Big baby steps

Another big step forward today. Well a big baby step anyway.

Yesterday was my first ride on my TT bike in nearly 3 months and this morning I went for my first jog is probably close to two months. It has been a big couple of days.

They didn't know what had hit them.

I would love to say that the jog was a thing of beauty, but that would be a lie. In reality it was slow and hard. Shockingly it took an average heart rate of 166bpm to maintain 5min/km pace. Apparently I even hit a new max HR of 186bpm on one of the hills. Stride length was down and so was cadence. It was not a shining example of running prowess.

But on the bright side it was a continuous jog. 30 minutes straight. Not walking and jogging, or just plain walking, a genuine 30 minute session.

Also my shoulder seems to have pulled up okay from the jog. My shoulder feeling good is what prompted me to head out jogging in the first place and I am pleased to see it seems no worse for it. It gives me hope that I will be able to get in a couple of weeks of training before my final surgery. Start the rebuild a little early. Every session counts at this stage.

As dire as my running statistics were, I actually find them quite encouraging. The same goes for my struggle street ride yesterday. In both sessions what held me back was my heart rate. On the bike yesterday I could have pushed more watts, but it cost me a lot of effort to do so. The same goes for this morning. When I first started jogging, many, many unused muscles protested, but once they warmed up I could have run quicker, it was my cardiovascular capacity that prevented it. That is good news because that is a relatively easy fix, it is just fitness. All I have to do to improve that is keep training. As long as I keep sensibly plugging away my fitness will improve and things will get easier again. Simple.

I have had a few false starts on my post injury return to training, but this feels like the most positive one so far. Hopefully I can continue to keep the training consistent and sensible and regain myself a little bit of fitness before surgery in early March.

Every long road begins somewhere.