Walking & Cycling

I had hoped to be able to run 18 miles this last weekend, preferably with the balls but that didn't happen. My ribs are being sooooo slooooow to recover. I tested them out with a very cautious lap of the park behind my house on Friday night. I managed to complete the half mile loop without the pain making me stop, which is progress but it confirmed for me that a long run is still out of the question. So I went to watch my son play rugby on Sunday whilst many of my fellow Petts Wood Runners were putting in between 18 and 22 miles. Some of them even ran 20 miles of the VMLM course (cutting out Docklands). I would've loved to do that.
So, a little depressed on the way back from rugby it suddenly occurred to me that I can still walk! It's the jarring of running that's hurting my ribs. Surely it would be better for me to do a fast walk and be on my feet for three hours than to just go home for an afternoon nap in the beanbag? Now enthused at the prospect of being able to do something, I got changed and set off for a walk in my new Brooks Glycerin 14s that I didn't get to wear at Silverstone! Now I'm not used to going out for this sort of walk and I overdid the layers. I very quickly had to put my waterproof jacket in the backpack and remove my hat and gloves. I covered 12.53 miles in 03:00:26 which is an average of 14:24 per mile. Not the sort of stats I wanted to be writing about at this stage but at least I was out there. However, walking creates a very different footstrike to running and my heels didn't like it much. Too much heel in a walk.
Having had a bit of a chat on Facebook with our track coach at PWR (thanks Mike), he suggested I could get on a bike at the gym and to a bit of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). So I made enquiries this afternoon and tonight I've been at the gym! Something I haven't done for years. I thought I was going to have to sign up for a month (or until the end of April as we're past the 14th of the month) but when I got there it seems you can just pay your money and get on with it. Things have changed since I worked in the leisure industry. You used to have to fill out a health questionnaire and book an appointment with a fitness instructor for a 40 minute induction to show you how to use everything. Not these days it seems: '£8.75 please. Off you go!' (not her exact words but that's essentially what happened). That's great but you then have to walk into a gym full of much younger and better looking people and pretend that you know what you're doing. The machines have changed a lot too. I managed to get my recumbent bike working without looking like a numpty and did a 3 minute warmup. I then did 20 sets of 60 seconds hard peddling at high resistance followed by 60 seconds of recovery peddling at low resistance. This became 50 seconds hard and 70 seconds recovery after about 10 minutes but I was pleased to be able to do something. I admit I was feeling a little wobbly when I got off the bike. This is all new stuff to me. I'd much rather be pounding the pavement but before I left I had a little go on an elliptical trainer to see if that would bother my ribs. It didn't, so I might go back tomorrow for a session on one of those.
I don't have any pictures of this walking and cycling so this weeks image is me on a bike when I was two.

Cycling 43 years ago.