Effed Up Hand Update

I've successfully done it again: taken myself out of the game for two months. The thing is, I'm not all that pissed anymore. Sure, I'm bored and with the usual training load I would have, boredom was almost never an issue. But I kinda can't do much about it, anyways.

I had the hand surgically "fixed" on Friday. What does that mean, exactly? Well it means taking out whatever bones (I swear I remember hearing growth plates, but maybe, maybe not) had fallen INTO the thumb joint - the middle one - and repair the "shredded" tendon ligament that, you know, you NEED to have to use your thumb. So in theory it's back in place where it should be where the bones were keeping it from going before surgery. But I can't see it because it's wrapped up in plaster and gauze and ace bandages that make it look like my thumb is bigger than the rest of my hand. It twitches every once in awhile like it keeps hoping it's free, but alas, it is not.

So what does this mean for training, then? Well I can't do much till I have my follow-up appointment to get the sutures out and hopefully a removable thumb support. At that point I'm hoping I can start lifting (light) weights again and hit the pool. That's also when I'll start riding Skippy since I can - and have - ridden that bike one-handed. Otherwise I probably won't ride till two months is up. That sucks. I miss my bike(s).

Positive note: this totally gets me out of the embarrassing excuse of an attempt at snow sports when visiting the bf's family this winter. Because, you know, I can't be falling on my bum hand.

Slide, BOOM........Ouuuuuccchhhh

So it was an interesting Thanksgiving for me - with one hand! Yeah, I crashed yet again in spectacular fashion. Requiring an ER visit and the whole shebang. I'm definitely not happy about having broken myself yet again on a bike. This time it was on a much harder surface, too - slippery concrete.

This is how it happened: I went to the weekly UCR ride - the night ride around town on mountain, or in my case, my cross bike so that I can keep up without issue. We all met up, and not even five minutes in, we headed into the unnamed parking garage for our warmup. They all started taking off fast, so I joined in, not to be outdone as the only lady on a bike that night. On the second turn, I didn't even have time to react before I felt my head hit the concrete and myself slide for awhile. I came down on my left side, and I must have tried to catch myself with my right hand without realizing it, since that is the one I really messed up. I laid there for a few moments trying to gather what had just happened as I hear Dan start to make fun of me for going down - and my usual snarky responses were out of reach. My mind kept scanning my body to see what was wrong, which was when I realized that there was another body next to me. I was one of three or four that went down! And we weren't even going that fast!

It took a little bit for me to come back from lala land, and at that point I finally realized that my hand didn't feel right. Or look right, and it was still in my glove. I pulled it out very carefully and saw that my thumb was pointing in the wrong direction. The guys instantly said "Oh it's dislocated," so I was about to simply pull it back into place but they stopped me, probably for the better. Even though that's what the doctor ended up doing later that night at the hospital.

It was clear that they didn't believe me at the hospital - they asked quite the list of questions about any drug use and any "abuse at home" before even really giving me a look. They took xrays, gave me a "pain reliever" shot in the bum that did NO good whatsoever, and were about to splint it up and send me out before I protested that it was not in the right position. They finally backtracked and retook the xrays, this time with my good hand as a comparison. Then they claimed that the first set looked ok, but the second didn't. Probably because they hadn't actually looked at the first set.

That's when the doc decided it would be best to numb it with a shot and pull it back into place. That wasn't much fun, either, but at least it looked like it was more *normal* in position than before. Then they gave me the plaster splint that I'm not allowed to take off, and sent me home.

So then I had to cook all the Thanksgiving goodness we'd already went shopping for with a messed up thumb. Notthatmuchfun.

I didn't accidentally chop anything off, so that's a plus.

Four days post-crash and I can use my fingers better, but I don't particularly like to. And if I try to use the thumb it lets me know that's not OK. My hand is swollen to the point where I don't have knuckles anymore, and it's all purple-yellow grossness that you get when you bruise something good. The other bruises I got from the crash aren't all that bad - it seems that my hand absorbed 90% of the impact. Maybe it saved my collar bone, maybe not. I prefer to think it did.

Here's to hoping I don't need surgery. I go Wednesday to find out.

Gonna have to go see my massage therapist this week to get my angry muscles worked out, too.

Now I have to be more creative about getting my workouts in, but I'm mostly just hoping I can get back to swimming soon. I have the road bike on the trainer already, and it's going to be back to riding Skippy around town since I don't have to use my right hand on that bike. And I'm not really going to allow myself to run before I get *cracked* back into position.

Gotta work back into it yet again.

UCR November 16, 2011 by ablapat at Garmin Connect - Details

Night rides on bikes! Yes we were going everywhere. No, we didn't always have a clue as to where we were. It was a blast though.

Home from France and Spain!

I spent the last two weeks (as of last Thursday night, I've been home) in Europe. It was awesome. Though the one thing I have to say is that I'm so so tired of cigarette smoke. It seemed like everybody smokes there. Which made my nose hurt.

