Weekly Review April 18th – 24th 2022

Each week I try to review and reflect on my previous week on the bike. This allows me to see how my fitness and ability is progressing on a wider timescale than day to day. For previous weekly reviews please click here. 

All in all, not a good week then this one. It started well enough… sort of. But then something bad happened on Wednesday. More on that in a moment.

The two rides I did get in were as follows:

• Monday – The Fail And The Snail (Outdoors)
• Tuesday – Tyre Test (Outdoors)

Starting with the rides I did manage this week, I perhaps over estimated myself on the Monday ride. As it was the final day of my Easter Bank Holiday weekend I definitely wanted to get in something a little ‘bigger’ than a typical ride. However, with still recovering from injury the main thing I was probably always pushing my luck going on a fairly climby ride.

The frustrating part of that ride wasn’t in the bad route I picked but rather in coming away with a sore knee. I guess I expected, if anything, to be feeling pain in the ribs. Hopefully though, with all the time I’m having off the bike at the moment, the niggling knee issue will be long resolved by the time I’m back up to fitness.

Even so, it was nice to get out into the countryside on a sunny, if a little windy, Spring day.

What I hadn’t noticed on Monday was that I’d picked up a puncture.

Whilst I had a sore knee after Monday’s ride, yet again it had eased off sufficiently the next day that I was considering ‘an easy ride’.

However, during Tuesday morning I spotted the puncture and so spent my dinner break fixing that up. At least I can repair my own punctures at this point, even if it takes me about an hour to do so.

Tuesday’s ride, therefore, was all about testing the repair. Intentionally I kept it short (knee related) and local (potentially exploding tyre related). But all in all, seems the repair went well.

Sadly things took a down turn on Wednesday.

We’ve been renovating the living room. Long story short, our house is a mess – we knew that when we moved in – but with Covid kicking in, we’ve had to postpone / delay a lot of the work. Now that some semblance of normality has returned we have been able to get tradesmen back to carry on the refurbishment.

Lately we’ve been finishing off the living room.

Last week we had the carpet fitter in, and part of that task involved moving the furniture out so they could lay the new carpet. Well, when moving the chairs I felt my back / ribs hurting way more than they had been. That wasn’t good, but what happened after was worse.

The following morning I inadvertently sneezed and heard a cracking sound. Imagine cracking your knuckles, but doing all four fingers at once. That little machine gun ripple noise. I quite like that sound. However, when it comes from inside your chest and is followed by a stabbing pain, it’s really not quite as much fun.

So I didn’t even bother going to hospital for this one. I knew it was a fracture at best or a break at worse. It’s crazy. This is the front, yet the fall injured the back. I have no idea how this has happened… getting old? Weakened my bones previously? Who the hell knows.

All I do know is I’m well and truly out at the moment. Thinking of the bike is the best I can do. Riding it is some ways off.

I’m guessing that I’m going to be out for a good few weeks yet. And I said it a few weeks back that the smart thing to do is start off again with ERG mode rides on the turbo. Keep it controlled. No outdoors stuff. I have to stick to that this time round, or I suspect things will delay even longer.

At this point I’m kinda writing off Spring and maybe even some of Summer. I’m absolutely gutted. However, time will heal this and there’s no sense in forcing the issue.