Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Return to the Bike

I was going to title this entry, "Back in the Saddle" but I decided that it would be too cliche.

Anyway, a little less than three weeks after my accident I've begun training at a very basic level again. I did 35 minutes yesterday and 45 minutes today. Both days were in Zone 1 (60-70% MHR) and at a high spin cadence. No power efforts at all. The plan is to start by just getting my legs used to going in circles. The interesting thing is that I took a walk this morning before the rain rolled in and me legs felt more beat up than the harder effort on the bike did. The experts say that cycling is a lot lower impact than any other exercise type and based on my experience today I'd have to agree. The other interesting thing is that I felt good throughout the whole time. My cardiovascular system is OK, it's the muscloskeletal system I want to make sure comes back on a slow and measured path. I don't want to push too hard and develop imbalances that show up in January of next year as I'm working to peak for Tundra.

That last couple of days have also been spent watching Hurricane Dennis roll in. We got some rain yesterday but the big shot came in about 3:00 pm today. We've had pretty much a steady rain since then which mean that we've got flooding all around us. Fortunately, where we live is above any of the local bodies of water so other than swampiness in our backyard we won't have much trouble either here at home or in the town as a whole. Looking over the flood warnings the last several days with Cindy and now Dennis in the metro areas near Atlanta and Macon, I'm once again pleased with our decidion to live in a place that's a little less overurbanized.

Tomorrow I'll probably try to bump the time up to 50-60 minutes of on the bike time. Hopefully, the bike box I shipped what's left of my TT bike back in will get here and I'll once again have my raod bike shoes. It'll be nice to get back on my S-Works, even if it's only on the trainer or rollers. I haven't decided if I'm going to try the rollers tomorrow but it'll be an excellent way to see if my balance has been effected by the crash. I suspect that I'm OK based on my MTB rides to work but there's difference between the rollers on skinny tires and the road on nice fat, soft tires. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading.

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