Giro da Living Room

So finally today I felt well enough to get back into some form of training, starting with yoga this morning, which felt really good. Was also good to get some stretching in, because even while I've been ill I've been struggling a bit with a sore left knee. It seems like it's almost certainly Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome, so in a way it's probably a good thing that I've had a bit of rest over the last couple of weeks.

I'm hoping that my new pedals will mean that I get less pain from this, because they allow my knees a bit more freedom to 'float'. I also learnt a bit of ITB stretching when I did my 'ski fitness' class at the gym earlier in the year, so I guess I'm just going to have to do lots of that over the next couple of months.

I was only easing my way back into training today, to see how I felt, and as the weather was rubbish, I just did 45 mins on the turbo trainer at 'endurance' level. Luckily, my 45 mins coincided with the final stages of today's stage of the Giro d'Italia, which I've been following over the last couple of weeks.

Things seemed ok, although again my heart rate is a bit higher than it would ideally be for a given level of effort, so I was only turning a fairly low gear. No ill effects from it, and my knee actually felt a bit 'looser' afterwards. Tomorrow and the weekend I'll probably do similar fairly easy efforts and then aim at a bit more 'threshold' stuff next week ahead of the Highclere Sportive which is a week Sunday.

At the moment, I aiming to do this just in order to give me an idea of whether I'm in any position to do the Dragon Ride the week after, but if I'm feeling good I might actually give it a miss and continue with my more structured training.

Finally, I didn't have a chance to post them earlier in the week, but I did take all my usual measurements on Monday, and you can see them below. Still gradually losing weight, although a lot of that can be accounted by a loss in muscle mass as a result in the loss of training, so I guess we'll get a more accurate impression of where I am when I've been back in training for a couple of weeks.

Weight: 10 stone 12 lbs

Body Fat: 16.9%

Visceral Fat Rating: 5

Basal Metabolic Rate: 6934 kcal / 1657 kJ

Muscle Mass: 8 stone 8 lbs

Water: 57.7%