour to an hour-and-a-half. But since he's incapacitated, I need to get my cardio elsewhere. Eventually I'll work up to 30 minutes of spinning on top of our walks. My knee is pretty much in a place to handle that.

Yesterday I did spinning for 30 minutes. Seeing as it's been more than 3 months since the last time I was on a bike, my clothing options were the last thing on my mind. I was in my gray sweats, since I'd just finished a 50 minute session with Jenny. My routine goes like this: 30 seconds in position 3, heavy load. 30 seconds in position 2 with a few turns of tension off. 30 seconds seated, even less tension, sprinting. 30 seconds recovery, all tension off. Repeat for 45, 60, and 90 seconds. This totals 15 minutes. Do it twice and there's 30 minutes of cardio. Perfect. Everything's going as planned until I get to my first sprint. My left pant leg gets caught in the pedal. As I'm going as fast as I can. My foot is jerked off the pedal (by the way, I was wearing spin shoes which locks you into the pedal. So you can imagine the force it took to unlock my shoe and pull my foot off), which skids down the back of my calf. But since I was going so fast and I'm trying to stop myself with my injured right leg, the pedal is able to make a second rotation. This time my achilles is the next part of the back of my leg to get hit. Luckily I'm able to stop after those two rotations. It takes a minute to get my pants unwound from the bike. They're torn. Damage is done to my back leg. It feels like someone punched me with sandpaper fists. Twice.

At first I was afraid to look at the damage. I was in enough pain, and because of the was I was injured (it felt like all the skin had been scraped off), I figured I'd be dripping blood. Then I remembered my body does not show injury signs. Although the lower half of my leg is warm to the touch and the muscle underneath hurts anytime it moves, there are only two slightly red marks indicating anything even happened. Man, I'm totally missing out. That should be a serious war wound. Oh well. I was able to finish my cardio. It hurts like hell today, but you can barely see any indication on my leg.