Injury – Frustration

Backache
Last night I attended/worked the Search for the Golden Sprocket, an event sponsored by The Extraordinary Contraptions. I arrived earlier than most of the band and discovered that the primary entrance to the venue was a slick ice death trap. Therefore, I shoveled.

Now, I’m sitting on the couch, wondering when I’ll be able to run again. I have (again and again!) managed to pull muscles in my back that make me feel a lot older than I actually am. Hell, I’m wondering how many days it will be before I manage to walk about the house in a normal fashion. This leaves me very frustrated, because I’m in the middle of training for a marathon, and if you follow this blog you may be aware that the last marathon I trained for had to be deferred because of another injury.

I’ll have to rejigger my training schedule based upon what I’m guessing my recovery date will be. I am going to finish this marathon, dammit, but I might change up the race schedule I have planned for the rest of the year. I’m thinking I may want to concentrate hard on one thing, strengthening my core, for the entire year. If that kept me from being a couch-ridden doofus, it would be worth giving up triathlon and serious racing for a year. Maybe I’ll go see a specialist (I wonder if my health plan would cover that?).

Comments

8 responses to “Injury – Frustration”

  1. annie Avatar
    annie

    Unless you have really cheap-ass insurance, you should probably be covered, especially if you go see someone soon in regards to this specific shoveling injury.

    When I hurt my back a few years ago, my cheesy insurance covered the specialist & a decent round of PT. The specialist, himself, wasn’t able to do much other than prescribe me much needed pain meds. But the PT really helped. As did a consult w/one of the PT professors at work who showed me a series of stretches to keep my trouble muscles stretched.

  2. Bill Ruhsam Avatar

    Yeah. I just downloaded the “Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine” list of doctors on our health plan within 20 miles. I’ll make calls around on Monday.

    I don’t need immediate pain relief—don’t get me wrong, it hurts—but unfortunately I have experience recovering from this injury. What I need is a plan and a process to avoid this injury in the future, or at least make it less likely. My personal self-coached training has obviously been inadequate.

  3. […] As mentioned yesterday, I’m a bit of a homebody right now. Not moving around too much. […]

  4. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    Bill,

    I started working with a personal trainer on core body strengthening and ever since then I’ve had no (knock knock) problems with my back. Essentially, we worked on the muscles that helped with balance and posture which in general most people don’t do a good job at strengthening. Not that I know anything about your training routine… I’d recommend that you try to find a trainer who can help you with building those up and work with them for a bit. I’ve seen the guy I work with bring people who are in significantly better shape than me to their knees with a few exercises, so even people in great shape like your yourself are sometimes missing things!

    Jeff

  5. Bill Ruhsam Avatar

    Jeff: Oh, I totally agree. I know that I have muscular weaknesses. I was hoping that I’d been addressing them since the Massive Failure of 2009, however this is a demonstration that there is still work to be done. Professionals are going to be called. Progress will be made.

  6. […] Given my experience of one week ago, I took it a little easy during the race. I put in about 85% effort. Nicely (although not coincidentally) this activity did not bother my back strain in the slightest, aside from the drive to and from the race where I was sitting in the car. […]

  7. […] find it painful to write down. Nevertheless, it’s what I’ve got, given the fact that I lost three weeks to a back injury. Damn you […]

  8. […] mean, “couldn’t stand up straight for 5 days” kind of thing. This, unfortunately, isn’t a new thing for me. I’ve come up with a new metaphor for why this keeps happening to me: it’s the […]

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