It's been a while. The post-trip struggle was over in December as expected, about a month after we settled in Sacramento. Shortly after, we went to SF and I registered 10,000 step on Christmas day. That's when I caught the flu. Then another one in January and I missed my nephew's wedding. It was a nasty one and I got back on my feet only a few days ago. Then I went out for a walk, got caught in the rain and walked fast back home. And I paid for it with 3 days of post-exertional sickness. So only now I'm finally out of jail (of the post-trip struggle) and out of penalty box (of post-exertional sickness), book-ending the two flus in between. Long story short, my plan for post-trip observation went out the door, lock stock and barrel.
I'm now in the familiar one-day-up-one-day-down territory as if I'm back in a post-trip struggle. I'll get out of it in a few weeks and then we'll see if there has been any steady state improvement from the pre-trip condition. I'm hoping for at least the half way between the pre-trip valley and peri-trip peak. (I'll call it the post-trip plateau). That means about 43,000 steps per week.
Meanwhile, I'll finally get to analyze my trip activity data for the past 9 months this week. I'm anxious to see what they will turn up, though I pretty much know already what it will look like: the elevation during the trip followed by 3-4 weeks of post-trip depression when settled in, sprinkled with several post-exertional sickness during the post-trip struggle. But it'll be good to confirm with the concrete data and see if it reveals anything new. What I still don't know and am really interested in finding out is weather the post-trip plateau is real and there is a lasting improvement after the post-trip struggle is over. I haven't been able to observe that so far, thanks to the double flu. But I will in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.
