Everyone into the Pool!

Or at least me!

Using the kickboard is certainly better than nothing and heaven knows I can use the kicking practice.

Approaching the end of the kicking lap.

I finished up tonight's swim with one more lap of "freestyle" with emphasis on the free.

Here's a video of my current swim stroke.

http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3033865730038836306ojeVMr

As you can see, the best I can get out of the left arm is about a half of a doggie paddle stroke. Occasionally, I forget my limits and ask more of the left arm than it can give at the moment. That prompts an involuntary yelp of pain underwater making the swim more interesting I suppose since it's hard to predict when that will happen. Tonight's swim "workout" was 1 easy breast stroke lap, 4 mostly one armed freestyle laps, 1 kicking lap and 1 last freestyle lap for a total of 7 laps. That's two laps more than last week.

Progress.

Starting Over Again Sucks

But it beats the alternative. I actually ran a bit last week but that was just a test. Today I did an hour on the trainer and then, a few hours later, I went out for a three mile trail run on the trails above my house. It was pretty hard work covering the three miles. My legs complained a lot towards the end but I ran the last mile over my favorite part of trail without stopping.

Here's a shot of the foothills where I have the privilege to run and crash my mountain bike.

As you can see from the heart rate and elevation trace above I walked the steeper uphills. I had a great time running the flats and downhills though. This was the first time I was able to get my heart rate much above 140 and it sure felt good.

There's even more good news. The trainer ride went so well that I decided to see if I could ride the bike outdoors. The answer was a resounding YES! I'm back, baby. The trick now will be to keep from doing too much too soon. Not that I've ever done that before, of course.

It'll be a while before I can do much more than flail about in the pool but for now at least I can ride the roads. I'm thinking I'll wait a bit before I get back on the trails with the bike.

The Terrible Triathlete

"The bone is healed."

It's hard to believe that underneath this angry looking (and feeling, I might add) thin red scar is a 4 inch long piece of titanium secured to my clavicle with 6 one-inch long screws.

I saw the doctor two days ago and he said, "The bone is healed." That's the good news. The bad news is that the muscles, ligaments and tendons surrounding the shoulder and upper chest are in terrible shape. That's where the pain and stiffness are coming from. That and the fact that the surgeon cut through my trapezius muscle making moving my left arm in almost any direction quite painful still.

The good news is that the pain gets *almost* imperceptibly better every day. I find myself doing some things pain-free or tolerably painful almost every day that I couldn't do a few days ago.

Today's 51 minute trainer ride will likely be my last one until the weather forces me inside on the occasionally inhospitable-for-riding this winter. The ride went very well. I even did some riding standing on the pedals that the shoulder tolerated reasonably well. I'm not ready to go flying down some mountain trail just yet, but I think some easy road riding is in order.

Tomorrow I plan to resume my triathlon training schedule, albeit at a reduced level both in terms of distance and intensity. This week's plan is :

Sunday - 2 miles trail running/walking
Monday - 1 mile easy track workout
Tuesday - Back in the pool. I'll try to do 400 yards of kickboard, one arm drills and just messing around in the water.
Wednesday - 3 miles easy running/walking
Thursday - Same as Tuesday in the pool as I try to get some range of motion back in my left shoulder.
Friday - One hour easy bike ride, OUTSIDE!
Saturday - 3 miles easy running/walking

We'll see how it goes. I don't have great expectations and if I need to cut any of the workouts short I will. Then, I'll just build from there the following week. I'm also going to start Physical Therapy next week or as soon as they can get me in.

The 2009 triathlon season continues tomorrow, sixty-six days post injury.

The Terrible Triathlete

Zone One

It's better than nothing. Yeah, it's heart rate zone one. If you click on the image above you can see the high resolution plot of my heart rate from tonight's ride on the trainer. There was a 24 second foray into the the lofty area of zone 2 when I decided to push the pace and shift into the big ring. But only briefly. My left knee started to complain a little so I dropped down to the middle ring.

I was shooting for a post-injury high of 50 minutes on the trainer. I only made 49 and change when I reasoned that this was probably not the best time to decide to gut out the increasingly uncomfortable pain in my left knee. Why start an injury while I'm trying to rehab another?

It was, nonetheless, a good workout. I had my left hand on the bars and I even let my left arm support a little weight. It was definitely less painful than the last ride but it hurt the whole time, just not as much.

Eight weeks post-injury today. Five weeks and two days post-surgery. I'm not sure I see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. But I'm starting to believe that I might catch an ever so faint glimmer around the next bend or two.

The Terrible Triathlete

Inching Around the Corner

Thirty days post-surgery and I FINALLY think I am making some progress. This may not seem like much but to me it was huge. I rode the trainer tonight for 45 minutes. I was hoping for an hour but my knees, no doubt feeling the relative dearth of riding over the last 7 weeks, decided that 45 minutes was enough.

