Life's Little Messages

Life’s little messages can come in many forms.  I received one of those messages disguised as a ripping pain in my quad 5 minutes into day 1 of training in Canada.  It was devastating, I thought to myself, “how can this be happening?”, “I rested the past 2 days”.  After I got over the sad part, I found a physiotherapist in Penticton who worked on my leg and got the knots out.  The next day I was good for an 80 mile ride but then the day after that, the same ripping pain hit the medial side of my quad.  There I was in Penticton, staying at the race hotel, looking at the course thinking, “was the past 6 months of 50 hour work weeks and 20 hour training weeks all for nothing?”  I just broke into tears, then after a long time I thought about everything and really analyzed the situation.  It’s true, I did take the 2 days off leading up to the trip, but what about the weeks leading up to that?  I haven’t been sleeping enough, I haven’t been getting massages, slowed down on my water consumption, I have been rushing through my stretching sessions, etc...Basically, I created this situation and my body thought it would scream at me to get a grip now, 7 weeks out rather then on Day 1 of Ultraman.  For that my friends, I am very thankful.  This was a blessing in disguise, and I won’t take it for granted.

On the way home I emailed Dr Darvish a fantastic ND.  It was Sunday, and her office actually got back to me that night and  made arrangements to see me after hours on Monday.  On Monday night she met with me until 8:00 pm, do YOU know of a doctor who would do that?!  ND’s are great they really care about the person and, there’s no snowballing them. Before I new it, I spilled all the beans and basically explained that I have been training for this crazy endurance event while balancing a demanding job and instead of doing all the right things, I have been not getting enough sleep, water, nutrients etc...  She checked me out and then gave me some homeopathic injections in my leg, nutrients and other muscle healing stuff.  She also noticed that my back was “out” and proceeded to adjust it.  She then reminded me of my food allergies and suggested that it may not be a good idea to ingest things that your allergic to, so it’s no wheat or dairy for me. I took it one step further and gave up caffeine too and I feel better already.  I will have appointments with her over the next few weeks where she will continue to work on my quad and back.

On Tuesday I went to see Neal Goldberg, an awesome PT.   This guy knows how to deal with bull headed triathletes like myself.  He did a bunch of tests and noticed that my right leg is quite a bit longer than my left.  This is probably the root of my problems as my body has to compensate with every foot strike when I run and rotation when I ride.  Most people could get by with the leg length discrepancy, just doesn’t work so well when you’re piling on the miles.  He made a lift for my left shoe and I felt better instantly.

Although I have taken steps to heal, I’m not out of “the body dog house” yet.  After what I have put it through, my bod isn’t going to let me off that easy.  It will be the weekend before my legs are ready for pounding.  In the meantime I have been eating like Richard Simmons (minus all the yelling, jumping and split shorts), sleeping at least 8 hours and drinking ALOT of water and electrolyte stuff.  I have been swimming alot which is cool because if I thought 6.2 miles was long before, actually seeing the lake/distance was an eye opener to say the least.  We ended up driving the bike course and while the climbs are not as intense as what I have been training on, the wind is Hairy Scary!  I learned that we could have a headwind for 50 miles on the bike and it’s not uncommon for it to be 110 degrees.  Its a good thing I had this wake up call, I will need every bit of physical and mental strength to get me through the course.

I don’t really have alot to say about training because its been more of a healing week.  I do want to say something about my “rock”.  Without this rock the hard times would be harder, the fun times wouldn’t be as much fun and without this rock, I wouldn’t make it to the starting line, let alone the finish.  Rob, you’re the best.

Thanks for reading, have a great week!

Beth