Squaw Peak

 I'm six months out from my ACL reconstruction surgery!  However, I'm STILL not fully recovered...crazy how long these darn ligaments take to fully heal.  I still lack full motion of my knee: deep bends such as squatting down or sitting cross legged I still can't do.  And I can still see the muscular difference from my good thigh and my gimpy one...it's amazing how much muscle loss happens with this type of injury!  Anyway, riding my bike has been great for my physical therapy.  I try to ride a couple of times a week (I know, not much).  Most of my rides consist of cruising on the bike path up the canyon...basically, pretty easy stuff.  But last Saturday I bumped it up a notch and decided to tackle Squaw Peak, pretty much the hardest climb in the area.  Why I didn't start with something less daunting, one will never know. 

I figured if it was proving to be to hard on my knee I would just turn around.

But really, who was I kidding?  Once I started, I was going to see it though!

My knee handled it just fine!  The rest of me...well, not so much...I'm a little out of shape in the cardio department to say the least!

But I made it!!

 For the record, Ryan set a goal for his 40th birthday to climb Squaw 40 times this summer.

He met his goal early that morning...and then, just for kicks did it one more time with me later that day making it 41.  Pretty cool!

I discovered I was only about a minute slower than my time from last year when I did Squaw.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Either my recovery is top notch and I'm on fire or I really sucked last year, because honestly I felt as slow as molasses going up that darn climb this time!

But in any case, it feels really good to be making progress with my recovery.  And honestly, I find that when I challenge myself I'm surprised how much I can actually do!  The healing process is pretty neat that way!