Back on the Bike... Well, Kind Of!!

April 18th

Well, we are into the rehab phase of my recovery now and like always there are good days and not so good days. The initial rush of excitement you feel when you are finally allowed to move the leg has come and gone and now everything seems slow and monotonous. After a week of slow flexion and extension exercises and struggling to sleep because of the aching, I am onto the next phase. This has involved getting on the home trainer. Yee ha!!!!!!!
Getting the full-length cast off 2 weeks ago and being able to start cautious movements the first day home after visiting Pepe, my physio, last week were positive experiences. The GreenEDGE doctor, Peter Barnes, spent Tuesday morning with me and Pepe. During this session we made some good progress and I was sent on my way home with instructions that it’s ok to start on the home trainer. I had gained enough range over the previous week and I was now given the nod to ride without force on the injured left leg. It was only to passively go through the motion. Immediately after I arrived home I set up the trainer and pumped out a 15min effort. ALRIGHT!!!!

“That’s enough”, I thought, “Let’s save it for tomorrow”. After all, it was only the good leg peddling and the emaciated left leg hitching a free-ride. Even after such a short effort, the left leg was left trembling like jelly; it felt like I had done 10000 single-legged squats. It’s difficult to expect more when the leg has been out of service for a month. It was quite a sobering feeling and made me wonder what it will be like with still a few more weeks until it will be able to bare weight.

This morning I was up bright and early and into it. Again I banged out 15min on the trainer with the right leg leading and the left leg hitching and again my left leg was left a trembling mess.

Later this afternoon I got one up on yesterday by doing a second session for the day. This time I managed 20 minutes. I thought that for interest sake I would put the SRM on. What a mistake that was; I managed a whopping big 24 watts average for the 20 min. How demoralising. Any positivity or hope I was feeling about coming back was immediately quashed - especially when I thought back to when Contador visited me in hospital just after my operation and he had done a test up a climb that day and had averaged 450watts for more than 30min.

Anyway, don’t reckon I’ll put the SRM on for a few days now. Or maybe weeks. For now I just have to try and take daily positives and by doing that I will make progress physically and mentally. My positive for today, then? I managed more than yesterday.
Rehab aside, my other on-going mission since this whole fiasco began has been to pimp my crutches.

I started out with handle bar tape on the hand grips to soften the jarring and lessen the rubbing on my hands. That was ok but I wasn’t completely satisfied so I got Craig Geater to send me some of the gel pads they put under the handle bar tape of the Paris-Roubaix bikes. I redid the handlebar tape over top of the gel pads I had strategically adhered to the hand grips. Result? A pimped, luxury ride.
Tonight, I took my mission to a new level. I have been getting annoyed with my ‘clunking’ around as my crutches make contact with the floor. I pimped them to make them stealth so I can sneak up on the boys without the ‘clunk, clunk’ announcing my arrival.
I do have to say my form on the crutches is coming along nicely. If I keep going the way I am, I will soon have arms and shoulders like Sonny Bill Williams and if there’s ever a crutches world champs, I reckon I’ll be up. I’ve even been working on a sprint technique, just in case.

Julz

Graeme Murray Images

We've been asked a few times now to add some new pics of Julian in his new GreenEDGE kit. That being easier said than done when a certain person has only been able to swan about in his GreenEDGE kit for 2 and a half race days so far in 2012!

However, thankfully a great photographer/friend of our's dragged Julian out for a wee sunrise photo shoot just before we left NZ back in January. He has kindly flicked through some great images for us to show off to you all so please enjoy.

Be sure to check out Graeme's website, www.graememurray.com

And a big thanks to Graeme for his madness-filled photo shoot on that rainy day way back then....

Active Rehab Is Underway...Yay!

Almost one week has passed since my active rehab began. I paid a visit to my trusty physio, Pepe - who has helped me through several of my past hiccups - and he gave me a few daily exercises to begin with. I'm feeling a lot better and definitely motivated since having something planned and active to set my mind and body to.

The next step is for me to begin on the trainer next week. As much as I loathe the home-trainer, I'm actually looking forward to it as I know what it will mean to my rate of recovery.

Anyway, I know I owe you all a decent diary update and I will get one up but for now I just wanted you all to know that I am working my way back to where I want to be.

Thanks so much for all your support.

Julz

Post-Surgery Update

It has been almost 24 hours since Julian had his surgery and thankfully all has gone, and continues to go well. The surgeon, Dr Gastaldi, is happy with his efforts after inserting several plates and about 7 or so screws. He was kind enough to show me a photo of the post-surgery x-ray which he had on his mobile phone and I was initially quite taken aback by the image. It certainly isn't too dissimilar to that of his elbow, which Dr Gastaldi also reconstructed back in 2005. Dr Gastaldi was quick to joke that if Julian didn't beep going through airport security checks before, then he probably would now.

Julian had a fairly calm night last night and today they have removed the drain and have given him the green light to move around with a walker - as long as he keeps all weight of the leg. With that green light, Julz was his speedy self and was off like the proverbial robber's dog to get some movement happening through his muscles.

