Played basketball again on Tuesday night. Monday night I put in an hour on the trainer with a couple of harder efforts. All day Tuesday my legs had that happy but tired feeling that comes after a good workout on the bike. That all changed after the torture of the hardwood!

Yep, that is exactly what hurts

My knees still had a tinge of aching from the last week, but I hoped the new basketball shoes I got would make them handle things better. It seems that I have a case of “jumper’s knee.” Right off the bat I knew the stiffness in my knees was going to give me issues. I just couldn’t uncoil smoothly for an outside shot. During warm-up I was missing badly!

The same thing was happening when I attempted to drive. There was very little elevation – at least it felt that way. I just hoped that things would come around in the game.

Ah, when we started playing I ended up guarding a guy who had an incredibly fast step. I figured he was in his early 20s’. It was all I could do to keep him from driving on me. Then each time I would close him out, he would step back and elevate for an outside shot. I’d have my hand in his face, but turn around to see the ball swishing through the net.

One time I was trying to take away his right hand and he did a crossover dribble and moved left. I tried to slide to my right to shut it down, but he was so fast that I lost my balance and ended up sitting on my butt!

The outside shooting woes continued. I finally started getting some baskets by posting up low, putting back some rebounds and slashing to the basket. However, it was just one of those nights and the other guys I played with seemed to have the same issues. We ended up getting creamed every game during the hour I played.

If I were to go by perceived effort, I would say an hour of basketball leaves me feeling about like a 30 minute crit. It is all the bursts of energy that get to you. At least the way I have to play (due to my lack of ability) has me constantly moving to create space. There is very little standing waiting for a pass. By the end of the evening, I was bending over grabbing my shorts.

I don’t know how all of this is going to translate over to the bicycle. The jury is still out whether or not this will be helping me physically. I do know that it makes me have a new appreciation for the bicycle and even the trainer!

The pounding my body takes – I’ve already mentioned my knees, but there was also the elbow to my face which caused my tooth to cut open the inside of my lip – has me rolling out of bed the next morning feeling like a truck hit me. Now in my third week of playing things have improved for most of my muscles, but my knees really do hurt.

Today I’ll get back on the trainer. It will not be so much for a workout as it will be to recover from basketball! Spinning helps warm up the muscles without the impact of all that lateral movement. At least it doesn’t increase the pain in my knees.

At the same time, this experience is showing me that I can’t depend solely on the bicycle for my health. The bike is awesome for the heart and lungs. My legs are stronger – for the most part – than ever. However, there just are parts of my body that the bicycle can’t affect. So, here is hoping that I can play through the pain to the other side.

In an earlier post I mentioned that something I am doing differently this year is trying to do more cross training. Now that I am doing it, I realize all the more why athletes need it. I just hope I can survive it!

For me an important part of cross training is that it needs to be something I enjoy. It has to be something I enjoy more than riding my trainer. Where I have gone wrong in the past is doing cross training that I don’t enjoy more than the trainer — say, running for instance.

What I arrived at was basketball. Here is a sport that I used to love playing. I would spend hours on our dirt driveway shooting baskets. As I grew a little taller I would put a concrete block in a strategic spot and dunk. Unfortunately, that is one part of the game I never got. I never graduated from the ability to dunk a volleyball.

I played high school and was “the man” on my team. In college I enjoyed pick up games and intramural league. As a matter of fact, basketball was one of the reasons I spent the last three years of college digging out of a giant GPA hole!

It was actually a football injury that ultimately moved me away from basketball and toward cycling. In high school I was a wide receiver and sometimes an option tailback. In one game while running out of the backfield, I made an abrupt change of direction while planting my left knee. The cleats got hung up in the centipede grass and my left knee twisted. Immediately it swelled up like a melon.

I recovered from that for the most part, but during college I could be walking up a flight of stairs and pivot left at the top and there would go my knee. The same would sometimes happen as I played basketball. I just never knew when it would.

The doctor said I needed to build up the muscle around my knee. I did some gym work in an attempt to improve the stability of that region. I still had a fear that my knee would go out at any time.

Once out of college I got married, started a job and basically stopped playing basketball all together. That is what brought me to the bicycle. Not exercising left me very unhealthy. I knew that cycling was a way to exercise with low impact on my knees. The rest is the history of this blog!

Now I’m looking for something to shake things up and basketball certainly fits the bill of being something I enjoy more than the trainer! Plus, I’m less than a mile away from some awesome facilities. Last night was my second night of pickup. I saw dramatic improvements in my game. Giving up the outside shot, I decided to do more slashing toward the basket. That combined with picking up some trash points from offensive rebounds had me scoring pretty well.

The body has taken the toll though! We moved to full court and I was doing a bit more running. Plus, I’m wearing my Mizuno running shoes which offer zero lateral ankle support. I never sprained my ankle, but I could definitely feel my ankle muscle straining.

My knees also took a bit of a beating. As we were finishing the final game, I could feel a tightness in the tendons just below my knee caps. By the time I went to bed, it hurt to bend as I lowered myself to sit on the edge of the bed. This morning it was even worse when I got up. I’m pretty sure some actual basketball shoes would solve some of these issues.

At the same time, some of the other muscles that were screaming at me after my first game night were much more happy. My t band was pretty much what it is now days. I basically live with that pain — it is the new normal. However, my hamstrings and upper body were not complaining.

This is good. All the years riding my bike have given me the stamina to run with the youngins’. Running with the guys on the court is giving me a break from the monotony of the trainer while also strengthening those muscles that the bicycle doesn’t affect. It makes me enjoy the time on the trainer more if for no other reason than because it helps take away the aches and pains!

This morning is a commute morning to work. I’m sure the fixie is going to give those knees a workout. Still, I’ll enjoy it all the more because of last night. Now to to get some shoes!