Ouch! That hurts.

I woke up last Monday morning feeling less than stellar. My muscles under my right shoulder were tight, sore, and it took much more care to turn my head or move in general than normally required. I don't know what I did but I was able to find some relief after my massage therapist worked on me for one-half hour Monday afternoon. The pain and limited range of motion in my upper body resulted in two things:

1) I couldn't swim
2) I couldn't run

This definitely put a cramp in my 70.3 training. I realize the race is in July, a mere eight months away, but those of you who know me, know that taking it easy and taking time off to rest and heal drives me crazy. It's more work sitting still than running 10 miles or swimming two miles. Which reminds me, I picked up quite a few annoying habits at my office as a way to help release the pent up energy.

1) Leg bouncing
2) Foot tapping
3) Pen tapping
4) Increased conversation (which is okay in my office, but I felt like I talked WAY too much. Sorry to all my coworkers.)

Thankfully, my husband's exercise ball, which is much larger than mine as I am really short and he's not, came in handy and helped disperse some of this excess energy. It fit perfectly under my desk when not in use and I was able to sit on it at roughly the same height I do in my chair each day. It also allowed me to practice proper posture (that's a lot of p's in a row) and relieve some of the pressure and stiffness in my shoulder.

One additional massage session, ice, ice, and more ice, a little ibuprofen, lots of stretching finally paid off. I was able to swim slowly on Wednesday of last week. I finished 1000 yards with little irritation. I also ran a few miles this weekend finally with little irritation. I'm sort of back on track this week, but still am taking it much easier so as to avoid a relapse. I plan on visiting my chiropractor and having him work on me to help with some possible irritation that causing some pain to radiate down my arm. I've had issues with this pain in this particular part on my body but it's been quite some time that I've felt this out of whack ( to my chiropractor: I will be calling. Monday).

I did end up swimming 1000 yards this morning and ran a 5k after work today and plan to run the local Turkey Trot in the morning. I am much more diligent on stretching and maintaining proper posture through the day in all my activities. Hopefully, this was nothing serious. I'm not a fan of pain. Or a fan of doing nothing when I could be running or swimming.

Happy Trails and Happy Thanksgiving

Tyson