Crumbling Joints!!

As August approaches I cannot believe how chaotic 2015 has been. Training has been inconsistent, although there have been flashes of feeling strong and getting fit – only for those times to slip away because of various domestic crises. Being in Saudi has not been great for my health or racing ambitions. After a good 2014 and a decent ironman finish I really wanted to keep the momentum going. The opposite has happened and the body has started to crumble! Strangely, during a 3 week visit back to the UK during May when I was unable to train at all I started to get various niggles. The worst occurrence was knee pain. To cut a long story short it looks like I have some sort of Osteoarthritis or body immune system malfunction that is attacking my joints. My knee is swollen and my wrist is giving me problems. I have had an MRI that confirms the problem and inflammation within the synovial lining of my joints. All this is not good, though the advice from the medical folk is that exercise is good; maintain doing what you can. The result is that I can cycle and run ok but it takes a while to warm up the knee and feel ok(ish). Swimming is ok but I struggle to push off with any force – not really a problem with the important racing being open water swims. I am due to see a specialist back in the UK to identify the best course of action. It could be that I will have this problem for ever. Not happy. It makes sense that I have probably had this problem for some time; however, because I train so consistently I have naturally sort of kept the symptoms at bay. Then, with a prolonged period of inactivity the problem hits home. So how do I approach my goal of Challenge Half Bahrain scheduled as my main goal on 20 Nov 15? I just need to crack on and train the best I can. If I feel pain, rather than intense stiffness then I do not train; or I change the specific training that I am doing. I am not yet sure if running makes my joint worse. Cycling certainly feels ok once I am warmed up properly but sometimes that takes over 30 mins. My feeling is that I will need to limit running as much as possible whilst maintaining the potential to run sub 90 mins for the run at Bahrain. I am pretty much in that run shape now. So, bike monster time! Thanks to the RAF Sports Lottery I now have a lovely set of Garmin Vector pedals to monitor my bike training using power! This is a major shift in my training as I have always used ‘feel’ as my barometer for bike training and racing. The last few sessions that I have completed on the turbo using power as a guide have been very interesting. Not only am I monitoring the Watts; I am also completing different sessions. For example, I would pretty much use the same system to get bike fit each year – say 5 x 5 mins as hard as I can manage. These are basically VO2 Max sessions. So I have never completed targeted training levels based on FTP. Yesterday I did the main set as 60 mins at 80 – 83% of FTP with surges every 3 mins to 115% of FTP (lasting 10 sec). This was hard but I can see the benefits. Hopefully, I will have good bike legs for Bahrain and it will not matter too much if I am not running to potential!