Wow. So not a great two days, really. Well, not fitness / health wise.
On Friday night I went a bit crazy. I’m not sure exactly how much alcohol I had, but by my standards it was months worth, in one night. I’m guessing somewhere north of eight or nine bottles / cans. Can’t really explain why. I just felt the need to blow off some steam, and one thing led to another, and next thing you know I’d gone wild.
Anyway. Having done the damage, I kinda knew – even when drunk – that I’d be paying for it. Big time. And that would mean extra bike riding. No bad thing, really. Hey, when I was drunk I had grand ambitions of doing some extra hard Zwift racing. Those ideas diminished, somewhat, when I woke on Saturday with a stellar hang over.
But yeah… the plan was to do something like a Sweet Spot Training session on Saturday. Something hard enough to make me start sweating out those pints.
Only, I had a really weird incident around midday.
I went for a fresh cup of coffee, and next thing I know I’m having super tight chest pains. If you can imagine where the heart rate monitor strap goes around the chest, it sort of felt like that, but super tight. All the way around. Difficulty taking a deep breath, the works.
So, of course, my wife suspects a heart attack.
I was less convinced. For a start, I believe (?) that a heart attack tends to affect your left arm, and you get dizzy and sick, or stuff like that. I didn’t have that. Actually, I thought it might be stress related. Not a panic attack, but something triggered by stress.
Whatever. Anyway, I had a long lie down, some anti inflammatory tables (ibuprofen?), and after plenty of reading on the net (definitely not cancer, which is Internet suggestion #1 for any ailment), I concluded it could be a herniated disc. Again, pure speculation. I’ve got a doctors appointment booked in, and I am also going to see a physio.
What that all meant was: no cycling yesterday.
Which honestly made me feel bad, as like I say, I well overdid it on Friday night and I was desperately keen to pay some of that off yesterday.
I figured I’d see how I got on after sleeping, and whilst I definitely wouldn’t be going out on the road, I could try a Zwift session…
So that’s what I did this morning. And by and large it was fine. The pain is still there in my back, but it’s a fraction of what it was yesterday. Very, very odd. But glad I didn’t die, didn’t need an ambulance, and didn’t need more than a day off from exercise.
The plan is now, because I really have overdone it and also missed yesterday, is to stay inside and do FTP Builder endurance / recovery efforts for the next few days. I don’t want to risk it outside, sending horrible pot hole jarring shocks up my right arm and risking doing any damage before I’ve seen the doctor & physio. Hopefully it’s nothing. Or at worse, just something that can be ‘fixed’ somehow.
Really just happy I could get in the ride this morning. It wasn’t anything special, but it was what I needed. Well, about an hour of the three I really needed. But one is better than none.
