My legs are back

The swim this am wasn't much fun. You will recall I banged my elbow when I fell over at Chinook. Other than a slight scrape, and a small bit of swelling and soreness, it didn't really bother me. Till today. You know the muscles in your arm you use to swim, catching the water, getting your forearm vertical, and pulling? That's what hurts. It started kind of dull and got worse. To be fair, I was trying to pull medium hard, but I bailed after only 600 m. I did some massage and stretching, and did a little bit more, but I'd be surprised if it added up to a K in total. So that was about 20 minutes. Soaked in hot tub waiting for the dive tank to free up. Did about a half hour of stretching and core work there.

Dragged my butt upstairs to the gym. It was dark. Nobody in it at all. No machines in use, and no killer core class led by the woman who can belly press 500 pounds with her abs. Repeatedly. Often. The scale says 228. Sigh. The good thing is that my weight is stable. However, I had hoped it would be trending down again. I guess I have to work harder at this food stuff, trying to limit quantities just a tiny bit.

My ride turned out surprisingly well, which made me very happy. My legs came back from where ever they've been for the last month or so. Maybe they were on vacation with my inner shark. As soon as I got on, my legs felt better. I rode out 22X, turned around at 22, came back to 37 st (flying all the way!), and was feeling good enough to turn down 773 to do the first hill, then headed home. No cramping, no feeling weak. Really, the only thing I've done different is to realize I hadn't been drinking enough water, and started back on my multivitamins. They're still a bit tight (the calves, not the multivitamins), but nothing like they were.

The wind was fairly strong from the north, but it didn't matter. I made it out to 22 in just under 41 minutes, which is a new record for me. What's funny was that I wasn't trying hard. I was just trying to pedal smoothly, and it worked out really well. I pushed hard up the little hills on 22X, and was good and warm for 773. I powered down, hard up, back down, and hard up again in 10 minutes, which is two minutes faster than my first set of hill repeats way back when. My average speed was exactly 29 Kph at the start of the hill bits, and was 28.6 Kph at the end, so I maintained speed fairly well.

By now I could start to feel my legs getting tired, but it was a good tired. I pushed fairly hard home, then spun it out when back in the neighbourhood. 1.5 hrs total. Did some stretching after, and will do more.

I tried the Clifs shot blocs. Cran Razz. Sort of like a giant gummy bear. It was ok once, and might be ok for variety, but by the time I went through 6 of them, I was a bit tired of the taste. The hardest part was digging them out of the plastic container, and hanging onto them.