A Fitness Update

"I've become a cyclist."

A statement I never thought I would make.

When I was 10 years old, I was riding bikes with my friend, Andrea, on a side street near her house.  I was on her brother's bike, so one I wasn't terribly familiar with, and while speeding down a hill, I lost control and flipped over the handlebars.  I knocked out a front tooth, which a dentist shoved back into my mouth after my parents could locate a dentist open on a holiday, permanently damaged other teeth, fractured my jawbone and sprained my wrist.  I had to undergo surgery to have my jaws wired together in order for the fracture to heal.

That accident has never really left me as I will continue to live with the consequences.  I now have an implant for a front tooth.  My parents eventually found a dentist who was able to slow down the rejection process of that tooth, but eventually it began to disintegrate in my mouth.  At that point, I was an adult so I was able to receive an implant.  The teeth on either side of the implant are crowns.  When I underwent surgery to place the metal rod in my jawbone for the implant, I had to have a bone graft done.  Thankfully that took hold and as of last year, the bone still looked good.  I also had a gum graft around the implant but that never took hold and has been receding.  Right now, it's just cosmetic and no one can see it because it's above my smile line, but if it continues to pull back, I will need to have it repaired.

Because of that accident, I'm an extremely cautious cyclist.  I will only ride on designated bike paths.  Honestly, around here, you have to have a bit of a death wish to ride on the road.  We have the whole "share the road" thing but there are so many roadways that are just wide enough for two cars.  Add in a bike and a texting/speeding driver, and no thank you.

I don't know exactly what I did but it appears that it was the perfect storm of events that lead to my ankle injury and even though I've taken off the better part of the summer from running, I am still not completely healed.  I know I made a mistake jumping back into 3 miles every other day at the beginning of July and after that stupid decision, I took off three weeks from running.  I began to bike more and more with some days of walking.  Then I picked up running again but it was so light.  A mile to a mile and a half every couple of days.

For the month of July, I ran a grand total of 12 miles.  Eleven of those miles were during the first week of the month.  I thought my ankle was doing better.  I wasn't experiencing any pain when running but there would be some stiffness here and there when I wasn't running, mostly when I did a lot of walking in the sand/up and down steep beach access stairways.

Last Saturday morning, I ran 2 miles.  I had run 2 miles at some point the week before without incident and after several days off, thought it would be okay to run 2 again.  And I was fine.  On Tuesday afternoon, after 3 full days of recovery, I brought the girls over to a paved recreational path near our neighborhood.  Emily ran with me while Allie and Anna rode their scooters.  We stopped after a mile for a break and to turn around.  I had intended to run the full mile back but that all too familiar pain returned to my ankle about a quarter of a mile in.  I stopped at a half mile because it wasn't letting up and wouldn't you know that felt achy that night.

At this point, I don't want to go to the doctor because I've been down that route before and it typically ends with "you need to stay off of it and rest."  Plus, right now between Anna and my parents there are just so many medical appointments.  I really don't want to add this into the mix, especially since I'm pretty sure tendinitis is involved and it was feeling better with rest.  I think I just need to stay off it more, which is where cycling comes into the picture.

Even though I wasn't running much, I was walking.  Sometimes up to three miles.  I'm going to cut that out of my exercise for now and really try to stay off of that ankle.  (Except for tap class, which starts next week.  No jump-shuffling for me though.)  I've biked more than I ever have this summer and I'm enjoying it.  I push myself and I can feel I'm getting a good workout.  I am lucky to have that paved recreational path, which is good for bike riding, near our neighborhood but, unfortunately, it's fairly short.  You can only go 1.5 miles before you have to turn around.  It doesn't take me very long to do that 3 miles (down and back) so I need to repeat it to get my mileage up.  And then sometimes repeat it again because I have time and I want to go farther.  There are so many scenic and much longer bike paths in our area but they are 30+ minutes away (via vehicle) so up and back on repeat will have to do for now.  

I don't have a shiny bike or official cycling gear but I've learned from running that you can't judge someone's ability on appearance alone.  I'm out there and I'm doing it.