Well, despite all of the hype I put into competing at the Eagleman half-Ironman, I didn’t compete.\u00a0 Eight days earlier, on June 5th, I had a sports injury that caused some rather severe muscular trauma to my right mid-back section.\u00a0 I went to the ER to ensure that there were no broken bones or organ damage, to which an xray and cat scan were performed.\u00a0 Neither revealed any damage, so I was left to simply heal while taking motrin.\u00a0 Fortunately, I had leftover Vicodin from my knee surgery back in November 2009, so I took them instead which helped a lot.\u00a0 I was in serious pain and could barely move.\u00a0 Also fortunate for me was Roya’s co-habitation thanks to some homeless friends who are using her apartment until they find another flat.\u00a0 “Homeless” sounds harsh:\u00a0 they are between apartments and aren’t bums.\u00a0 Well, that’s not exactly true either; the guy is a Brit and though he helped me put together my World Cup predictions, he’s still a bloody wanker.<\/p>\n
Simply rising off the couch was initially torture.\u00a0 Getting in and out of bed was a near-death experience.\u00a0 Credit to Nurse Roya for all the incredible compassion and TLC she provided, but even her super-human strength couldn’t help alleviate use of my core muscles which are at the root of my discomfort.\u00a0 Now, on day twelve following the injury, I can move fairly cleanly and without significant pain.\u00a0 I had to work from home however last week as there was no chance I’d be able to handle a subway ride, let alone the walk to the subway station.\u00a0 Naturally, I couldn’t compete at Eagleman.<\/p>\n
I heard that race day featured terribly hot and humid conditions.\u00a0 As anyone who knows me can attest, I fail big time in such weather.\u00a0 It’s my kryptonite.\u00a0 My buddy Fernando managed to complete the event, his first at that distance, in a VERY respectable time despite the terrible weather, and while I hated having to miss the race, I didn’t miss the suffering that he and so many others faced.\u00a0 Pics on Facebook depict some pretty worn-out individual.<\/p>\n
I managed to get onto a bike Monday evening for a little while to help out a triathlon\/biathlon clinic.\u00a0 It was painful to get out of the saddle, but riding in aero position was manageable.\u00a0 I felt pretty strong surprisingly.\u00a0 I tried swimming last night but managed only nine minutes in the water before bailing.\u00a0 I probably could have continued on and grit my teeth through the pain, but it became increasingly worse and my form suffered.\u00a0 Making the call to quit was a good one.<\/p>\n
I did manage to get back on the bike this morning as part of my triathlon team’s Thursday early morning brick workout and while the first loop of Central Park felt pretty good, I realized that I couldn’t get out of the saddle to attack Harlem Hill, and that my endurance while training a high intensity wasn’t good anymore.\u00a0 By the time I finished the biking session, I was a humbled man by how hard it was to ride hard.\u00a0 I tried in vain to run for the 20 minutes or so that was allotted for it, but it hurt too much.\u00a0\u00a0 I instead walked for 1.5 miles at as brisk a pace I could manage without causing too much pain.\u00a0 It was very discouraging to say the least, but I’m trying to keep a good attitude about it.<\/p>\n
My next race is in 10 days:\u00a0 The Philly Olympic Triathlon.\u00a0 It’ll be my fifth time competing at this venue and I do like it quite a bit.\u00a0 I had hopes of getting a P.R. thanks to an improved run this season, but at this point, I’m just hoping to compete.\u00a0 It’s entirely possible and likely that I’ll be able to swim and run by this time next week, and with a fair amount of base fitness under me (a good early-season training regimen, and 10 years of multisport training under me), I’m sure I’ll do okay.\u00a0 The “A” race continues to be the NYC Triathlon.\u00a0 That’s three weeks after Philly.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to say how well the body is going to respond to the intensity workouts that are in my future, but I’m committed to working hard and that’s really the most important part.\u00a0 For now, I can only cycle without pain, so I intend to ride A LOT in the next week.\u00a0 I never thought I’d say that I miss running but dammit, I do.\u00a0 I loved the feeling of being in the water yesterday to swim, and although I was in pain, I knew that once it subsides, I’m really going to enjoy this new phase of training.\u00a0 I’m super motivated.<\/p>\n
That’s it for now.\u00a0 I’ll update this weekend with how things went training-wise.\u00a0 I’m going to give it a try at swimming and running on Sunday\/Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, despite all of the hype I put into competing at the Eagleman half-Ironman, I didn’t compete.\u00a0 Eight days earlier, on June 5th, I had a sports injury that caused some rather severe muscular trauma to my right mid-back section.\u00a0 I went to the ER to ensure that there were no broken bones or organ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregghgordon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}