I woke up this morning to another EPO headline on Velonews highlighting that PED use in pro cycling is still an issue. I immediately started to think about the Cat 1 – Masters who have been testing positive over the last few years. Then, I started to wonder how many of these masters cheaters had explored natural strength building exercises to improve their performance prior to going down the cheater path. I’ve never gone down that path, and I’ve never even been tempted. I don’t care enough about winning to even bump bars with riders at 1 to go, so I definitely don’t care enough to cheat. I have a great career and a family outside of cycling, so maybe it’s easier for me since bike racing is a smaller part of my life. I’ve always been more satisfied with a strong result in a stacked field that winning a race where the competition was not as strong. I’m never impressed when I see a masters rider winning a masters race. I’m always impressed when I see a masters rider on the podium of a big race because I know how hard it is to train hard enough to race competitively at a high level and avoid injury as you get older.
Prior to injury, I was focused on 1 min / 5 min / 20 min power, hill repeats, etc… All these things are important, but they don’t matter at all if your muscles become so tight and inflexible that they eventually cause injuries. My back injury (herniated disc / several annular tears) wasn’t a case of overuse, fit, form, etc…it was a case of no flexibility, inconsistent muscle strength, and some areas of weak core. If I was a racer in my twenties, I probably could have raced without injury for years. Eventually, the lack of strength in my glutes, no flexibility in my hamstrings, and no range of motion in my hip flexors would have caught up with me. Since I’m race age 43 next season, it happened much sooner, and it is taking much longer to fix. At this age, these muscles don’t become limber very quickly, and they also don’t rebuild as fast, so it is a long process to fix imbalances. The best thing about the physical therapy is that I can see how much better off I’ll be in the long term. I’m only about 50% convinced that I’ll get back to pain free riding, but if I can accomplish that, I could get faster because all the imbalances caused by weak / inflexible muscles create a slower rider. If I fix imbalances, but I still have nagging back pain, then I’ll never be fast again, and I can live with that. It’s a very real possibility since I’m over a month into this physical therapy and still feeling serious pain if I try to push for any extended period of time. It may be that I have permanent damage that can’t be fixed, only managed enough to ride short group rides recreationally. However, I’d like to look on the positive side and think about a more optimistic potential outcome. If I can get pain free, then I could eventually get faster with a long rebuild. I’ve lost a lot of muscle, so it could take 6 – 12 months to rebuild all my muscle, but if I can get pain free, continue PT exercises, and rebuild fitness/form, I would be a faster rider. I was riding with so many imbalances across so many key muscle groups, that it caused strange compensations and over use by other muscles to make up for my weak muscles. I think this is likely the reason why I always complained so much about fast crits. Nobody else walked around hurt for several days post crit like me, and I couldn’t figure out the reason. The likely reason is that my weak glutes, tight hamstrings, and inflexible hip flexors caused my other back muscles to compensate and created severe pain and soreness. My rehab process involves a lot of trigger point therapy to remove tight muscles that have built up over time. The mots common reason for trigger points is due to a muscle compensating for another weak or tight muscle that isn’t doing it’s job. The muscle that is forced to compensate then becomes overused and worn out. It knots up and cause a lot of pain. When you add sensitive nerves running down the back to the equation and other injuries like herniated discs, it is a problematic mess.
So, 4 weeks into physical therapy sessions, and I’m happy to report that we’re making progress, but at least 8 – 10 weeks away from pain free riding. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get pain free, but if it’s possible, it will not happen until December. Fingers crossed…
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