If all continues to go well, Julz will be out of here on Monday. That will be nice to have him home again with our boys.

Here in Spain, it is expected that a family member stay at the hospital to look after the patient. That family member being me, myself and I, I stayed here last night. Thankfully our village, Palma de Gandia, although small, is full of the most amazing, supportive and generous people who have taken Team Dean on full gas and have been sharing the care of our kids amongst themselves. It has truly been a humbling experience and one which gets me choked up with emotion just thinking about how much kindness they have given us and continue to offer us. We are incredibly lucky to be surrounded by such great friends and Julian and I are so very grateful to them all.

GreenEDGE have also been outstanding in their level of support to us both. As a wife of a pro-cyclist, I have often been left out of the loop when Julz has gone through similar experiences in the past. This time though, GreenEDGE were quick to make contact with me and continue to support us both with sincerity and genuine care. It has made a huge difference to Julian's morale.

Anyway, that's all the news I have for now. I will tell you more when there's more to tell.

Carole

Update
Hi all,

Carole here. Thank you all so much for your messages of support. We've been flooded with emails and website messages and we've noticed the most common title of these has been, 'Bugger'. Julz reckons Barry Crump would be proud.

Anyway, to be honest there's stuff all to tell ya. We're still waiting for the MRI results to determine the state of the soft tissue. The break itself is substantial and the surgery will take place tomorrow morning once all the results have come through.

We shall keep you all informed.

Carole

Part II

So here we are again; the kids are back in school, Carole is back being a semi-typical Spanish village housewife and I'm back on the bike doing the same loops I've been doing for the last 13 seasons and am about to add another season to the tally, yet this year will be spent with the fifth team in my career.

You never really feel like you are with a new team until you have all the new kit; the bike, the clothes - the works. You might think that the feeling of a new team comes when you start getting paid by them but it doesn't work like that for me. The feeling of belonging and identifying with a new team is intrinsically born from donning the team colours and throwing my leg over the saddle of the new team's bike. That is when I truly feel a part of that team's identity.

Unfortunately I had to wait a few days before the new sense of belonging enveloped me. My kit didn't arrive until a week after we got back so I was spending my training hours on an old bike and wearing clothes from teams gone by. I was a mish-mash of colours, logos, and brands. Carole, with tongue in cheek, thought I looked a bit 'vintage' which she says is very popular at the moment. 'Vintage' maybe so, maybe not - but the feeling of entering a new year with a new team was noticeably absent as was, to a degree, my excitement of fronting a new wave of enthusiasm in the top level of cycling.

Eventually, my new GreenEDGE kit arrived from the team headquarters in Italy and my bike finally found it's way home after going MIA during our journey back from the other side of the world. Suddenly I was awash with that great feeling of opening up my box of new kit. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning gazing over the concentration of GreenEDGE logos sprawled all over the bed as I sorted through my new bits and pieces. No matter what it looks like or whether it fits or not, if it's new it always seems better. What made this consignment even more exciting is that GreenEDGE treated us to a range of wears - even a fancy tailor-made suit sponsored by 'Jeff Banks', and for the first time in my career I even got undies - and not just any old undies, 'Jeff Banks' undies! Finally, I had made it to the status of 'free undies'.

I remember when I was at high school and All Black, Graham Purvis talked at our prize-giving. In his glorification of being an All Black he talked about when going on tour they never had to take anything. They got free everything from playing kit to new undies. As a youngster I was incredulous to the idea of getting so much free stuff. I remember thinking how amazing that must be. In all my years professional I have never been so fortunate as to receive free undies... Until now. So now I feel as though I have made it. A suit and free undies. Sweet.

So since slipping on my good-looking GreenEDGE kit and looping around the Costa Blanca on my new good-looking Scott bike, I feel as though not only do I belong on this exciting new team but I'm itching to get my racing started.

Unfortunately, the Tour of Sardinia was cancelled so I have had to clock up a few more training hours before I'll get to roll up to the start line for the first time in 2012. For now, I'm about to become the training camp king for 2012. Tomorrow I have to go to a training camp in Girona after which I have to go to another training camp in the Sierra Nevada. By the time I start back racing I will have had almost 6 weeks of training camp and no races. My saving grace is in the fact that the season is long. Although from experience I have to be aware of how quickly time passes.

Julz

Let The Season Begin...

After a hectic few days post-training camp and pre-Europe bound travel, we've since made it back to the other side of the world and have been 'settling' back in for the last couple of weeks. On more than one occasion during the last two weeks Carole and I have both said to each other that it feels as though we haven't been away. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, we're not sure but I think that it probably feels that way because of the kids' adaptation back into the daily grind which from our perspective seems to have been seamless.

In terms of trips or travel back to this side of the world, it seemed to start out bad - partly due to some of our own oversights - but ended up one of the most fortunate trips we have had thanks to some incredibly understanding and helpful people we came across all the way through our troubles.

