randomduck

It’s been six months (and one day, as I started writing this on the 11th, and it’s now the 12th) since my injury – since #projectfemur began.

I am not, by nature, a patient person. My patience is wearing thin in terms of indoor workouts. I’m riding the spinning bike, lifting weights, stretching, and it’s tedious and boring. Sure, I see and feel positive results, but I’m not sure how gym rats do it all year long.

Yes, I can hike, but I haven’t since the Connecticut trip. I have the Rock Creek Park trails close to home, but I’ve been oblivious to their draw. Perhaps the spate of afternoon thunderstorms has me leery to go into darker, wooded areas. And the mud around here is slick, which isn’t conducive for sure-footed hiking.

And while I’ve discussed the idea of going to yoga classes with sprite, that hasn’t become a reality just yet. Perhaps this coming week, that can be fixed.

I’ll also finally start my indoor trainer workouts on the Wahoo Kickr this coming Tuesday (at *cough* six effing thirty in the morning – a time of my own choosing, I admit), which will mean riding my own bike. And I’ll be riding with friends, riding to some intense workout programs, and maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a better shot of my own version of “vitamin A.”

“Vitamin A” is the adrenaline thing I mentioned in my last post: I crave it, and I’m not getting it from my current high-intensity indoor training, at least not in amounts that register with my psyche.

So I celebrated my six month anniversary of #projectfemur by riding a bike to Friday Coffee Club.

It was on a Capital Bikeshare bike, rolling slowly on the lowest traffic roads between The Burrow and M.E. Swing’s.

It was liberating.

I smiled a lot.

I felt free.

And that’s likely it for outdoor rides until mid-August.

Y’see, I did it on the sly. I didn’t let anybody know until it was over – not even sprite.

It was, any way you look at it, a boneheaded, selfish, childish move.

I didn’t feel like I was in any danger at all. CaBi bikes handle very predictably, are fairly slow, and are perfect for an initial foray into outdoor riding. At least that was my approach to my 1.3 mile ride.

But I hadn’t told anybody I was riding, not even sprite – a big mistake, if you look at my current risk level. I didn’t have anything on my person explaining that I’m on anticoagulant medications, just in case I got into an accident and needed medical assistance.

As I admit: it was a very irresponsible thing to do. And while I enjoyed it at the time, as the day wore on, I knew I hadn’t gone about the ride in the proper way.

So I’m in the doghouse right now. sprite was right to be mad at me, and I don’t expect those feelings to subside soon. What I did was hurtful and insensitive. Given all she’s done for me during #projectfemur, it was a truly dumb move on my part. I am most sorry for that.

I think I’ll stick to the complete mental torture that is indoor workouts – and the occasional hike here and there, with friends – until I’m off these (now likely unneeded) meds. It will do my body good, if not my psyche. And while I can commute via bike, taking the precautions that I didn’t this morning, I can see myself forgetting to let sprite know I’ve made it to my destination. That would be a deal breaker.

We’ll see. All I know is that I caused a lot of grief that I do not wish to repeat.

Days since surgery: 181

Somehow I managed to not publish any updates in June. I’m not sure how it happened, but it’s not as if I was doing nothing.

The weekend after Memorial Day, sprite and I went to Bethany Beach, Delaware, to get away from things and enjoy the surf. The water was “New England warm” – i.e. 60°F/14°C – and the air temperature was mild (as has been the case with most weekends this summer). We managed to see the sunrise over the water, which was extremely beautiful and worth the pain of rising so early in the morning.

Leaving DC for the weekend was effective at getting my mind out of “I’m missing the bike” mode – at least for a little while.

The rest of the month had highs and lows: days where I’d feel like I’m moving forward, and others where I questioned whether there was any point in doing the work needed to get my leg back into shape. Indeed, the nice weekend weather, combined with the fact that my flexibility level and basic leg strength are good enough to get onto a bike, tore at me.

All. the. time.

