So how is my recovery going? Slowly, but surely. This is my latest update, and it’ll also be my last. From now on, it’s all about the future
THIS is going to be my last post on my injury and recovery. Not because it’s healed now; it hasn’t. I’m still in pain every day and it’s still affecting what and how much I can do. In fact last weekend proved to be very bad, with extreme pain and cancelled plans. I cried and slept a lot. But I’ve had enough of it, enough of thinking about what went wrong and how long it’s taken to get this far. After this post, I’m going to be all about the future and my plans for it.
I can also acknowledge that I am in the final stretch of recovery. At times it feels like it’s taking forever to heal and that it’s never really going to be right again. But this isn’t the case. It improves a tiny bit all the time and it shouldn’t be too long now before I feel normal.
Working out
I’m doing a lot more exercise these days. I do three weights sessions and two cardio workouts every week; I’m also up to 9,000 steps per day. Over the next month or so I’m going to increase steps to 10,000. I’m also going to dial up my two workouts – longer sessions, more reps, heavier weights.
I’ve not been to any yoga classes yet. I can do sun salutations at home, but yoga is still a bit out of my current ability. I’m not far off though.
The biggest and best news is that I’m properly back on the bike. I’ve moved on from the turbo trainer. I go out early Sunday morning and I’ve worked out a really nice route. Mainly traffic free via the marshes to Victoria Park, where I can do laps to my heart’s content. Although I’ve only managed a maximum of four so far. I pass a lovely café in the Olympic Park where I can stop for coffee and a snack if I want to. This is a really enjoyable ride.
I’m not commuting yet; I’m not even really cycling on roads. I still need to build confidence with both these things. I’m also only doing one ride a week rather than every day. I do want to add in an evening ride in the week. But that depends on the pain – at the moment my leg still really hurts by the evening. Cycling is very good exercise for it, as it loosens up the joint while not putting too much pressure on it. But I don’t want to aggravate it. Listening to my body is important.
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| At Victoria Park in east London. |
Working in
I’m back at work full time – eight hours a day, five days a week. Now it just so happens that I would have been perfectly happy to continue with six hours for four days a week. But I wouldn’t have been allowed to. Also I wouldn’t have been able to do my job properly. From the point of view of my recovery, being back at work is a good thing. But to be honest I’d much rather spend a lot less time at work and a lot more time writing and knitting.
I’m only taking one dose of painkillers on work days now, at around 4pm so it kicks in on the way home. At weekends I’m mostly painkiller free. This is an enormous relief. In the last eight months there have only been a handful days in which I’ve not taken drugs. This cannot be good for me.
Plans
I’m not going to go into these too much, but I have two major plans in mind. First, a cross-country tour. Hadrian’s Cycleway is 179-mile route from Cumbria to Northumberland, following the path of Hadrian’s Wall. It goes over the top of the Pennines and passes quaint villages, museums, castles, ruins and all kinds of things.
I want to do this next year; in May or early June. And what’s really great is my mum wants to do it with me. We’d do it over several days, cycling a maximum of 30 miles per day. This will give us plenty of time to stop off and visit anywhere we want to. We’ll stay in B&Bs along the way and we’ll probably end with a couple of nights in Whitley Bay on the north-east coast.
The other thing is more long term. I want to get into racing. I’ve always loved cycling and I was worried that my accident would affect this, that I’d end up too scared to get back on my bike. This hasn’t proved the case and I want to turn my experience into something positive.
This is going to take a lot of research as I really don’t know what’s required. It would obviously be amateur and at my advanced age it would be veteran. I live near the Olympic Velopark, so that’s a good place to start, and there’s the very active Lea Valley Cycling Club, which I can contact via Facebook. I’ll just have to see where things take me from there.
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