WEEK SEVEN (and eight…)

Monday 30 June to Sunday 13 July 2008. “Rest and Recovery Weeks”

Not so much with the riding this past week or so.

I’ve had a Pilonidal Sinus infection (basically an infected pore just above my tailbone) – which has made it rather uncomfortable to SIT (…one a chair – strangely enough I was completely fine sitting on a bicycle saddle!?). In my last entry I had mentioned I’d had a bit of a sore and got on some antibiotics. Well they didn’t work out so well. After the long weekend, by some miracle, I was actually able to get in to see my own doctor. She sent me scooting off to see the on-call surgeon at St. Paul’s Emergency to have a look. He had me promptly cut open by a couple of residents to drain a rather large abscess that had been forming. I have to tell you, it even less fun that getting the old sniperoo – which was absolutely no fun AT ALL!

My doctor said it’s most common among cyclists and people driving jeeps!? When I asked her what she meant about people driving jeeps she said it was first medically described affecting soldiers driving their jeeps around in the desert… Hmmm… wonder if that could have been the Long Range Desert Group (British army commando-types that fought in North Africa during world war two that would drive thousands of miles around the flanks and raid German and Italian outposts hundreds of miles behind the lines)…!? I can’t imagine how much THAT would have sucked driving thousands of miles across lumpy, bumpy, rocky deserts with one of those on ones backside!?

Anyway, I am on the mend now and I should, literally, be back in the saddle again soon. Hopefully this next week I’ll be clocking on the miles again. Of course I’ve gotten out of the pattern of early nights and early mornings and once that’s happened it’s so damn easy to just say I’m too damn tired and not get up…

I was back on the bike last week hauling Finnegan over to campus every day for the Saskatoon Suzuki Summer String Experience (a total of ~75km through the week), and on Sunday I rode out to do some errands (another 15km). I HAD totally planned on doing rides Saturday and Sunday morning… see previous comment about “so damn easy…”