Wednesday September 7th
Mark again doubled his efforts today, and again he finished his skate
symptom free and feeling like he could have done more. He is pretty
confident he is totally recovered from his injury and now faces 2
primary challenges getting back to full time skating: 1) he needs to
build the strength back up in his legs to be able to maintain a full
schedule of 50 km per day and 2) he needs to refocus mentally and get
back to a point where he is not concerned about falling again and is
fully confident in each and every stride.
It was a grey day today with a pretty cool temperature, and it
certainly felt like a typical fall day. At the same time it didn’t
rain, the pavement was good, and overall it made for an excellent day
to skate. Cam’s ankle is back to normal after only 3 days on the
antibiotics for his infected cut, and he started the day off by
skating the fastest 30 km of the trip in just under an hour. When he
was done, Mark and Matt hopped out and easily skated 10 km with Mark
getting up to about 70 – 80 % exertion. Mark felt as though he could
continue but wisely shut it down for the day to be safe, and has been
feeling good every since.
Matt put in another 15 km and we arrived at Perth-Andover which was
our destination for the day. Once in town we had a late lunch at Tim
Horton’s, and then headed to the campground where Mark was met by a
local reporter from the Victoria Star Newspaper. Mark gave an
interview, and was feeling so good and energetic this evening that we
all engaged in some pretty competitive 2 on 2 basketball that pit Mark
and Phil against Matt and Cam and ended in a draw.
After the game it started to rain, and we gave the RV a good clean and
made spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner. It’s a dreary night, and
there are plenty of mosquitos outside, so we’re hiding out in our
dressing room on wheels for the evening and getting ready for another
good skate tomorrow.
With Mark feeling this good, he’s planning on doing somewhere in the
15 – 25 km range both tomorrow and Friday as we work our way up to
Edmundston. We then will have a day off on Saturday so that he can
rest his legs after a full first week back skating. Edmundston is the
last city before the Quebec border.
Life on the road is starting to get back to usual with Mark working
his way back on the road, and we look forward to being back in the
full swing of things in the next couple of weeks.
Stay tuned…
