June 22: At Judy’s for my rehab.
June 21: Super good night of sleep so it’s just getting better literally by the day. With that good night under my belt I decided to hit my walk with either two ways to go: left posterior knee tendon is still sore so keep it shorter like Monday, or the tendon is feeling much better in which case I could go further.
My hope was obviously that the tendon was feeling better so I could go further. Got going and ticked through the first 2 miles feeling like it really had gotten way better since I’d iced it for a bit on Monday. Decision made - “let’s go further.” Pace felt good so I just kept it rolling. Now without even trying I was going through some of my time checks with significantly faster times since I’d seen my cardiologist on Thursday.
Man it feels SO good to be back at a pace that feels “right.” Not to downplay what I’d been doing for the first several weeks out of surgery, but it just felt so unnatural to have been walking that slow. Kind of felt like I was shuffling most of the time, and I was so damned consumed with keeping the HR way down there that it just made things even worse. Ok, so that was probably (definitely?) pretty good on my part to be mellow right out of the gate, to do what I was told - by the book. It wasn’t easy to do that but I really wanted to adhere to all the med advise I was given.
Well, the HR was still within my RPE 3-4 range, likely floating more in the 4 area on the hilly portions, as I was walking further and faster. And from my several times of measuring my HR by the right radial artery, never did I exceed 120bpm on any of the hill climbs. So I went the full section today, doing 3.5 miles 1-way to Rt. 91, where I turned around for the 3.5 mile return trip back. I hit the halfway point at about 1:01 hours, so I’m definitely getting back to my old walking/hiking pace. Used to be that about 3.75-4 mph was my typical pace on a flat trail.
Turned around and just felt really good. Once I got back to Judy’s house I was at exactly 2 hours dead on, so I kind of negative split the walk. Now with that being said, I’ve just kind of caught myself here…driveling on about time checks and negative splits and mph pacing. I mean damn, I’m rehabbing from open heart surgery for God’s sake, and here I am reverting to my old self where that ego/competitive side always seems to raise its head somewhere, somehow.
Heck, I’ve got like a pile of training diaries that go back to 1981 where I just have every PR, every little detail of every resistance workout, every race, every training ride/run/swim/hike/rockclimb, everything. And that’s just been my MO for so long that it’s really hard to get out of that mode. Even when I kind of stepped away for competitive racing, I still kept recording in my training diaries. So today here I am a post-op. open-heart surgery patient, and I’m still in the habit of being cognizant of my time splits, negative splits, total times etc. I’m just so damned conditioned to competing against myself in one way or anther that I it’s like being on autopilot.
Felt really great after the walk, good enough such that I went straight to the computer and worked for hours. Then around 3 PM I took just a little nappy-poo. After that went back to working again, then helping with dinner, and finally working yet again. So it’s getting better all the time. Heck, that would be a really good song title!