This will be my final post concerning this particular injury and, let’s hope, the last of its kind for a long, long time. As I write this on a Saturday evening, I am back to the swim, bike, and run routine, full speed ahead. I have two key themes to focus on here, patience and consistency.
Like every injured athlete, I was chomping at the bit to return to activity. Thankfully my surgeon gave me strict warning about taking it easy, and I am the kind of guy who listens. I don’t always remember, but that's a different story. I took the time to lay out a training plan with just enough activity, tailored to favor my less injured bits and pieces. With each passing week I felt my body improving. Strength and mobility gradually returning.
The challenge is, we can easily recall how we used to perform. It is only natural to want to push ourselves, to prove to ourselves we’ve still got it. Or, to fall into the trap of thinking that more training will cause us to improve faster. The body doesn’t work that way. There is a limit on how much repair work the body can do in a day. Proper training stimulates tissue growth. That’s how we get stronger. Acute damage demands all available resources to help with repairs. A little training can help, but even a little too much will impede healing. Patience is the ability to overcome our natural desire to get out there and blow the doors off, to give our body the resources it needs to heal.
I have written previously about consistency. Enough so that it should come as no surprise to you that I mention it here, in the context of training while healing. Young, fit athletes can get results only training on weekends – the weekend warriors. Some people refer to hero days, training that looks like an olympic distance triathlon every weekend. The older you are, the less likely such an approach will be effective, and it is quite likely to lead to a training injury. There is a lot of agreement among coaches that smaller efforts at lower intensity and done daily produce much better results. Eat the whale one bite at a time. (But don’t actually eat any whales!) Consistent training does not mean training every day. Early in my return to training I only exercised every other day. The point is, do as much as you can as often as you can. Okay, I’ll admit, that’s an over simplification. I just don’t want to get lost in the weeds of designing progressive training plans. When you train too hard one day, you are a sack of potatoes for the next couple of days. What good is that?