A Week of Idleness and Lethargy ... and a surprise

So,  there I was Monday, not really interested in exercise, which flowed into Tuesday, Wednesday and almost into Thursday.  I think it was a combination of factors.  Firstly I have been doing a fair bit of exercise since I started this side show and secondly since the cancelling of the swim leg and my inability to participate in the Standford Tri, I haven't got a goal at the moment of the next Tri to participate in.  Thus finding motivation this week was a little ... difficult.

Thursday

Finally got motivated and out on the bike and around the short Alpine Loop.  I started a little under 100% and wasn't pushing myself to my limits but measuring my effort, then as the long up hill started I pushed pretty hard.  I was looking at the average speed through the ride and I was keeping it so high that I was worried I would be decreasing it at the end, rather than increasing it.  Overall I was incredibly happy with the ride, the fastest average speed ever (moving average of 21.3 mph).  Apparently the three days off was worth it!

Saturday

Spent Saturday morning after picking up a bike stand working on the bikes.  On the Thursay ride there was a fair bit of water on the road from the recent rains and the bike was a mess.  So I cleaned both Colleen's bike an mine and then oiled the chains made sure all the wheels were correctly seated.  Check the tire pressures and the brakes.  I figure if I am going downhill at over 45 mph (72 km/h) I should probably make sure the bike is in good shape.

After the bike was sorted out - off to soccer.  No not a misprint a typo or a lie.  I played soccer.  Probably not the wisest move, but I was just so keen to go an play, I have no idea why.  Up until this point I had no real desire to, partially to not try to hasten my recovery perhaps, partially because I was busy with all this Tri stuff, but whatever was diminishing it evaporated Saturday morning , because I was keen.  So Saturday afternoon I was back out on the pitch.  Colleen came to make sure that I didn't do anything more silly than I already was in just participating.  Luckily or perhaps because of excellent physical preparation nothing untoward happened, at least to my surgically repaired knee.  I slipped once, but everything was ok.  I ran into Blake and we both fell, bruising him up and bruised the inside of my right knee pretty bad.  I also had a lot of very ordinary passes, crosses and three terrible shots on goal.

One and a half hours later I was yanked.  Colleen decided that that was enough and I was taken off the pitch.  She was a saint or letting me go for that long.  Th next day, and the day after that and the day after that I hurt.  There is something so much more dynamic running around playing soccer that isn't captured in riding or even running distance or anything in my day-to-day life.  My quads hurt, my back hurt, my calves hurt, my groin hurt.  I was a mess.  The good news is one of the few things that didn't hurt was my left knee, which of course is an awesome result.

It was five calendar months to the day from my surgery (October 12th - March 12th) which was one month faster than I had planned.  One hundred and fifty one days or twenty-one weeks and four days.  A pretty exciting development, but not one that will repeated regularly.  I was pretty cautions through most of it and didn't try anything too clever.  Mostly because basic things were beyond me since it has been well over seven month since I last played soccer.  A game every other week might be the goal just to get a different sort of running, and to strengthen all those lateral movement muscles.

Sunday

Out for a ride with Colleen around the normal loop in a break in the weather.  Colleen was being a little lethargic, due to her lack of exercise through the week as well.  However a woman coming down the hill when La Honda meets Portola in front of us gave her the carrot she needed, with a good dose of prodding from your truly.  Colleen chased down that woman and then the next guy and then another guy as we went through Woodside.

The highlight of the day though was when Colleen spotted a "bobcat".  She yelled at me and we doubled back.  I pointed out what a poor idea it was to head back to see a bobcat, but we went anyway.  I advised her if it came at us to keep the bike between her and the wild, vicious animal.  When we rode back along the line where Colleen saw the "bobcat" we saw a larger than average black house cat sleeping on the fence.  Be sure that there was a lot of ribbing about the bobcat during the rest of the ride home ...

So my goals for next week are to do more exercise and select a new Triathlon to aim for.