My injury plagued 2012 season

Well I am injured yet again in this 2012 season, this time a stress fracture in my lower right leg., in the spring it was my left hip with a muscle imbalance.  Here is how I think all this happened, kind of like the leg bone is connected to the hip bone type of thing.

            So in the spring I took my youngest daughter skiing one last time at Keystone, she was 5 at the time.  She skied I snowboarded, she headed into the trees on a trail and so did I.  I was getting going a little too fast right behind her and needed to slow, but the trail was too narrow, so what do I do reach my arm out and grab a tree.  This was not the best idea and I pulled my right shoulder back real hard.  This was the initial injury that little did I know at the time was going to plague my entire season.  So my shoulder did not really hurt on a daily basis, but after a long swim it was a little sore for months.

            The shoulder injury I believe led to my running all early season a little differently.  This led to my hip muscle imbalance after running with a sore shoulder, but nothing felt incorrect at all.  Then right before Oceanside after a long run I could barley walk with my left hip hurting so badly.  I was sure something was broken, after X-rays and MRIs confirmed nothing was I started resting again.  I raced Oceanside limping through the run and then took a few weeks off from running to recover.  I have been doing hip strengthening, lower leg strengthening, and weights, all this for injury prevention and healing. 

            This hip muscle imbalance eventually subsided and I was running again.  I raced Kansas and Lubbock 70.3 without issue.  Then last week the came the stress fracture in my lower right leg after a track session Sunday and a long run Wednesday which ended with a long walk back to the car.  I have not run since and now need yet more time to heal this injury.

            So my sore shoulder led to running crooked, which led to the left hip imbalance issue, which put more stress on my right leg which finally gave in with a stress fracture.  For now I will continue to bike and swim as those don’t cause all that much pain, running is out of the question for now.  I hope I can at least race the Boulder 70.3 in a few weeks, but it may be bike racing for now.  The late season races Austin 70.3 and Branson 70.3 I still hope to be able to recover from this season.

Moral of the story here don't follow a 5 year old into the woods skiing....but I think next season I will take what I learned here and take my rest time in the fall, then build slowly in the spring even if that means not racing at full fitness come the first spring race.

Lucky Pie Crit – 7/7

My bike racing team puts on a critium race each year right here in Louisville, the entire team volunteers to run the race.  I started at 7:30am and was a race marshal until 1:30PM.  It was not hard and it was nice to see all the juniors and women racing hard all morning.  We hosted the kids ride at 12 or so and both Corrie and Riley did their age group races, they loved it.  Being able to ride the race course that we were all riding all day was super fun for them.  My race started at 3:25 with a field of about 50 or 60 guys in CAT 3.  I started in the middle of the field.  The course was very nice less than a 1k lap with a uphill and a fast downhill.  Most of the turns you could take without hitting the brakes except for the last one before the finish.  I rode hard but could tell that I was a little out of shape after spending the week in Crested Butte with the kids for the 4^th.  I stayed near the rear of the bunch until the last 3 laps and I knew I had to do something.  I made a hard pull up the hill and passed a few more on the down hill, this put me in top 10 or so on 2 to go.  But as 1 to go came around I was getting tired again and guys passed me again.  I rode hard through the finish and ended up 20^th place in the CAT 3 field.  The good thing is even though I placed back a few in the field, and did not feel that great I still managed to hold 340 average for 55 the 55 minute race.  Granted this is a ctit so the power is up and down, but a good average for sure.

Lubbock 70.3 – 6/24

In 2011 I told myself that I was not going back to race Buffalo Springs seeing as the high for the day in 2011 was 118 degrees.  We got lucky this year the temp was only going to be just over 100 degrees.  Christine, Jason, and I set off from Colorado to Lubbock with all the gear on Friday afternoon.  The journey was uneventful but nice to be able to drive to a race.  We had a nice dinner with all the Timex crew and rested up for the race on Sunday.   I was surprised at the number of male pros at this race, about 20 which seems high to me for a $15k race.  But no excuses here just race my own race and see how it goes.

            Race day water temp was 75.9 degrees of course so it was wet suit legal, in hindsight I am going to be racing any warm water race in my speedsuit from now on.  The swim start was normal and I found myself up front in the first few positions, before the first turn buoy I had already taken my swim cap off  due to the heat of the water.  I swam a little slower than I usually do but that was simply due to the fact that I did not want to overheat in the water.  I came out of the water 3^rd or 4^th I think  and headed up the hill on the bike out of T1.  The bike I feel much stronger this season than last, but this race I did not get warmed up until the 2^nd half of the bike leg.  Good thing was I did not crash on one of the technical downhill turns as I did last year.  The wind was against us at the end of the bike coming back which I felt good on.  A little wrong turn at the end of the bike was my mistake, but I still came in to T2 in the top 7 or 8.  The run was going to be hot so I started a little too easy I think, Michael passed me at about mile 2, and went on to pass every other male pro for the win.  I was not quite as fast as him that day, I was hot and just trudged through the entire run.  At the finish in 9^th place I was happy with the day seeing as the pro field was pretty strong, but did not feel all that fatigued so I and think I did not leave it all on the race course.

Swim – 22:28

T1 – 1:15

Bike – 2:19.25

T2 – 0.57

Run – 1:29.30

Total – 4:13.35

9^th Place Pro divisions