On my recent trip back to the UK I injured my knee (sliding into my train seat of all things). Plodding on regardless, I kept going and including a step count, I can only achieve at Disneyland Paris. The knee held out and Disneyland Paris was fully explored.

Back in New Zealand, I figured the ache and inability to bend weren’t going to magically go away. So a GP visit and physio later I’m now in procession of an exercise bike (thank you ACC) and I’ve been prescribed 30 minutes a day! The first time I sat on it I managed a minute! 

I know I’ve slowed down the last two years, walking alongside Adam and his treatment, and we haven’t yet picked back up. Just making one minute was the impact of that slowing down. That hit me hard.  

The need for the knee to bend (and to pick things from the bottom supermarket shelf) drove me onwards. 

Once I built up to 5 minutes I knew I’d have to get something to watch as it was beyond tedious. All for making the most of my time, and that the bike had a slot that my phone could rest in, but was so high that I couldn’t see the TV, I turned to TED.

So since Christmas, I’ve been watching increasingly longer TED talks. Thankfully you can search for talks by duration and I happily searched the 3-6 minute section, moving through the 6-12 minute and then to the 12-18 minute surprisingly quickly. I’m in the 18-minute plus section now and almost look forward to it (almost). Though as I learnt from the talk below, (sitting at the 11-minute range) I should be prepared to fail and actually as long as I get on that bike every day and manage one minute I’m still working towards my goal and the return of a fully bending knee.

One morning while peddling away and wondering how I could remember some of the handy things I was learning. It struck me, I could share my thoughts and insights on LinkedIn and I could do it straight away - right from the bike. That all struck me as quite radical, but as this talk taught me, no one would really be reading what I wrote, so why worry? So, once the talk finished, I clicked ‘share’, wrote a few words and heh - I’d also gained another 5 minutes on the bike.

So this explains the TED talk sharing and is almost a secret code to how long I’ve spent on the bike each morning. Follow along with me here