Notice that I am using both arms on the handlebars. I can actually mount the bike almost normally and put a little weight on the left arm while it's on the bars. I'm pretty sure that riding outdoors is still off limits but this is progress.

I went without the sling all day today. I didn't do it on purpose. I forgot the sling at home and then didn't have time to go home to get it. There were a few rough patches but basically the day went OK.

This was a good day. I finally feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Clearly, I have a few pounds to shed. According to the bathroom scale I didn't gain that much weight but it sure shows around my middle.

Here's a picture of the incision after a month. It seems to be healing nicely but the area is still VERY tender. I was thinking this morning that if someone had told me how painful this was going to be I might have had second thoughts about having the surgery. I'll have to wait and see how complete the recovery is and then decide if it was worth it.


The Terrible Triathlete

23 Days Post-Surgery

There is some good news. No, it's not that my feet are doing well but since you mentioned it, yes, my feet are doing fine. They should be. I haven't run a step since September 4th.

The scale reads 186. That's only five pounds over my pre-injury weight of 181. Now, most people would say, "Great! You only put on 5 pounds in 6 weeks!". And for most people that would be fine. Me, I only feel sort of good about that. I say "sort of" because my stomach hasn't ballooned up to massive proportions but part of that is the loss of a bunch of muscle mass in my arm and shoulder. I'm atrophying away to nothing. I'm probably losing muscle mass all over the place since I went from 8-10 hours of training a week to less than 1 hour of training a week. And the training that I *can* do is all legs on the bike trainer. If this continues much longer I'll be the poster child for the 98 LB Weakling Society.

Tonight, I'm hoping to get an hour in on the trainer. We'll see what happens.

The Terrible (and steadily getting worse) Triathlete

Phone Books are Obsolete Anyway, Right?

Doesn't everyone use their phone books to level their

mountain bikes when riding their bike on the trainer?

I got in aboout 40 minutes on the trainer today. I was working pretty hard while watching a couple of episodes of Weeds on Netflix. Riding the bike on the trainer isn't too bad although I've discovered that it's a dismally poor substitute for an actual mountain bike ride.

First of all, you don't actually go anywhere while riding on the trainer. At first I was dismayed because I hadn't put my Garmin on before the "ride". Then I realized that the Garmin wouldn't actually record anything except my heart rate which would stay pretty steady once I got warmed up. Boring. Athough, it would have recorded the amount of time that I rode and I suppose that would have been useful. I'll use my Garmin next time and upload the plot to The Terrible Triathlete. I'm sure the 2 or 3 of you that actually read this can hardly wait.

Secondly, there's no real skill involved in a ride on the trainer. I can't work on my cornering skills or my braking skills, although I can do strength work I suppose by cranking up the shifter to high gear and trying to maintain cadence. I am trying to work on my pedaling technique a little bit to be more efficient and get the most power out of my stroke. I can't tell yet if it's doing any good really, but one of the benefits of the knobby tire against the resistance roller on the trainer is the noise it makes. If I'm spinning efficiently on the pedals the noise level should be fairly constant meaning that I'm applying constant power to the back wheel throughout my stroke. At least I think that's true. It gives me the illusion that I'm actually "training" while I'm on the trainer.

Here's a shot of the incision exactly three weeks post-surgery. It doesn't look too bad and seems to be healing nicely. It hurts like hell most of the time though. I wonder when the yellowish discoloraton of my chest will go away.

The skin area surrounding the incision from my neck to my shoulder and down into my chest is completely numb. I'm washing the sling right now and typing this on my laptop while lying on the couch. the pain is pretty strong, a five probably on a scale of one to ten but if I don't move too much it's tolerable.

I'm VERY slowly getting mobility back in my arm and shoulder. A week ago the pain from typing this would have been completely intolerable so I guess this is progress. And I guess I'm going to have to learn that this is the pace that the progress will take. It's terribly frustrating though. I'm going on six weeks without any real use of my left arm, although I have reached the point where I can put my pants on almost, but not quite, normally. I'll know I'm healed when I can pull a pair of socks on my feet with both hands.

I can sleep fairly well. I've discovered two positions that don't feel too bad. I can lay flat on my back with my left arm cradled across my stomach or I can lay on my right side with my left arm balanced on my left hip and the side of my left thigh. This works great as long as I don't move. Apparently I move quite a bit as I'm frequently awakened by pain and have to very carefully re-position myself and my left arm into another relatively pain-free position so I can go back to sleep.

And the adventure continues...

