It's killing me but..........

[Alex Simmons]

I'm sure it is, especially for amputation candidates. I was just getting at whether they thought it unusual to not be interested in *****-footing around.

In any case, I understand where you are coming from to soem extent. On a purely rational, non-emotional basis - they were going to take the thing off anyway, it was just a question of when. Delaying it didn't help anybody.

Come to think of it, I don't think I talked with the psych team until after the amputation.

I honestly don't recall it being a topic of any of our conversations.

If I really wanted to, I could go through the 800 pages of hospital clinical notes I have a copy of.... but somehow I don't think that would do me much good right now.

 

[PaulMD]

You gotta love a thread that started as this one did and is now discussion the minutiae of aerodynamic positioning and performing fields tests with power meters....

Reading how you guys keep looking for ways to improve helps keep me motivated too. And ways that are both training hard and being smart about it.

Did my second timetrial: Medical National Championships.
And I became second, again

(just like last week)

Stats:
12.08km, 16min50sec, AP 338w (5.12w/kg), NP 337w, IF 1.053, TSS 30.7, C 100, S 43.7km/hour

WKO file

I started to hard again, stupid stupid me. This time a timetrial with almost no wind but my average speed was only 0.2km/hour faster than last week while I did 5 watts more work. When I look at my powerfile I see that there were 8 corners were I had to coast and brake.

Now I am gonna do some base again. Serious L4 training to boost my FTP to > 320watts 350 here I come!

PS Tyson where are you? And how are you doing?

 

[Felt_Rider]

Now the time is here and I am starting my 2nd week training with a PM. My first oberservations were what I thought they would be. It is like being hooked to a lie detector for the time of the training event. RPE has to face the truth of reality and it is much more discomforting than before. I would have jumped into using a PM earlier, but my wife balked at the idea saying that I am progressing fine under RPE because she hears from my friends all the time of how much I have progressed and training under RPE was not expensive. Last night she again witnessed another step up in effort level and now I think we are both understanding the value of the PM. While I was in the middle of an interval she said I have never seen you train with such intensity and meanwhile my legs were about to explode and I couldn't even gather the energy to respond to her comment.

With the 2nd week now behind me my wife is seeing the 2nd payoff with the purchase of a PM and an increase in intensity and consistency being the 1st. The 2nd payoff is a rapidly changing body composition. Since the beginning of the year my bodyweight was stuck at 170 lbs and was not budging despite a change in calories and yesterday evening I weighed 164 lbs. My wife made a comment about looking thinner so that prompted me to step on the scale.

Still a long way to go, but I do believe progress breeds motivation and I am getting more fired up everyday.

Who was it that needed evidence that the PM was a worthy tool?
At least for me I am seeing evidence that I can more clearly dial in the training load rather than use RPE as I was doing.

 

[kopride]

With the 2nd week now behind me my wife is seeing the 2nd payoff with the purchase of a PM and an increase in intensity and consistency being the 1st. The 2nd payoff is a rapidly changing body composition. Since the beginning of the year my bodyweight was stuck at 170 lbs and was not budging despite a change in calories and yesterday evening I weighed 164 lbs. My wife made a comment about looking thinner so that prompted me to step on the scale.

Still a long way to go, but I do believe progress breeds motivation and I am getting more fired up everyday.

Who was it that needed evidence that the PM was a worthy tool?
At least for me I am seeing evidence that I can more clearly dial in the training load rather than use RPE as I was doing.

It really does alter the whole training paradigm. Like numbers on the barbell.

My wife also likes the PM from an efficiency level. Better results, less time on the bike and away from the family.

 

[kopride]

Funny Story:

As a favor to a neighbor, I took his wife's triathelete cousin out for a ride last week. The guy talked a mile a minute about how great he was. The ride is a pretty hilly two hour loop and I did warn him not to shoot his wad in the first half of the ride. I literally waited at the top of every long steep hill circling until he reached the top.

In an attempt to soothe his ego, I did remark that his tri bike could use better gearing for hilly terrain. (It looked like his lowest was a 39/23). After a steep climb, the ride goes into a valley, but any moron should know that there is no elevator on the other side. In other words, you are going to have to climb your way out. In the flat parts of the valley, this guy is churning out big numbers on his tri bars with another hour of real hilly stuff ahead. I did warn him that there was a lot more climbing left to do, but then he basically did his own thing and was burning mathes by the packful. I either drafted or just stayed close until we had to start the climb out; at which point I again opened up a two minute plus gap on a ten minute steep climb to the ridge line.

