Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Nothing to report but continued rest.

This morning, as far as I can tell without extensive testing, the right half of my back feels normal. Interested readers can draw the obvious conclusion about the left half of my back. Some progress, at least.

Back did not feel good on waking this morning - no idea whether to conclude swimming is bad for it, despite feeling fine at the time, or lying in bed is bad or something else. Fortunately, my doctor, now that her office is open, can fit me in on Monday. Seems to think ruling out some sort of gall bladder problem is the first order of business (after asking questions about whether pain radiated to limbs that I presume were intended to screen for this being an acute cardiac problem). Can't say I lend much credence to the idea of this being anything other than musculo-skeletal but I don't plan on telling my doctor how she ought to proceed.

I don't seem to be feeling better after Sunday's effort as quickly as I did after last Tuesday's (in fact, the Obama era is a big disappointment so far - lucky for him he didn't make any specific campaign promises about curing muscular aches and pains. Also, the problem clearly originated during the last few hours of the Bush administration). Felt bad enough this morning that I tried to make an appointment with my doctor early in the afternoon. Her office, it turns out, is closed on account of the weather. My discomfort not yet being anywhere near the point at which I'd consider going to an ER, I guess that's that until tomorrow.

Update: I had a better afternoon physically than morning.

Good news - apparently, I can still tolerate swimming and deep water running.

Tried to cycle in to work despite the beginning of the first snowstorm of the season and got a flat somewhat over a mile from the office. Walked my bike the rest of the way.

Cycling to work and back.

C • Happy... 2

Event: QOC: Greenbelt
 

Miscellaneous cycling.

QOC Greenbelt Blue - turned out to be correct in thinking I was physically up to running but I felt fragile and unable to accelerate strongly when the situation called for it and the impact forces involved were not kind to the section of my back just below the shoulder blades, which have become the main painful area . Similar aftereffects to those experienced on Tuesday afternoon but considerably less severe. At a minimum, I'm sticking to cycling and the pool for the next week. I'm undecided as to whether to do the sprints at Lake Fairfax on Feb 1 - hopes of being able to compete normally in the Winterlude Triathlon and run hard enough at the Vancouver Sprint Training camp for it to be useful technical training may depend on not doing so. Or perhaps everything will heal nicely over the next several days.

C • Still Fast 1

Blue - Splits

Today's miscellaneous cycling.

Flutterkicking to Hungarian lesson 8.

Rounded out the workout with more classical plus a couple of songs by the Red Army Chorus and a bit of James Brown.

Cycling to work. Plan on going to the pool this evening to see how that goes. Hope to orienteer on Sunday but will avoid running at least until then.

Going to the pool on the way home went fine, at least.

Flutterkicking.

Water running part of long, slow workout. Listened to two Hungarian lessons, one new, and various music. Had forgotten how long Jupiter from Holst's The Planets is.

Good news - at least I seem to be able to cycle without pain. This was to work and home by way of PCRM.

Very easy run downtown, through the less dense humanity around the Washington Monument and the fringes of the denser crowds heading to the parts of the Mall between it and the Capitol, and back in time to watch the actual ceremony and speech at home. Figured I had to go see what the crowd was like but being there during the main event was dispensable.

Felt ungood during this but would not have turned on injury flag for that. The injury flag is for the debilitating, apparently muscular aches and pains around the right half of my rib cage through the rest of the day, not continuously but caused by adopting many and various body postures I'm still getting a handle on (inhaling to the maximum is bad as is almost any position involving leaning my torso without supporting it with at least one arm on something solid). These were to some extent preexisting and can't have been helped by falls onto my torso during my two most recent long trail runs but something about this run (cold, pavement?) seems to have pushed them over a threshold. Aleve and a hot bath have provided some relief. My best theory at the moment is that I've got a broken rib.

C • Get Better 1

Cycling to work and back.

Easy run in Rock Creek Park. Vast number of canines and their human escorts. Also a few unaccompanied feral humans.

Cycling to and from more films (sublime entry - Three Women - in the current Iranian series at the Freer and two more Manhattan-centered entries in the Beat series at the NGA) on the fringes of the Mall. The main action was west of the Washington Monument, though some of the overflow from that was watching the concert on the Jumbotrons set up for the inauguration as I biked from the Freer to the NGA. Still, the Mall and surroundings were busy in a way unprecedented in my experience other than on the Fourth of July. Many police directing traffic in the streets north and east of the White House and Freedom Plaza. Witnessed one carful of people asking a police officer how to get to 12th and Independence WHILE executing a left turn. Heaven help us if more than a handful of the people coming to town on Monday evening and Tuesday morning are that ill-prepared.

Miscellaneous utilitarian cycling as I went to Georgetown and back then to the pool and the National Gallery of Art to see a bunch of films from the American avant-garde/Beat of the late 50s and early 60s.

Gave up on Hungarian lessons on entering the pool and finding one third of it taken up with a youth swim meet - Beethoven (good thing I put the fourth movement of his ninth symphony on my MP3 player) and Stravinsky were a lot easier to follow than ordinary conversational tones and suffered less when drowned out by cheering for short periods.

Commute plus trip to the Kennedy Center to see the Limon Dance Company. A genuinely, not just by DC standards, cold day, though nothing extraordinary to anyone living in the snow belt.

Cycling commute, including grocery shopping at TPSS on the way home.

Run home through Rock Creek Park. Saw a fox uphill of me while on the Valley Trail near the end of the run. Also what I believe was just a cat within a few minutes of home. Fell three times, fortunately on smooth, unrocky sections of trail which I wasn't treating with the same degree of caution the gnarlier trail sections merit.

Cycling commute, by way of the aquatic center on the way home.

Flutterkicking while relistening to Hungarian Lesson 5.

The balance of the pool time until they closed half an hour early because they had a bulkhead to move. Hungarian Lesson 6, some Shostakovich and the first several minutes of Hungarian Lesson 7.

Cycling commute, incl grocery shopping on the way home.

Warmup/cooldown.

Silly walks and hill sprints.

Cycling to work then home by way of the Freer Gallery, where Dan and I saw an Iranian sort of screwball comedy .

Ran to work through Rock Creek Park.

Cycled home by way of PCRM work party.

Ran home through Rock Creek Park, moderately heavy rain then light rain, many puddles and a couple of streams that were much harder to cross than usual - at least RCP doesn't get seriously muddy when it rains.

Event: QOC: Manassas
 

Manassas Score-O.

Skated in to work. All the leaves, sticks and tree limbs on the sidewalk after the high winds earlier in the week made this a bit dicy in places.

Cycled home.

Cycling to work.

Ran home through Rock Creek Park. No deer, beavers, owls or other fauna barring humans and one dog being walked sighted.