oops, i think i hurt myself again

Published Tuesday, July 24, 2007 by geo | E-mail this post

I'm not sure what I did, if anything... but I'm starting to be a little concerned.

This was a very good training week for me. Tuesday was a pretty hardcore spin class (although I have no HRM data). Everything felt pretty good. On Wednesday the instructor didn't show up, so I had to make my own personal class without music. That actually worked out a lot better than I had expected. Looking at my heart rate graph, it looks like I managed to build myself up quite well doing proper intervals, climbs and speed work. I think I'm going to try and do more solo work like that at home. Plus I get the added bonus of acquiring cadence data! W000W!

I took Thursday and Friday off in anticipation of the big ride double header weekend. Saturday was to Keswick, and Sunday was to Uxbridge again.

I showed up late on Saturday, just as everyone was leaving. I wasn't too worried though... I've been getting pretty fast lately. It's kinda crazy actually. I caught and passed most of the riders before we were out of Markham. There was one group I was drafting for a short while, until they made a wrong turn at Leslie and Stouffville Rd. I used the opportunity to fly ahead of everyone and completely lost them.

I couldn't believe how easy the ride felt. It seemed like ten minutes later I was at the barbeque at the halfway point... and after from the British guy (I think his name might have been Ian), I was the second one who had made it up. I was shocked, even though I tried to play it off. When the others came by I found out that a few of the faster riders were chasing Glenn to let him know that he had gone the wrong way. So there was a reason... but it still felt good.

On the way back a few of us took a side trip to Sharon Temple to check it out. I was burning hard climbing those hills. Both of the guys were lighter than me, so I was averaging a 160 bpm heartrate for 5k. From there it was a fairly challenging ride. At the hill going down Warden after Bloomington I was averaging 40 km/h for 10k. Crazy fast. My heart rate was pretty high there too, but this time it was fun, because I was going bloody fast.

I missed the turn and made a little detour, but I was still ahead of everyone (other than the British guy) for a little while. I stopped for some fluids since now I only carry two water bottles and saw Walter, Geoff and Steve (I think?) go past. I spent the rest of the ride trying to catch them.

The end result was that I had pulled the fastest 2-way average speed I've ever done, at 28 km/h. Admittedly there was a fair bit of drafting, but I'll take what I can get. :)

Sunday I didn't get any drafting opportunities. Most of the ride was done solo since I was late (yet again), and I don't think any of my usual riding buddies were on the ride. The good thing is since I've done the Uxbridge ride already and it was still in my Forerunner, I could actually ride against myself! This was an awesome incentive to push hard... maybe too hard.

At any given time the watch said I was within 1 or 2 km of what the Forerunner said I was at the last time, so I kept pushing... and pushing. Going up hills I was pulling up on the pedals just as hard as I was pushing down with the other foot. I was spinning hard, keeping my cadence AND torquing the hell out of the crank. It's even making a new creaking noise from all the effort I've been putting into it. Hardcore.

By the time I reached the Rouge valley I gave up on catching myself. I felt a pain on the inside of my left knee. I figured it was a hamstring. I've done it before. It wasn't pleasant, but a week of rest completely cured it. So I just concentrated on making it back in one piece.

It turned out that I actually beat my last time by 13 minutes, and my average speed went up from 25 km/h to 26.2. I don't know what was up with the watch. It pushed me hard, but because of that I might have injured myself. Not cool.

Yesterday I started pushing on the inside of my knee where it was hurting, and I felt a sharp familiar pain on the other side—my IT Band. This is a real piss off. The day after I actually get excited about this ride and say something about how I'm so happy I haven't felt any pain this happens.

I've been icing it since, stretching it every chance I get, and manipulating the area as much as I can. I'm going to try a very light spin tonight when I get home and see how it feels. It's improved a lot since yesterday, so I'm actually fairly confident that it'll be fine by the weekend. I just have to be very careful.

More stats from Saturday's 133k ride here:

More stats from Sunday's 120k ride here:

Update: It looks like I only injured myself because I was actually competing against myself on a completely different ride—the one to Campbellville. Haha. So much for that brilliant idea. I'm going to have to try out another ride I've already done. It certainly makes sense why the elevation data looked so wrong...