I got to ride a (very crappy and loose in all sorts of ways) bike in France and a different one (in better shape, slightly) in Spain. Didn't get pick pocketed, and I, at least, avoided food poisoning. My poor mother, notsomuch. I learned that while my favorite shoes are the cutest darn things ever, they are not so great for travel in as much as they started stinking to high heavens. And I can't decide if it's worth trying to wash them/sanitize them or just throw them out.

Maybe just toss them....

This week marks the official beginning of training bonanza 2011/2012. Starts with a whopping 8 hour training week. Haha I like the beginning.

Going a new direction

So since I've been sooooo so SO injured this year, since, ha oh yeah, February...ok that basically makes my whole season the time of being injured...I'm going to take a different approach. I'm going to start running barefoot. No biking, obviously, but running. Why, you ask? Isn't that dangerous? Hmmmm no. Here's why.

The body has the most amazing ability to adapt to it's environment. When it's not important or useful to be strong in some areas, those areas get weak while the areas that need to be strong get stronger based on the forces and work subjected to that particular part of the body. What this means is that the feet, that which supports your whole body need to be strong. What we've done by wearing shoes is confine them and not allow them to be the awesome adaptive tools that they are. We instead engineer padding and "support" under the arches to keep them from flexing. But the arch flexes because it is designed to do that. So since your foot isn't taking the hits, what is? Your legs....really it makes perfect sense. At least, it really resonates with what I've experienced running in my nice and supportive winter training shoes all last winter. And then ended up with seemingly chronic overuse injuries all year. And by chronic I mean one after another after another after another....very very frustrating.

I'm not quite as eloquent as explaining it as this guy is. What it breaks down to is that I'm giving up on running like I've been running for the last couple years. Hasn't worked. Everything else seems ok, just the running isn't good. So, I've really got nothing to lose on it since I've hit this impenetrable barrier on my running speed. Just can't train enough speed to get faster because I get injured just from building up the base to properly do the speed I need to do. Boooo. So I'm only going to build base via bicicleta and build up my running distances based on what my (barefoot) feet allow. Which means I don't have to spend another $100 on some foamy running shoes that only last me a few months. And I'll of course lift weights and build my core strength to address inherent imbalances and improve power yadda yadda yadda. If it ends up being a bad winter and biking is off the table, I'll have to track down some snowshoes and hit the cornfields or something. And hit the pool since that'll be indoors...and there's a sauna in there too...hehe....

Heading to France on Friday this week...three days till I fly out!! Should be a stellar trip with my mommy :)

Sartwhat??

So in my searching for healing, we (and by we I mean me and my massage therapist) have found a new culprit!!!

I'm actually pretty excited about this one - the sartorius. And yes, it hurt to get worked on, but I already feel a lot looser, so I'm betting I'm going to be heading out on a run in the next few days...hehe I'm excited.

Yep, it was a good night.

Leg Issues

So my defunct leg - the left one - hasn't let me run in over a month. Not really, anyways. I tried running a few test runs, but really they ended up being 10 minute walk/runs. Now that finally seems to be changing. I've been going to a chiropractor to get the Active Release Technique done, which I've had before I moved here, but the problem has been that there hasn't been anyone listed in town that I could go to until recently. Well, there was one listed before but he was completely unreachable. So that obviously didn't work out. So the chiropractor I've been going to now has been helping loosen things up, and I haven't really had much progress until this last time - when he worked on my adductors. Now THAT hurt. That means that the adductors are REALLY pissed off. And guess what - today I ran for 15 minutes without having to stop!! So I suppose that means that we found the big culprit! Yay!

So I'm building on that progress by sitting here with my fabulous zapper zapping away at the bad spots. All while I work on those grad school applications. And the training plan for the winter. Yep I've decided that even though I've been completely burnt out from this year that I'm still not done doing this triathlete thing. What it was this year really was dealing with all the injuries that I've gotten. What it boils down to is that I didn't quite take it careful enough in adding more running to the plan and I didn't lift enough weights. I know that if I had been better at strengthening the things that needed to be stronger to prevent overuse injuries I would have been fine. And I wouldn't have pounded my legs into oblivion on frozen hard concrete all winter. Live and learn, right? Oh and I'm adding more aqua jogging to the plan this winter, too.

Better to work the muscles happily, my dear.

Oh and I discovered a hot tub I can use. Can you say SWEET???? I've always been a big fan of them but didn't discover the one in the gym I've been using until yesterday. Definitely gonna make a habit of that!

I'm still hoping to get some cross races in this fall though. The next cyclocross race that I'll be able to get to is maybe on October 9th - the Dan Ryan cyclocross in Chicago...dun dun duuuunnnnn.....so I may be heading up to Chicago for a visit and a hammerfest! I'm interested to see how I'll do against other Cat 4 women. You know, since I beat them by a fair margin at the small cross race I did before. But I don't know if that's representative of the Cat 4 women...probably not gonna worry about moving up till next year, when I'll be willing to pay for a cycling license for a full year instead of what's left of a year (when I'm going to be in Europe for two weeks here soon too - fun!). And hopefully I won't break anything mid season this next time around. Like my elbow. That kinda ruined things. Just a bit.

Things are looking up :)