December progress report

Welcome to mid-December! I hope everyone is having a good holiday season so far.  We have our lights up, stockings hung by the chimney with care, and are prepping to fly to Ohio next week.  Go Christmas!

What’s Going On?

I would say that, for daily life, I’m about 90% back to normal.  I have moments of flare ups and I still can’t lift/carry as much as I’d like, but that’s about it.  Most days, unless I’m really careless, I don’t notice my back at all.  Woohoo!

Exercise.

• Still doing planks every night (I’m up to 30 seconds each for “normal” forearm ones plus side planks).
• Still weekly training with Melinda.  My weights are increasing and the back soreness after workouts is decreasing.  I still ice my low back after working out, but I’m usually back to normal within a couple of hours (not counting normal DOMS from the actual workout).
• Couch to 5K is stumbling along — I was doing great with it, but then took the week of Thanksgiving off as a rest week, and then got the evil death plague the week following Thanksgiving.  I was out of work for a week and it took another week past that to stop being winded just walking between rooms.  So I’ll pick that back up today or tomorrow.

Motorcycling.

• I’m up to about 40 miles per ride (double from last month, which was ~20 miles per ride).  Yay!
• The last couple of weeks have been woefully low on riding due to the aforementioned evil death plague and then the ubiquitous winter fog/rain.  While in theory I have no problem with riding in either (and have done so many times in the past), I don’t yet have the margin of error with my back to deal with the myriad problems that could occur with foggy, moss-covered twisty roads.  So, I wait for the sunshine.