Georgia Riding

I got back from Georgia on Tuesday this week. It was a shock to go from 70 degrees and sun to 30 degrees and snow!

The trip went well. My bike made it down without damage, although I need to learn to pack it better if I'm going to do this very often. I got in three rides; it was not as much riding as I'd hoped to do, but it was good recovery time for my knee. I wore shorts and a short-sleeved jersey only one day, but I had to wear knee warmers and sometimes arm warmers the other days. Still, the weather was very nice for riding, and the terrain was dead flat, which was good for my knee I think.

I kept my rides relatively short (about 1 hour) and easy. My knee is feeling pretty good. I'm not feeling any patella discomfort now, but my knees are feeling a little fatigued by the end of the rides. I think that this is a result of my body adapting to the corrected saddle height (I've experienced this before). I'm going to stick with the short easy rides for another week or so, and then I'll start building the volume back up a little. So, I'm hoping to resume normal training by the end of this month.

So, assuming all continues to go well, this injury will have set me back over two months. This is why it's important to train in such a way as to avoid injury! This means that my goals for the season really need to change, as I will be totally unprepared to race the Spring mountain bike races. There are a lot of races in August, so I think I will build toward those, and then focus on cyclocross.