First off, here are the weekly weights and measures stats. They're very late, but were actually taken on Monday, as per the protocol...although they're probably not very representative as my body was dealing with recovery from the Dragon Ride.
Weight: 10 st 11 lbs
Body Fat: 16.5%
Visceral Fat Rating: 5
Basal Metabolic Rate: 6919 kJ / 1652 kcal
Muscle Mass: 8 st 8 lbs
Water: 58%
I won't say too much about those, as next Monday's will probably be more useful, but it seems a little bit wierd that my muscle mass has gone down a bit - although maybe that's a normal response to heavy 'training'.
I went to see the on-site physiotherapist at Sky on Wednesday, for some treatment on what I thought was iliotibial band friction syndrome. The good news is that, after a bit of poking and prodding, it turns out I don't have that. The bad news is that I have cartilage damage in my left knee.
She's prescribed some exercises to strengthen up the muscles around the knee to strengthen it, and also suggested taking glucosamine and chondroitin supplements, to help the cartilage sort itself out. Unfortunately, the problem with cartilage injuries - as I understand it - is that they don't really have a blood supply that would help them heal..but the outcome is the same as if I had an ITB problem -suck it up for the next month, and work through the pain.
I haven't done much noteworthy in the way of training - just the odd hour here and there to keep me ticking over, although I'm going to do an hour's worth of threshold intervals on the turbo just now, and will go on the TCC club ride tomorrow.
Just a few reflections on last weekend's Dragon Ride, now I've had a chance to think about it a bit.
Positives:
- Finished it, so now I know I can do the distance, and the required level of climbing
- Knee wasn't too sore on the day and didn't really have an impact on my ride...although it was quite sore on Monday.
- Still had a bit of energy left at the end - wasn't completely out on my feet as I was after the Hampshire Hilly Hundred
- My heart rate stayed in manageable ranges - in fact my average HR gradually decreased over the course of the ride, so that by the end even when climbing it wasn't reaching threshold levels. This bodes well for endurance.
- Enjoyed it!
Negatives:
- I was really quite slow overall. Some of this can be put down to spending time with the extended family at the feed stops, but being honest, I couldn't have done it much faster anyway.
- Although my nutrition worked out pretty well, I should probably have drunk more than I did. Don't know what to put the nausea that I experienced around the 60-mile mark to. Maybe I need to try to eat some more solid food, as there was a definite 'empty' feeling in my stomach, which was quite uncomfortable. I never really feel that I can eat solid food on a long ride though, so it's a bit of a Catch 22.
I think what this shows is that I need to work on my speed and power more over the next month or so -which kinda fits in with my training programme anyway.
However, as long as I finish and don't kept swept up by the broom wagon, I've never really been bothered about my overall time and I need to remember this. It's 'not about me', in that as long as I finish I will have raised a pretty significant amount of money for Childline, and that's the really important thing.
I really want to enjoy the actual day too, as it'll be a once in a lifetime experience and if I just try and rush through it, head-down, then I'll be missing out on a large part of that.
I know now that I'm physically capable of doing the Etape, and hopefully that should make the day itself more stressful.
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