“Pain don’t hurt”
-Road House
Elbow’s healing up nicely…
…hip not as much. The swelling in my hip has reduced quite a bit, although my hip is still very sore and obviously quite bruised.
“Put me back on my bike”
-Tom Simpson
This morning, I didn’t take any of the Vicodin that the doctor prescribed after the crash. Instead, I did an easy pace ride of about 30 miles…Came home, changed clothing, and prepped the lawn for tomorrow’s 4th of July party. Now going to ice my hip and sack out on the sofa for a while before guests arrive.
Last night’s time trial went very well - 16MPH headwind for the second half of the time trial, and I was still only 22 seconds slower than my PR for the course!
Once a week as part of my training, I head over to a local parking lot to do handling drills on the bike - typically practicing time trial turnaround + working on cornering sharper turns and at faster speeds. Headed out this morning still feeling pretty beaten up from the time trial. With only about 5 minutes left in this week’s handling drills, I wiped out at about 17-18 MPH. I didn’t hit my head, but did scrape up my elbow (not big deal), and tore open my hip pretty badly. A few other scrapes and bruises as well, and my shoulder’s pretty knotted up. I sat down for about 10 minutes to let nausea and light-headedness pass, then biked home, scrubbed out the road rash on my hip, and headed to Convenient Care. The doctor said my hip was about a nanometer away from needing stiches, and the sizable hematoma on my hip may need to be surgically drained - we’ll know about that next week.
Now for the exciting contest portion of this blog posting - what should I name my hematoma?
Training over the past four days:
06/26: ~1 hour cycling speed/crit training
06/27: AM: Easy pace hill ride; PM: 6mi easy pace run
06/28: AM: ~50mi training ride, windy, started with fast-paced group; PM: Mow lawn w/ 30# weight vest
06/29: ~1 hour cycling acceleration training
Cycling miles: 130
Running miles: 6
Calories burned in training: 8,600
Average calories consumed per day: 3,600
For the record, consuming that many calories (peaking at about 4800 calories on Saturday) is not nearly as much fun as it may sound…
Tuesday Night Time Trial is tonight, and they’re currently predicting about a 15MPH headwind for the second half of the time trial.
Relatively inconclusive news from the doctor - the abdominal pain was most likely some sort of transient nerve issue. The good news is, no further tests at this point, and I’ve been pain-free running/cycling well this week.
At Tuesday night’s time trial, I set a new PR for myself, beating my best time from last year by 31 seconds. My turnaround for the time trial needs work (which is a pretty normal limiter for beginning time trialists), so I’ll be devoting a lot of my handling drills to practicing that for the time being.
I finalized my race calendar for this year, and am currently planning on the following:
Thursday started off great - got up early, had a light breakfast, had a great time trial training ride (~15:00 warmup, 7:30 fast pace, 00:30 sprint, 7:30 fast, 3:00 rest, 7:30 fast pace, 00:30 sprint, 7:30 fast,~15:00 cooldown). Got home and had my traditional post-ride meal of a glass of Spicy V-8 and a protein bar, and went upstairs to shower. By the time I got done with my shower, I was doubled over with severe abdominal pain. Ended up going to the emergency room, almost in tears every time we had to come to a stop in the car or go over rough sections of road. Was at the ER for about 8 hours, with numerous rounds of tests for appedicitis, kidney stones, you name it. They were unable to find anything at that point, and I was still in severe pain, so they decided to admit me at about 5pm on Thursday. I spent the next 24 hours or so flat on my back on a morphine drip. (not listenening to Morphine, unfortunately) The pain started to lessen a little by Friday evening, so I started tapering off the morphine, and tried eating some clear fluids. That stayed down ok, so I tried some soup and crackers and stopped the morphine entirely, and slept most of the way through the night. Ate a relatively full meal this morning, and was home by about 9:30 this morning, still no idea what caused the pain. Will be seeing my doctor this week to try to figure out what happened.
3rd of the Tuesday night circuit races - much improved. Highest average speed for any of the three (previous fastest was average of 18.8MPH, max speed of 26.2MPH, this one was average of 21.3MPH, max speed of 28.6MPH). Thick black line, as per usual, represents 90% of my max heart rate. Did not get lapped by the entire field this time, managed to pass one person, and I now know what it feels like to go ~29MPH on a bike on flat ground without significant tailwind (if you’re wondering, it feels great). Developed a nasty case of pursuiter’s cough from the race, but at least the weight I’ve lost from coughing up half a lung will improve my power to weight ratio :)
My first group ride of the season was this morning, which went very well. Yay for Mad Alchemy! Will be seeing my ortho/foot guy in mid-May re: what I’m pretty sure is a sizable bone spur on my heel. No running at least until then, but cycling seems to be fine. I’ll be doing the Tour de Champaign criterium in July, and the Ultramidwest 6-Hour Time Trial in September. Beyond that, I’m not sure - a lot will be dependent on how the heel turns out…
just finished adjusting front derailleur, currently hoping that body and bicycle don’t explode during tomorrow’s ride.
for the 2nd year in a row, the McNaughton trail chewed me up and spit me out. DNFed at mile 30 for the 2nd time. Working on recovering.
Had a
great ~11 mile run this morning, will be mostly resting this week, head to McNaughton on Friday. Current forecast for the race is a little cooler than the last forecast, but currently showing no chance of rain during the race. I’ll do the last of my race shopping tomorrow night, will post pictures of race gear after that.
