Wednesday, September 27, 2006

I'm hanging with my best friend, Ibuprofen.

There were some fast people in my lane with me at practice on Monday night, and you know what that means. I wanted desperately to try to keep up with them, but I was also afraid I wouldn't be able to. For the most part lately, I've been as fast as anyone there (at least at evening practices), which does terrific things for my ego, but the challenge is better in the long run.

So do you know what I did? I wimped out. My "excuse," of course, is very sound. For the last week or so I've had quite a lot of soreness around the joint in my left shoulder, and ever sense a bout of tendonitis ended my triathlon career (and an illustrious one it was, let me tell you), I don't take pain lightly, once I am pretty sure it is not just muscle fatigue. I have been doing the icepack thing, but it turns out I don't really know how to approach pain and soreness the smart way.

Which involves not just icing, but also ibuprofen, and apparently my new coach is going to bring me a regimen of shoulder exercises. I am sad that I did not know all this before, because this is not the first time I have had this kind of pain at the beginning of the season. But meanwhile I am pleased to have learned the ibuprofen trick (I know, I know, everybody else knew this already, right?), and I am even more excited about the exercises, which might help prevent it in the future.

And on Monday I have an appointment with a new massage therapist, who my coach calls "The Answer." I am VERY excited about that.

All this to say that those fast people better watch out, because next time I'm not taking it lying down.

2 comments:

Joe said...

DO the shoulder exercises. I had BAD shoulder pain at the beginning of last season (because I too was trying to keep up with fast people). My physiotherapist gave me all kinds of rotater cuff exercises involving 1 and 2 pound dumbbells. Within about 3 weeks, I made a full recovery.

Isis said...

That's good to know: I'll keep at 'em!