How much fitness can you lose in a month...

I broke my collar bone end of December. and I am 52 years old, I think age is a factor.  I had about 8 weeks of arm in sling and problems with mobility etc afterwards. At first I was doing regular spin bike/turbo sessions and was limited in how much I could do before pain set in, but I tried to exercise at least 3 times a week.  After about 5 weeks I had to stop the pain was just getting too much and I had 3 weeks of no cycling. I avoided pain killers so I could judge when to stop exercise. 

After about 8 weeks I could take the sling off and it had sort of stuck together and I could start to spin on turbo again but I had arm mobility and strength issues, the rotator cuff was damaged and I had a frozen shoulder.  With physio and exercises I went back out on the road after 12 weeks. FTP was down and I had to un-slam the stem. The TT bike was impossible to ride. 

I managed the tour of Ayrshire 4 months after accident, but to be honest the arm was not correct and after 3 hours on the bike the arm was useless, strength and ability to cope with bumps in the road surface being the issue. Just after this I started to ride the TT bike again, but with my elbows sticking out. Another month I was able to get back into my old riding position and equal my personal best, one month later I took 20 seconds off my 10 mile pace. 

What does all that say, I think the legs came back fairly well but the ability of my arm to cope with road shocks and bending was as much of an issue. Pretty well the recovery time matched the time off the bike. It probably depends on the injury. The 1st assessment was 6 months off the bike and probably an op as I had over 1.5cm of gaps between the bones and 3 bits of bone L. But after 2 weeks it sort of settled down and after about 8 it was gummed together again. I was told that was a little bit slow for the average collar bone but quick for the level of damage, the main bit of good luck was it looked to re-align itself well while strapped. The bad news was the muscle and capsule damage. 8 months on the arm is OK for normal life but still not correct in terms of movement. Will it be good enough for cyclocross?

If your arm feels good go for it. Just check out what sort of pain is muscle and ok and what is coming from bone damage.    

Keep having protein with every meal to stop your body chowing down on your muscles whilst you are off the bike. Maybe British cycling strength routine also. 

High interval training as has been said if you can but sounds like that could be problematic. 

I can give you an idea. In our club a young man joined the military services. He hasn't ridden for one month. Sunday he came out on a club run and after 14 miles went home. Now before he went into the forces, he was easily one of the best and strongest in our club. One month without cycling at the usual high intensity will see a significant drop off in fitness. The good news it comes back reasonably quickly. Personal experience having spent 16 weeks unable to walk at all, took me 3 months to get 90% fitness back and another year to get a further 5%

The Manchester 100 is flat, I did it last year as my first century ride at the age of 68, on an average of 100 miles a week, and found it easy - I'd never ridden more than 50 miles in one go before.

My experience as a frequently injured distance runner was that you don't lose much endurance in a month, particularly if stamina is your strong point.

Just take it easy, chat to the people around you and it will be over before you know.

I'm in reasonable shape to begin with, when I came off and broke both wrists in January I was limited to short exercise bike sessions for a couple of months.

It didn't feel particularly different to a normal winters' loss of fitness when I finally got back on the bike.  I always do less miles over the winter months anyway, I was back up to my normal 70 mile weekend jaunts within a couple of weeks.

And I'd keep the activites as hard as you can without causing any pain. It'll do you no good to delay healing because you needed to do 25miles over 15miles on a turbo.  Spin free and raise your HR, I'd suggest over and above any 'resistance based' wattage stuff. 

Prior to the event don't worry about covering distance, to me baseline miles are a 'want' not a 'need', just focus on HR training ramping it up and recovering your HR, the rest will take care of itself. 

No simple answer here. 

If you're a 'seasoned' cyclist ergo your body is used to training and cycling a lot - then the simple answer is - you won't loose much.

If you're a reletive newbie who's shot up the ladder of fitness like a hero - and you have a month of inactivity with zero workouts, then you'll know about it.  

And every shade of grey inbetween.. 

As I understand it, your heart sort of grows and gets stronger the fitter you get, with that you pump more blood more efficiently around your body and your muscles get more used to getting more blood and act accordingly.. with more oxygen and other sciencey stuff making you into a fuel chomping monster endurance athlete. You let that slide Clyde and it's all down hill from there...

However the good news is that 'science' also says you only need one 15min high intensity workout a week to keep form and fitness.

More good news! Common sense tells me that you'll be absolutley fine and stop worrying about it, you'll get from one end of the Manchester 100 to the other in some form regardless.