30 Days of Biking, Day 21: Aches

Okay, so, aches. I get it — not the most positive word I could choose. Sufficient unto each day is the biking therein, or something like that, and today I noticed yet again a couple of twinges that have been hanging around for a bit. Maybe writing about them will exorcise these tiny demons.

But first, a quick note on enjoyable aches. These aches show up when I’ve exerted myself in a way that makes me feel strong. I’ve enjoyed various forms of ache-inducing activities over the years, from weight-lifting (got an A in a college PE class) to dragon boat racing in Spokane to yoga practice including doing 108 Sun Salutations for a winter solstice celebration.

Bicycling has provided many enjoyable aches, all of these representing bike dates with my sweetheart:

And now, for the less enjoyable aches, which fortunately are few and far between.

Ache #1: Tailbone. I mentioned this as a possibility for the word of the day over a week ago, thanks to a tumble I took onto a cement floor setting up for the Spokane Bike Swap. That’s what can happen when you back up to get a better look at your booth layout and don’t realize someone has set boxes behind you.

Biking relevance for today: The early feedback from my body was that with a bruised tailbone, biking was a much better idea than walking because the impact of my foot striking the ground hurt quite a bit. Every day I’ve ridden any distance, however, I’ve noticed the tailbone bruise yet again when I dug a bit deeper in muscular exertion to get up a hill or start from a dead stop on an incline or come out of a light in downtown with a lot of cars behind me, which motivates me to move quickly.

Today I had those climbing elements plus a little bit of walking as part of my ride. I scouted a new way to climb the ridge out of my neighborhood last night, but misremembered the turns this morning and found myself facing a longer rather than a shorter hill. Not ideal and I ended up getting off and pushing, thus experiencing tailbone walking impact plus climbing effort all in one package.

Ache #2: Calf muscle. This little hangover lingers courtesy of a really bad leg cramp that struck Friday night. While not as bad as the punishing ones I experienced when I tried to boost my mileage too far, too quickly, it was still a monster. The fact that my muscle is still sore if I rub it 3 days later is my proof.

I’ve been prone to charlie horses all my life; I even get them in my feet after wearing the wrong shoes on a long day. I add Nuun tablets to my water bottle every time I ride 10 miles or more, which seems to help but doesn’t entirely eliminate the problem.

On a related note, I just learned that kiwis are higher in potassium than bananas.

At any rate, today’s bicycling, while beautiful and springlike and enjoyable and a lot of other fun words, also represented a few aches.

No picture of my tailbone or calf shall accompany this post.

Day 21 in the 30 Days of Biking, 30 Words, 30 Pictures-except-for-today series

Related Reading

30 Days of Biking

Your Turn

  • Do you like to ride ’til it hurts on purpose?
  • What do you do about leg cramps?
  • Even if you’re not riding every single day, is 30 Days of Biking inspiring you to ride more often than you would otherwise?

 

This article was posted in Health, News. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are closed.

One Comment

  1. Posted April 22, 2014 at 6:13 am | Permalink

    Great post. I empathize with you. Calves, sit bones, knees all barking after our 60 miler.