on the road to recovery

It has been probably 5 years since the last time I crashed so I had completely forgotten how tough dealing with road rash can be. It's funny because though the cuts are seemingly shallow combined with the bruising they become so incredibly painful.

My right elbow healed up really fast and I have been without those bandages since day 2. All that remains are a few scabs and some bruising. However, as I took that wrap off the bruises all over my legs started appearing. So my skin coloring down there is a pleasant shade of blue and green now. As for the other wounds, I had a great time peeling the old bandages off, for some reason "non-stick gauze" still has a tendency to stick, and redressing them in order to get back to training yesterday.

I built my bike up with an ambitious intention to ride for 2 hours. That changed within the first 15 minutes of my ride. The range of motion pulls the skin around the deepest cuts on my right hip and thus was a very constant reminder of the crash with each and every foot stroke. I also had a bit of trouble holding the bars as the bumps in the road were quite hard on my very bruised left elbow. But, I figured anything I did was going to be uncomfortable and I was determined to train, so I put up with the discomfort for an hour. Returning home I decided that perhaps running may be easier on me since the range of motion would be much smaller. I opted to go on the treadmill so that if I encountered any issues I could immediately stop and I wouldn't have to walk a long way back home. I ended up doing a modified build run increasing the treadmill speed by .5mph every 5 minutes up to what is the equivalent of about 6:15 pace. I felt great once I got going with only mild discomfort. It was actually when I stopped to cool down that my legs stiffened up and reminded me how hard I had gone down only 2 days earlier.

Today, it was back to the pool. I was anxious to be back in the water because I hate being out for more than 2 days in a row. It's a swimmer thing... I just find that I lose my feel so fast. So I went out and bought an assortment of waterproof bandages after my run yesterday. Unfortunately, some of them didn't even make it through the night as all of the ooze leaked out breaking the seal and essentially making them ineffective. So, at 5am I was changing bandages so I would be ready for the 5:30 start. I managed a good 6k swim, flip turns were a bit tough and quite slow, but I managed to get a good aerobic session in. Now, it is on to a lot of running as I will take a few more days off the bike since it is the most painful. That is never a problem as I can never run enough so I'm actually looking forward to having a few really solid days out on the trails and treadmill.