Not much to report

By Friday afternoon, it was pretty clear that I was sick. I managed to go for groceries with my wife on Friday evening, after her workout, but that was it.

By Saturday morning, I felt like I'd been run over by a car, a truck, and a train. I watched TV most of the day, and worked for part of the day. I managed to cook dinner, watch a movie and then went to bed early. My wife skied all day and then gloated about good the conditions were. I was happy for her, considering how much more often I get to ski compared to her.

Sunday was no better - basically a repeat of Saturday.

This morning wasn't much better either, but I finally got vertical and took a shower. I am now working at a coffee shop and feeling better, but not good. Maybe I'll be ready to go to the office and do a workout by tomorrow.

If I still feel OK at the end of the day today, I'm going to take my bike to the bike shop for its spring tune-up, since that never got done this past weekend.

Regretfully, my children seem to be getting sick now. It seems like a lot of people in our town are afflicted. I want to find Patient Zero, and sarcastically thank that person for the loss of the last few days.

CDC maps currently show that northern New England is "regionally" affected by influenza, which is the second highest standard level, below only "widespread".

My training has been going so well recently that I'm really unhappy with this interruption, to be honest.

Quick Post About a Slow Run

Yesterday, it got up to almost 50F here and the sun was out all day. I wrapped up work at 4:00 and started running a few minutes later. I ran for about 25 minutes to my wife's office and met her, and we ran another 40 minutes or so together. This was my first run longer than an hour in quite a while.

After six good days in a row, today is a rest day. I seem to have a cold right now, although I don't feel too bad at the moment. I'm hoping that a rest day today will have me feeling better by tomorrow, so my wife and I can spend the day skiing.

That's it. Happy Friday!

Work Your Weakness

Yes, this is another boring CrossFit post.

Other than CrossFit these days, my life consists of the following:

Sleep

Commute

Work

(Workout)

Commute

Dinner with the family

Catch up on Stewart and Colbert on the DVR

Repeat

So, if I feel compelled to tell the whole world about my life, CrossFit seems to be the least boring thing to write about.

Otherwise, my post for yesterday would be as follows:

Slept in a hotel near the office to save on gas money and commute time, but didn't sleep too well. Got up at 6:00 and made it to the office by 7:00. Produced a number of data sets for our chief medical officer. Spent a couple hours doing database migrations and restores to our test environment. Documented a couple new bugs and enhancements for our software system. Contacted a data provider after giving up on an exasperating data analysis task. Left work a bit early for a medical appointment. Went to CrossFit, worked out, drove home, ate leftovers for dinner (my wife and daughter were gone for the evening), watched Stewart and Colbert from Tuesday and went to bed at 9:30.

It's my life and I'm not bored, but it's not the material for compelling memoir. My work would be boring to many people, but it's complex and challenging to me. The minutiae of building and maintaining computer systems to help doctors and patients work together to manage chronic diseases are probably not interesting to any athletes who read this blog.

And so, there's CrossFit.

One component of CrossFit is constant improvement, not just in strength or endurance, but also form in a variety of movements. And, everyone seems to have a different weakness. Sometimes our warm-up will include 10 minutes or so of working on form in an area where you are weak. And, sometimes, we have "Work your weakness" workouts, which is what we got last night:

Warm-up, including kettlebell swings

10 minutes WYW on a strength movement - do 1-5 reps every minute on the minute for ten minutes.

Repeat previous item with a different movement

Then, 12 minutes, as many reps as possible, alternating between two WYW movements that can be done quickly

I chose to start with overhead squats. I have some mobility issues that make it difficult for me to do this move correctly, so it's a definite weakness. I did 10 sets of 4 at 75 pounds - not heavy at all. But, as the sets continued, my form definitely got better. I was using a box behind me for safety (to prevent me from falling over backwards if I lost my balance with weight overhead) and also to gauge the depth of the squats. By the time I was halfway done, I was squatting to the box on every rep. The key for me really seems to be sure that my hands are far enough apart on the barbell.

Next, I did ring dips. My form there is terrible and so is my strength. I did them with a band for assistance and focused more on form than strength. After returning to push-ups for the first time in a month the previous day, my triceps were a bit sore, so I needed to limit the weight and protect my shoulder.

Then came the truly tough part of the workout. I opted for the following pairing:

10 burpees

10 Wall Balls (Start in a squat with a medicine ball, come out of the squat and push the ball high on a wall, then return to the squat position as the ball is falling, and catch it near the bottom of the squat)

CrossFit burpees just plain suck. I used to do burpees in the gym on my own, as follows:

Stand straight up. Squat down, putting your hands near your feet. Jump your feet back so you are in a push-up position. Jump your feet forward to where they were. Jump up and clap overhead.

Those are hard enough, but in CF, we add an actual push-up as well while in the push-up position - pure torture. Apparently, many people think of this one as torture or a weakness, because lots of people did burpees last night.

In 12 minutes, I did 5 rounds plus 9 additional burpees. I was spent.

