Starting over

It's been exactly a month since my last post. Here's the quick update...

Three and a half weeks in a cast. I couldn't swim at all, but towards the end, I did manage to run a couple of times on the treadmill and once outside and also to ride a stationary bike (I tried an upright bike, but it was very uncomfortable because I couldn't use my hands to keep myself balanced, so I rode the recumbant bike at the gym). Once the cast was off (I'm now in a splint), I started swimming and riding my bike on the trainer and this week, I was finally able to ride outside.

I lost an incredible amount of fitness over the past month. My heart rate soars when I run and riding up hills is hard. I've also gained some weight, which makes riding and running harder. And even if I were in the same shape as I was in early August, I wouldn't be able to handle long workouts in the pool or long rides, as my hand still hurts. It's getting better, but not as quickly as I'd like.

Today, I missed a race that I had really wanted to do. This was the Olympic distance that I wanted to try for the first time. I would have been happy to just do the sprint, though. Neither was to happen. There was no way I could have raced today. The next race is in two weeks -- I'm still not sure about that one, although the plan is to do it.

I'm very frustrated and discouraged, but I'm also determined to get my fitness back to where it was before I broke my hand. I doubt that will happen by the national championships in Eilat (late October), but at least I'll be able to race. I know that injuries and accidents are all part of the game and that everyone has training setbacks (and that relative to what other people sometimes have to go through, my broken hand is nothing), but when I'm huffing and puffing while trying to get up a hill that was a piece of cake six weeks ago, those thoughts don't do a whole lot to console me. Some encouragement would be really helpful to me right now, I think.