Happy Birthday Andre!

Having only had a half day yesterday, the afternoon seemed pretty lonely. Marion had just left with her friends to go back to Epinal, and since it was Saturday, I only had treatment and a workout in the morning.

Still with the half day, I did all my leg exercises, spent an hour in the pool working out and had a test on the spin bike. Since the doctor is happy with my progression, he had me start with bike workouts a bit early. So yesterday morning at 930am was my bike test to see how hard they can push me in terms of my heart rate. I was pretty excited to get to work and was dripping with sweat by the time the 25 minutes were up. Every 3 minutes I had to increase the tension and also increase my speed. We worked my heart rate up to around 175 beats per minute. Not my max heart rate but a rate I could still maintain for 3 minutes. The biggest positive was that I had no knee pain during this.

After lunch, I had the afternoon off, I iced my knee a few times to make sure it didn't swell up from all the work I was doing, then spent an hour or so watching some Entourage episodes on the computer. I also spoke with my older brother Andre a few times on skype during the day. It was a pretty exciting day for him and the kids as it was Julien and Sebastien's first hockey practice of the year! So they were bouncing off the walls all day and driving Andre crazy. I told him to try and remember what it was like on a Saturday morning when he was little and the hockey season was just beginning. Maybe Andre was just wanted to celebrate his 36th birthday a day early and wanted all of the attention???

My evening was designated to watching the live scoreboard of my team who was playing their home opener in Epinal against Villard de lans. I have to admit, this was very difficult to watch, knowing that I can't do anything to help them. It was 0-0 most of the game, then a few penalties were called in the last few minutes, leaving us short handed 4-3, resulting in Villard scoring with 7 seconds left. I swore so loud that I could probably have been heard all the way up to the 4th floor. Had I been in Thionville, all of the old people would have been woken up by this, but on a Saturday night here in Capbreton, nobody is sleeping.

I wrote a few paragraphs of this blog, then I had reserved a time to swim today so I am just getting back from that now. I got a pair of goggles today, and it was so much easier to swim lengths with those on. It was quite refreshing getting some physical activity today and then tonight I have 1.5 hours of recovery. This includes sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, cold tub, massage etc... I am not exactly sure of how this will all work, I will have to write about that tomorrow, but I sure am looking forward to it!

As I mentioned briefly above, today is Andre's 36th birthday! I have spoken with him on skype 3-4 times over the last 2 days since he got a computer with a camera and I have tried to prepare him for this big day! He really isn't that old, our captain and best player Jan Plch just turned 36 and I think if Andre were still playing hockey, he could be just as good. They are both left handed playmakers with very good vision and can score. Both also use very big curves, as Andre was known for his Paul Coffey pattern. Now he is passing that knowledge and experience on to his two boys Julien and Sebastien.

Though Julien is right handed like his two uncles (Gabe and Myself) and Sebastien left handed, he may need our help to teach Julien some tricks of the trade, but as I write this......if I recall correctly, in Andre's glory days of confidence and swagger, he once claimed he was better than I was right handed, and would show off his skills in our parent's basement. So he is probably best suited for teaching both of his boys the game, even if it takes 4-5 hours of hockey in the basement on his day off, on a Saturday morning! Good luck brother, love ya, and have a great birthday!