As I sat on the ground, I looked around the gym, and I could tell everyone had picked a true weakness for their work. Everyone ended up flat on their back, gasping for breath. Twelve minutes had reduced us all from laughing and smiling people to prone pools of sweat

My clothes are fitting better, I'm recovering better, I'm eating better, I'm not drinking alcohol at all right now, and things are moving the right direction.

The Godfathers sang a depressing song that summarized life as "Birth, School, Work, Death". I'm having a lot of fun these days, even if that means getting excited by having burpees kick my ass.

Cruel

Last night, when I got to the gym and looked at the main workout, the first word that came to mind was "Cruel". And then, I did the entire workout with Bryan Ferry's song "Cruel" in my brain. It's still lodged there this morning. Most readers should be safe because it's a fairly obscure song, but if you've ever been a Bryan Ferry or Roxy Music fan, Frantic is an amazing album, in my opinion.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Cruel. The lyrics actually had nothing to do with the workout. The song is about much bigger topics (Big "Why?" type of questions) than my CrossFit workout. But, the word fit. On Monday, we had done a longer-than-normal workout with rowing, running and rope jumping. I was hoping for more upper body work yesterday.

After our warm-up, we started with 5x5 of heavy back squats. That's not upper body work. Then, the main workout was as follows:

15 minutes, as many reps as possible:

Row 250 meters

25 push-ups

25 double-unders (or 40 single unders plus ten high knees jumps)

So, just like the night before, we had rowing and jumping. And, I haven't done a push-up in over a month because of my shoulder. But, I guess that's what CrossFit does best - find ways to stress you that you wouldn't have done on your own.

We only have six racks in the gym for squatting and we had 16 people there last night, so we had to double-up and triple-up. I joined the two strongest guys in the gym because I knew no other group would go over 225 pounds.

We each started with a set of 5 at 225. Then, Ken and I did 235, while Del did 315. Then, 245 while Del did 345. I eventually worked up to 255, my highest weight ever for a set of 5. Ken made it to 275, and Del went to 405. We all got in some good work sets, but we finished last and everyone else was ready to start the main workout. We got very little recovery between the squats and the main workout.

Because I hadn't done push-ups in a while, I thought about doing dumbbell presses again. But, I tried some knee push-ups (knees on the ground rather than toes) and they felt OK. The prescribed workout was regular push-ups, but Level 1 was knee push-ups. That sounded perfect for me.

Because of the number of people and the fact that we only have 8 rowing machines, we started the workout at different spots in the rotation. I started with push-ups and the first set went OK. Then the rope jumping and high knee jumping. And, then, a short rowing split.

And then, things went downhill. Starting with the second set of push-ups, I couldn't do them uninterrupted. I guess that's what happens when you don't do a certain movement for more than a month. My form on rope jumping got sloppy and I started to get tripped up. The night before, I'd had some stretches of 80-100 reps without messing up. Last night, a set of 10-15 uninterrupted felt like a victory. Most people made five full rounds or close to it. I fell 250 rowing meters short of finishing my fourth round.

But, I had worked hard, I was soaked in sweat, and it was a good workout. I stayed near my office in a hotel last night, and by 7:30, I was in my room, with dinner, wearing pajamas, watching the Red Sox game, and ready to go to sleep.

Monday CrossFit

With our snow slowly disappearing at lower elevations, I knew it wouldn't be long before we were putting running back into our CrossFit workouts. I got it last night.

When I first get to the gym, I immediately go to the board to look at the workout. I like to wear Vibram Five Fingers for workouts when it makes sense, but there are certain movements I don't like to do in them. First, unlike what seems to be half of the runners in the world these days, I don't run in them. I also don't like to do box jumps or burpees in the Vibrams and I have mixed feelings about push-ups and rope jumping. As my feet get stronger, I hope to expand the activities that I use them for, but for now, I use racing flats as my primary footwear at CF.

The boards that show our workouts are broken into segments. The first board is the warm-up, usually mobility, balance and perhaps some easy strength work. Then, we usually do some hard strength work, which is specified on the second board. The next four boards are the main workout, from the prescribed level down to Level 1. Last night, the strength board was blank. That usually means that the main workout is going to be long and difficult. This is what I saw last night:

4 rounds, as quickly as possible:

Row 500 meters

Run 400 meters

50 double-unders

A double-under is rope-jumping, where the rope passes under your feet twice in every jump. I'm not very good at double-unders yet, and the alternative is always three times as many single-unders. I could do the double-unders, but I miss so many times that it would take me forever to accumulate 50 even once, much less four times. So, I would end up doing 600 jump rope reps, more than I'd done in a day in many, many years, perhaps ever.

Most of our main workouts last anywhere from 8 to about 15 minutes. As I looked at this one, I was guessing that half an hour would be a decent time for me. I figured I'd average just over 2 minutes per 500 meters rowing, just under two minutes per run, and the rope jumping would take about 3 minutes. Plus, we had to travel back and forth between inside and outside and change equipment, etc.

