Day 3

Happy times!

If my selective memory serves me right day 3 was a pivotal day when we were here in October.

Rich always tells me that 72 hours is when inflammation peaks, and his body is proving to be a good case study. I am going to keep it short ( since I didnt last post!) and say we are hanging out at Mayo, the surgery was succesful in that they were able to do the procedure they had hoped, and now we wait until his GI tract calms down and he can take in nutrition and have normal body functions. ( I wont be more detailed than that!)

It sucks to see my honey in such agony, and when they put the NG tube back in we both groaned. And then he started throwing up ( double groan, bc you arent supposed to throw up with an NG tube, that is the point) and triple groan bc they have to reposition it and that hurts. Imagine a giant straw in your nose and down your throat. Ouch.

We got part way thru The Big Lebowski and he couldnt finish it. That tell's ya something bc the DUDE is Rich's favorite. Oh well, there is always tommorrow.

On my front ( yes I know i said this would be short..but..) Post Tucson I feel the effects of a less than comfortable couch here at Mayo, some fatigue still from the 10 days of training ( that i would not change in a second), I had an MRI of my left GH joint ( shoulder) and I am stressed out about Rich. Oh and I am leaving for Texas in how many days? To be honest I will be so happy to race Texas 70.3 or Lonestar or whatever it is called bc Greta hasnt even been outside yet. As for the MRI my Orthopod was not impressed and that is good. I know i still have something going on in there but thankfully nothing APPARENT that a surgeon wants to play around with. This is good news for swimming and means i just need to lay off the Atomic Pushups for a bit. OR forever. TRX is one strength wko i kinda liked so i hope i dont have to return to my stabilization and cuff exercises for good, but for now to get me to the start line of some races I would rather swim than do pushups!

Hope you are having good spring weather. We had 30 this AM and high of 53 so not really getting the 80's some of you are. Enjoy it!

Doubts

First of all thank to all of you, those i know, and those i dont, and those i hope to meet sometime soon...for all your nice comments on Uncle Angus. I did a race report but didnt do a family weekend funeral report:) It's always heartbreaking to gather as a family when it is sorrounding a death. Our wedding was the last family gathering and since i was kinda "out of it" in a good way! It was fun to see cousins and aunts and uncles back in the twin cities. As usual we laughed and cried and then did it all over again. I know Angus would have enjoyed the party and I know he was looking down on us happy to see us all together.

So onward and upward, right? Sorta.

The last few weeks have been rough. I dont usually get doubtful but other than fearing falling on ice, which is thankfully gone, it just seems that training has been kinda BLAH. I know its March. I baited Jen for a pep talk, and I needed it, to remind me I am human. I can take days off that are unscheduled, and as Angela said someplace sometime in blogville " I have Jen to save me from myself."

When i played tennis all the time alot of it was teaching and I could do that everyday all day. I am finding that now at the age of almost 44 I take more time to recover. In my head I dont, but the open road races that are longer than 10k just kill me. My quads have been tight since last weekend's run and ride bonanza, so tight that my massage therapist even was doing what i call the ART-DEEP TISSUE combo deal. On top of that my shoulder has been sore. I will save you the PT jargon, but after swimming wed i had a tweak in the front of my shoulder. No doubt due to my new love, the ATOMIC push up. I have some instability in my left shoulder and a partially torn labrum so i am always treating it with kid gloves while at the same time trying to strengthen it to avoid going under the knife.

So to top it off when i asked her about my sore shoulder, she said : "you have the Full Meal Deal..you've got your fries ( points to my upper trap), your shake ( points to my pecs/bicep tendon), and your burger ( and points to my general rotator cuff area)"

Lovely.

I did laugh tho, bc it was super funny, and of course i love to diagnose myself, even tho that is a dangerous thing to do and leads to mental trauma or the thought that i need to amputate or have surgery. Not really.

So going into Tucson camp I have a few goals:

Laugh

Be outside in temps above 40

Meet some neat people and laugh some more

See Jen and Jerome again, and try not to insert foot in mouth like last year where i said to her..."You are prettier in person." Ok that's not so bad but it sounded kinda funny to me:) and to her i think.

Work hard but respect my aches and pains

Ok my bike is clean, I have grease under my fingernails, and I just put my positive cap on again.

Rich is sick so playing nurse Nancy is no good either. Gotta add my immune cap to that positive cap I guess:)