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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Confessions of a sore triathlete


Forgive me, self, for I have not trained.  It has been four days since my last triathlon. 

The back pain is now almost gone.  I have not been for a swim so far this week for fear of re-aggravating an already aggravated back that had more spasm than a stomach with Dehli Belly.  I have been doing a lot of walking though, which is finally not painful.  I also have not run this week or been for a bike. 

I will save the swim and run for Saturday, and the bike for Sunday morning when I can finally go out for a ride in my nice new bike shirt (which turned up late last week, after several lying phone calls from the company I purchased it from over four weeks ago).  It is not worth messing up my back even more for the sake of one or two missed training sessions, and besides, the rest has been good. 

I had a great massage very early this morning and now I feel good.  I think 30 or 40 minutes of sports massage every two weeks will become mandatory.  The masseuse found a gazillion knots in my neck and shoulders, and a giant one around my left scapula, in addition to gazillion more in my back.  The knots are now almost gone but there will be another two litres of water required to flush out all the toxins.  I am trying to chug-a-lug my way through it but it is so hard to drink when you are already hydrated and not even remotely thirsty!  I am now oilier than Marsden Point but I feel great!

I passed another assessment at Uni yesterday, so there is only one more to complete before I receive my exercise consultant’s certificate.  After Uni, I went to a wonderful store to spend a voucher I won.  I scored a pair of recovery compression socks in pretty black.  I am certainly going to enjoy using them, and as a bonus, they double as flight socks, so no DVTs for me.

The next Uni assessment is going to be a bit gnarly.  It is exercise instruction, and I am still freaking out about PNF (or assisted stretching), although I am a little less freaked now than last week.  I need some “crash test smarties” to practice on, so I will have to see whom I can drum up at short notice.  I think I will be fine; I just need to do some research and practice.

Real Uni has now started for the year and I am doing three papers this year.  The nutrition one is a double-semester paper (meaning full-year); in semester one, I am doing intro sports science and in semester two it is human development I.  I have about four more cores to do and a couple more 300-level papers and I am done.  I can even cross-credit some of my IT degree papers across (like communication studies, marketing, business management, etc) so my workload shrinks and the timeframe for completion halves.  The goal is a Bachelor of Sport & Exercise or BSpEx.  Because I am studying extramurally, I will not have a major, as the papers for the major options are not available in extramural mode. 

The most exciting thing on my calendar right now is Ironman New Zealand, in Taupo on 6 March.  I am mega excited!  I am not competing, but going to watch a friend and hopefully (if they ever get back to me) volunteer at it also.  Moreover, I get to watch the pros, the middle of the packers, and the back of the packers.  I always fall into the last group at my triathlons, so I will especially enjoy watching fellow back of the packers completing one of my dream events!  This will be awesome indeed! 

In seven more sleeps, I am off to Taupo, hooray!

I have entered three of my remaining four events for the season.  Two are Triwoman events (3/10/3), and one is another super-duper sprint Panasonic event 1/10/2.  Better get off here and re-plot my training plan I guess!


Have a great day J

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