Ow--Wow--Ow

That's how my week has gone: from Ow to Wow and back to Ow again.

It's been a fun ride.

The first "ow" is a direct result of Crossfit.  You know how, when you do something physical that you haven't done before or haven't done in a while, you get Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)?  Well, it's even worse when you're doing the physical thing wrong.  Despite having done thousands and thousands of squats during my skating career, I was unable to execute the Crossfit-style squat correctly and thus left Monday's intro class with my quads screaming obscenities at me.  By Wednesday morning, my quads were so sore that I could barely hobble down stairs (you know that DOMS is always worse on the second day, right?  You know Wednesday was the second day, right?  You know Wednesday was the day of my first on-ice workout this year, right?  Right).

(By the way, I love the new place I'm going for Crossfit.  The coaches I've met so far have been extremely nice, helpful, and--and believe me, I've given them plenty of opportunity to demonstrate this one--patient.  The facility is really nice--they even have showers. If anyone is looking to do Crossfit in the Northwest suburbs of Minneapolis, I highly recommend Crossift SISU.)

Anyway, I left Crossfit Wednesday morning wondering whether I'd even be able to skate.  Fortunately, my intro class that morning was 1:1 rather than a group (peer pressure is a powerful thing), so I ended up being able to talk my way out of actually doing a workout ("WOD"--Workout Of the Day); I had been afraid we'd do deadlifts or some other back-intensive WOD, thus sealing my DOMS-induced inability to assume a proper skating position.  Also fortunately (for my travel mates) Crossfit SISU has showers.  Unfortunately, the shower I used had "men's body wash" as the only cleaning product.  I left the shower all manly-fresh, and I'm afraid that adding my baby powder-scented deodorant to the mix resulted in me smelling rather, well, confused.  Still better than sweaty, though.

So on to Milwaukee.  Mel's dad (returning home) and Inliner Boy (heading for the ice as well) rode with me.  By the time we got to the oval after six hours in the car, "hobbling" pretty much described my movement.  But then I got on the ice, and suddenly...nothing hurt (or not very much, anyway).  I eased into my 5x2K (5x5 laps) workout with some 44-second laps--not the fastest, but I felt smooth, relaxed, and coordinated.

Trust me, these three words have rarely been used to describe my skating.

Best of all, my stroke count was extremely (and effortlessly) consistent: 10 stroke straightaways, 16 in the corners.  This consistency, and the fact that my straightaway stroke was an even number (last year I always seemed to end up at 11, and thus on the wrong foot, at the corner entry) meant that I entered almost all of my corners correctly.  Usually I hose up about 50% of my corner entries--and a bad entry can cost you half a second, so in a race corner entries are critical.

And the smooth, relaxed, coordinated, consistent-stroke-count, good-corner-entry mode continued into the last set of the workout--although the lap times dropped, in the middle sets, to satisfying 41's and 42's.

Then...fifth set.  Fourth lap.  Twenty-four laps into the twenty-five for the day.  As I approached the last corner on this lap, a thought drifted into my head.  I'd been trying very hard (and very unsuccessfully) all 24 laps to get my left hip into the corner.  This is something that people have been trying to get me to do for years; multiple coaches screamed "hip in" at me on multiple corners last year throughout Master's Camp, to no avail.  But suddenly I remembered that one of these coaches had emphasized contracting my right abs; Mel has also harped on this, calling it a "pinch" of the right side.  But I've never actually successfully executed it.

Until now.  I thought "pinch right side," I pinched my right side...and a whole new world opened up.  Not only was my hip in the corner, but suddenly my shoulders were square, I had a good full left leg push, and it was easy to lean.  It was as though the corner grabbed me and hurled me forward, screaming "come on, let's go fast!"

That was the "wow."

And a big "wow" it was.  I was a bit tired by the fifth set, so my lap times had slowed back to 44's for laps 23 and 24.  Just with the addition of the "pinch," though, my lap times dropped from 44.0 for lap 24, to 41.7 for lap 25.  Nice...free speed!

So I left "ice workout number one" very happy.  And I was really looking forward to workout number two, Thursday morning; I wanted to see how "the pinch" would affect my lap times in some 400 and 600 meter intervals.

