Epic Wednesday

Wednesday was the first official day of the 2014-15 skating season.  It is now Friday evening, and I think I've recovered enough to write about it.

The week started with a CrossFit workout, "Nancy," on Monday.   I have a bit of left bicep tendon irritation (according to my doc, who I asked about it when I went in for a thyroid check on Tuesday--thyroid levels are fine, thankfully) so I had to do the workout with front squats instead of overhead squats...but it was still challenging.  I kept getting lightheaded when I stood up from the squats, which limited me to doing five in a row and then kneeling down until I didn't feel like passing out anymore, then doing another five.  Fun times.  I asked the doc about this, too, and he said that lifting often leads to unintentionally doing what's called a vagal maneuver (specifically, the Valsalva maneuver), which I am very familiar with because I used to have to do this to stop my heart arrhythmia (the one I had ablated in 2005) whenever it started.  At any rate, vagal maneuvers can cause dizziness, since they make your heart rate and blood pressure drop suddenly (or something like that--all I know is that doing the Valsalva maneuver used to stop my arrhythmia in its tracks).  It's the same mechanism that's at work when people faint at the sight of blood; some people react more to vagal maneuvers than others and apparently I'm one of them (although not to the point of fainting for any reason).  So anyway, nothing to worry about there, and I may try different breathing styles with squats to see if I can lessen the dizziness.

So "Nancy" was fun (side note: only in CrossFit is it acceptable to bump into someone you know in the grocery store and begin the conversation with "so, did you do Nancy yesterday?").  And then I took Tuesday off to prepare for Wednesday.

Wednesday would have three workouts.

I had an all-day workshop to attend on Wednesday, held not too far from the short track rink that has "early bird" skating on Wednesdays. So of course I told Sprinter Boy I'd be happy to go to short track again at 5:40 am.  So we did, and I got some good technique work in.  Then I went to my workshop all day, and then met Sprinter Boy at a park with good skating trails--which, again, was very close to where my workshop was held.  Unfortunately my insistence on skating the trail rather than a road near Sprinter's house was a bit premature and not well-thought-out...

Yes, that's snow.  In fact, that's about the fifth drift we had to skate through in the two miles 

we made it down the trail.

So then after four snow-infested miles, we packed up and drove 25 miles to Sprinter's house to skate the road.  I felt I owed it to him after dragging him and his (previously good) bearings through the snow.  The road skating was actually more fun and less intimidating than I'd feared...and I think I did some of the (technically speaking) best inlining I've ever done.  I actually felt the "carve" and the pressure that skaters talk about...well, I felt it maybe 10 strides total of the 6 miles we skated on the road.  But hey, it's a start.

So then we went back to Sprinter Boy's house and picked up Mrs. Sprinter, Sprinter Dog, and Sprinter Sister and we all walked to a park about half a mile away and did dryland--the first dryland of the season.  We did 15 of the prescribed 25 minutes and decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and we quit at that point.  Still, those 15 minutes felt remarkably good...I don't think I've ever done "baby steps" that low.  Thanks, CrossFit, for making me do all those squats this past 6 weeks!

So that was Epic Wednesday.  It was followed by Epically Tired, I'm Going To Bed At 8:45 pm Thursday, but it was a fun way to start the season.  And I'm happy to report that I'm not nearly as sore as I usually am from the first dryland of the season, even though I did about twice as much as I've done for the first workout of the season the past couple years.  Again, thanks CrossFit!

I'm sure that, like my decision to skate the trails on Wednesday, this statement is a bit premature--but I'm happy to say that the 2014-15 season is off to a great start.