Recovery Week and A Chat with My Doctor

Over my shoulder is a cattle ranch.  5 trucks passed me while I was riding the trail this morning making for a very dusty cyclist!

In the past two weeks I have seen my gynecologist, general practice doctor, and had my annual mammogram.  It was time for all three so I just clustered them together to get it done.

After greeting me on Tuesday morning, my GP said, "So what are you doing these days for exercise?  Do  you walk in the mornings?"  "I ran a marathon on Saturday." He kinda walked into that one!  He is not anti-running, but he's not exactly pro-marathoning.  He has a brother-in-law who has been running for years and tried to get him to run a marathon.  I think the brother-in-law's constant "encouragement" has been a little much for dear doc, because he said more than once, "no way will I ever run a marathon!"  His biggest concern is that I don't push my body to a point of harming it.  Hopefully, I was able to reassure him that I understand my limits.  My lab results came back and all my numbers are great!  My overall cholesterol went from 180 last year to 142 this year.  I'm 51 and on exactly zero medication, I feel great about that!

I took FOUR rest days this week!  Two were physical rest days and two were mental rest days.  I couldn't move without pain on Sunday, Monday morning was still pretty painful.  I walked about 2 miles on Tuesday and could tell I was starting to recover.  I did an easy bike ride on Wednesday, rested Thursday and Friday, and did a trail ride this morning.  I ended up with a whopping 20.49 miles for the week.

I did not run a single time this week!  I thought I would, and I could have, but it felt nice to not have any pressure to do so.  The pressure was all from me, but it was pressure anyway.  There are seven weeks left in this year and I plan to finish strong with over 2,000 miles!