Following my successful outing on the recumbent a couple of days ago, I did 20 miles on the trainer (Zwift) on the DF. I did one of the new Paris routes on Zwift that included one longish climb - 1.66 miles at an average gradient of 4%. Didn't kill myself on it, kept the wattage at 200+- 20. There was also a short sprint that I got out of the saddle for and pedaled a bit harder with a max wattage for the whole ride at 393 watts. Not soft pedaling but not Peter Sagan level watts either.
Post ride, my sciatica and back were significantly worse. Foot numb, left calf and hamstring burning. This lessened somewhat over the course of the day but as I write this the following morning, my back is still sore and my toes are numb.
So I'm going to stick to the 'bent for a while.
I don't know what this means for the future and have more questions than answers right now:
- Will I still have the surgery?
- Certainly if having symptoms is a requisite, all I need to do is keep riding the DF
- Is riding the DF a mistake, even for JRA riding?
- My hope (and plan) regardless of whether or not I had surgery was to attempt a series on the DF next year and, if it goes well, continue life as before with riding the recumbent as an occasional event either to recover from a long ride or just to do something different.
- If the series on the DF didn't go well, my fallback was to do randonneuring on the recumbent and ride the DF for shorter, JRA rides here.
- Recumbent only, forever?
- I'm still not mentally "there" for this alternative but it might well be the reality I face. As I've noted in the past, this leads to a bunch of follow up questions:
- Continue randonneuring or just give it up?
- If I continue randonneuring, given the difficulty of transporting a recumbent (or any bicycle for that matter), domestic brevets that I can drive to only?
- Given the consequences of an "episode" do I restrict myself to domestic only?
- Even if I decide to continue randonneuring, if it's 'bent only do I restrict myself to flatter rides?
Lots of unknowns right now.
Stay tuned!
N.B. I've been asked a couple of times what "JRA" means. It's Just Riding Along
