I wrote this in February 2018
Over Christmas vacation, I found myself with lots of pain in my back, so I stopped riding and did my old stand-by when faced with pain in my back, namely Yoga! After three days of reduced activity and lots of yoga, I was no better! WTHeck!
I took to spinning a huge gear to get my back to feel better because the above fact became apparent. So now I regularly/daily spin a huge gear dirt slow 30 RPM (Gospel music like Kirk Franklin and others works great).
To take this even further, I have recently as in the last three days added HIIT sessions to what I was doing and slowly even out of the saddle efforts are becoming doable without pain and without pain afterwards!
Yes, spin like a twelve year old, but also mash a big ole gear for the yin-yang, balance of what we love to do!
Back to this week and last week:
My mantra right now is, “Pulling out all the stops!”
Reading above I am reminded that two years ago yoga didn’t help! But if I'm pulling out all the stops then yoga and core work has to be part of the build-up!
Last week I did a couple of yoga sessions to try to knock out the pain I’m having in my lower back. And the pain in places where I didn’t know about continued.
I talked about using the MTB as well. It has helped keep my body warm and diminishing the pain, but did not knock it out!
The core work continues as well as the stretching! The yoga is still there tightening places I’m not even aware they exist!
The thing that is making the biggest difference is spinning the big gear on the Position Fixe rides in the basement on the trainer! Even on days that I’m not exercising outside I am doing fifteen to thirty minutes in a big gear downstairs!
For those that don’t know these big gear workouts, they are very hard on the joints! My knees have been a problem these past five years as well! Today, I have good news! All the bike work, coming up on 1300 miles so far for the year has strengthened my knees to such an extent that today on a tough and taxing ride on the trainer my knees had no complaints even after thirty minutes in the big gear with standing accelerations (activity that used to cause pain in my knees)! That is very encouraging!
April fools, but not April Fool's 2021 update on my back! So I'm taking lots of days off before I retire at the end of May! It has been fun, but being unleashed to ride all kinds of mileage is not conducive to my sketchy back! I've done some big gear workouts and some time trials. Not a whole lot of difference there! I hae a new set of Ultegra Wheels because I busted up my Mavic Open Pro that we got a few years ago! As a big guy the best solution is to get down to 200 lbs. so the 32 spoke wheels can handle the weight and no buckle under my weight! I replaced the bad spokes that were stressed by the derailleur derailing into my back wheel! I trued that wheel very carefully so now both set of wheels on the Litespeed and the Caloi Time Trial are nice solid wheels! New curve ball has been puctures of the front wheel. I rode a little today with a 15K trying not to tempt fate with more mileage. So if I can keep the mileage reasonable I might be ok!
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