Life Gives You Lemons....

Or....Life is a bowl full of cherries, till you get to the rotten ones....
Or....Reality Check 101!!!



Anyways I can go on FOR-EVER with different posts. But i will say this, Life has given me alot of sugar too, but sometimes the sugar and the lemons dont find a good balance and you are left with some choices as to how to sweeten the lemonade.

You guys and gals have been so amazing in supporting me with Rich and just with life in general and that support has helped me beyond words. Comments or emails or just knowing you are thinking about us, even for a second, is wonderful. Today I decided to write about me. Rich is good. We have to change up a few things and he is starting a new drug set and is part of a clinical trial in a week, but we are staying put and we dont have to drive to Mayo. Yay. He is riding his bike more than me and i feel like an out of shape slacker. And that is going to just get worse after monday.

I am not racing Kansas. I am not racing BSLT. Damn it I am racing IM Wisconsin tho!

Sigh. Yea can you do the math on those? At least there were no plane tickets bought. So WTC owes me big time, just in kind, if anything:)

Monday i am in the hands of a wonderful MD who will give me prolotherapy into my sore hamstring tendon. PRP, to be exact. Plasma Rich Protein. Not covered by insurance. ( Yes the dollar bills keep flying, but heck i have a job, stuff happens, this is what we do.) and I will rest for 2 weeks. No not swim, not legs off rest, totally rest. That is the key to this working. Maybe if i feel up to it iwill write an amazingly scientific blog about the process and the protocol and all that, bc if you look online the jury is out as to how effective this is. I just know my MD has a 100% success rate with this and so Damn Straight i am going to follow her orders. I would hate to be the outlier :) And she just did IMSG So she knows the timeline, she knows what i need to do to get ready for Madison, and she says i can do it.

Trust me. I spent some back and forth on this. I can run. I can run pretty fast, but i get some "discomfort" and no its not pain. One reason i decided to do this is that i am not totally a gimp yet. I am strong. I do not have symptoms doing anything but running, and even then i can run thru this. But there comes a point when i have to say "What would you tell your patient if they were trying to decide?" And I would tell me, as my patient, to get this done. I SO WANTED to go to Kansas. My MD said she saw no reason to not go to KS. Go, have fun. Do it when you get back. But to be honest I knew i would worry. 7 hour car drive alone, = too much me in my own head.

What really clarified this was not looking at the calender. I was doing that like a freak,  how many weeks do i have to train for Madison? That helped bc I realixe I can be up and going by July, hopefully, but it was that i thought about AFTER Madison. And about this winter and about NEXT YEAR! Lets not make this worse, bc when you let something get acute so that pain starts to inhibit muscle use, well then you get weak. We see it alot with older adults. "My knees hurt, so i dont walk as much." They dont walk as much and they get weak. In Athletes we see this more in a compensatory fashion. It hurts but your body is so smart that it just uses something else, usually in the wrong action, and you all the sudden are sore and creating new injures. The body is amazing, but sometimes we need to shut it down and shut our minds up.

When did this "happen?" Well i have had this before, about 10 years ago. I let it get to that point of total demise. No glutes, no strength. I was a tennis player, Rt dominant and guess which leg you lunge and slide with the most, when your FOREHAND rocks? Well that Left leg got alot of slide time, but my Rt leg is way stronger. So I am more apt to get this. Also tendonopathy or -osis does NOT happen over night. Likely its been stewing away since last fall. This winter i had some Lft glute issues, but usually just after racing. I could localize it and it got better with some massage, and of course PT, doing my strength work likely got me where i am and is allowing me to keep being active. But after St Croix and pushing speed a bit on longer runs leading up to it i would get SO TIGHT in my lateral hamstring at the insertion it felt like someone had a vice grip on it. IT was not in the belly of the hamstring. Running downhill was harder ( ie, not a good sign...eccentric lengthenig of the muscle) wheras uphill ( shortening the mm) I could feel it but i didnt get that TUGGING.

Fast forward to Gear West. The first time i felt it on the bike. Oh and i ran hard before hand. Ok, I was not sure sore after, running fast is more concentric ( ie shorten shorten shorten) wheras duration and longer work is more eccentric, those muscles are not firing as fast, you have more graded shorten and lengthen of the muscles, and add in some speed and you have a girl with a shortened stride looking like granny at the end of the race. Little steps are fine but....not bc you have to!

So here I sit, dropping out of KS and BSLT with the hopes of arriving at the start line of Wisconsin injury free. Maybe undertrained, but having a bit of muscle memory for the training and the distance and knowing how to fuel are going to be in my favor. I am nervous but i am also really excited to get this behind me. And after Wisconsin? Who knows. I would love to do IM Texas. See, Last i heard Triathlon isnt going anywhere!

So I have a few lemons right now but once i get that PRP I suspect that HS tendon is going to be fired up and heal and be ready to run even faster, and with less discomfort. I cant wait:)

Next time I will write about what the protocol is and how i diagnosed this. Since i have had it before I sorta knew but maybe i can help some of you avoid it or at least treat it. You dont have to get the shots, but the alternative isnt comfortable either.

Happy Weekend. I am traning Big this weekend, so i can earn that 2 weeks off:) I may be blogging more! And i may need to have a huge dose of patience.....remind me, ok?