After a few more minutes of flats where he caught his breath, he must have felt the need to redeem himself and hammered another 4 minute hard stretch where my PM showed 315 while drafting. After the match was burnt, he commented that although he could not climb well "because his bike was not set up right," it was a good thing that the ride wasn't flat because "I seemed to have trouble keeping up with him on the flats." I told him that he was in luck to test that theory because the remaining ten miles was relatively flat along a ridge line. At which point, I took it up to my meager FTP of 283 and began to hammer it home. After about a mile or two, I looked back and my tri guy friend was well behind with the gap (at least 40 seconds) continuing to grow. There was a few turns and I couldn't drop him in an unfamiliar area so I did have to slow at parts until I was sure that he could see where he needed to turn. The last two miles is straight and pretty flat so I did take it up above 300 and opened up another few minute gap before I had to wait for him at the light right near the turn into my street.

So I go home and drop him off safely at my neighbors. The next day, my neighbor says to me that "I heard you couldn't keep up with X" on the flats. he was bummed that he could not take you on the hills because his bike was set up all wrong."

Moral: No good deed goes unpunished

 

[daveryanwyoming]

Funny Story:....

I had a similar experience earlier this spring that really drove home the way the PM tells the truth and a lot of folks have no idea how they're actually pacing. I met a friend for what we'd both planned as a moderately long SST ride. I made it clear that the goal was to ride Tempo or above for the whole ride and I wasn't interested in a social cruise and he was on board. We agreed that we both needed some longer SST miles and if our pace didn't match we'd go our own ways rather than suffer or go easy just to ride together. I spun into town and he'd brought along another guy who he described as being strong and in tune with the plan.

Anyway we rolled easily out of town which seemed o.k. as a bit more warmup before we settled into SST pacing. About four miles out of town we hit the first hill, a few hundred feet of moderate climbing and the third guy goes to the front and just about kills us. I look down and see I'm doing 330 watts to sit on his wheel. It's not crazy hard, but definitely above SST for me so I just sat on his wheel and thought, 'damn this guy is strong if he's just pacing SST.' I also hear my buddy breathing like a freight train to stay with us and I'm thinking this isn't a great way to start a four plus hour SST ride but we're all hanging so I figure there's time to settle down a bit on the flats.

At the top of the hill the strong guy pulls aside and I roll to the front and settle into a comfy 230 watt SST pace. I glance under my arm and see my friend on my wheel and just settle into pacing. A few minutes later I glance back and I'm all alone with two guys sitting up and talking a long way back. I figured they'd opted for a social ride and I finished my ride alone and got a really nice SST session.

I talked to my buddy that evening and it turns out he was comfortably on my wheel when he noticed his friend had fallen off and decided to go back for him. The third guy was ****** off and complained that he liked a "decent warmup" and that he didn't expect to get hammered at the start of a long ride. He had absolutely no clue that the hardest five minutes of the day was when we had to hang on his wheel up that first climb. I'd backed off the pace by a full 100 watts compared to what he was laying down (and he's a big guy so I expect he was going even harder than us on the climb) but he was cooked from jamming up the first climb. In his eyes we just rocketed off on the flats, but the PM tells a really different story.

It was a good reminder of how folks can get a really distorted picture of pacing without objective feedback. This guy has ridden for many years and I'm sure he's accustomed to suffering on climbs so he figured that's just the way climbs feel. But he was killing himself and us as well and then had nothing left when we settled into a much more reasonable pace. I'm sure he still doesn't get it but I compared power files with my buddy and sure enough we both saw the same thing, a comfortable roll out of town, a killer VO2 Max effort up the hill, settling into Tempo on the flats and then the third guy blew and was ****** off because we didn't "get enough warm up".

Definitely an eye opener about the honesty of a PM and learning to pace.

-Dave

 

[jD_Empath]

I wonder how much time you would have got on him if you didn't wait at the tops of the hills. Climbing gains make big gaps!

As far as keeping up on the flats, who knows... unless you are riding side-by-side the entire time then it's a matter of drafting and pulling. Maybe he had some good 4-minute power..whatever.

