trying to start all over again

[Yelsel]

Hey, I can really empathize. I had a multi-year sick in bed layoff, and I started out just using the stairs and walking for 15-30 minutes at a time. A couple months later, I started biking to work - only 4 miles, and I took the bus+bike there or back as often as I biked both ways. Then I started riding a bit more for weekend rides, and a little bit of light, close bike errands.

Another setback with a really bad tibia stress fracture in January (running on the treadmill too fast too soon, my muscles and tendons were back up to par after a year, but not my bones), and when I was eventually allowed to ride again in mid-May, I could only increase mileage by 10% a week. It goes really slowly at first! Plus I needed to divide my time between commute (now 8 miles each way) and weekend rides. At the moment I commute 3 days a week, do grocery errands, have one day on the trainer, and am increasing gradually on the long weekend ride. Only being allowed a couple miles increase per week total (and having to split it between different goals) made it much easier to work up to about 45-50 miles on the weekend (which is what I'm at now for my long ride). I look at the ride books to find rides of the right length, and then add the mileage there and back if I'm biking to the start. Being forced to add slowly made it really exciting every time I got to increase the long ride by a couple miles, so I haven't hit a barrier yet.