MinnMan

I've been off the bike for 4 months, dealing with a chronic leg condition (it took a long time to diagnose, but when I finally had an MRI, it turned out to be tendinopathy of the right gluteous medius). At first it wasn't healing at all, but with PT and a great deal of rest, it's now healing slowly. The good news is that I am beginning to ride again.

I've done essentially no riding at all since mid-January - maybe 200-300 miles total, with nothing over 10 miles at a time, but starting at the beginning of May, I've been doing some gentle rides - 15 miles or so, under 15 MPH. So today I thought I was entitled to push a little further. 26 miles at just under 16 MPH. This is about what I did for a recovery ride up until my injury.

Wow, am I EXHAUSTED. I can hardly believe what I was capable of just a few short months ago, when i tossed of 40 mile rides without even considering them to be much of an effort and did 80 mile rides most weekends.

I'm frustrated to be back near square one and to have to have the patience to build back up again. I can't ride with my friends - they'd put me in the ground, perhaps literally. But I'm happy to be riding again and looking forward to slowly improving.

And I"m even more impressed with what I was capable of before. I was really fit!

stapfam

There are so many of us that have not ridden much over the last winter that I am beginning to think it must be a viral infection.

Since October I have just been turning the legs on the bike but I retired on 31st March. That gave me a bit more time- subject to weather and mental attitude- to get out on the bike a bit more. Started out just riding gently for at least 20 miles. Not much effort and bypassing the hills where possible. By the end of April and a bit of speed had come back and hills were not feared-Not liked much either but at least I was doing them. Milage up to 40 odd miles and funnily enough I found longer rides easier. Second wind was coming in at around 10 miles.

You may have a daunting task ahead of you--(You haven't really but it will seem so) but just do the rides at the effort level you want to do them at. Within a couple of weeks effort will be higher and milage will be up.Within a couple of months and you will be getting a tow up the hills from your mates and another couple and you will be towing them. Providing they haven't dropped you before you get to them.

fat biker

MM,

Good that you finally got a valid diagnosis and that your treatment is going well.

Amazing just how fast our capacity for work goes away. I could tell you stories...

Get well, stay well, ride well.

Jeff, still fat

xjken99

Congrats on the recovery no matter how slow it may seem. You are riding again which is what is most important but, don't push to hard you do not want a setback. Any idea what caused the leg condition in the first place?

Yo Spiff

It'll come back quicker than you think.

Velo Dog

Probably so. In December, I was in a wheelchair and needed help to go to the bathroom. Today I took a break from putting in my vegetable garden and went for a short ride. I'm a long way from where I was, but I can see it...

cyclinfool

Add miles slowly, don't expect too much at the first. It takes a few months to get you endurance back.
I am suffering from the same issue.

One good thing that my Doc friends have told me, that you retain the vascular infrastructure which takes several years to develop longer than the muscle tone, that's why it can come back faster.

MinnMan

Well, it's amazing how many of us are dealing with different versions of this issue. It comes with the age, I suppose.

I don't really know what precipitated the problem. It was either something wrong with the biomechanics or just plain overuse. I added lots of miles last year and also for the first time was doing lots and lots of hard steep hills. Once I get closer to normal, I'll be getting a detailed fitting from the sports medicine program at the university.

Thanks all for the encouragement. I do hope the fitness comes back soon, but I'm shooting for no more than the standard 10%/week increase in distance. I just hope my leg keeps feeling better.

Oh yeah, the MRI also showed that I have arthritis in both of my hips. In retrospect, I've been aware of a minor discomfort when I really work my hips, but for the moment, I'm not worrying about it. It's an annoyance with which I can live and ride.

JanMM

We lose our strength faster than we regain it but it does come back.

DnvrFox

Find some roses to smell. Make your recovery enjoyable, not a tedious chore. And, yes, those blood arteries, etc., are still there.

robtown

I feel your exhaustion - only mine comes much earlier. The 9 mile bike to work took a toll on me. I used the surgery I had last summer as an excuse to slack off. After the century ride in October I essentially stopped cycling until this month.

Hopefully we'll all recover to a point where we can enjoy rides of interesting lengths.

Bikey Mikey

Don't rush it. Just enjoy that you are back on the bike again.

Dudelsack 

I had never heard of that condition, so a quick trip to the Interwebs was in order. That sounds like a nasty condition. May I ask how you sustained the injury? I ask because I want to avoid it if I can.

