Day 139

In my self assessment it helps to use the word vigilant. As I rate the progress (or the plan) of returning to racing. It has been a long sixteen months. A long, dark, frustrating and sometimes devastating sixteen months. I like the new docs at UW Medicine. I trust that they will decode the data from last week's stress test and get closer to a diagnosis. Should they not…..I have my own plan.

It is this: Back to the track and more of the same. Having executed my third 5K since a five month physically unable to preform hiatus, monitoring the effects closely and grading the results as objectively as I can, the news is good, trending upwards.

I still get blindsided by occasional cardio sucker punches, but none with the lights-out  ferociousness that were the norm back in winter's bleakness.

So I push the envelope. Two a days. This morning we reeled off our third Wednesday of cycling Super Eights, monstrous all-out efforts of thirty seconds on and ninety off. Times eight. Tonight we do a 5 mile indoor spin and a hilly one mile run, three times. Someone with talent might call this a brick of a difference color. I simply call it training. It will hurt. By all measure I should be gassed at completion.

Gassed AND giddy.

Because I can do it. Because it is the only way I know, the only antidote. THE cure.

Could it be a colossal error of commission? Absolutely.

Will I take that chance? Definitely.

Should I trust the process and embrace the challenge? Unquestionably.

How should I describe this journey? Vigilant?

Sure, why not?