Off the Bike and it’s Killing Me

If it makes you feel any better I have had to fix six flats in the last two weeks, And it’s incredibly buggy outside. And the wind is always in my face. And they seem to have steepened every hill. Oh, I forgot to mention being doored twice.

Actually I have crashed twice this spring.

Does that help?

Okay, here’s a topic about which I know something.

First of all, thank goodness you got timely medical treatment. That is serious business. Riding can at times take a back seat to, you know, staying alive.

Second, consider this: your overall conditioning and level of fitness are probably helping you recover much more easily and quickly than you would have had you not been in good shape. As hard as that may be to believe at the moment.

Third, I was off the bike for eight and a half months in 2009 while the medical professionals performed various forms of torture on me. I also managed to gain 20 pounds. I started back at absolute zero in terms of strength and conditioning. The good news is, you will return to form, but it takes patience as much as work. Some years weren’t meant to be high mileage years. But those will come in time.

Best wishes for continuing recovery.

Liz

I’m so sorry to hear about your illness. That sucks, no way around it. On the bright side, it sounds like you can expect a full recovery. If it makes you feel any better, I battled a very painful case of plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the major tendon in the foot) for about a year and could barely walk. At the time I lived in London and didn’t have a car so walking was largely my only mode of transportation; it was very inconvenient.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

That sucks, Jim.

In the interim, talk to the docs weekly about what activities you can do when: they’ll adjust this based on how your recovery is going. But make it clear you were active and want to be active again, sometimes it affects their treatment techniques. And as you start becoming more active, check with them on how to watch for too much too soon.

Look forward not just to the start of riding, but how strong you’ll be again six months after you’re riding again.

I crashed hard on a lobster-pot sized pothole at the construction at 18th and Florida on Halloween, struggled to get back home to Clarendon to pick up my costume and only then realized my knee was swelling so much I couldn’t ride back into DC. A few days later, I was diagnosed with a fractured patella and had to be in a locked-at-extension brace for a month and no biking for two months.

Riding *was* my mood stabilizer and just *what I did*. So I got myself to a shrink pronto. That helped.

Slowly working back up to the fitness level I was at last summer and looking forward getting there.

Brendan

Sorry to hear….I spent close to two months off the bike this past winter due to a wonky knee…Whenever the weather was nice, or I would see other people out and about biking, it would drive me nuts….I know your pain, and just wanted to chime in to wish you luck, and a speedy recovery.