Yet I soldiered on. I continued with my intensive PT regimen, with Scott and Megan working me, stretching me, poking and prodding me (i.e. dry needling), giving me new “homework” assignments every week. I work hard to “ace” these assignments, and tend to do quite well in exceeding expectations.

And there have been breakthroughs. I can balance on my bad leg:

And I’ve been working out on a Spinning® bike that I’ve setup to my road bike’s measurements:

I do well on the spin bike, but I call it “going nowhere – really fast!” I’ve discovered that I like indoor cycling about as much as I like riding the bus: it’s OK for collecting my thoughts, it is a means to a (fitness) end, but it’s not overly enjoyable. I do workouts that mimic stuff I’d do on a normal bike – endurance riding, working on form, intervals, et al – but it’s not the same as real cycling.

There’s no change of scenery, save for whatever TV program is on the little screen. The tiny little fan on the control panel blows a feeble stream of wind across my brow (no way to setup a good box fan at the gym), and the eSpinning® bike doesn’t react like a real bike. To “shift gears” means turning a resistance knob where the top tube should be, and if I stand to “dance” on the pedals, the bike doesn’t rock under me like a real bike.

Hello, my name is Rudi, and I’m an adrenaline addict in serious withdrawal.

Granted, I’ll be working with a Wahoo indoor trainer starting this coming week (I hope), and that should get things moving in a better direction. I’ve cleaned the drivetrain of the Pedal Force to get it in shape for this next chapter:

Still, these stationary bike workouts are not analogous to real cycling.

Trust me: I feel like I should be out there on the roads. I know I could be out there, riding safely, and enjoying the hell out of the ride. But it’s not in the cards just yet – thank you, anticoagulant meds. To say I’m displeased is an understatement.

I am finding ways to mix things up. For example, a couple weekends ago, I went on a nice morning hike in the hills of northern Connecticut:

(Click on the picture to see it in a bigger size – it’s a nice view from the top of Soapstone Mountain in Shenepsit State Forest!)

I also built a tiny Intel NUC for sprite’s dad. They are amazingly tiny – and very capable – computers for the money.

(Yes, it is smaller in width and depth than a CD case – very tiny, yet powered by a Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM!)

And I repaired my 9-year-old (!) iPod, replacing its dying hard drive and dead battery. I also replaced the batteries on my old heart rate monitor (to use in the gym), and finally sent my old Garmin Edge 500 (with its blown-out screen) for a warranty repair (hey – GPS data in real time!).

I’ve also has some incredible, high quality time with sprite. Y’see, during a typical summer, I spend a great deal of weekend time away at long bike rides. As she’s not an endurance bike rider, she stays home, while I’m gone for huge chunks of daylight time.

This summer, we’re doing more things together on the weekends. From traveling to the beach, to walking around town, to exploring new places, to simply sitting in the park and reading in the sunshine, I am enjoying this time with her quite a bit.

While it’s not the summer is typically experience and enjoy, it’s satisfying.

I hope that the rest of the summer contains more fun travels. Right now, there are a few variables that need to be nailed down before sprite and I can commit to doing anything more than a weekend jaunt to the beach or the mountains (and if it’s sprite, the beach always wins out).

There are many things left to do. I need to continue with the #projectfemur recovery (which is still on schedule, much as I’m still grousing about it a lot). I want to take advantage of the summer. I want to see my endurance cycling friends (hey guys, it’s me, Rudi – remember me?). I want to hang out more with my DC friends. I want to see movies, eat out, cook out, camp, hike the VA, MD, and WV mountains.

And I want to ride my bicycle.

So there is an upside, right?

Right?

34 more days… 34 more days…

Days since surgery: 175

Right now I feel like a spectator.

I feel disconnected.

Disconnected from the world I know and love.

Disconnected from many friends.

Disconnected from “normal.”

