You Can Do Whatever You Want

Yesterday was a day off, mainly to rest my left calf. Today it seems to be 100% back to normal, so it was probably the right call. I had set my alarm to go running this morning, but I decided to sleep in instead. Today, as you may know, was the big doctor appointment day and I had pretty much convinced myself that there was no way that he was going to let me return to normal activity, so I figured, what was the point?

So, I went to the doctor's office and promptly waited. And waited. Which is really weird, since the last two times I went, I was seen right away and both visits were on the quick side. So, after waiting for 45 minutes, I was finally taken back to talk to the doctor.

He asked me all about how it was feeling and he asked me to move it around. He said that he was quite impressed with my ability to get it to be straight again without physical therapy. I told him that for the first couple of weeks, I really wanted to hurt him since my arm hurt so much when I straightened it out, but I guess the end results were worth it.

Finally, the moment came and I asked him if I could start riding my bike again. His answer? "You're healed. You can do whatever you want now." What? I really thought he was joking. I thought that there was no way that he would say that. He said that I might still have pain in my elbow when moving it certain ways or doing certain activities for the next six weeks or so, but I can get back to normal working out.

Of course, this now poses a lot of questions. Ones that I'm not sure I've got the answers to right now. What I really need to do is just ride my bike. Hopefully tomorrow morning. Because I need to see how it feels on my arm and if I think I can do it. The problem is that we'll be away all weekend, so that doesn't help with the bike training any. But, hopefully, there will still be some running over the weekend!

So, it's great news that I'm a fast healer. And I'm so glad that I don't have to restrict myself anymore. But I'm not sure that I can be quite as fast of a getter-back-in-shaper ... at least enough to do an Olympic in 4 weeks or Half-Ironman in 9 weeks. I just have to get back on the bike and see how a short ride feels before I can really think about this and make a final decision.