In my experience the best riders tend to understate their abilities. When you get to know them then they might start telling stories about great race wins but in general they don't really shoot their mouths off. I figure that a great racer knows as well as anyone that there is always someone faster. People who brag a lot...I figure it's just a lot of hot air.

My racing mentor was a state champ in one of the big western states. It takes a lot to do that! He told me many stories about winning races by just riding away from them at the first hill and then going it alone for the rest of the race. One time he did this in a 100-mile race and was expecting the same outcome when some guy came along and passed him like he was hardly moving. He figured it was just some local guy out for a 5 mile hammer session or something and forgot about the guy.

When he crossed the line he expected to get 1st place, but he was told that he got 2nd place. The guy who passed him was Greg LeMond. Greg had done to him what he was used to doing to people.


There is always someone to kick your butt.

Funny Story:

As a favor to a neighbor, I took his wife's triathelete cousin out for a ride last week. The guy talked a mile a minute about how great he was. The ride is a pretty hilly two hour loop and I did warn him not to shoot his wad in the first half of the ride. I literally waited at the top of every long steep hill circling until he reached the top.

In an attempt to soothe his ego, I did remark that his tri bike could use better gearing for hilly terrain. (It looked like his lowest was a 39/23). After a steep climb, the ride goes into a valley, but any moron should know that there is no elevator on the other side. In other words, you are going to have to climb your way out. In the flat parts of the valley, this guy is churning out big numbers on his tri bars with another hour of real hilly stuff ahead. I did warn him that there was a lot more climbing left to do, but then he basically did his own thing and was burning mathes by the packful. I either drafted or just stayed close until we had to start the climb out; at which point I again opened up a two minute plus gap on a ten minute steep climb to the ridge line.

After a few more minutes of flats where he caught his breath, he must have felt the need to redeem himself and hammered another 4 minute hard stretch where my PM showed 315 while drafting. After the match was burnt, he commented that although he could not climb well "because his bike was not set up right," it was a good thing that the ride wasn't flat because "I seemed to have trouble keeping up with him on the flats." I told him that he was in luck to test that theory because the remaining ten miles was relatively flat along a ridge line. At which point, I took it up to my meager FTP of 283 and began to hammer it home. After about a mile or two, I looked back and my tri guy friend was well behind with the gap (at least 40 seconds) continuing to grow. There was a few turns and I couldn't drop him in an unfamiliar area so I did have to slow at parts until I was sure that he could see where he needed to turn. The last two miles is straight and pretty flat so I did take it up above 300 and opened up another few minute gap before I had to wait for him at the light right near the turn into my street.

So I go home and drop him off safely at my neighbors. The next day, my neighbor says to me that "I heard you couldn't keep up with X" on the flats. he was bummed that he could not take you on the hills because his bike was set up all wrong."

Moral: No good deed goes unpunished

 

[kopride]

I had a similar experience earlier this spring that really drove home the way the PM tells the truth and a lot of folks have no idea how they're actually pacing.

but the PM tells a really different story.


Definitely an eye opener about the honesty of a PM and learning to pace.

-Dave

Yes, when I looked at the average power for the ride it was 204, which is actually less than what I usually see for this ride (220-225 is more typical). So even with his "he-man" stretches on the flats and my long pull at threshold towards the end, we actually rode the ride at a significantly slower pace than normal for me. IOW, the circling while waiting, the coasting down the down hills while he caught his wind, and the recovery periods after his spaz sprints, offset the 45 or so minutes we were riding in the red zone.

And, he needed to stop at a farmhouse for water so our total elapsed time, incuding the stop, was even longer than two hours. (At the hour mark, he had already emptied both of his 24 oz bottles when I had more than a few swallows left in my first.) Listening to his hydration theory was also interesting. When he started talking about his HR zones, I just started to drift off.

He trains in Chicago, so my sense is that his typical training ride involves flat rides around the lake on his tri bars. He had no concept on how to pace himself in rolling terrain.

 

[Steve_B]

the third guy blew and was ****** off because we didn't "get enough warm up".

Then he should have announced that he wanted a warm-up before going into the hill. Fair is fair.

The guy sounds pretty clueless to begin with and possibly inexperienced at riding with others. If you can't handle 230 W for a decent amount of time, then >330 W isn't a warm up. It isn't even a "blow out". It's a shock to the system and not a very subtle way of opening up the body. Forgetting about the PM, I think any decent rider without a PM wouldn't be so dumb.

