Sort of.
Yesterday was, of course, my Dub Bootcamp in the oval's mirrored multi-purpose room. After a fantastic, effortless, speedy (for me) mile warmup run on the track around the hockey rink, dub practice started out like this:
Neoprene knee brace because I have a bad knee,
neoprene elbow sleeves because I whip myself in the elbows,
and dirt bike gloves because when I don't whip myself in the elbows
I whip myself in the knuckles.
My plan was one minute of dub practice/one minute of rest until I got better at dubs or until Sprinter Boy showed up for our 3 o'clock skating interval workout. I started with "two singles/one dub/stop." It took me a good 15 minutes before I could do 10 of these in a row, after which I tried to do "two singles/dub/dub/stop." I never did get consistent at this, and before long I found myself just trying to get as many dubs in a row as I could, rather than stopping at two. I was marginally more successful if I stared at my right hand (in the mirror) and thought about turning the rope fast than if I watched my feet, so I stared at my right hand. And I tried to relax, because the mirror allowed me to see what everyone else gets to see every time I try to do dubs: the more dubs in a row I achieve, the more, um, effortful each one becomes (the Hubster, who knows my athletic style well, used the word "violent.") In other words, dub #1 looks relatively normal, but by dub #3 I look like I'm trying to stomp a six-foot rattlesnake to death.
Which, I'm sure, had something to do with what happened at 2:40.
After a half-hour of (mostly fruitless) dub practice, I decided to use the remaining time before my skating workout to re-do the "eighty dubs" part of yesterday's WOD. I wanted to see if I could beat my time of 13 minutes...all that practice must have resulted in some improvement, right? So, after a quick break in the hockey arena to cool off, at 2:35 or so I started out on my eighty dubs.
Single, single, dub.
Single, single, miss.
Single, miss.
Things were not going well...and then they went horrible.
Single, single, dub...OUCH. Damn.
Sudden, severe pain in my right calf.
"Oh," I thought (ever the optimist), "it's a cramp. I'll walk it off."
Um, nope. Not a cramp. And walking wasn't really happening, unless I managed to do it in such a way that my calf muscle didn't engage at all.
Well. This was clearly not a good thing. The only positive I could come up with was that, when I poked around my lower leg (oww!), it seemed to be muscle that was complaining rather than Achilles tendon--I had Achilles tendinitis in this leg in 2008, and it took a year to heal. Not interested in signing up for that again.
So I stripped off my gloves and my neoprene, gathered up my rope and my iPod, and hobbled out to the track to meet Sprinter Boy--who took one look at my lurching gait and said "we're not skating today, are we."
Nope.
Back home, I consulted Dr. Google. My guess is that I have a Grade 1 or possibly low-level Grade 2 calf strain--no bruising or swelling, but enough pain that I had to stop the activity and I'm not able to walk normally.
Damn. Bring on the ice and ibuprofen.
I had planned to go to this morning's 6:30 CrossFit class, and then the coach and I were going to go over the WOD's for Saturday's competition.
Oh, yeah...I have a competition Saturday. More on that later...
So anyway, I went to CrossFit this morning. I could do the strength work--squat snatches--and part of the WOD, the cleans. I had to sub situps for bear crawls, though. And then, on to Personal Training to figure out how to attack the competition WODs on Saturday. Or so I thought. PT did end with discussing the competition--but it started with a well-deserved and very accurate lecture discussion about overtraining and the need for a break. By the time the coach had filled in his impromptu "Injury Report" list on the whiteboard with everything I told him--left shoulder, left knee, right calf, left elbow--I could certainly see his point. I need to take a break and get healthy, or bad stuff is going to happen (or, worse stuff than has already happened). Bottom line is, other than the competition on Saturday (which I'm already registered for and which is a partner event, so I can work around the stuff I can't do, like jumping rope) I'm forbidden from working out--no skating, no CrossFit, no running, nothing more strenuous than walking the dog--until next Thursday.
Yikes.
If I'm honest, though, I know this is the best thing to do (even though I'll hate it). I was beginning to suspect, by the first couple of days this week, that I might be dipping a toe into the "overreaching" waters (overreaching is what happens before overtraining; overreaching can usually be corrected fairly quickly if you take some recovery time to compensate for it. If you don't...overtraining happens). Anyway, my workouts were going more or less OK physically, but mentally I was struggling. Getting frustrated with myself (hello, dubs). Looking at the clock during CrossFit workouts and wondering if I could finish (I never look at the clock until the very end of the WOD, when I'm trying to cram in the last couple reps) even though I wasn't really struggling with the work--I was just...not motivated. Going to a workout because it was on my schedule but not being excited about it. So there were signs pointing to overreaching...but for us perimenopausal women, stuff gets confusing. If I'd felt physically bad during WODs or skating, it would be easy to identify the need for a break...but the random hormonal swings enjoyed by us fifty-plus ladies always make me wonder, when my workout issues are mental, whether they're related to actual training issues or to fickle hormones.
But once the coach spelled it out for me, it seemed pretty clear: I need a break.
So after Saturday, I'm on the Disabled List until Thursday. Hopefully the Hubster and the dog will survive my forced inactivity The competition on Saturday should be fun and I'll be able to distract myself from my Disabled List status by writing up a post about it on Sunday. And if I'm smart I'll use my time and energy the first half of next week to get some stuff done at school, pre-Workshop Week. And then, with any luck, my calf, shoulder, elbow and knee will be much happier when I resume workouts next Thursday.
I can't wait for Thursday.
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