Coming back to training after an injury or illness is a difficult process. And sometimes, data, recording, and social media-ing the training can make it even harder. In the last three weeks, I’ve been learning a lot about my motivation and relationship to training metrics as I get back to the normal rhythms and routines of training. And what I learned is that sometimes, it’s OK to need that break—and taking it can be healthy.
Since I sprained my ankle at Leadville, it’s been a slow process coming back to training. Luckily, the injury itself, while painful and annoying, is healing well and is much less of a long-term injury than we were initially led to believe. So that was a huge relief. But for me, this has been the slowest comeback to training that I’ve had, ever.
I started riding with flat pedals a bit over a week after Leadville. (After clearing it with the orthopedic surgeon!) But getting back to training was also complicated by what should have been a simple quick oral surgery that turned into 10 days of extreme pain, antibiotics, and all that fun stuff, which left me feeling both flattened physically, but also unable to breath through my mouth on the bike just due to that pain from stitches. So, it was going to be slow.
Still, getting back on the bike as a cyclist-turned-runner is a very easy path to some extremely spiral-y behavior. After a week of doing next to nothing, having only run 50 of the 100 miles of the race, I was definitely chomping at the bit to get moving. Not ridiculously, but the panic of ‘what if I stop training for a few weeks?’ was definitely starting to build. So getting back to pedaling felt good—but I was aware that it could easily go sideways.
That’s why I made the decision that for the first couple weeks as I got back to simply moving my body, I wouldn’t record any rides. Now, most readers know that I’m not a data nerd regardless, so it wasn’t a major issue from an info-collection standpoint since I’m pretty casual about that anyway. It was really more about the mental side. Until yesterday, my rides were all done strictly with my phone timer pinging when I should turn around after doing 30 or 45 minutes out in one (flat) direction. I didn’t measure the mileage, my speed, how much further I went one day versus the day before—I just timed it so I could be home in time for whatever was happening the rest of the day. I didn’t want the power, speed, heart rate—nothing. Because that wasn’t the point. The point was just to get moving, get that light aerobic work in.
Yesterday, I rejoined the Strava masses and started using my cycling computer again, because it felt like the time was right to start pushing a little again, to actually be riding as opposed to recovering. This was an intentional shift—I was finally feeling like I had energy to use to train for the first time.
All of this to say, I think sometimes it’s really smart to turn off the recording devices when you’re in recovery mode. And it feels so good when you do get to come back.
