A cautionary tale:
I’ve never been very flexible, and have paid lip service to stretching & now it’s very seriously back fired on me.
These last 18 months I’ve been training hard, growing a fair amount of muscle on my quads & calfs to the extent that I had to buy 2x new bib shorts this summer, even though my overall weight has fallen.
I’ve not had a stretching regime in place for my immediate post ride routine & this is my cautionary tale as some 6 weeks ago it all ended in a torn lat’ quad muscle which simply has not got better.
Not only have I abandoned all my cycling for this year, but even with one hours stretching per day and weekly physio’ it’s not making any real improvements. I still can’t touch my toes, but more relevantly, I can’t kneel down and sit back onto my heels, it’s OK on my R side but the tightness and loss of stretch on my L side still precludes the heel making contact with my L glute’.
So, I mention it here (I’m sure someone will be along to poke their tongue out and blow the proverbial raspberry) as I’d rather others learnt from my lack of foresight & this avoidable error in their own training regimes so you too don’t end up putting your bikes in storage for the winter, 6 months too soon.
See you in 2011 (I hope). 