Closed Office

Yes, it's starting to dawn on me the things I still have that are worth being grateful for.

It's nice to have the whole breathing apparatus still working.

MinnMan

Dudelsack:

tendinopathy or tendinosis isn't too common for cyclists. IT's more common for runners. Also, it's more commonly the achilles tendon, the patellar tendon (knee), or elbow (tennis elbow). It tends to be a repetitive use injury. As far as I can tell, it's not an inflammation (that's tendonitis), but rather an aggravation of the tendons that makes them weaker, perhaps owing to microtearing. It's degenerative b/c the worse the symptoms, the more prone you are to further injury.

In my case, the pain has never been acute, but it just hasn't gone away and, at least at first, even modst amounts of riding caused further aggravation. Later, even walking more than 15 minutes was aggravating.

It's chronic and degenerative and does not get better with rest. Guaranteed treatments don't exist, really - the most successful treatment is physical therapy (eccentric loading). There are some controversial experimental treatments (experimental means that your insurance won't cover it) involving injections and shock wave therapy.

I seem to be responding to PT. The doc says complete recovery is likely, but there's no guarantee and the danger of reinjury will remain.

B. Carfree

Whenever my wife and/or I do a protracted lay-off from training rides, we call the resulting feeling on the first few rides "Road 95". This phrase stems from around 1985 when we both stopped riding, except for errands and commuting, from mid-December to mid-February. When we realized that several centuries and double centuries we like to ride were coming up, we hopped on the bikes to get back into shape. The county we lived in was set up on a grid system with numbered roads one mile apart. We lived off of Rd. 99. When we got to Rd. 95, we both decided that was enough for the first ride and we turned around and went home. It was a pretty depressing first training ride for a double century that would occur in three short months. By the way, I finished our local double century in under eight hours that year. Your fitness will return, just get on the bike and go find it.

MinnMan

Yeah, I think this is key. If I spend every ride bemoaning my lack of fitness compared to last year, I'm going to turn in to Mr. Bummer. I have to enjoy these shorter slower rides for their own sake. Believe me, I will. Sitting on my rear end doing nothing was just so depressing, I'm thrilled to be out riding, even if it's not the thrill of hammering with a pack of MAMILs.

I did have a nice ride today. I even found some pretty trails that I didn't know existed - they are not suitable for hammering, but just fine for tootling along like, um, an old man (jk).

MinnMan

"Enjoy Every Sandwich" - Warren Zevon.

JimF22003

I'm going through a version of the same thing. I was in great shape for this time of the year (3000 miles, 6 century+ rides). Then in April I had emergency abdominal surgery, and was not only off the bike, but because I couldn't eat, I lost a lot of weight way too rapidly.

It was over a month of no riding before I got back on the bike. Last week against doctor's orders I got back on the bike, and was barely able to do 20 flat miles. It was just shocking how bad I felt on the bike. I did several more rides last week, all on flat roads, and no more than 30 miles. I started feeling better at the start of the rides, but was still practically exhausted by the end. It really seems likes it's going to be a slow climb back to anything like my previous conditioning.

Yesterday I started to get a glimpse of hope. I did 50 miles of an organized century ride in Shepherdstown, WV. The terrain was only moderately rolling, but it was way hillier than anything I had done since getting back on the bike. I took it really, really slow, and stopped a good long time at the two rest stops. I was still pretty wasted by the time I got back, but at least I was wasted after 50 miles instead of 20

So, keep it up, and don't push too fast. (That's advice I don't take myself as much as I should.) Hopefully we'll be back kicking butts before you know it.

BigAura

Years ago a trainer told me that it takes 1/3 the time, of your layoff time, to get back to the same fitness level. This assumes that you train basically same as you did when you were fit. Based on this concept it would take you 5-6 weeks of training, at your pre-injury level, to get back. Injury recovery slows things down even more. Obviously this is a vague "rule of thumb" and nothing more than that. I've found it's worked for me.

MinnMan

That might apply to a month off or so, but when the time off gets long, the battle is to simply get back to the training at something even close to the pre-injury level If I tried riding that hard right now, I"d drop dead. No joke. If I tried riding half that hard now, I'd rupture my tendon.

I'm quite happy to be riding again, but it's a long road back. Maybe I can do some hard riding by July or August, but 200 miles/week at 18-19 MPH can wait until 2013.

qcpmsame 

Just glad to hear you are back to riding MinnMan. Take the recovery and your return safely and don't get thrown back off from a re-injury. All my best to you.

Bill