Things are starting to look up!

Yes they are at last starting to look up. Last week I started a 6 week one day a week 'knee class' generously provided by the NHS, this class is basic but is helping me to get strength back in my leg(s). As I said It's basic in that it's simply circuit training through 10 different exercises and it all starts with a quick warm up on a stationary bike then it's 2 minutes on each exercise and the only rest is the time it takes to move to your next bit of equipment.

Some of the exercises are harder than others such as the leg press, leg extensions, leg curls, standing calf raises, lunges and the easer exercises; the 'bridge', rowing machine, balance board and the sit to stand exercise however the one that I find the mother of all badass exercises is standing on one leg, my affected leg with leg slightly bent at the knee for two minutes. This exercise kills me it really does - trying to balance on my bad leg isn't too bad but bending at my knee so that my knee is over my big toe has my leg shaking within 20 seconds with my quad and hip muscles screaming in agony but the result of this session was sore muscles over the next couple of days and I've not had that nice 'soreness' for absolute yonks, it's great to know I'm hitting all those muscles that have been taking it easy for the last few months.

This week was my 2nd session and I found it just as hard but I discovered very quickly that these sessions are greatly benefiting me and well worthwhile; I'm walking better and my legs don't have that 'heavy' feeling any more and I'm only 2 weeks in! The sessions have also benefited me in that I've learnt that just 2 minutes each of the right exercises done correctly can reap rewards very quickly and free-standing exercises like the lunge, calf raises and balancing on one leg knees bent can be done anywhere but better in privacy as I would imagine you'd get funny looks performing them at the station...

My arm is also improving, although I'm not receiving any physio for my arm I have used my brains and started on my own set of exercises - behind the neck triceps extensions with light weights, my version of bent over rowing, upright overhead press and 100 press ups, not the full blown on the floor press ups but a rather easier version using a table so my body is at a 45' angle. In time I will progress to the normal version and perhaps step up a level to the bench press - gotta make use of my Fitness First card at some time!

Lastly I've been on my turbo 4 or 5 times a week and have seen improvements in my average speed and heart rate per session. With my arm getting stronger, today was a real turning point - for the first time since my fall I could use my good arm to drink from my water bottle using my bad arm to hold my weight through the bars, before this time my bad arm would not hold my weight for more than a couple of seconds so with everything finally heading in the right direction I'm a happy chappie and really looking forward to getting out on the road when the sun's out...

Hello fellow sufferee..

In my previous blog entry I received a comment and a couple of questions from Gordon who in answering him is worthy of the main page and not a line or two in that little reply box so here goes.

Gordon's comment: 

Hi Mark
Just found your blog today. I broke my hip 8 weeks ago today on my bike and our stories are similiar although I am 49.
Back wheel went out on some diesel? at 25 mph and I came down hard on right hip. No other damage thankfully.
DHS and no weight bearing for first 6 weeks. So now allowed back on turbo and 25% weight bearing building up to full weight by 10 weeks post op.
Your story is heartening and it sounds like you are making a good recovery. I am getting a lot of aches and pains in leg now I am using it again - did you go through that? Knee seems a little unhappy about working again too. No one mentioned anything to me about prospect of ball of femur 'dying' from lack of blood flow - how do you tell?
All the best
Gordon 

Hi Gordon, firstly so sorry you've joined the broken hip gang, it's an exclusive club with few members but more than you'd think! You say you are 49, well I'm only a year younger and the only reason I mention age is that in my case age combined with the side affect of the immunosuppressant drugs I take for my kidney transplant (along with the fall of course) are responsible for my weakened bones. Since my fall I've read a lot and have come to understand that cyclists are prone to 'thinning of the bones' as my doc puts it and once we get past forty it can become a real concern. Calcium & vitamin D supplementation is recommended as a precaution but in our cases that recommendation comes too late - I'm mostly mentioning this for the older riders that may be reading this...

You are already on the turbo and soon to be fully weight bearing, that's really good going and slightly better than my own progress but all the same very similar. I like you also had pains but in places you wouldn't associate with a broken hip, my pains initially were in my thigh, hip, knee and strangely my feet - both feet. As soon as I was allowed to partially bear weight I was out on my crutch 'walking' my dog and walking as much as possible in the house. Every day I upped the distance until the time came when I was allowed to fully weight bear and then I would walk up to 2 miles, yes there was pain but I was determined that I would get back to my old self so 'walked' through the pain trying to walk as normal as I possibly could.

My pains have diminished or completely gone now at 4 months. My knee pain has gone but does occasionally flare up, pain killers takes care of that if I'm off out somewhere. Both of my feet hurt from the time I was partially weight bearing and for a few weeks after fully weight bearing with the good legs foot stopping aching first then a couple of weeks later the bad leg stopped. I also had hip pain at first particularly when walking up a slope and especially when riding my bike up any sort of incline but this rarely troubles me now although I can't say I've pushed myself on the bike as I've deliberately avoided any of the hillier hills around my locale but normal walking doesn't hurt my hip any more.I still get pains in my thigh during and more so after exercise or physio. I also suffered some muscle wastage particularly in my calf and in my lower quad just above the knee - some of it is back now but I still have a lot of work to do to get those muscles back...


This death of the head thing is called avascular necrosis, I was told it can be caused by a lack of blood to the head of the femur at the time of the accident or thereafter. If the break is on the neck or higher nearer the socket there is a greater risk of this happening than if it's lower like mine was. I have a follow up in 6 months time to see if I'm suffering from this but my consultant isn't concerned about it so I'm not.

