Getting better!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while! Nate and I were on vacation this past week up to the cabin. How wonderful! Beautiful weather, plenty of great food, and plenty of time to unwind.

I’m beginning to heal. It’s a wonderful feeling. I’m able to cross train a lot, and I took advantage of that at the cabin. My goal was to be doing “something” for about 1:30 each day. Accomplished (on average), and it felt great! I feel like I’m starting to regain “fitness”, the legs and core getting stronger. I spent a lot of time double polling and biking. I don’t have a bike, so borrowed one of the old ones at the cabin :). Also borrowing the father in law’s old golf gloves because they looked like they had some padding on the palms. Ha, I’m sure I looked great out there on the roads! Looking like a serious athlete, no doubt. I had a bike EXACTLY like this growing up. Must have been “the” bike to get when you were in 4th grade. They actually still sell them at Wal-Mart, $74. In case you want to join the Roadmaster club with me. I’m taking applications. Except now they’re a light blue. Too bad, that green is a pretty cool color.

All I needed to do was maintain an average HR on specific days, so I didn’t really care what I looked like doing it. The only thing is that these bikes aren’t really meant to be ridden very long — the seat definitely suggest that you sit VERY upright. So, my butt was a little sore, but oh well. Totally worth it :).
On one of my long, easy rides I calculated my average speed after the workout: 16 mph. No idea what that means. But I thought I’d post that here in case someday I get into biking and can compare it to something. Purpose of that workout was a base-building workout, so it ended up being 1:25 with an average 163 HR.

I’ve been doing all of my biking training with the HR monitor. Trying to target specific levels. Yesterday I went for an hour and a half on our home spin bike, very easy (av. HR 155). Today my goal is to do an hour, with 25 minutes of it at threshold & might throw a couple of pick ups in the middle/end as well.

Running has been going better as well — I’m up to about 20 minutes of running now! Tuesday was the breakthrough day. I headed out for a run with Nate and the dog. We went about 7 minutes and I stopped to stretch. The hip doesn’t hurt anymore, but I often have a feeling that something still isn’t right. Today the hip just felt tight & felt like the femur bone was a little too far into the hip joint (if that makes sense?). I was going to pack it in (if it’s not right, don’t do anything!, per the coaches advice), but decided to try it out after stretching. So glad I did — what a great feeling! No pain and no discomfort. Weird. I feel like there isn’t any power in the leg (or either leg, for that matter), but that’s it! It was the greatest feeling — to breathe in the 65 degree air, start to sweat, no pain. Ahhh. I love RUNNING!

Since then I’ve been around 15-20 minutes. I’m taking today off from running (tomorrow as well) and going to concentrate on biking. I think it’s a good idea to stress it for 2-3 days, then take 2-3 days off. Hope next cycle I can run for 3-4 and take 1-2 off… or increase the amount of time… or a combo of increasing both days/time. Wouldn’t that be WONDERFUL?

Looking pretty good on the Roadmaster, eh? I know you’re all jealous.