I have found that group tempo (or SST) rides don't work very well so I've stopped trying to do them. Forget about the fact that I am riding with racers at a similar level to me and not going any harder than the average power of sitting in during local training crit (without the major power excursions that make the latter much harder), you would think by the way they are complaining that you are trying to torture your ride partners. As another way of saying what you and KOP have said, people don't understand what an evenly dosed out effort is. Not even close.

 

[daveryanwyoming]

....The guy sounds pretty clueless to begin with and possibly inexperienced at riding with others. .....

Actually the guy has ridden for many years and often with the Tuesday night hammerfest ride. I think it shows more than anything else how folks just don't understand steady pacing. They're accustomed to working much too hard uphill and then easing off way too much to try to recover and don't even know it. It made me wonder how many times I did similar things back in the day. HR and even RPE won't fully respond during a three to five minute climb but you can still dig a pretty deep hole in that much time and then think everyone is hammering much too hard after the hill when in fact they've eased off to a much steadier pace.

BTW, I'm with you on group Tempo and SST riding and do at least 90% of my training solo these days. Once in a while I'll train with a friend who's on the same page but it often doesn't work out so well. Training partners are great for sprints and L6 hammer days and I've done some interesting L5 work where we start with a big gap and take turns trying to chase each other down for 4 or 5 minutes at a shot but for the longer stuff I prefer to ride alone these days.

-Dave

 

[Pendejo]

All these stories underline why I gave up riding with others years ago. When you do, the majority of time you're either going faster than you want or slower than you want. Then you have the inevitable "testing" jousts. I'm quite content proving what I've got in a race. When I'm training I'm working, and I don't need any "help."

(Of course, the other day this did not stop me from slowing a training ride down to ten miles an hour so I could chat with a beautiful roller-blader I encountered on the bike path.)

 

[Alex Simmons]

The power meter can be a social wedge. One needs to bear that in mind for some athletes for whom the bunch is an intrinsic element of their motivation.

That's where training with power comes in.

What I do with such athletes is to show them how to ride with the bunch and get a good training session.


Back to me....

Not a great week. Had a good indoor session last Tuesday but my stump became quite sore the following day and I thought a couple of days off would help. But it stayed sore through the weekend and that hit my confidence and motivation. It reminded me of what happened after the first couple of months with my first prosthetic - good progress, then ****les, then going backwards as my ability to be physically active went out the window due to the pain associated with using the prosthetic. While I'm sure it's not like that this time, it doesn't help.

It feels a bit better today, so will really try to get back on the ergo tonight and see how it feels. That's the public declaration for accountability purposes

Really just hoping it's an adaptation thing and not a sign of trouble.

 

[frost]

Actually the guy has ridden for many years and often with the Tuesday night hammerfest ride. I think it shows more than anything else how folks just don't understand steady pacing. They're accustomed to working much too hard uphill and then easing off way too much to try to recover and don't even know it.

Heh, yes, this is so true and so funny. I have friends who have been cycling for 20 years, ex national level riders, who really do not have a glue. They push 400-500 watts to short hills and explain that they want to ride fluently not stopping to hills. Then 250-300 watts on the flats gets them complain that it's not a nice social ride anymore and why are we always pushing this hard.

 

[jD_Empath]

I went on a 75-mile bike "tour" a few weeks ago with two other riders from the race club. It was a hilly ride so my intention was to keep a sane pace throughout and never get into "race pace".

One of our guys is young and strong, so he tended to hammer every hill that we encountered, and I (being the other climber) decided to keep up with him. My meter showed peaks around 330 watts for his climbing pace (later analysis showed that most of the hills had average watts around 250, but higher peaks). I was able to stay with him, but we ended up dropping our other friend, so it was better to wait at the tops. We picked up a fourth guy (very big and strong guy) along the way.

Once the hill section was done we had about 20 miles of flat headwind to get home through. We settled into a 4-man rotation of 1-minute pulls. This was the proof that all of the hill hammering was starting to take its toll. After a while I realized that our young buck wasn't pulling quite as long as he had been before. Perhaps even more interesting was that the big guy would surge ahead every time it was his turn and force us to accelerate in order to keep up with him. We would be going along at 23 or something, and then suddenly we are doing 25-26 for his pull. It was extremely tiring. I thought to myself "either this guy has no idea what he is doing or he is just much stronger than we are and thinks we are sandbagging"

At first it was like this, but then after a little while, his pulls got shorter and shorter, and then slower and slower, until someone said we had lost the guy off the back. I sat up and waited, slowing the group, and he rejoined us. We kept on going with a more reasonable pace for about 4 miles, but then he dropped off the back again, this time so far back that we just decided to keep going until the end. After all, we were just doing a steady non-race-pace, but it was enough to totally exhaust him after all of his surges had worn him out.

