More 5K Fun, Shoulder Injury, and Mountain Biking

A few more photos came out from the Charities Challenge “Challenging Aging 5K” this past weekend. Here’s everyone taking off at the start. I’m off on the left wearing the...well...just look for the pasty legs:

Here’s Tom (who came in second and who I first met earlier this summer), Danielle (first place female), and I chatting after the finish:

Congrats to the both of you!
Hope to see you at more races soon!

And here’s a random group at the finish - there are a few top finishers, a volunteer, Coach Jeanne (in the middle), the oldest racer, and the oldest racer’s son who did the whole race with his mom:

Here’s the top of the finishers list. I placed first out of 44 runners. I thought there were more, but I guess I’m a bad guess-timater:

On a different note, I’ve been having problems with my right shoulder over the past 4 weeks. It’s sore and achy deep inside the socket. And I think it was spurred by my weird collar bone. My right collar bone sticks out WAY too much (I’ll show you in a photo shortly...). So I made an appointment for yesterday with my ART chiropractor, Dr. Folske. I was hoping he could just crack my collar bone back into place by jumping on my chest. No such luck. Right away, Dr. Folske looked at me and said, “Oh yeah, that REALLY does stick out...” He tried a few things out, but I kinda stumped him. He thinks my Omohyoid muscle is a little tight or inflamed. It’s an L-shaped muscle that is attached somewhere to the collar bone. Here you can see it as #3 and #4:

Dr. Folske did a little ART on that muscle (which got a little tender), worked my shoulder a bit, and adjusted a few vertebrae. The good Doc did all that he could, and he basically gave me the OK to workout and swim, and told me that I wouldn’t be hurting anything.

Finally, after the ART appointment with Dr. Folske, since I was in the neighborhood, I drove just a few miles and hopped on one of the best mountain bike trails in the Cities: the Theo Wirth trail. Here I am after getting unloaded and ready to go:

Yes, that’s still my IM number on my helmet.
Yes, from IM WI 13 months ago.

To get to the main trail, I had to follow this tight little path really close to this little river (notice the stump I had to jump without getting wet about 40 feet ahead):

I headed through a park, under a highway, and out to the main trail on some paved trails:

That finally got me to the start of the trail. On the map below, you can see the start (at the lower right). That short trail straight north got me to the main loop (which is about 3 miles per loop), which I ended up doing 3 times.

FINALLY, I hit the main loop. On my first loop, I stopped to take a bunch of photos. Here’s an early part of the trail:

Single-track among the pine needles (and that’s NOT my ween-dog in the foreground, so no teasing):

The parts of this trail that always get to me are the rocky climbs and descents. My balance is all off and I always slip. Here’s a nice rocky section about 1/3 of the way through the loop:

More sweet single-track:

After riding out there for 1 hour and 27 minutes, I had gotten in a good workout. The sign of a good workout: boob sweat.

I did the first loop in 22:13 while stopping to make a lot of photos. I rode the next loop hard, and pulled in a respectable 17:23. During the third loop, I nearly fell a BUNCH of times proving that I was getting pretty fatigued. I came out of every technical section during the third loop thinking, “I did that better during my last loop.” But I still did OK and finished my last loop in 17:58.

I hope to do more mountain biking in the near future. I had a GREAT time! More trails shortly! So yesterday, I taught 2 intense classes, had a quick ART appointment, and ended the day with a cool, autumn mountain bike ride. WHAT’S BETTER THAN THAT?!?