Because of my broken collarbone, I’ve had to focus on my off-bike training which includes a daily boot camp and a bunch of gym work, but, two weeks ago I was cleared to ride.
THIS COLUMN WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN ADB ISSUE #476 – MAY 2019
The past month has been excellent for my recovery! Because of my broken collarbone, I’ve had to focus on my off-bike training which includes a daily boot camp and a bunch of gym work, but, two weeks ago I was cleared to ride. Since then I’ve been building my ride fitness and starting my on-bike preparation for the Luca Oil Pro Motocross Championship.
It feels great to be back on the bike pounding out as many laps as I can! My collarbone and shoulder feel awesome too, they don’t give me any dramas which is perfect.
California is probably the greenest I’ve ever seen it. We have had a fair bit of rain (for Californian standards) over the past few months, so the tracks have been pretty wicked. And, just recently the Southern California winds have picked up so instead of miserable cold and rainy winter days, they have 30-40mph winds!
Riding on these days is pretty sketchy and you try do what you can without being stupid. Typically, we will call it a day after we are a satisfied with our seat time. It varies each week but if we’ve had several good days of riding prior to the bad wind days, we will sometimes just ride for about 45 minutes before calling it, just to reduce the risk of crashing. If we think it’s too dangerous and the risk is too high, making riding unsafe, we will call it early. We’d rather miss one day of riding rather than suffer a freak crash.
In this line of work, being a professional athlete really makes you evaluate your risk versus reward. So many things come to mind to keep yourself injury free and safe.
The older I get the more experience I get with this. Some days your speed is okay so you just focus on hitting your marks and getting quality laps in the bank. Then, you have other days where your feeling in the groove and you push harder and can go into that next zone. Learning what battles to fight to win the war is a big experience thing!
Not too long ago I went to Target and bought some tennis rackets and some tennis balls. My family and girlfriend and I have been practising and playing tennis for a bit of downtime fun. My Dad is pretty good at tennis as he was right into ball sports growing up. My brother Jett however, is not good, and sadly neither am I. It’s frustrating because we suck!
When we were living in Europe we didn’t know how long we would be there for so we weren’t able to get a pet. We had a dog while growing up in Australia so we miss having a dog. But, the other day I went and had a look at a little French Bulldog and he was awesome! We walked back in the next day and bought him and called him Milo. So far, being a parent (to a dog) isn’t too bad. He poo’d in the house at first but by the second day he was much better. Now he has everything dialled, I reckon this parenting thing is easy! Kidding, of course.
The team and I are currently developing our outdoors bike. We’re testing engines and other stuff, which means long days in the saddle but its crazy when you see how many things you can change. This makes me feel knackered, but, after riding I always do a minimum of 20 minutes cycling to get all the lactic acid out of my muscles. You feel stiff and sore from the big work, but after 10-15 minutes you start to feel better as fresh blood pumps through your body. I also stretch for recovery and use a TheraGun massage tool. The TheraGun is like a jackhammer with a rubber ball on the end of it. I use it on all muscle parts on my body and it helps loosen and relax them to aid recovery.
I’m itching to get on the gate soon. Stay tuned to my social media pages @hunterlawrence for daily updates.