Post-ride analysis on this one was pretty interesting, to see the power sections of my pulls followed by a higher spike of power where I had to stand up and mash to catch the guy's surges, and then later, back to a more normal paceline pattern.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Based on what you guys are saying about these type of cyclist I can relate, but from the weaker side. My aspirations are to become a better club rider and I am riding with a gang that is just above my ability on most rides. Now that I have stepped my training up a notch I am also struggling more on the Saturday group ride because training through the week at a greater intensity is leaving me less than fresh for those rides. I can definately understand why guys at your level desire to train alone because there are things in group rides that can be frustrating, like longer stops changing flats or refueling at stores or having to slow the pace down for weaker riders like myself.

However, I feel I have been very fortunate to be accepted into the group that I have been riding with for the past 2 years. They have mentored me in many ways and yet they are not at the level of you guys. When it is my turn at the front someone may sit behind me and tell me if I am pulling too hard or too long. When my turn in the front is done I often get encouragement on my way back to the back with, "good pull." If we are riding in the North Georgia gaps I get a lot of coaching as to how to handle the extended climbs. So there may be some benefit to clueless riders if they fall in with the right group and if that rider is willing to listen and respect what the veteran riders are saying.

I understand why you guys want to train alone, but this past weekend I was grateful to be in a group when I flatted 50 miles into the ride. I ran over a piece of glass and while changing the tube I was unaware that the piece of glass was so large and I was feeling the inside of the tire when it cut my finger deeply. Blood was streaming out so fast, but two riders came back to check on me. I was very grateful for the help to finish to tube change because of the amount of blood streaming was quite messy. One of the riders was actually carrying bandages and antiseptic. Times like that make me happy to be in a group.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Back to me....

Not a great week. Had a good indoor session last Tuesday but my stump became quite sore the following day and I thought a couple of days off would help. But it stayed sore through the weekend and that hit my confidence and motivation. It reminded me of what happened after the first couple of months with my first prosthetic - good progress, then ****les, then going backwards as my ability to be physically active went out the window due to the pain associated with using the prosthetic. While I'm sure it's not like that this time, it doesn't help.

It feels a bit better today, so will really try to get back on the ergo tonight and see how it feels. That's the public declaration for accountability purposes

Really just hoping it's an adaptation thing and not a sign of trouble.

I hope you can keep at it. That makes me wonder how the long distance amputee runners tolerate the pounding.

Just think of it this way. Your numbers starting back are higher than my numbers with constant training. Perhaps not that encouraging, but it all I have to offer.

 

[kopride]

Had a good indoor session last Tuesday but my stump became quite sore the following day and I thought a couple of days off would help. But it stayed sore through the weekend and that hit my confidence and motivation. It reminded me of what happened after the first couple of months with my first prosthetic - good progress, then ****les, then going backwards as my ability to be physically active went out the window due to the pain associated with using the prosthetic. While I'm sure it's not like that this time, it doesn't help.

It feels a bit better today, so will really try to get back on the ergo tonight and see how it feels. That's the public declaration for accountability purposes

Really just hoping it's an adaptation thing and not a sign of trouble.

Alex,

This is going to be a challenge for you as an athlete. And as a scientist, you already know that it often is not something you can just work through. You might want to get your stump imaged by MRI. The newer MRIs can image things like edema and bursitis and differentiate them from just normal adaptation. See link below.

If it is not organic, then there are significant issues with pain perception by folks who lose their legs traumatically as opposed to non trauma (vascular or diabetes). Indeed, many trauma patients even experience increased sensitivity in their non amputated limb compared to non trauma. (I can send you the link if you are interested). Hopefully you are working with docs who are experienced in your type of patient population, i.e. trauma/athletes. In terms of prevelance, your group is relatively rare in developed western countries compared to the usual population of diabetics, vascular, cancer patients, where the actual surrounding tissue has already experienced dramatic sensory loss due to the underlying condition. Those patients have problems, but they are often quite different, i.e. the dramatic sensory loss leads to them being unaware of excess mechanical stress until after damage is done.