Our journey began at Rotorua airport on a Sunday morning at 9am, bound for Auckland. We couldn't have predicted that Kora would be on our flight after their gig the previous night at Raggamuffin. Hence with all their band gear to load on a tiddly plane we were informed as we were boarding that my bikes couldn't fit it on the plane and were re-scheduled to arrive at 1.30pm - half an hour before our long haul flight's departure time. Basic maths 101 was all that was required to figure out that that time-frame was just not ever going to work. Yet no amount of dialogue and reasoning seemed to get through to the ground staff and that's all they could offer at the time so we boarded the first flight of our journey already rattled. Maybe I should have been a rock star and not an athlete.

Little did we know that the worst was still to come. After arriving in Auckland and immediately finding someone incredibly helpful to solve the late-arriving bikes saga, we felt relaxed and chuffed with ourselves so off we wombled over to the International Terminal to check in for our long haul flight in great spirits.

All was going marvelously smooth at the check-in but just as the check-in lady was handing over the boarding passes, she realised Carole's passport was expired. I looked over at Carole, who looked at me then down at her passport then back at me and then at the check-in lady. I think we both stopped breathing for a long while before we fully realized the situation we were now in at which point the rate of respiration skyrocketed.

The funny thing was, Carole had checked all our passports except her own the night before.

Fortunately for us on this particular day we seemed to be touched by the angel of luck. Apart from it being a Sunday, it was a long weekend so it seemed impossible to get a new passport in time. But somehow it happened. After a few moments of head-in-hands disbelief, we jumped into action. After surfing the net while sitting on our piled up luggage, Carole rang Internal Affairs' after-hours number and discovered that yes indeed passports could be processed after-hours and in fact, right now even. So from that point, the race was on. All she had to do was get to 99 Albert Street, downtown Auckland and back again with a new passport within 2hrs.

She fled the scene of disbelief into a scene of desperation and made friends with the taxi driver who was keen to take part in this bizarre race. He said he'd wait for her while her passport was being processed so she didn't have to waste time flagging down another taxi for the return trip. And no he wouldn't charge her for his downtime! Meanwhile, the kids and I were left to watch passengers come and go through the check-in queues and watch the minutes tick over on the departures board.

I was waiting at the check-in counter the whole time with two kids who could not have been better behaved and with check-in staff who could not have been more understanding. Their service was superb and after an impatient wait and constant updates from Carole to me to the check-in staff, we were all checked-in and waiting for 2 things only; Carole's new passport number and Carole herself!

It was a scene out of a movie: Carole comes hurtling through the door to the check-in counter, waving her new passport at us, we scoop up the kids and are escorted hurriedly (VIP-style) through departures, security, immigration (where she finally had the opportunity to sign her new passport) and past all those tempting last-minute shopping opportunities by the ground staff supervisor who was talking on the walkie-talkie and waving us through each and every queue. We were delivered to the gate just as the final few passengers were boarding. At that point, we were finally able to sigh a huge well-deserved sigh of relief and share a look of pure disbelief that we'd actually pulled it off.

I really could not believe that we had made it. That sort of luck we never seem to get. And just when we thought we couldn't possibly have any more luck on the trip, when we arrived in Kuala Lumper for our stopover on the way to Paris, the Malaysian Airlines staff didn't hesitate in letting us all into the Business Class lounge even though I was the only one allowed. Hallalujah.

Part 2 tomorrow,

Julz

Belated January Update
So what does it feel like to be in GreenEDGE? Well… It feels good and I feel proud. We're here in Aussie for our second team training camp and so far whenever we're out on the bikes from our training base in Bright, Victoria, it seems that everyone we come across knows of or has heard of the team and are 110% behind it; the following the team has already is phenomenal.

To see the Aussies so supportive and proud makes me feel incredibly fortunate to be part of GreenEDGE. It's like the team has been a belated birthday pressie to much of the nation. I guess though when you look at the history of the sport and the evolution it has made then it's only natural that GreenEDGE should be the next step.

In terms of sport across Australasia, in my view it is one of the biggest things to happen in my life-time. To build a team of high-performing athletes and take them across to the other side of the world to compete in professional competitions of the highest level in a sport, which is only minor down here, is something truly extraordinary.


So after a not-so-good start in our first camp before Christmas, where I got caught up in a training crash and broke my shoulder, I'm now starting to feel like I am back on track. The shoulder injury took a while to heal compared to what I expected but during the last two weeks here in Australia at this training camp, I have made good progress. Now I feel like I'm ready to get back into it again. We have just completed a 43 hour, nine day block of training in the mountains of Victoria. We have been able to experience some of the best rides and roads in Australasia. Probably the only place down our end of the earth where you have climbs similar to the Alps or Pyrenees.

So I'm now looking forward to getting back to Europe and into the racing again. All going well, I hope to be race-ready by the end of Feb for the Tour of Sardinia. Then it will be on to the Volta de Catalunya, Circuit La Sarthe, Romandia and the Giro.

But for now it will be about getting back to NZ, scooping up the family and making the journey back to the other side of the world for my 14th European season in the saddle.

Julz