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Update – Making Progress!

I’m now four weeks out from the accident when I broke my collarbone and nearly three weeks out from surgery to fix it (19 days to be exact). Things seem to be healing really well. I don’t have any pain and don’t even really have much discomfort for “normal” life things.

As for training, I took the first week or so after surgery completely off. Since then, I’ve been spending just about every morning in the gym in the basement of our new apartment building. The set-up down there is pretty nice – treadmill, elliptical and the new addition of my Computrainer. I’ve mostly been using the trainer, but also spending a little time on the elliptical and treadmill and using the dumbbells for lunges and squats. As best I can tell no one else in our building uses the gym.

As an added bonus, there’s a TV with a DVR, and I have it set to record the Tour de France every morning. So I go down to the gym, set the Guru up on the trainer and fire up the Versus coverage of the Tour on the DVR. I usually start my workout 60-90 minutes into Tour coverage. Then I fast forward through the commercials (and some of the cycling coverage itself) so I usually catch up right about 8am, just in time to watch the finish of that day’s stage live. I’ve watched more of the Tour than ever before and am really enjoying it! (I do have new appreciation for the injuries those guys suffer – by my count through the first eight stages, at least four of the cyclists who have withdrawn did so because they broke their collarbones: Janez Brajkovic, Ivan Velasco, Bradley Wiggins, Rémi Pauriol).

Today though, after nine days in the basement, I decided to switch it up and try riding outside. I rode from home to the corner at Ocean and San Vicente to say hi to my friends who start their Saturday ride from there, then did an extra San Vicente loop and headed home for a total of 24.5 miles. Getting out on the bike this morning felt great – my collarbone wasn’t uncomfortable from either the road vibration or holding onto the handlebars. My fitness has taken a beating, but I wasn’t nervous to be on the roads and didn’t forget how to ride! And I know the fitness will come back!