Tacking the Tour of Watopia

You know what?  Easing back in is hard.  Because even though I’m well on my way to being back to full strength after my surgery, I still have this hip injury to deal with.

Right now, Zwift is doing their Tour of Watopia, a series of 7 rides that takes you through all of their courses (I think).  It’s a pretty cool challenge, and while I’m not sure I will be able to complete it due to scheduling (and also some of the legs are super hard), I figured I would try the first leg.

The great thing about the challenge is that it’s not a race.  It’s not about how fast you go.  You just have to cover the course.  Which is good, because I wasn’t fast to begin with and dealing with an injury and surgery recovery, well… yeah.

(Thankfully, the programmers at Zwift are nice and no matter how slow I went, they never made my avatar fall over, which is exactly what would have happened if I were actually riding at that speed on some of those steep climbs.)

I made it through the first leg taking it easy, not pushing, and just riding at a comfortable level.  It took forever, but that’s okay.  Also according to the stats, I wasn’t last.  And most importantly, it didn’t hurt.

At first.

My muscles were not prepared for this workout.  While I made it through with no pain, just some fatigue, a few hours later, I was sore.  Super sore.  Do not recommend.  Of course, some of this was my own fault – if I had stretched just a bit more or not done the workout so late in the evening and walked around more following the ride, things may have been better.

But it was a good reminder that I’m not back to full force just yet.  No regrets, of course.  And I’m still going to push the workouts (though I don’t know that I’m going to finish Tour of Watopia, because one of the legs has almost 4500 feet of climbing and that’s a lot).  But I’m also making a point to remember to take rest days when I need them.  Slow and steady.  Slow and steady.

The post Tacking the Tour of Watopia appeared first on Elbowglitter.