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.
Really not a great week from a fitness / training perspective. Last week I really made a mess of my knee, and so spent all week recovering.
Early on in the week I knew the second I woke up I wasn’t doing anything on it. Monday and Tuesday were really bad. I was hobbling about.
By Wednesday I was waking up thinking I might be able to do a light ride, but almost as soon as I’d walked from the bedroom to the kitchen I knew that wasn’t happening. By Friday I was hopeful I might be able to run – and complete the Tour de Zwift stage as a result – if I waited till Saturday.
Well… as we shall see, that didn’t quite go as planned.
Here is this week’s run:
As I say, I had in mind that I’d at least do some light pedalling during the week. But it wasn’t to be. I had high hopes, but the reality was any activity would be risky. And even outdoor walks were off the cards, partly due to limping early on in the week, and then later as the week progressed, the outdoor conditions went first snowy, then icy, and in the end I just gave up thoughts of that.
Saturday was always going to be a push.
And I did push. Perhaps against common sense.
The idea was to run the Stage 4 event, but at a lower speed than last week’s effort. I knew running around 10kph would be very difficult, because I found last week’s effort a challenge when feeling alright. I was aiming / hoping for a speed of around 8.5kph.
But straight away that was never going to happen.
Getting through that Stage 4 event was a massive slog. It was pretty much a 1h 15m walk on a treadmill watching Zwift. Not fun.
It also hurt, and probably set me back a few days.
However, at least I got through it.
I then went for a walk on Sunday morning as usual, and found my pace was slower than normal, and there was pain the whole way around.
That said, the pain now is significantly more managable than this time last week. Every cloud. And I do think I can cycle without (hopefully) any issue this week. I won’t be racing, or pushing hard, but I’m aiming for endurance up to tempo, pretty much just to get back moving.
Being sidelined has sucked.
Knowing that it’s like 99% sure to be the running that has meant I can’t ride has also sucked.
But I have committed to getting through this Tour de Zwift as a run, and I don’t want to fail. I mean, I kind of have already failed as I didn’t run much of Saturday’s event at all. What can you do?
So yeah, week ahead is basically ride 4x, run 1x, walk 1x.
That’s the plan. And like I say above, when I make a plan I try to stick to it. Let’s see how we get on, shall we?