Week Six

That's a hell of a gap in training.

Six weeks from the crash and things are still fairly achy. At this point, trying to monitor the rate of improvement is like trying to watch grass grow. Actually slower. Since I've been sitting here looking out the window since March 10 I've watched the city Parks and Parkways people cut the grass on the neutral ground twice. I had thought that by now I would be more or less back to normal, but I guess these particular injuries, while not necessarily any more painful or slow to heal than previous ones, have just made it much harder to actually sit on a bike, and therefore ride, and therefore not get fat. At any rate, I was frustrated enough that I thought I'd go back in my blog and see how I was feeling at six weeks after various collarbone fractures. I was a little surprised to find that those were also still achy at six weeks. The difference it that, despite the nagging pain, I had been able to get back on the bike and on the road, albeit solo, within three to five weeks after injury. But of course in those cases, sitting on the saddle wasn't a problem, and the complications of falling off the bike would have been significantly fewer, so I guess I should just be patient.

Marginal improvement in the New Orleans area

I've done a few rides on Zwift now, working up from about ten minutes to forty-five. They haven't been very comfortable, and the effort levels have been fairly low, but at least I've been able to get my heart rate up off the floor for a little while. The setup I'm using is low-budget to say the least. With Zwift set up for an "unsupported" trainer, and without an actual power meter, I think the power estimates, and therefore avatar speed, are pretty inaccurate. Just judging by heart rate vs. speed on the flat, and comparing actual experience to game experience, I'd guess it's under-estimating speed. It's not really a problem except that it just feels strange to have other avatars passing me at dramatically higher speeds all the time. I suppose I can tolerate it all for a couple more weeks.

Old books, occasionally referenced

Hopefully I'll be able to get out on the road by then. I doubt I'll be too comfortable riding with a group for the foreseeable future, however. Therapies for COVID-19 seem to be evolving, which is good, but I'm old enough to be at a little higher risk should I become infected, which is something I'd rather delay as long as possible under the circumstances. With cities and states getting understandably anxious about re-opening their economies, it seems inevitable that there will be a second wave of infections at some point. New Orleans itself seems to be moving in the right direction, but of course that doesn't mean that SARS-CoV-2 is just going to disappear. It's going to be a long summer. All bike racing has been shut down for a month and it's looking like it will stay that way for at least a couple more. Schools are starting to think about how they might, or might not, be able to re-open in the fall. Graduation ceremonies are all going online.