Things have been going well with my healing. My leg grows stronger every day. I’m to the point where, as long as the surfaces I walk on are fairly smooth, I can walk without a crutch and without any major limp (this crutch-free walk is still very much a work-in-progress). The flexibility I depend on for my agility and power is coming back, bit by bit. I’m putting in the hours on a recumbent stationary trainer at the gym, and am very close to being able to sling a leg over a regular bike, which will open me up to the world of more proper bike trainer simulations. And my outpatient physical therapy is working wonders in getting all the various and sundry pieces of “normal leg function” into place.

Really, I’m happy about this – elated, even.

But it’s still not quite right.

I miss my friends.

They ground me. They entertain, provide a sounding board, provoke conversation, and so much more.

And right now, I feel disconnected from most of them.

I miss my cycling friends a lot. I can follow their exploits via Strava, emails, and whatnot, but it’s not the same.

I’m not hanging out with them like I usually do. And when they go out on an epic ride, or compete in a well-known local race, I hear about it after the fact – sometimes well after the fact.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to know, as it simply makes me jealous and angry that I can’t be out there – rubbing salt in the proverbial wound. But there’s another part that wants to know simply to relate, as cycling is the root of these friendships, even those that have grown beyond the realm of the bike.

So I sit here, stuck. Sometimes, I simply want to throw my crutch across the room in frustration.

My cycling friends are neck deep in training for the big events of their seasons right now, and I don’t want to derail their efforts. All the same, I want to see them, hang out, socialize, even if it’s not on the bike. It could be anything: watching the Giro d’Italia stages in the evening, or going out to dinner or for post-work drinks, even a gym workout – anything would be an improvement.

And my non-cycling friends are similarly busy right now. Weekends are often the best times to hang out, but my close DC friends have a lot on their plates right now, some of them fun, others decidedly not. They were there for me (as were my cycling friends) when I was in hospital and needed the company. Since I’ve been out of hospital, I’m grateful for the times I do get to hang out with them, fleeting as they may be. Perhaps the month of May will settle things down a bit.

But, as I said in the opening of this post, I feel like a spectator to a life I miss. It gnaws at me and makes me feel like things are passing me by, even if they aren’t doing that at all. The feeling of an invisible wall between where I am and where I’d like to be is evident, even on the best of days.

Injury, you are cruel and cunning in your efficient wresting of normality.

Yes, I am more grateful than ever for every step I’m able to take on my right leg, for the fact that I will be back on the bike and back on skis, and that I am still, essentially, healthy. But injury still has me slightly by the scruff in terms of disconnecting me from the things that keep me sane.

I want to re-connect.

I need to reconnect.

I need the balance to return.

And I’m fairly sure I’m the one who needs to make the first move.

This isn’t the official list topic, but it works for what I have to say with this update:

1. Recovery continues to go well, all things being equal.
2. I need to remain on an anticoagulant until at least mid-May mid-August.* Hopefully, that will be the end of it, as I can’t do any high-risk things (e.g. outdoor cycling) while on said medication.
3. I now have a hematologist who will give me a date certain for cessation of the anticoagulant.*
4. I saw my orthopedist yesterday. He’s impressed with the bone healing and the building muscle strength in my leg, and cleared me for full weight bearing – woo-hoo!
5. My outpatient physical therapy is quite challenging. Both of the therapists I’m seeing (my main PT and another PT who previously worked on my shoulder) have me on an aggressive strength and flexibility program. They do deep-tissue massage on my hip and knee to loosen the atrophied muscles.
6. After all of the workout and massage, these muscles are sore, especially my adductors and iliacus groups. The upside: I see tangible improvement from day to day and week to week.
7. I’m walking around a lot, and my walking gait is far better as my leg gets stronger and more flexible.
8. Last week at PT, I was introduced to a Pilates Reformer. It was a good challenge for my still-wobbly leg muscles.
9. Riding a stationary bike will likely start this coming week, though I’ll know more about this after tomorrow’s outpatient PT appointment.
10. I return to work on April 10.

I think that covers it, really. Despite today’s snow, DC’s spring seems to be rolling in.

Days since surgery: 72

ETA on 4/18/14: corrected end date for anticoagulant drugs to mid-August.