"In irons".

Following my GP visit last week, an appointment duly arrived in the post on Wednesday to see the in-house physio for an assessment. That'll be next Wednesday, so I've a short while to wait until I find out if anything can be done locally, or I move on to some sort of specialist ... somewhere.

In the meantime, I rested through the weekend and took the bike out again on Tuesday for another 6 miles dicing with death in traffic. There are two or three parts of the route where I cross busy main roads whilst trying to keep the wheels rolling.

I used to cycle to school, half a life ago, and balancing on a static bike in the middle of a busy road waiting for a gap was second nature back then. However, I feel a lot more mortal now, so gaps need to be way longer. I also don't try that trick of following a bus so closely, the particular motion of the air behind the bus draws you up hills. You just have to be really quick on the brakes if the bus suddenly slows.

I adjusted the bike route slightly to allow me to join traffic for a couple of hundred yards before crossing into my target side road, which seemed to work OK this time, but might be troublesome in very heavy traffic. We'll see how that goes. The total distance this time was 6.1 miles taking 30 minutes exactly - if we ignore the 1 second it takes to hit the stop button on Mr Garmin. An average pace of 4:55/mile varying between around 2:55 on the swooping downhills and 9:something on some of the inclines.

Definitely sweat inducing though.

On Friday, I had a day off work and managed to fit into a packed schedule of gardening a 30 minute run. I had planned to take the bike out, but:

a) didn't feel like it
b) didn't feel any problems in my calf
c) wanted to be sure there was at least something to talk with the Physio about on Wednesday

So, back to the normal circuit, keeping it at 8:1 run:walk. What I find amazing is that the rest of me really feels it can do a lot more than this and I find that when Mr Garmin chirps up to say "walk" I really don't want to - I want to just keep going. However, I know that if I do, I'm going to do a load more damage.

I set out again with a warm up walk to the end of the road and then kicked off. Within a hundred yards, I could feel the tightness in the calf muscle, but nothing nasty. Last time, I know I began to favour my left leg and in doing so put extra strain on my right, so I was keen not to do that this time and just try to keep an even kilter and a steady easy pace.

Things stayed much the same all around. I was a little fast on my first downhill 8 minutes, 9:13 pace, but more consistent on the middle two at 9:47 and 9:48 through the uphill sections. The final 3 minute section (i.e. 8+1+8+1+8+1+3) averaged a 9:34 pace.

Following the run, I've been icing and compressing a couple of times a day. I might get the bike out this evening as my calf is still pretty tight now, 48 hours on. Hopefully I can maintain some running with cycling over the coming weeks and not be instructed to stop by the physio!

So, not much forward, but not back either, thus "in irons".

Mr Stumble.