13 Weeks Post Surgery

I have my last Physical Therapy appointment today.  I really feel I should have more but BCN says they are not medically necessary.  Interesting that they would pay for them before my surgery when it actually was useless, but not now when I could benefit from the guidance, they won't.

I had an appointment with my surgeon last Tuesday.  She said I could go back to riding on the track, could introduce overhead strength work and start swimming again.  The X-Rays revealed no stretching of the grafts and everything is where is should be.  There will still be a small bump on my shoulder consistent with a Grade 1 separation but everything is healing well.  It will still be another 3 months before I should go back to bike racing and healing will go on for about a year.

Shoulder is feeling much better, I've avoided the things that made it sore and introduced new things that could have made it sore. 😁 I swam for the first time on Saturday.  I purposely held it to 500 yards to see how it would be.  The best description I can give is that it felt loose in the socket and slightly painful.  I was only swimming 50's on a minute so it wasn't fast.  Afterwards I ran on the LRC track and did my exercises.  In addition to the exercises I used the pull up machine with 100lbs of assist.  I am ~150lbs right now so it's like pulling ~50lbs.

I rode 204 miles last week with a mix of track and Zwift, ran 3 times and swam short once.  Only one intense day on the bike: Saturday Moring track where I finished all the drills.  It wasn't easy, but I finished them.  There were no jump-the-gap sprints so I didn't put much stress on my shoulder.

Sunday track is progressing well.  We have some new riders that are learning how to do pursuits, they seem very enthusiastic (wow I spelled that right on the first try) and are working out well.  We have a very good candidate for our fourth member of our team, I feel he fits in really well.

My strength exercises are going well.  I've increased the weight I've been working with a little because I felt some of them were just stretches and too easy to do.  I have 15 exercises to do 3 times a day and it takes me ~40 minutes to complete them as prescribed.  Sometimes I cut them to 2 sets instead of three to save time since most of the time I'm doing them twice at work.

My weight has consistently been 149-150lbs for the last week;  I'm pretty happy about that.  I would like to be down to ~142lbs by May.

Bike training notes

 I'm going to drop the intensity this week to recover. 

No 4x10's but I'll likely ride the Saturday morning practice if available. 

12 weeks post surgery

My shoulder has been better since last week.  I cut the running and bench presses out and things got better by Thursday.  I ran again on Saturday and Sunday and felt good so I feel the bench presses were the cause of the problem.  45lbs was more than I wanted to do but there wasn't a lighter bar.  I need to find an alternative.

Threshold intervals went well last Thursday, they confirmed my TP of 190.  It was just Kevin/Linda and myself doing the intervals, we started off splitting my work as a rotating paceline of 9 strokes each then 20/9.  After that we went 4 laps for me and 1 lap for K/L.  That lowered his power to the range he needed and and raised mine to the power I needed.  I'd like to see and increase of 5 to 10 watts in my next cycle, I'd be happy with 5.

I've been up for 3 weeks now and it's time to lower the training stress for a week so I can recover.  Kevin is on the same cycle.

The Saturday practice is going well. I need to be careful on the "jump the gap" sprints so I don't tweak my shoulder any.  At one point during practice I got my HR just over 180bpm so I was going quite hard.  Our second Sunday of pursuit training went well, we had 7 bikes and worked on exchanges, and finishes.  Today I tried to ride on my aerobars but it turned my left arm to an uncomfortable angle so I abandoned it for now.

I've been pretty good about doing my daily strength exercises, sometimes I miss one but most of the time I don't.  I have an appointment with my surgeon tomorrow and expect to have some restrictions removed.  I'm going to ask if there is something I can do to get more sessions of physical therapy.  I don't need a lot, maybe just 8 sessions so I can make sure I'm doing the right thing to heal up correctly.  I don't want to go through this again.

Body weight has been 149-150 so it dropped a little.  I've been skipping lunch sometimes to reduce calorie counts.  I need to find something more filling to eat for breakfast so I don't snack before lunch.

11 Weeks post surgery

I over-did it last week on the bike and my should is sore.  I rode track a little on Tuesday, then easy on Wednesday, Saturday morning track practice and Sunday easy pursuit drills.  The extra stress on my shoulder is a little too much right now and I'll drop that down a bit.  Combining with Zwift I completed my 200 miles again.  My last threshold session indicated a TP of 190 watts so that came up a little.  I decided to do track workouts instead of the second TP session.  My next one will be on Thursday and I'll see how it turns out.  It should be on the track, I don't know if I should do it solo or with the group, solo would be a better indicator of my abilities but it's also boring.

I have an appointment with my surgeon next Tuesday and I expect some restrictions to be removed.  My PT feels that they'll let me start swimming and do upper body strength exercises.  As of now I have one more PT session left and that is the week after the appointment.

Body weight is still 150-151, I have not been tracking it as closely as I should.  I need to work on that.

Week 10

 Another 200+ mile week on the bike, mostly on Zwift but Saturday I rode on the track.  It was a moderate ride without a whole lot of effort but not easy.  Since I was there to work on the refrigerator and Kevin was there, I choose to ride.  It was busy but uneventful.

I noticed that I ride a lot harder at the track and my moderate days on Zwift need to be a little harder to match that effort.  I plan to be there Tuesday to ride my 10 min intervals with Kevin and whomever else shows up.  My 10 min intervals went well, they indicate my TP is about 185-190 watts.  Garmin estimates 190 watts.

Home therapy is getting better and I'm using more weight than I had in the past few weeks.  I have used some Ibuprofen a few times when I felt swelling was hindering my recovery.  Even though it relieves pain, I'm using it for recovery when needed.  I think it was 2 or 3 times last week, 400-600mg.

I'm 150-151 lbs this week, I'm getting lighter but I need to concentrate on it some more.