I ended up finishing dead last in 30:33, but I was very happy with the workout. I paced myself well, and unlike someone in the class before us, I didn't get sick. I'm now doing the prescribed workout more often than not, and my fitness is definitely improving.

When I got to work this morning, the walk up four flights of stairs was a challenge.

I'm hoping tonight's workout focuses on strength and upper body muscles.

Running on back to back days

After the cortisone injection on Friday, I decided to let my shoulder rest for the weekend. No lifting. And, no skiing, even though the only risk there seemed to be a repeat impact.

I did some work both days this weekend, but I also ran 4 miles each day. The last time I ran on back to back days was last August.

In 2010, I had my lowest mileage for a year since I started running in 1985. Even that partial year in 1985 greatly exceeded my mileage for last year. My mileage in the year I tore my ACL was also a lot more than last year.

I am signed up for a 100 mile, six person relay race in August, so I need to do some running.

On Saturday, I ran an easy 4 on pavement by myself. On Sunday, I ran on a dirt road with my wife and our dogs. Both runs were at an easy effort and I feel pretty good today.

Due to a busy week at work, it looks like I'll do CrossFit the next three days, and then maybe run again on Thursday. It shouldn't take a whole lot of effort to exceed last year's total mileage. Basically, I didn't run much last year because I wasn't having fun with it. After a hamstring injury the previous year and some knee problems last year, running just wasn't fun. Right now, I feel like running again, so I'm hoping to actually get back to running more regularly.

Oh yeah, for the first time in a long time, some of my lawn started to peek through the snowpack yesterday. By the weekend, it looks like most of my lawn will be clear of snow, which should make the dogs very happy. But, ski season isn't over yet and it's snowing outside right now.

Shoulder Update

On Thursday, my wife and I took my daughter to see the podiatrist. She's been having some ankle issues for more than a year, and a hard kick to her ankle in soccer season last fall made things worse. She made it through basketball and skiing, but her ankle just hasn't been getting any better and lacrosse will have her in cleats in the next week or so.

We went through the results of an MRI and the podiatrist didn't think it's a big deal. She has a bone bruise that is healing slowly, and some other structural issues that can be helped by inserts. So, we were pretty optimistic about her prognosis.

The podiatrist is the dad of one of my daughter's best friends, and he and I know each other pretty well from our time in the gym. He is a real stud powerlifter, and I mentioned my shoulder issues as we were leaving. We talked about it, and he told me about a rotator cuff injury he'd had that took 8 months to heal, and he couldn't bench press the entire time. The doc I was seeing on Friday wanted him to get a cortisone shot for some continued inflammation, but he's held out so far. I asked the podiatrist if he'd be in the office on Friday, because I told him I suspected I would be getting a cortisone injection in my shoulder and they might need help holding me down.

The last two times the orthopedist has gotten close to me with a needle was for a Synvisc injection in my knee (very uncomfortable) and a PRP injection at the top of my hamstring (seriously painful). So, I expected no less for my Friday appointment.

The fact that this is the third injury I've seen the orthopedist for in 2 years should probably worry me about how old and fragile I'm becoming. But, I still like to play hard and he's keeping me out there.

When I first got there yesterday, before I'd even seen the doc, his assistant was worried about a fracture high in the humerus. So, I got some x-rays, but they showed no breaks. Next, I got to talk to the doc.

It didn't take long to confirm that the injury was in the rotator cuff, in the Supraspinatus muscle. He did some strength tests and I had a hard time pushing in certain directions without a lot of pain. So, he used an ultrasound machine to look at the muscle in more detail. He found one problem area right away, and his first suspicion was a partially torn tendon (I started thinking about another PRP injection immediately - costly and painful). But, as he looked at it more and re-considered how I'd hurt myself - a hard hit to the shoulder rather than something that stretched me beyond normal range of motion - he started to suspect that he was seeing a hematoma and inflammation.

He said there was a quick way to tell the difference and that was an injection of lidocaine. If after the injection of the painkiller, my strength was equal between the two arms, he could assume that there wasn't a tendon tear, and then he'd want to do a cortisone injection to help with the inflammation.

If my strength was not good, he said he'd still likely suggest cortisone and then possibly an MRI.

Since cortisone was likely in either case, he suggested a single injection of cortisone and lidocaine. I agreed to that. He used the ultrasound to guide the needle right to the trouble area. It seemed like the needle was in there for quite a while, but it didn't hurt too much. As soon as the injection was done, I could push against resistance in just about every direction without pain. So, my strength was good and he thinks the cortisone should have me back to normal in a few days. He told me no lifting until Monday and sent me on my way.

It's been less than 24 hours since the injection and my shoulder feels noticeably better already. I was able to put my arm in a jacket sleeve without pain this morning for the first time in a month. I'm working right now, but plan to get out for a run a little bit later this afternoon.

Hopefully, I'll be doing pain free push-ups in a few days.