Bit by Bit

(editor's note: as I completed today's entry I realized it is almost an exact rehash of last week's post with a few more nuggets thrown in, but it's written so here it is)

It's still slow going on the recovery but, every once in a while, I seem to make a big improvement.  Three or four weeks ago, I got the go-ahead to walk unassisted again and to do whatever I felt comfortable with.  At the time, I didn't think it would be all that much.  Fast forward a few weeks and I find myself able to trail run (close to three miles on Sunday) AND I did my first mountain bike ride since the injury.  A full 4 1/2 months later.  When I first hurt myself, I thought that I'd have to wait til mid February (if I was lucky) to get really active again so I'll definitely take it.  I still have to be REALLY careful since the hip isn't healed and a bad fall could mess my shit up but I'll take what I can get. 

I also think that there is a blessing in disguise in this whole situation.  I'm not the one trick pony that a lot of cyclists are since I do a lot of running, snowshoeing, lift some weights and do core work but I was still heavily weighted on the riding side and other parts of my body suffered as a result.  Since I am now forced off of the bike most of the time, I've had to come up with new ways to torture myself and relieve the copious amounts of stress in my life (I didn't realize just how much cycling did that for me until I couldn't do it anymore).  First it was swimming because it was all I could physically do (albeit really really poorly) with a bit of elliptical mixed in.  I quickly bored of the elliptical but was able to introduce spin class.  Spin class isn't bad and I'll do it as much as possible but it still wasn't quite doing it for me.  As a result, I've starting doing a High Interval Training (HIT) class; essentially a class that has you do multiple exercises in a very short period of time.  On paper the workouts look easy but actually completing them is complete torture made all the more painful since you're surrounded by women while the "real men" pump iron and have no clue that they're working a fraction as hard as us women folk.

It seems to me that come spring my riding legs might not quite be there but the rest of my body is going to be primed to explode.  At least I hope so because, as I sit here, I can barely lift my arms enough to work the keyboard.  I sure hope this is worth it!