Unfortunately, fatigue caught up with me for the interval workout.  (It probably didn't help that my hotflash-infested night in the motel resulted in about four hours of sleep).  The first two sets were OK, with lap times from 38 to 40, but by set three my legs were locking up at 500 meters in what Coach TieGuy used to call "peg leg."  I cut that set short and did the final set at reduced effort, and thought glum thoughts about the 13K workout I had planned for the final session--which would be happening in five hours. But after killing the five hours in the Pettit (spinning, foam rolling, eating, and napping), I felt more positive about my prospects for finishing the workout.

Until I stepped on the ice.  My skates, which had felt perfectly fine for the first workout and only mildly uncomfortable for the second, suddenly began inflicting excruciating pain on my left ankle, and the tongue on the right skate began trying to saw a hole in my foot.

That was the second "Ow."

Fortunately I still had my molefoam-and-scissors kit in my skate bag, and I was able to pad various bony foot-bits enough to skate.  And when I started the workout, I was happy to see that, although my legs were still tired, the "smooth, relaxed and coordinated" thing had returned.  I managed to complete the whole workout--including the 3K at the end of it--with slowish lap times but with decent technique--including a good, consistent "pinch."

So on the whole, an extremely successful and encouraging start to the ice season--because the "ow's" will go away, but the think the "wow" just might stick around.



 

The End of Summer

One week from this coming Tuesday, my summer vacation will officially end (please observe a moment of silence for the death of staying up late to watch the end of Twins games, sleeping in, and working out whenever I want to.  Thank you).  So, to make sure I'm really tired and sore and sick of working out and am ready to sit in meetings and rest, here's what I have planned for this week:

Monday: morning oval skate, then into my classroom for a few hours to meet my student teacher, then a 90 minute Crossfit class in the evening (actually, it's an intro class so I'm assuming it won't be 90 minutes of working out.  Yes, I did an intro class at the first Crossfit place I went to (you know, the one I finally realized was too far from home).  Yes, the lift we were doing--it was cleans--in the "sample" class I tried at the new Crossfit place was something they'd just covered in my intro class at the other location.  Yes, despite this the trainer in the "sample" class had to spend much of his time hovering over me, vainly attempting to teach me how do do a proper clean.. Yes, he suggested I take the intro class at his Crossfit place even though I've already had an intro class.  Yes, it was a strong suggestion.  A very strong suggestion).
Tuesday:  Second session of the intro Crossfit class in the morning.  Then more time in my classroom getting ready for "workshop week" next week (workshop week is never actually enough time to get my classroom ready).  Then...sharpening my long track skates and packing, because on Wednesday I'm GOING TO MILWAUKEE TO SKATE!  Sorry--I'm just very excited.  It's an Olympic year, which means the Pettit will have ice a month earlier than usual...which means I get to skate before school starts!
Wednesday: Final intro Crossfit class, then jump into the car (all nice and sweaty) and head to Milwaukee. I may be carpooling with Mel's dad and Inliner Boy--hopefully they won't mind the smell.  Inliner and I will skate the evening long track session.  By this time, after two workouts and a five and a half hour drive, I will undoubtedly need pizza.  And maybe some ice cream.
Thursday:  Check out of the motel and then skate the morning long track session.  Since I no longer have a hotel room, kill four hours at the Pettit or nearby; I suspect there will be much foam rolling and eating of carbs during this time, and perhaps a nap.  Then skate the evening long track session, and then drive home.
Friday is a bit up in the air. It may involve a trip to the cabin, or it may just be a whole lot of recovering.  Either way, I plan to spend much of Friday in the seated position.

So...the last week of summer is looking pretty good!

Yeah, THAT Will Improve My Confidence

I may have mentioned, once or twice before, (I'd link to the post, but I'm too lazy to look it up) that I'm a wuss.  A wimp.  A weenie. (I believe I also commented on how these terms all begin with "w," but what the heck, it bears repeating).

Anyway, I really am.  A wimp, I mean.  Somehow I've ended up doing any number of un-wimp-like things, like dirt bike racing and playing rugby...but still, underneath it all I'm a wimp.  I'm clumsy and cautious--which I guess is a better combo than clumsy and fearless--and things that other people don't give a second thought will send me into a cold sweat.

Take, for instance, last night.  I'm currently in "easy week," so I had no Monday oval workout.  I could have skated my normal trail route for the prescribed "recovery skate," but I felt like something different.  So I joined six other inliners for a Group Skate.

An urban Group Skate.

On a very busy trail.

