dry

its been a tough week. and a dry week.
subsequent to the crash i was advised by kathleen, a friend who happens to be an A and E nurse and an experienced cyclist, that swimming is a total no-no with these open gash's and road rash that i have on my hip and elbow. of course my frist reaction was ...nah., i'm no wimp, of course it'll be alright to swim...but a bit more consideration, and my respect for her professional advice, i reckoned that a day or 2 out of the pool in return for rapid healing would do no harm. my body has had a hard time dealing with the wounds and monday and tuesday my glands were swollen, i had a sore throat and felt pretty run down. not much evidence of healing either.

there is a lot of conflicting advice as to how best to treat these sorts of cyclists wounds, too. keep it covered and moist in its own sterile environment? let it dry out and scab over? to use antiseptic spays or not to ( they can kill the body's own 'healing' bacteria as well as germs)? then there is the overwhelming choice of dressings available at the chemist...not knowing that i was doing the right thing was upsetting me, with Wensleydale Tri coming up at the weekend.
so, in the end, i let kathleen take over.

this has kind of thrown the swim push off track, but my consolation is that in the previous 3 weeks i have managed over 22k swimming/week. this week i chucked in a load of extra time on the bike, and took the oppurtunity to start building the run volume a little. despite the aches and pains its been a good week on dry land. i am really feeling that i'm getting in shape, and feeling good on the bike. sessions are now FUN and i can push it, and enjoy it.


some funny/though provoking things that drunks have said to me whilst i've been running:

"are you training for a race, or racing for a train?" - this tickled me initally, then i thought about it a bit more. bloody good question. am i just training for a race , or racing toward something else

"keep running - not that you need to" - i thought , yeah i'm nearly back. but then realized he was referring to appearance, and assuming that we who run do so to loose weight/look good. that whe we acheive that target, we are allowed to stop.

"nice hair" - this as i was running home late after an evening pool session. obviously, my hair was in a state, having exited the shower as fast as possible in persuit of sleep. so this guy said it ONLY to make me feel bad/self-concious about my appearance. again, the assumption that we run because we care about our appearance.

and a really nice blog by some of the residents living on 'my' canal route home from work, opposite one of the olympic development sites.
http://leabanksquare.blogspot.com/

tommorow i'll swim for the first time in 5 days, and get kathleen's opinion on the rotting gashes on my arm and hip!