First week of ‘training’ in the bag.  Not bad for 4th week out of surgery.  I did 4×3.5 mile walks, most with Tula Mon-Thu, then a 6.75 mile walk on Friday, again w/Tula.  I was pretty tired on Saturday, so I made that a rest day.

Each of the walks felt better than the last, which is why I decided to push the distance on Friday.  Plus it was a beautiful day, and I really needed a mental break.  I was tired at the end, but I felt great.  My HR stayed steady, except on the hills where it sped up a bit from the effort, but nothing that I haven’t seen pre-surgery on the same route.  It also dropped back to normal pretty quickly on the downhills.  At about 5 miles, HR started to trend up a bit, but that’s to be expected when extending duration.

Since my HR was pretty steady on the long walk Friday, I decided to do a short bike ride on the trainer on Sunday.  I set up the road bike on the trainer, since it was going to be easier to ride with a sore/tight chest than the tri bike.  I decided to try The Sufferfest’s “Elements of Style” video since it’s pretty low intensity, focuses on form and is one of the shorter videos.  Also, I wanted to re-establish the winter training setup in the basement with the Cyclops Powerbeam trainer, TrainerRoad software and the new Garmin speed & cadence sensors on the road bike.

As usual, getting everything set up and reconnected was a snap.  Kudos to the folks at TrainerRoad for making this so straightforward.  I set my output to 60% of my pre-surgery FTP, and was up and riding in no time.  My goal was to keep my HR at about 120 for the ride, but for some reason I was riding at 130ish for most of the ride.  That was a bit more uncomfortable at first, but pretty quickly felt ok.  My crotch and left hand went numb pretty quickly, so I figured the elevated HR and other physical symptoms were mostly due to being off the bike for 5 weeks.

When I got done with the bike, and looked at the data I was pretty down on myself.  38 min, 4.5 miles, and 67w avg power.  Pretty poor showing.  But I figured it was a start, and I was better off than any number of other people weeks out of surgery.  You take what the day gives you and this is what I had today.   After I showered and got some lunch I still felt that ‘post-workout’ glow that I really love and all the bad vibes had disappeared.  Nice.

On to week two….