My legs and ribs had started to feel better last week and I had been spinning on the indoor trainer a couple of days which all felt great. Then Friday of last week I did a short run. Legs felt stiff and a little sore but overall pretty good. I decided to run again on Saturday this time the run had one downhill and one climb in it and the legs felt a little sore by the end of the run but overall ok. Within a couple hours though I felt like I had had felt the week after the race. My legs were in a bad way. I may have under estimated how badly my legs were damaged in the crash, so I'm back to measured approach to the active recovery.
The biggest thing I've noticed is my heart rate is significantly elevated during these workouts. For example my 4 mile run last Friday was completely flat and I averaged 7:20/mile which prior to IMC my HR would have been somewhere around 142-146, my average for this run was 162. 162 is pretty much my aerobic threshold HR, it's the rate I average during my hard negative tempo runs for 20-30 minutes when I'm holding 6:00 - 6:15 mile pace.
I was thinking there is no way my cardiovascular system would loose that much efficiency in just 3 weeks, but in thinking about it it's really that my body is working overtime trying to heal and repair all the damage done to my muscles so my HR overall is much higher so my body is just working hard all the time right now which is why I'm more tired than normal and I'm not even working out (even though my body is). What that means is that this isn't a rest period. So I'll take things one day at a time and recognize that it's just going to take some time.
This week. A couple of swims (actually swam last night and it wasn't pretty), a couple of short runs and some riding. I've got to take advantage of this great early fall weather, temps in the 80's and sunshine. Less than two weeks to Kona and I'm looking forward to getting on the island.
I plan to do a fair amount of blogging that week o
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