 |
| A depressing chart of my fitness |
I could have kissed Matt (my physical therapist) when he told me I was clear to ride the trainer for five minutes last week. I held back though, on account of being married. And being a man. Five minutes hardly seems worth the time to set up the trainer, put on cycling shorts and socks and shoes, and embarrassingly realize the helmet I spent three minutes looking for was unnecessary – but I didn’t care, I was going to be on my bike!
Spoiler alert. Though I haven’t posted it yet, the bike build is complete, as evidenced by this post about a trainer ride. I hope to publish the build posts soon; it’s just taking longer than I thought it would to organize photos and descriptions.
The high heart rate value aligned with my labored breathing. But the power output did not. I was convinced something was wrong. I must have miss-calibrated, or maybe the power meter came from a bad batch, or the Garmin is incorrectly reporting the value, or...
Or maybe I lost a little fitness. And by “a little” I mean a lot.
Before I was finished with my internal debate on whether my power meter was giving me accurate numbers, the five minutes were up. I frowned and dismounted, then considered deleting the ride. I kept it though -- and even uploaded it to Strava for all to point and laugh at my measly 47 kJ of work. Half an apple later and I had sufficiently replenished the spent calories. Not much of a ride.
But I didn’t care, I was happy. Because it may be small, but it’s a start.
 |
| Five minutes after five months |
Yesterday after work I was clear to add five more minutes on the trainer. For kicks, I decided to do 30 seconds of near-maximum effort to get my heart rate up. I wasn’t paying attention to power (which was good because again my output was pretty pathetic), but it is somewhat interesting to compare the power with a pre-accident effort.
On August 1 (three weeks before the accident) I was riding up Lemmon and interested in achieving a personal best one-minute power (i.e. I did a Kilo Interval * ). For the first 30 seconds of the one minute interval, my average power was 633 w at an average heart rate of 180 bpm. It isn’t quite a fair comparison since it was a portion of a longer interval, but I don’t want to completely destroy my ego.
 |
| 30 seconds three weeks before the accident |
* A Kilo Interval is one minute of maximum effort. Named “kilo” because at maximum effort for one minute you hope to travel around a kilometer (which would mean averaging a little over 37 mph). The interval can simulate the final kilometer of a race, where one might want to launch an attack for the win. Kilo Intervals hurt. Bad. I highly recommend them.
So, on the trainer for the second time after five months of inactivity, my average power for 30 seconds was 327 w at an average heart rate of 174 bpm. About a 48% decrease. Half the man I used to be. Cue STP’s “Creep”
♫ Take time… with a wounded back… cause it likes to heal
 |
| 30 seconds five months after the accident |
I’ll be honest, it was a little discouraging at first. I knew I’d see low numbers but I didn’t expect them to be that low. My fitness has tanked and it will be a while before I am back to where I was.
But I don’t care, I rode my bike!