After even easy rides he still notices a slight bilateral discomfort in the global knee and may be even down the calf area -- but no sharp pain or moving related issues any longer. So far so good. Still working on a better routine of stretching and icing.
He took a longer nap this Sunday after icing -- just watching the icy snowy weather today from indoors. Plenty of time to think and beyond the obvious
- How to determine the optimal intensity and duration of riding for recovery?
- What about short peak loads, like a short hill -- to be avoided, just spinning up easy or may be short push is OK?
- Resting periods to ride ratio? 1 day, 2 days in between or even 3 and put in a pool swimming session? What about XC ski?
- OK, keeping the bike and pedals in good shape is easy, done.
- But still, there may have been more than this one factor, as the pedals did not went bad in this one trouble ride. Too much? What is too much, to long at too high sustained power output? Now this is disturbing. Fact:
- Py was resting for a few days, more than usual in a long time before this trouble ride. Now what does this mean -- was he may be able to output such sustained effort to hurt himself in conjunction with these pedal issue (well, he obviously was.)? Q: May this possibly could have happened also with good pedals?
- Means he was able to output so much more power due to a few recovery days than usual -- as with sustained riding his peak power was always lower and safe to sustain?
- Q: Now what? Assuming with more recovery cycles or days he seams to be able to output a non "system" compatible power. Seams odd to weird to throttle back yourself in case of an race or even hard training ride. Little over exaggerating: Can you image "just chill riding along..." on a "hard" ride?
- Will going through recovery cycles eventually make ligaments adjust slowly in time to take it? And if so -- what possibly could be an safe indicator on "how much" is OK or too much?
.... may be just a set of possible dump thoughts and questions -- any comments?
Here Py's training and recovery or better rehabilitation attempts so far since the initial acute trouble causing ride in December 2nd:
What matters? What next?
Hey Py, haven't commented in a while. How is your knee? I hope the pedal solved the problem. I wanted to ask you what Power Tap you have and which model you recommend. I have Garmin 500 so all I need is the hub/wheel.
ReplyDeleteThanks in advance,
Alex
Hey Mookie,
ReplyDeletethanks for asking. I think it is getting better but very slowly. Even a very light activity for about an hour ends up in about two days of slight dull discomfort bothering me, but no sharp pain as in the very beginning of it. Icing, stretching, resting... so far.
There is a suspicion of a possibly (slightly?) torn meniscus (occasional "pop" while pedaling), possibly caused by previous unnoticed internal injury / fall, possibly even at the D2R2 as I hit the wood of that bridge...
All issues together with the bad pedal and high intensity/cold day must have badly multiplied at this one ride at caused the acute injury.
I have an Orthopedic appointment with more sports dedicated specialist on Monday and hope they do an MRI as well. My usual Doc could not find anything obvious.
I actually do not yet have a Powertap, but looking forward to get one, I just could not yet decide on the wheel/rim to use [go full carbon clincher -- good for racing as well or just Alu for training only]. I think the PowerTap SL+ is a good compromise, the more expensive ones are from power measurement technology exactly the same, just more carbon/less weight. Yes, all those have ANT+ and will work fine with the Garmins! I have the 705 but also the 500 does it.
Alex, I am doing much better already :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd just signed "in" for the 2011 D2R2!
Start 6am I guess -- hope to see most of "the team" again for one more great day ;-)