My left calf continues to bother me. After a full-stop rest day on Monday, I felt strong enough to do a road ride on Tuesday. I was fine as long as I remained seated, but I could not pedal comfortably when I was out of the saddle. When I rode again on Wednesday—a ride on which I surpassed 3,000 miles, year-to-date—I felt strong enough to pedal out of the saddle. And that brings us to today and cyclocross practice, which proved too much for me.
Cyclocross practice was fine as long as I stayed on the bike, but I couldn’t run. During the practice race I detoured around both sets of barriers instead of dismounting to run over them. I gave something like a 75 percent effort: plenty of aerobic capacity went untapped as I very consciously tried not to hurt my leg any further. We’ll see what happens next Thursday.
In the meantime I will continue to train. Ordinary riding doesn’t aggravate the injury. And I have to keep the weight off somehow! I had a good weigh-in today: I’m down 14 pounds since May 1. I’m still +4 since this date last year and +5 since last October 1, but I could lose those pounds in the next few weeks. A handful of supplemental solo cyclocross practices might be in order. They’re short workouts but they’re much more intense than my typical road or rec trail rides. My weight loss stalls when all I do is long-steady-distance stuff. Mixing in the shorter, harder workouts always produces good results.
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