So busy, in fact, that by the time I had skated to the bathroom a mile down the trail, I had already seen more people than I usually see in five of my normal rural trail skates.  So busy that sometimes we'd be passing a walker on the left while a fast biker passed us on our left and another fast biker approached us from the opposite direction.  So busy that I was mentally thanking myself for deciding to wear my kneepads, and mentally questioning whether I should also have invested in some Depends (good thing I hit the porta potty before we started!).

The people I skated with were very nice about my phobias, but they didn't seem to share them.  They took turns babysitting me at the back of the pace line; I had no trouble keeping up with their speed, but I couldn't match their guts.  Downhills, road crossings, tricky passings of multiple bikers--all resulted in me losing the pack and then--along with the babysitter of the moment--having to scramble to catch back up.

This went on for 18 miles.

Still, after the turnaround at nine miles I was starting to feel a bit--just a tiny bit--more confident.  My skating partners were very good about positioning themselves at road crossings and yelling "clear" over and over as I made my cautious approach, and eventually I was hardly slowing down before the roads.  Well, except for that one time when I stopped at a road crossing and the old guy in the dress shirt and tie who was riding a bike rode past me into the street and then turned to his right directly in front of me just as I began skating again...but really, we were hardly moving and so I didn't consider it a traumatic event.

As we began our cruise home, I was thinking...yeah, this trail is pretty nice.  I'm getting used to all the traffic. It's not so bad; maybe I should do this again.  Yeah, this is fun...

And that's when I heard the sirens.

Loud sirens.  Coming up the road behind us.  Sirens that were soon revealed to be attached to a large fire truck, which was soon revealed to be heading to...a car/bike accident.  Surrounded by emergency vehicles and spectators, on the road right next to the trail we were on.  I didn't look as we skated by, but my fellow skaters mentioned that the biker was still on the car hood when we went past.  (I hope the person was OK; I never heard any more about the accident on local media, so I hope it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time).

Suddenly wimp, wuss and weenie don't seem like a bad idea.

That's How I Roll

Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be oblivious to trends, fads, and currently-popular-stuff (for confirmation of this, just check out the way I usually dress).  So, not surprisingly, I paid no attention to the "foam rolling" craze that has swept through my long track friends.  Sure, I noticed that an increasing number of people were lugging large foam cylinders (or, in the case of one enterprising and undoubtedly high-pain-threshold blessed fellow, a piece of PVC pipe) around at the ovals, occasionally stopping to drape a body part over the cylinder and roll about while making pain-noises and amusing facial grimaces.  I noticed, but I had no inclination to join them.  In keeping with my strict "I'm only doing the fun stuff" motto, I place foam rolling firmly in the "stuff I should do that would probably benefit my skating but I don't want to and you can't make me" category.  Foam rolling has lots of company in this category, including warming up before skating, doing core exercises, stretching, and resisting the urge to eat another poptart.

But then yesterday I went to a new PT.  I've been having hamstring pain for, um, eight months now, and knee pain for about two.  I've been to a PT for the hamstring, but after my last visit he said that, while he felt that he'd corrected the cause of the hamstring pain (SI joint issues), he didn't understand why the pain had not at least started to improve.  So when, a couple days later, I whined to the Crossfit trainer that I couldn't do the squats in the workout because my hamstring and both knees hurt and he suggested that I pay a visit to the PT who works out of the Crossfit gym, I decided that I would.

My first appointment was yesterday. This particular PT uses a tool called Functional Movement Screening, which means he had me do seven different movements which he scored and entered into a computer program.  The program then gives him workouts tailored to my weaknesses.  Which, based on my 7 out of 21 score, were many.  And the workout I was given consisted mostly of...foam rolling.

So now, I roll.

Well, first I had to get a foam roller.  We actually had one (from The Hubster's long-ago visit to a PT for something or other), but it's only 12 inches long.  A 12 inch foam roller is not nearly as long as some of the body parts that I need to roll are wide, so clearly that wasn't going to work.  So I got a nice new one--24 inches long, plenty of room for "future expansion."

Yeah, that little white one just wasn't going to cut it.

I've only rolled twice so far, but I swear my hamstring feels noticeably better already.  Placebo effect?  I don't care--less pain is less pain!  It seems that this fad,at least, has some merit, so consider me, for now, firmly on the foam rolling bandwagon.

But don't expect me to suddenly start dressing fashionably.  I do have my limits.