For one reason or another it's been about three weeks since I've done any weights sessions, and thanks to dislocating my shoulder last Friday it's going to be a little while longer before I can do that again. Did a fair bit of damage to my legs the final day of the Cambrian Trail, which stupidly I just made worse on the second day of the #jennride.
So I'm sat here after another physio appointment realising that it's going to be at least another 5 days before I can get back to proper training / proper riding.
I know training is a bit of a dirty word around here, but what do you guys do when you can't train (or ride) to stop yourself going a bit nuts? I've never actually been in the situation before that I can't do one or the other (weights or cycling), so this is new, and very frustrating. I can't even really spend any time at the allotment as I can't really lift anything and walking around too much is going to make my leg problems worse.
I ride my bike. Seriously I never "don't" ride it, I just ride it a bit slow and look in the hedges for porn. I've found I can now ride off just about any injury. I have tried all the rest bollocks and it does not work for me. I'm a firm believer that the body gets the message and decides to sort it out regardless.
Richard G wrote:...what do you guys do when you can't train (or ride) to stop yourself going a bit nuts?
Running? Sufficiently hard to be like training. I often work away from home, usually in places you can't ride a bike / take a bike and I've found trail running to hit a psychological reset button. If your legs are bust though...
Well I've had chronic back pain for 14 months which has kept me off the bike sporadically and more often made riding it an excercise in pain management. More recently my knee has been playing up meaning my final training for the Highland trail has involved sitting on my fattening arse and doing some stretches.
Riding motorbikes helps....
Lawmanmx is right, rest is recovery so assuming you had no major rides due really soon you might feel better for it, esp after a big effort on the TC. Too much training is worse than not enough. If you build fitness over a long period you dont loose much in a week or so off, just seems you feel a bit stale that the first few rides back. After that, no probs.
I don't train much these days, but when in between suitably close "training" rides I do this thing called "recovery". It works quite well as, by and large, I don't get injured
I write music to save my sanity. And do shots of Jaegermeister. The latter makes playing instruments (guitar/bass guitar/keyboards) interesting, to say the least.
Ha, no I do recovery, pretty carefully as it goes (I track Heart Rate Variability and a few other metrics).
...and when you crash, you crash. Not really much you can do to stop yourself getting injured (I'm yet to train falling off, maybe I should!). Problem is, it's knowing when you're ready to go again. I thought I was, but clearly I wasn't healed as fully as I believed.
Sadly I don't have an artistic bone in my body, so that sort of leaves the more creative mental recovery options off the table. Though maybe I could spend some time building something, I'm OK at that sort of stuff.
Richard G wrote:with my propensity for crashes and injuries
Maybe not the right time to be saying this, but you do seem to have a habit of doing this.
Perhaps a bit of time for reflection on how you actually ride?
Apart from the odd bruise/scrape its a long time since i've done any serious damage by crashing*, and that goes for most people I know.
The time you lose off the bike from this probably negates any benefit you've built up before. Perhaps more riding at 90% would be more effective in the long run?
In the short term just find another hobby to keep you occupied.
I think I'm one of the few riders here that actively does DH mountain biking though, and It's obviously far more likely in that sort of thing than in general off road mountain biking.
As much as I'm getting older, and I should give it up at some point, I enjoy it, so I'm not yet ready to yet. I have taken to wearing body armour now, but ironically my last major crash was on the way to the trail rather than actually on it.
Would have probably been a nothing crash, but it came out of no-where and I landed awkwardly, bringing back a very old injury.
I generally have a mountain of things that need fixing/maintaining that there's plenty to keep me occupied when but riding.
You can always take anything further too, I.e. start from cleaning a car to full on decontamination and detailing session takes a morning task into a few weekends of work.
You can come and help me if you like Richard, I've a never ending and always growing list of stuff to do. It's varied work which might involve anything from bodywork to joinery to landscaping ... wages are crap though
Four years ago I took voluntary redundancy - I wasn't particularly enjoying the job and the VR package wasn't bad.
If you've got a house then there's always stuff to do so I drew up a big list of all the jobs that needed doing and just worked through them: varied from re-insulating and then boarding out the loft to fixing the latch on the garden gate.
Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry
I rent, so I'm not sure the landlord would appreciate me hacking away at the place.
On the bright side, I'm back to being able to use the turbo. However, my shoulder is completely wrecked still, I think riding after it got dislocated has done it some pretty serious damage. :(
