This week I have made a vested effort to restore some fitness in my life and stop letting work take over.
That means 2 x swims, a gym visit and 3 x bike rides. Regular fitness certainly makes me feel happier!
In the gym, I am trying to make my squats evenly loaded between right and left leg. I have been compensating for the injury for so long that it is proving rather difficult for me to correct. I have resorted to propping a camera on a chair and watching myself so I have a visual which helps me correct things that are slightly left leaning!
At the pool, my supposed goal was a long and a sprints session each week, which I have not always achieved. This week I settled for the time that I had available (which wasnt my optimal!) so I opted for 20 mins as fast as i could get, and a 50 min steady long swim. I get tired of counting – but I know that 50 mins wouldn’t be that far short of the 120 lengths (3km).
Bike wise, the weekend weather was pretty good for a change so I did an outside bike ride on Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday, the forecast was dry without much wind, so I got up early and decided to try the long ride outside. Surely it is more interesting than 3 hours in the garage!?
empty roads 
shut up legs! 
my trusty steed! 
tired legs! 
before I started!
The long ride – 74km – was (when I worked this out half way round) my longest ride in over a decade! WOW!! I only have to add 17km to this ride and I will be cycling further with my bionics than I ever did before I became bionic! WOW!
I had no idea how this would go and I gave up trying to work out a long route that would all be on sealed roads, so I opted for my 90 min loop and did it twice. I think it might also be the first time I cycled PAST the house on purpose!
I have activated Siri on my phone so I could text Mark (simply by talking to the phone) at key points so that he knew I was still ok. I was armed with jet planes and a cliff bar for fuel, plus water. I really need to work out how to get my bike to carry more than one bottle!
First loop: 1 hour 32. Second loop 1 hour 36. Not too bad actually, because it is still within 5% and it is the first time in like – ever – that I have covered this distance outside. Clearly all those indoor boring sessions in the garage are helping, but I still much prefer outside!
I stopped outside the house on the other side of the road. Mark was out front cutting the grass, so I called over and asked him to call me a taxi to the front door! yes, I was THAT tired. So tired that I had DOMS without the delay, before I even completed the ride!
Cycling outside told me a heap of things about uneven loading though. Left leg quad REALLY sore…. like I have been sitting on the sofa ever since type of sore! left leg calf…. rather sore. Right leg: I do have some muscle pain in the right quad (which I consider to be a triumph in itself because I lost so much muscle here that I have never been able to get it to activate enough to get DOMS till now!) but I am also feeling it in right ham string and not calf.
CONCLUSION: still not completing the pedal stroke with even power throughout, so need to work on hamstring strength and pedal drills. Obviously also using ankle in the left leg pedalling more than the right. Hmmm. As for the right leg ham string pain… I am putting that down to the fact that it still has not caught up with the power of the right.
learned lots, hurt lots….. need to rest lots!
Melanie Magowan 