When my vacation rolled around I was tired. Tired enough that I was starting to struggle mightily to hold speeds that should have been easy.
After a 950 mile May, I busted 1,000 in June and for the first week and a half of July I was on pace for a whopping 1,500 miles for the month. All while meeting my responsibilities to my wife, kids and work.
My wife drove down for vacation a week early and took my Trek with her, leaving me with my Venge. I flew down and brought my shoes and a couple of spare kits with me (I packed a bag and sent it with her rather than pay to check a bag). The idea was to ride every day. We only rode once in the nine days I was down there and I was okay with it. We were too busy having fun spending all day on the lake and all evening preparing dinner and playing cards. I figure I probably swam two hours a day, much of it playing tag with my two daughters on a travel swim team and my niece and nephews who all swim like fishes. Let’s just say it was a fairly active vacation, we just didn’t ride much.
After driving home Saturday night we rode on Sunday, a fairly easy ride, but fun. Monday was short and slow but enjoyable, on the tandem. Tuesday was a great ride with the club, a 40 mile night with the main 30 above 21 mph. My legs were cramping hard those last five miles. Wednesday was a decent effort on the tandem again and yesterday was an easy 16 mph day… Then came the lone solo ride of the week this morning and my legs finally felt normal after a 2 mile warmup. Not only did they feel normal, after a slow-ish 18 mph start, I was topping 22 and holding it with ease. By the time I rolled over the halfway point I was just shy of a 20.5 mph average. Perfect.
I dialed it back for the second half because I’ll be riding again with my wife again this evening and I’ve got two long rides scheduled for tomorrow and Sunday (150+ miles for the two days). Best to keep a little powder dry because Sunday’s going to be tough.
This is why I rarely take days off. It takes too long to spin the legs back up after a break. Still, I have to work on some balance a little bit… Of course, that is a good problem to have.
For the rest of the day I’ll be cutting grass and my friend Chuck and I are heading up to the hospital to visit Mike.
UPDATE: On second thought, a better title would have been “The Day My Legs Came Back… I didn’t lose any fitness, I just had to get my legs back onto the game.
Fit Recovery 