The kids are back at school, med students are back with us, summer is certainly over but the weather has been sunny and dry. It’s a funny time of year. I’m not sure I can face going through the mill again for another academic year, but I’m enjoying early autumn and looking forward to the rest of it. This is a fantastic time of year to be riding and running, and riding and running again I am.
I started cycling soon after breaking my collarbone; at first on the turbo indoors and in the garden, and then back out on the roads. I’m not fit but cycling is feeling pretty good again. Running has been slower to develop and my tendons have taken some weeks to begin to strengthen again, but I can now run on back to back days without hobbling afterwards, and the early morning shuffle is getting longer and maybe easier.
I’m now back in the pool swimming with both arms too, and although that was unpleasant to start with, within a week and just 3 sessions the movements of freestyle started to feel a little more familiar. The amount of pace I’ve lost almost entirely due to loss of strength and aerobic fitness is astonishing. It’s nice to be splashing up and down the lanes again. Short fins for parts of the sessions help a lot. My right deltoid muscle has shrunk, and is much smaller than my left.
I’m not training, so much as just running, riding and swimming a bit. I have a bit of structure to my weeks and I’m carefully adding load, but in each session I’m doing what I feel like and stopping to smell the flowers that are left. Strava have a 700km odd challenge coming up, but it’s not a particularly inspiring one so I’ll leave it alone, and stick to slowly increasing my run and swim volume through to Christmas. I’m cycling every day but to no great distance. I’ve had my training frame powder coated, have fitted new forks and a headset myself and rebuilt it for the winter. It needs some decals next to give it a bit of colour, a new saddle (I bent the saddle in the crash – how did I manage that?) and new wheels, and then maybe it’ll be with me for many more years. It looks almost new with the fresh powder coat.
The days are getting shorter. The 12 hours of light day will be here soon. I’d better get my lights out of storage.
