Surgery Sucks!

I’m two(ish) weeks post surgery and all I can say is I hope others reading this blog don’t have to got through the same issues as I have.  The drugs are terrible, the pain is so bad, even with medication, that I can’t ride on anything but the trainer and not being able to swim eight weeks out from my first race is sort of a problem.

On the plus side, bike and run training are actually going pretty well.  On the run side, my anticipated 5k time has continued to drop.  I now estimate it to be around 5:45 a mile, down from 6:00. And I am getting more and more comfortable on my long runs.  I do plan to add some more transitions runs shortly, so I don’t flop coming off the bike when it really counts.

I have run into a new problem though, I get a pain in my ribs, just above the bottom of my rib cage, on the right side, after running for around 40min.  I’m not sure what it is yet, but my research seems to point at some sort of spasm in the diaphragm.  I’m going to try and track what I eat before runs more carefully in order to try to find the culprit.  It’s something I can run through, but it definitely gets pretty intense after a while.

Cycling has gone reasonably well as well.  I’ve been following the so called “Flanagan FTP Plan” and I gained 7 watts on my FTP in the first week, which is pretty stellar.  I’m still far behind where I ended last season, but I’m confident that, with some more focused training, I will return to that level shortly.

Sorry for the short post this week!  It’s finals week at school, so I’m a little strapped for time!