75 mile January challenge recap. Did I make it?

I set an intention and goal for myself to complete a 75 mile challenge in addition to my weight training at the gym.  I wanted to go into the new Year with a fresh new start to keep things challenging but also attainable for myself. A couple of years ago before COVID hit and shut down the gym and our worlds changed forever, I was doing a 75 mile challenge, but most of it was on the hand bike since my right foot was rolling out awkwardly and my heel wouldn’t reach the ground.  It was impossible for me to do weight bearing cardio because of the level of pain that was increase as I tried to stand for long periods of time.  Long being more than five minutes in one place.

I tried to do recumbent bike but it was hard to get my leg up and lane on the pedal especially with an awkward leg brace making things harder.  My foot was too fat for the pedal strap and definitely impossible to bend over and loosen it myself.

I stuck with getting my mileage on the upper body ergometer or hand bike.  I was noticing an increase in my miles as time went on but I always experienced a tightness in my trapezius muscles (the muscles that elevate or shrug your shoulders).  No matter how much I tried to depress my shoulders, the tension always built up in this area and I could get next tuf but ness.  Sometimes I would even get a knot in my neck during the night laying on my pillow and I could turn my head fully.  Not good when driving.  I had to keep lifting my body up tumor turn.  Hardly worth 100 miles I thought.

So for my 2023 January challenge I would experiment and see how 75 miles went.  I calculated it out and spread the miles over 31 days.

That would have been good if I had all 31.  But on New Year’s Eve COVID had knocked at our door and my husband needed we quarantining in the bedroom.  We had to keep the family safe.  Because I was exposed, I kept away from the gym.  I couldn’t get mikes in at home so I did what I could with body weight exercises like push ups off my kitchen counter and squats and lunges while holding on between my stove and the counter.

I would have made my miles but I fell short gaining only – little over 58 miles in a little over 14 hours.  This is 17 miles short.  I’m still proud of the effort I made and there’s nothing I could have done to prevent COVID from knocking on our door as my husband brought it home from NYC on the evening he took my son to the top of the Empire State Building and to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller center.  I am so happy they had the experience but masks are definitely a must still when in crowds.  Maybe always.  We’re all fine now.

I watched my miles go up on elliptical and was proud that my twenty minute mile went down to a sixteen minute mile meaning my leg muscles are getting stronger and that new reconstructed ankle is holding up.

My handbike miles are twice as fast with a mile made in ten minutes.  Is also like to see the ratio of weight bearing to upper body miles change in favor of my legs.

Today because I’m switching up to time in February instead of miles, I goooes on the arc trainer which doesn’t crank a lot of miles as the knee only does a half revolution instead of a full one like on the elliptical.  I opted for a program mode which switches up resistance and stride length and did quite nicely.

One things I am noticing is that I definitely am heating up more because me legs are working.  I’m actually finally breaking a sweat.

I’m getting there one step at a time.