I get the sense that you are a "grin and bear it" type who might not be interested in dealing with a sports psychologist, but progress is generally not linear. There will be peaks and valleys as your body goes through dramatic adaptations. You have made tremendous progress in a remarkably short time without a sports orientated psychologist, so common sense might just say, stick with what is working, but there is a risk that sensitivity might cause you to overcompensate, or alter mechanics and cause real harm to your stump. There are biofeedback and other techniques to get your through these issues if it is not a true organic problem. Here are some interesting links if you are interested. (My interest in this topic comes from a different stance. My father (and many other family members) have a neuromuscular disease that involves dramatic sensory loss in the extremities and is involved in prosthetic and brace research. Fortunately it is X linked so I didn't get it.) The sensitivity issue is a huge obstacle for this patient population). Here are some links that might be interesting. Good luck and keep posting

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12736896?ordinalpos=15&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18569892?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

[jsirabella]

+1 on your assesment of the group ride.

In my case even when we were suppose to be doing a "team" group ride where these guys were suppose to work together. It just became a "hammerfest" where the newbies felt like **** for not being able to hold on and the better riders sometimes performed like **** that week at their races.

Too much ego involved and is why I love the PM! I just need to look at my fil at the end of the ride to know if I did well. Lately I have been wanting to hang on to wheels and see how long I can do it. Even if I loose a wheel, it does not bother me until I go home and check the file. I sometimes feel better about those efforts because they sometime become my new best efforts for that duration of time.

I do believe you need a bit more "arrogance" in this sport than others though. But that should be expressed on through your bike.

-js

Then he should have announced that he wanted a warm-up before going into the hill. Fair is fair.

The guy sounds pretty clueless to begin with and possibly inexperienced at riding with others. If you can't handle 230 W for a decent amount of time, then >330 W isn't a warm up. It isn't even a "blow out". It's a shock to the system and not a very subtle way of opening up the body. Forgetting about the PM, I think any decent rider without a PM wouldn't be so dumb.

I have found that group tempo (or SST) rides don't work very well so I've stopped trying to do them. Forget about the fact that I am riding with racers at a similar level to me and not going any harder than the average power of sitting in during local training crit (without the major power excursions that make the latter much harder), you would think by the way they are complaining that you are trying to torture your ride partners. As another way of saying what you and KOP have said, people don't understand what an evenly dosed out effort is. Not even close.

 

[jsirabella]

I do not understand the amount of pain you are going through but as a simple minded person that I am woudl ask, "Do you take pain killers?" Can the doctor recommend even something like stronger advils or such to deal with the pain you are associating with the rides.

I find Docs to be either sympathtic to athletes or the attitude of "stop doing it". There is alot you can do with medicine and technology today.

I am always really impressed with the wheelchair racers. When I see them going up the hill at CP I sometimes slow down just to watch them do it. I do not want to bother so as soon as they notice I take off but that is amazing...

I was also really inspiried recently by the roumanian runner at 38 kick ass over the entire field of runners. When you look at her face she reminded me of a grandma but her body looked like a 20 year old.

-js

The power meter can be a social wedge. One needs to bear that in mind for some athletes for whom the bunch is an intrinsic element of their motivation.

That's where training with power comes in.

What I do with such athletes is to show them how to ride with the bunch and get a good training session.


Back to me....

Not a great week. Had a good indoor session last Tuesday but my stump became quite sore the following day and I thought a couple of days off would help. But it stayed sore through the weekend and that hit my confidence and motivation. It reminded me of what happened after the first couple of months with my first prosthetic - good progress, then ****les, then going backwards as my ability to be physically active went out the window due to the pain associated with using the prosthetic. While I'm sure it's not like that this time, it doesn't help.

It feels a bit better today, so will really try to get back on the ergo tonight and see how it feels. That's the public declaration for accountability purposes

Really just hoping it's an adaptation thing and not a sign of trouble.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Excuse my ADD, but I have to throw in a word to kopride.
I was thinking about you and your style of training off the bike last night as I watched the Olympic guys on the rings. From a guy like myself always into to strength related sports those guys are in a different league of strength.

Amazing strength and muscular control
Every summer Olympics I sit in amazement