A while back I decided that I would chronicle my pre and post surgical experience. I made this decision primarily for my own benefit - I wanted to be able to look back in the far distant future when my memory about what had happened and when had faded. I've found in the past that when a few years have elapsed from an event that I remember the vague outline of what took place but not the details and I wanted to be able to recall the details since this has obviously been a fairly momentous event in my life.
So as with any narrative worth writing there are highs and lows. This post documents one of the lows. I'll preface this by saying I'm not depressed, feeling sorry for myself or giving into my natural proclivity for excessive whining, just documenting what's happening.
So first some stats.
I've ridden 926 miles since I resumed riding on October 9th. Of those, 532 miles have been on the recumbent and 394 have been on a regular bike. The longest ride I've done has been 42 miles and I've done that 3 times. As I've said previously, I've been doing "triplets" where I ride three days then take a day off. My last triplet was 31, 20, 31 with the first two rides being on the DF on the trainer and the last being on the recumbent outside. At that time it had been 10 days since I'd previously ridden the recumbent. Since I'll be talking about it more, here are the specific stats from that last ride:
- 31 miles, 2:20 minutes
- 101 average heart rate, 131 max heart rate
- 116 watts average power, 375 watts max power
- 5 minute average power 166 watts, 20 minute average power 135 watts
Based on the stats, I think you could reasonably conclude it wasn't a terribly hard effort and I certainly wasn't trying to kill it. It was a very windy day so I was doing "the Zen of the wind" - just taking what it'd give me without pushing overly hard.
One other point worth noting is that one of the DF bikes I rode during
this period was equipped with power pedals (Asioma) and therefore could
record a left/right balance, i.e., how hard I was pushing with each leg
over the course of the ride. I did a 32 mile ride on that bike and the
resulting balance was 51/49 which is actually pretty good and is
consistent with what I did pre-surgery. For reference, I've seen similar
numbers from other cyclists far more accomplished than me e.g., the
winner of the Transcontinental Race a few years back, and they've had a
L/R balance of 47/53 or an even wider disparity. I don't recall ever
seeing anyone that was 50/50.
OK, with the stats out of the way, here's the point: on every single ride I have four symptoms post ride:
- My left calf is so tight it feels like I'm going to tear the muscle doing the "wall stretch" post ride. It tends to feel progressively tighter the longer I ride, like it "wants to" cramp.
- My left hamstring feels tight and when I push harder it also feels like it wants to cramp.
- My left toes and foot are tingling/numb to some degree.
- My back hurts. Either at the L5/S1, the surrounding muscles or both.
It should be noted that I have ALL of these symptoms after every ride, it's really only a question of degree and it's generally the case that they're worse after longer or harder efforts. It should also be noted that this is independent of whether I've ridden a DF or recumbent.This is more than a little concerning since doing randonneuring on the recumbent was my fallback plan if riding the DF proved to be too hard on my back.
The first one (the calf) is the most concerning. Let's do a little math. My average cadence is somewhere in the 70-80 RPM range depending on terrain, distance, etc. So to make things simple, let's say 70 RPM. That's 4200 pedal strokes per hour or 84,000 in a 20 hour ride which is the nominal distance for a days riding on a 1200K.
Without getting overly medical, I think it's fair to say that my left leg just isn't working right. I won't even begin to try to diagnose the cause, I'll only say that I had none of this prior to herniating the disc on June 8th.
So what does this mean? Frankly, I don't know. I'm writing this mostly to document that it's happening. It's my sincere hope that it's an artifact of the disc herniation and surgery and will fade with the passage of time but at this point I don't know. What I do know is this: 80-100K pedal strokes per day is a lot and it doesn't take a whole lot out of the ordinary bio-mechanically to lead to trouble. If I'm having this much trouble riding a couple of hours it doesn't bode well for longer rides.
So this leaves my future in randonneuring very much an open question. As I said, I hope that I look back on this post in 6 months and laugh that it was just a step on the road to a full recovery.
Stay tuned!
