Tuesday, January 26, 2010

How's it goin?

Well, pretty good I guess. As good as I could hope for at this point in the game after surgery minus one little worry (I'll get to that later). I've been trying really hard to take it day by day and not get too upset about the fact that I am waaayyy under power than what I ended last season with. I am just trying to be thankful that I am back on the bike to even know what my power is. As of now I can pull a 90-95 watt average on flat pedals if I try really hard. I get to ride about 5-6 days a week for 1 hour and I hit the gym and core routine about 6 days a week for the same time. I guess that isn't a fitness routine for slackers, so I'm pretty pleased with the amount of time I put into training right now, even though I can't post any killer long rides like some of my other competition.

My 6 week appt with Dr Porter went well and I seem to be on track for the overall 100% goal. Like I have mentioned in the past, I have never trained for cross 100% properly and I'm very excited for that prospect this year. I've been easing out of the cast and into a splint over the past week and by next week I will be out of the cast all together! Right now, I pretty much only wear the cast at work and when the pain is bad. Its gonna take some retraining of my leg and foot muscles to learn how to handle walking again. It just kinda flops around right now. Its amazing how painful a fatigued ankle can be. I also started the elliptical machine for a few minutes to get some ROM back and that was a fun new thing to do at the gym right now. Aside from that, I will start clipping in to spin on the trainer this weekend, but I'm not allowed to clip out for about 4 more weeks - so that means no riding outside at least until late Feb. The risk of having to catch myself or wreck on a fresh ankle out in the big world is scary enough to make me very thankful to stay in on the safe trainer for now. Think of breaking your ankle then breaking it a moment later again. Not a good feeling. Drill holes, metal harpoons and anchors in your bones do not feel good. Right now is a painful times as I try to transition to normal walking again and being more active, so I am looking forward to the next few weeks being over and having less pain with every step.
Our little worry right now seems to be what is causing the nerve pain. I'm having an internal stitch knot reaction on the lateral part of my fibula
.
This is kinda like the bodies way of fighting off a foreign object, but this one isn't supposed to be fought off. I have this inflamed, red, burned hole over the knot and we are hoping it will not get too much worse until it dissolves. Day by day, I keep a close eye on this and I'm saying my prayers I won't need more surgery to take it out. But overall, the ankle is healing nicely and as you can compare from the week 1 picture and this above 7 week picture it looks like a totally different ankle. Amazing how much damage and trauma a body can sustain and heal from!

I've also been able to take down the temporary infirmary that was my downstairs bedroom during my recovery. I can now make it up and down the stairs okay to my master suite. Good thing, since I was ready to get my exercise room back for working out. I even had my friend Deb help me put the total gym together. My first QVC purchase!
So that's how it's going. I feel like I'm in slow motion, but slow is better than stopped.
I'm gonna keep my head up.
I'm still training pretty hard for a gimp!

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