Hello once again from Big Bear Lake. I did indeed make the trip.
This time around I decided to book the full weekend and drive up early Saturday morning, similar to my original plan last month (scuttled by bad sleep and waking up late), and this time I was up early enough to make it work.
Because I cannot check into my lodging before 3pm, I parked at my usual spot and hiked with my backpack to get coffee on Moonridge, a nice 5K hike that took me through wood-covered Big Bear neighborhoods and gave my still-recovering left leg some easy extended exercise.
It still did hurt a bit to run across a couple streets as needed, though it’s worth noting I was carrying a 30 pound backpack (probably my first extended excursion of any kind while wearing the pack since Chicago) so maybe it was the extra effort that made it hurt. Still, some random movements still do hurt a bit.
This is one issue I often run into when injured or dealing with similar issues. I don’t suffer conventional injuries. There’s no predictable movement pattern that produces pain, that I can knowingly avoid. Some movements are fine sometimes, and sometimes they hurt. Pain may randomly show up when moving, but if I repeat the motion later I may not feel anything. So I can’t take any preventative action to avoid certain movements, without shutting things completely down and letting the uninjured parts of me atrophy.
That said, I found yesterday that I could run without pain for the most part, and at the very least (unless I wake up feeling like a truck hit me) tomorrow morning I can go try to run a few miles until I get too tired to maintain the needed form and/or until it starts to hurt. Then I can just hike back and call it good for the weekend.
With no long workout scheduled next week I’m thinking now when I return to Vegas to just shut it down for next week, cross train lightly and strength train in the evening, walk out work breaks, and see if a week of downtime from aerobic training gets this all to heal up. If by the following week I get back to training I’ll have lost trivially little aerobic fitness.
As for right now, at some point I have to take that long hike back to where I parked, have a good meal, and head to my lodging (I’m waiting until check in begins at 3pm). From there I’ll play a relaxing evening by ear before tomorrow’s workout.