Deja Vu

It's Saturday night again, and it's raining. Again! I was relieved in a way to have an excuse not to ride my planned 30km of hills today (Houghton Bay Rd, Alexandra Rd, home up Brooklyn), because I was nursing the hangover to beat all hangovers and a huge dose of contrition. So I've sat on the sofa and eaten rubbish all day instead!

Other than that my week has gone really well. I'm having to manage my sacroilleac injury. A massage on Monday morning left me feeling a lot better for a few hours, then very sore and emotional that night. It's taken the rest of the week to start to feel like I might be recovering. Still, I'm a bit worried. Duck had me doing one-legged drills on a spin bike on Thursday morning and I was noticeably weaker on my right side. I really need to get this sorted.

Given that my training this week had the potential to make things even worse I should be pleased I'm feeling relatively pain-free today. After taking Monday off I fitted in my lower-body workout and an RPM class after work on Tuesday. The fourth floor was unusually testosterone-fueled. One of the leg press machines was loaded up with 14 20kg plates, and there was no way I was going to take all of them off, so I waited until another became available. Even then I had to take six plates off to do my single-leg reps. Grrr! Afterwards Duck's class was fun, though my hip was feeling quite pinchy by the end of it.

The next day I walked up to the Botanical Gardens and did intervals around the sports field there. It's the first time I've done outside since the ankle injury back in November. Speed work probably wasn't the best thing to be doing with the back injury either, but I was on a mission.

The first interval felt slow, slow, slow. The third was the best. The fifth was slow again. I knew I was killing myself each time but I felt like I was barely moving. Afterwards it was such a lovely evening that I decided I wasn't ready to finish up, so I ran up the Serpentine Path (which felt flat), back down through the Gardens and cemetery, and along the side of the motorway back to the gym.

Thursday was a mammoth day. I spun my legs out on a fairly light setting for nearly 40 minutes waiting for Duck to finish up. We mixed up the drills with lunges on a balance disc and mixed up a number of different lower- and upper-body reps. After work I was down to run 40 minutes of hills, preferably on a trail. I was still feeling sore and my legs were pretty dead but I got a bit stubborn and decided I was going to run anyway. In the end I decided to try the Kelburn loop I was starting to time myself on just before I injured my ankle. I wanted to know whether I really had slowed down.

I'm not sure whether I've lost speed, but I do know that I've gained endurance on hill climbs. I jogged up to the viaduct at an easy, steady pace with a good heart rate. I made myself speed up a bit once on the flat and did feel like I was running a little more like my old self. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn in the Gardens, got rather lost, ended up coming out in a completely different place from what I was expecting, and had to double back up and down a few more small hills than I'd planned. I did reach a good sprint pace though running back along the side of the motorway. In the end I was out for 50 minutes.

With the plan being to ride both days this weekend, yesterday was a rest day and, although I could have swapped the ride for a spin class the hangover and rain killed my motivation. Tomorrow's supposed to be 'the big ride' before Grape Ride. If this weather keeps up it isn't going to happen! At least the two rest days have given my back an opportunity to heal up a bit I guess. This week is a light week, so I should be in a pretty good place come Saturday. The nervousness and excitement are building!