Last week, sometime on Tuesday during a yoga class, I realized that my legs had swollen up to the point of my kneecaps being noticeably less visible and my calves verging on cankles. Physiologically speaking, I’m no really sure why, after several days, that would happen, but, for about 3 days, I did an hour at a time, a few times a day in a set of Elevated Legs compression boots.

It’d move the swelling out, only to have it come back within an hour or two of standing and walking. I tried riding, and, even though my muscles felt about as I’d expect, that or any other vertically-oriented physical activity made my legs more puffy.

Thankfully, by Friday, it was noticeably better, thanks in part to some acupuncture. One of my former students from U of M is an acupuncturist in Nashville (at Affinity Acupuncture), and he comes to Memphis every couple of weeks to practice from a chiropractor’s office. He’s one of the big reasons I was able to train as hard as I did for Dirty Kanza without taking large quantities of ibuprofen for back pain. I’ll admit, I don’t actually enjoy the process of acupuncture. The needles are really tiny, but when one goes into an irritated muscle, a lot of times it will twitch or contract involuntarily, and that’s not a pleasant feeling. Occasionally, the same thing will happen when the needle is on its way out, too. However, I walk out of the office feeling like a million and five bucks, extremely relaxed and with no back pain at all.

I could tell that recovery was going well on my Saturday ride. I only wanted to ride 1.5 hours or less, so I decided to get up early with Matt, who was racing a local training race about a 20 mile ride from the house (Ryan had left town to race in Louisiana). I put a bag of clothes in his car and left just after him to time it to where I’d get there & changed about the time his race would be in its first couple of laps (45 miles on a 5 mile circuit).
On my way there, I was in between rolling hills when I glanced over my shoulder and saw a large pack of Memphis Hightailers- the large local recreational cycling club. They’re nice people and all, but it was early, and I didn’t really want company, so up the next roller, I picked up the pace to a “don’t let the group catch you” effort. It was only 99% effective, because one dude decided to jump out of the group and come flying up the hill after me. He passed me about halfway up and hammered his way to the top, where he promptly slowed down to catch his breath. I ended up catching up to him and figured, ok, I’ll just ride on his wheel to the next corner a half mile or so up the road where the group is probably going to turn off my route. However, we reached another small hill, and he kept pedaling pretty easy. My inner troll came out, and, just to mess with him a little for chasing me down, I stood up and told him, “If you’re gonna pedal hard up one hill, you gotta pedal hard up all of them.” He chuckled and said OK and matched my speed. We were cool until we got near the top, and he looked over at me and said, in a “surprised dude” tone of voice, “Good job!”

I couldn’t help but laugh for a second before I shifted to the big ring and showed him what a good job actually was. I don’t know what he did, because I didn’t look back.

Anyways… the point? My legs felt pretty decent doing a 2-3 minute hard effort. Not 100%, but definitely on a solid road to being there. I got to the car a half hour later, cleaned up, and watched the ongoing circuit/road race. Matt tried to get in to every viable break, which ended up wearing him out enough to get dropped when he didn’t make a break and had to help with some chasing. It made for some good heckling when he rolled by and yelled that he felt like LeBron James.

That afternoon, we went to a friend’s housewarming party & crawfish boil. Highlights included a muddy back-yard-trail race, a moon bounce, a garden hose in the moon bounce, and running away from said moon bounce at a high rate of speed in order to avoid being body-slammed in the mud and sprayed with the hose. People watching laughed at my “scalded cat”- like reflexes, but, hey… I was neither muddy nor hosed, so I consider it a win.

Sunday started with an easy 2 hour ride and a generally laid back day to put the wraps on my recovery week. My legs felt alright, nothing was swollen, and I’m looking forward to the next batch of training. I did get notice that I’m “in” for the Vapor Trail 125 in September. It means that I won’t be going to Breck Epic again this year, but I will likely kick my yearly Colorado Pilgrimage off with a stop through Breck for some riding and relaxing around the end of the Epic.
Until then, I don’t have any real plans except for a Women’s Weekend at Mulberry Gap later in the month (I’ll be teaching the Bike Repair class)  as well as my July 12th shenanigans, which will remain mostly secret until the right time. I’d very much like to find some racing to fit in between all of that, but right now, I haven’t found anything that looks like a good time that isn’t >6 hours from Memphis. There’s supposed to be a mountain bike race at Stanky Creek in town next weekend, but the trail is absolutely saturated from the recent rains, and it won’t be getting any better with continuing heavy rains this week. If the race isn’t cancelled, I’m not going to be a part of tearing up the trail.

So, a little lull in the action for now. I can’t take that for too long, though, so I’m sure I’ll figure something out.