November Training and Injury Updates

Every day of November had SOME sort of workout, except for the Saturday of Thanksgiving where I was instead stuffing my face at 2 different parties:

The "injury" notes on the 12th and 15th are regarding some pain in my sacrum (and slightly to the right towards my hip), and the "injury" note on the 29th is about my shoulder impingement (swimmer's shoulder) feeling a little achy and tight.

NOTES AND INJURIES REGARDING EACH SPORT:

• SWIM: 12,000 yards on the month. After deciding that I needed to start swimming faster again, my left shoulder started to ache. My left shoulder impingement (AKA "swimmer's shoulder) started to ache 36 hours after a solid swim. Dang. My right forearm is still a bit "angered" by swimming, but it's still slowly getting better. (Remember, I didn't swim for almost a year to let it get better, and that didn't help much.) Hoping for 2 swims/week with SOME intensity.

• BIKE: 13 miles with the boys in tow, and 2:41 on the trainer (or the equivalent of about another 50 miles) for November. After those 2 trainer rides the week of the 7th, I realized for the first time that cycling is one thing that really upsets my sacral pain. I need to take time to stretch out my back post-ride, and I can't ride for too long. Dang. So I took 2.5 weeks off of the bike (which was partly due to resting up before and after the Thanksgiving morning race) before riding again. This is what I'm going to keep "testing." I'll keep an eye on my lower back issues, but I still want to see if I can keep logging more bike miles. Adding my bike and trainer "miles" for last month, I logged a whopping 63 miles. In November of 2015 (when I was getting myself into the best bike shape I'd ever been in), I logged 267 miles, or over 4 times as much.

• RUN: 63 miles on the month. After starting my "back to running" program in July, I was still building miles in August. Then Sept, Oct, and Nov were pretty similar: 68, 66, and 63 miles respectively. (Oct and Nov were a bit lower because I had some races, so I had to ease back and/or take some days off.) Everything is holding steady here, but that's because I'm being smart. I'd LOVE to race the Securian Winter Run Half Marathon again in January, but that'd be stupid to try to force the miles over the next 8 weeks. Nothing too far for me in the near future.

To help with all of this, I've still been seeing Robert at Element Wellness Group. He's been really able to help relieve some sacral pain and my (chronically) sore calves:

I'm not sure how much the cupping helps, but it gives me sweet hickeys.

Here's to another good month of training, some pain-free rides, and some decent runs!