Recovery

(Okay, I cheated a little today. Just a little. I wanted to update my health and fitness blog, Moving Your Body, so I devoted my evening writing to that. It's a story, not-fiction, nevertheless. Here's the link to the story on the blog. The story also is below: Moving Your Body)

That one-word title has been the focus of the past four weeks. Recovery from nearly two weeks of inactivity following the removal of two wisdom teeth. Recovery has meant management of residual pain. It also has required in me some redefining of my year’s training goals.

On April 11, one day before the surgery, I ran six miles in 70 minutes and followed that with a 1,700 yard swim. I joked that I needed to put in the mileage because I wasn’t sure when I would be able to work out that vigorously again. I expected that I would have to rest for about four or five days. I didn’t expect to still be struggling and popping pain pills a full month later.

“You had major surgery,” my husband reminds me. “And you’re fifty.”

Words of support that both help and frustrate me. I’ve always been proud of my age, of looking, acting, and having the energy of someone so much younger. Deep inside, my body does let me know in a variety of ways that even if it looks thirty-five or younger, it is the half-century that it is. I have learned to be mindful of what and how much I eat, how much I sleep, and how I pace myself at work. I have accepted — and perhaps embraced — the reality that medications to control blood pressure and cholesterol will probably be with me for the rest of my life. But the triathlon is now just over thirteen weeks away. I desperately want to get back on “the plan.”

Bicycling feels pretty good and so does swimming. Running is where it hurts. My pace is still that of the six miles in 70 minutes that I did on April 11, but I have run twice since the surgery. Both times, my jaw has felt jarred and tender. This convinces me that I need to modify my plan a little: bike and swim as much as I can manage, and for at least two more weeks, go walking instead of running.

The need to slow down is oddly infuriating. But perhaps teaching in and of itself. The last time that I ran, I went out resolving to go gentle, to walk five minutes and run one minute on a 4.5 mile loop around my house. As soon as I started running, I turned into a race horse. The loop ended up being run fifteen to twenty minutes and walk one minute. By the time, I hit the last one-third mile, I felt as if my mouth was full of broken bones and teeth.

The lesson: Patience. Take it slow.

On a positive note, the diet that I have taken to calling the “No-diet diet” is bearing some very happy fruit. I weighed in at 118 pounds twice last week and all three days so far this week, falling into the “healthy weight” category for a person of my height for the first time since 2004. I have enrolled in a free Nutrition and Healthy Lifestyle course through a website known as Coursera.org, and am gaining some valuable advice from the course on how to add more calcium, protein, and iron into my diet through the locally-based, fresh and inexpensive foods that have come to comprise my daily meals.

I also am taking part in the National Bike to Work Day this Friday, May 17. Both my mountain bike and my road bike are now functioning, and I have been riding the eight miles from my home to office about three days a week. Friday, May 17 happens to be a day when I am attending two conferences in Albany, NY, some 36 miles from my home, and making three presentations total. On a whim, I decided to try biking at least part of the way to Albany, and stated my intention of doing so with the Saratoga Springs biking group, Bikeatoga.

Initially, I predicted that I would ride 100 miles. A Bikeatoga organizer told me that would set a one-day bike commuting record for the group. After consulting Google map, I realized the distance would be more like 87 miles. Still, the organizer said, I would probably log the longest commute for the day.

These predictions motivated me. Then, I realized that my first presentation Friday was at 8:30 a.m. Being at the conference in time to eat some breakfast would mean leaving my home at 4 a.m. Even as the days are getting longer, it’s still dark at 4 a.m. And my body — that body that naggingly reminds me every so often that I am 50 — isn’t particularly fond of waking up at 3 a.m.

In addition, the Google Map directions for biking from my home to the two different conference locations where I would be presenting were crazily complex. To top these challenges was the fact that I don’t currently possess functioning head and taillights for my bicycle. Procuring these items would be possible — if the monthly mortgage payment hadn’t left our bank account virtually dry.

The challenge began to feel a little too overwhelming, and daunting for me to handle.
That’s when the lesson of the run kicked in. Patience. Take it easy. One step at a time.
My husband can drive me part of the way to Albany. I can start riding at 5:30 a.m. and get in a decent morning “commute” of about 20 miles. The sky will be light, and I will be a little more awake. After presentation #1 at the Desmond Hotel, I can cycle the ten mile distance to the College of St. Rose and do my other two presentations and have lunch. I would be able to leave St. Rose by 4 p.m. From there, it would be no problem to cycle the full 37-mile one-way trip back home.

Not the 87 miles that I had envisioned. But 67 miles is nothing to sneeze at. It’s perhaps where I am, physically, as I continue to train and continue to recover.