As I said I'm 4 months post break, I'm back on my turbo and the road and my fitness is getting close to where I was before the break, I'm getting better every week. My limp is slight when I'm having an occasional bad day but nearly undetectable otherwise. I do get tired easily when out walking, my legs feel heavy most times but I hope that over time I will get back to where I was when walking was like 'floating on air'.

I hope the above is of some encouragement to you and that things will get better for you as I'm sure they will, just takes time and patience. There is a thread over on BikeRadar forums that may be of interest to you link why not grab a cuppa and have a read, lots of riders in our boat on BikeRadar.com

Week ending 8th May...

Sunday, today, was a good day for me on the bike, It's been a couple of weeks since I've dared venture out onto the roads and today was a good day for me to do just that. Yes it's windy but at least it's warm so I pumped the tyres up on my Scott, stuck my water bottle in it's holder, switched on my Garmin and set on my usual training loop around Aston and Preston on the hill. The last time I rode this route was a month ago and I suffered, I was knackered after just 10 miles and was in pain. This time I rode a similar route and was able to maintain a 15.3 mph average and no stops except for junctions. None of this is phenomenal but for me to manage the distance without problems is good going and fills me with hope that I am just a few weeks away from the club runs and getting back to cycling normality.

During the week prior to my Sunday solo effort I have stepped up my turbo workouts, I have managed to maintain a workout ratio of two consecutive days to one day of rest and have seen my fitness increase by a small measure. A few more weeks of the turbo combined with a few road rides to rebuild my confidence on the road and I'm sure I will be fit enough to keep up with the boys - fingers crossed...

I still have a few hangups I need to get past, I came across quite a few areas on the cycle path I use where cherry blossoms had inconsiderately shed their blossom right across the path to make a pretty looking white thick blanket of the stuff and this put the hebegebes up me I can tell you. Gravel or twigs on a bend also has the same affect and I don't know why it should as in the 4 years and all the miles I have ridden I have only fallen off three times, none of them on twigs or blossom or gravel but once when I was pushed over when I was used as a cushion by a fellow club member (who will remain nameless) when he unclipped the wrong foot coming to a junction only to fall the wrong way and onto me and the other two times on black ice, once before last Christmas and the next and last was the big one in January where I momentarily became Samuel L. Jackson in 'Unbreakable' - he fell down the stairs breaking bones as if made of glass but in my case black ice causing me to break my glass like bones on the rock hard asphalt of a Cheshire country lane...

SportTracks Plugin :Training Load

I've had this plugin installed in my copy of SportTracks for quite a while now but have only recently realised it's worth. This plugin uses data from your Garmin to give you a record of not only your workout but also how hard you've worked over the short term (ATL), long term (CTL) and how these workout affects your fitness.

Heres a chart of my recent cycling activities to illustrate;

Ok now to explain to the best of my knowledge.

TRIMP (Training Impulse), this is the vertical bars on the chart and correspond to your individual workouts which give a 'score' for your workouts based on time in various heart rate zones. As you get fitter two exact same workouts will have different scores. In the chart above the last two vertical bars are exact same workout based on speed over 1 hour but in my 2nd workout my heart rate had adapted from the previous workout and therefore slightly lower resulting in a lower score indicating an increase in fitness.

Red line is my ATL (Acute Training load). This is a measure of your fatigue and load over a period of the previous 10 days.

The blue area is my CTL (Chronic Training Load). This is an indicator of your fitness and takes into account all of your workouts over the last 45 days or so.

What that means

From the above chart you can see the effects my training had on my fitness starting 7th November when I started the first 3 week Base period of training ending 21st November. The chart shows that my CTL (blue, fitness) moved up 6 points, my ATL (red line) moved up towards 'epic' and then came week 3, a weeks rest where I recovered from the previous 2 weeks and my fitness in the remaining base periods from thereon remained fairly level (a slight dip over Christmas week). However just as I was about to take my training to the next level, I fell over and bust a few bones, This can be seen in the huge dip in my CTL (fitness, blue area) which corresponds with my hip fracture and lack of exercise in the weeks thereafter. Some more little raises as I attempt to get some fitness back, some gaps where I did nothing due to either despondency or after aggravating my hip. You can also see my ATL (red line) increasing as my workouts have increased in firstly length and lately intensity after my fractures. My very recent  ATL (red line) tells me that my workouts are increasing in intensity (but not nearly as much as pre fractures workouts) and as result my fitness (CTL, blue) is also increasing in small steps. If I was to stop training this plugin also predicts how quickly fitness will be lost and can be seen in the pale blue area to the right of my last workout.

There's tons more stuff to learn from this plugin, I've just covered the basics. I can see this being of great use not only in viewing how my workouts affect my overall fitness but also I can see if my very recent workouts (ATL, red line) is leading me towards over training or getting close to it so I can back off to avoid illness. Everyone is different in how their bodies tolerate training loads but as most of us do at some point we over train without realising it until it's too late. If that should happen it would be easy to look at your ATL (red line) to see what load we have put on our bodies and take steps to ensure that we do not replicate that training load to avoid over training and possible illness.

I've not gone into the depths of what this plugin is capable of demonstrating, there's tons more but I have explained the basics as I understand it (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and how we can tailor our workouts to avoid over training.

EDIT
A more detailed and dare I say a better blog on this plugin here