Cardiovascular Purgatory

I felt pretty good to be out there completing that transpennine cycle. It was an interesting self-suffiency and lone endurance experiance. All part of the rich tapestry of what a well endurance-honed indivdual can do. However the achilles problem I mentioned has brought me back down to earth with a bump.

It took me a bout a week before I could manage any kind of endurance training after this. I tried a run midweek but the achilles was too sore and I bailed out after about 600metres. I passed my leisure time semi-constructively by upping the variety of my core, upper and lower body strength work. Things looked up when I managed a very flat soft trail run on the Saturday of about 2.2m. No massvie reaction from a hopefully recovering achilles or the stress fractured leg. I repeated this distance two days later and then four days later whithout major complaints. Then bizarrely after two days rest on the Friday the area of the stress fracture seemed to be feeling sore again?!

So I opted for a cycle today as the achilles was now the lesser of two evils and I fancied a longer and tougher cardio session, due to feeling - probably paranoically - I'd be starting to lose fitness with the limited distance running. So off, out I went, pretty nice day compared to some of late, for a nice trip into the wolds. Bouncing up and down hills between sea-level and a not-quite dizzying 550ft above - but on a bike at speed even a shallow climb feels harder work than the equivelent when running.

It was enjoyable and all going pretty well, but the achilles got more and more sore throughout. Towards 1hr45 out I was glad to be nearly back as it was now close to as bad as two weeks before. So a good hard session - which I then followed with some strength work in front of the Ryder Cup ("Go Europe!") - but at what cost?

That rules out cycling of any great distance and perhaps running also after the reaction from my tame return in the last week. Unfortunately my run of good training and eventing has made me impatient and I sorely miss the things I was able to do just two months ago. If this goes on I may have to do a deal with the devil and join a gym. I guess I've got to be patient and accept that I'm not the first person this has happened to, or by far the worst effected. But as the title suggests; I'm frustrated!