The Terrible Triathlete

No Ordinary Sling

After my shoulder surgery I didn't get just any sling. I got the ULTRA sling. Somewhere along the line, the people who dreamed up the ULTRA sling figured out that there was a way to improve the sling even though it was already an ULTRA sling. So I've got the ULTRASLING II which is in some way different (maybe even superior to) the plain old ordinary ULTRASLING.

Now I have to admit that this sling is much better than the ordinary sling they gave me when I first broke my collarbone. First of all it *fits*. My arm doesn't want to slide all the way into the sling, thereby changing the angle between my arm and my shoulder, painfully altering the level of support given by the sling. My arm can't slide back into the sling because my elbow is already all the way back in the sling. That doesn't seem to be enough to make it an ULTRA sling though. Maybe that's the feature that makes it the "II" although it seems unlikely since it's a pretty simple change that anybody could do.

Notice the little strap at the front of the sling? That baby can do at least two things. Yes, it's a multi-tasker. It can act as a thumb loop to keep your arm from sliding back in the sling, although that would be redundant if they gave you the right size sling in the first place. Or it can attach (it's got velcro, of course) right across the front like I've got it to seal the front of the sling and help prevent your arm from sliding back in the sling, which, as I pointed out earlier, is a painfully bad thing. That little strap may even be able to do more things that I haven't thought of yet, since I've tried my best to be in a beer induced alcoholic haze as much as possible throughout this nasty ordeal. Maybe that's the "II" feature?

Then there's the "shoulder strap" pad that fits adjustably (it slides back and forth and is held in place by, you guessed it, velcro) on your opposite shoulder and supports the weight of your useless arm as you try desperately to get your arm in a position that doesn't make your shoulder feel like someone is twisting a meat cleaver around in it. Could that be the "II" feature? It sure does make the sling more comfortable in a masochistic sort of way. I guess if you have to wear a sling you'd want an adjustable shoulder pad.

The last really cool feature of the ULTRASLING II is the padding on the inside of the sling. My "regular" sling (you know you're in trouble if you have a "regular" sling for everyday use and a "good" sling for those more formal occassions where comfort is of great importance) doesn't have any padding. It's just plain cloth held up by a simple ring that a strap with a velcro end on it goes through. The padding makes the sling comfy for those long days with your arm hanging uselessly in front of you. It must be the padding that makes the ULTRASLING II "ULTRA". Or it could be what makes it a "II". Just something to think about as you're laying around because you can't do anything with just one good arm.

So, I hope you never need a sling for any great length of time. But if you do, now you know to be sure you get at least an ULTRASLING and if you're really lucky, maybe even an ULTRASLING II. Who knows. They may even come out with an ULTRASLING III!

The Terrible Triathlete

XTERRA NATIONALS ARE TODAY!

Here's my invitation to the Xterra Nationals being held right now at Lake Tahoe Nevada. If I hadn't landed *hard* on my left shoulder after falling off my mountain bike (remember it's the "landing" that hurts, not the fall) and broken my collarbone at almost exactly the same time this email was landing in my inbox I 'd be in Nevada right now riding the bike course.

The weather at Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe right now is 47 degrees. It's probably a bit cooler than that on the mountain where the bike course runs, I'd guess about 40.

Other than being a little cool, conditions are probably perfect for the race. The lake temperature is 58 degrees with a 5 mph wind. I'll bet the lake is very smooth. The swim would've gone well.

I was REALLY looking forward to doing the bike course again and riding over the bridge where I crashed last year during Xterra Nevada, the all comers race held the day before the National Championship.

The run would have been a bit of a challenge at 6.2 hilly miles but I would've been ready for the distance.

I also missed a great party the night before the race.

This is a shot of the lake on the day before last year's National Championship race.

This is day 12 of season two. I've got an hour on the mountain bike trainer on the schedule for today.

There's always next year...

The Terrible Triathlete

Back in the Saddle Again

Check out my new trainer.

With this baby I can ride my mountain bike while I’m still in the sling. What a concept! I can maintain bike fitness while I rehab the broken collarbone.

Here I am with my headphones, bike shorts and bike shoes on. I’ve got a video queued up from Netflix on my laptop and I’m ready to go.

OK. It’s not quite the same as riding outside. I need to make some adjustments to the trainer setup and I need to wear my biking gloves to be comfortable on the bike. I also need to set up a fan for some airflow. It got really hot while I was riding. It’s a little uncomfortable because I can’t put my left arm on the handlebar so all my upper body weight is supported by my right hand but I think I’ll get used to that. It’ll be easier when I get my biking gloves on.

Brigitte wanted me to ride in the hallway so if I tipped over I’d have something to stop me from falling. The trainer is really stable so falling isn’t going to be a problem but it doesn’t hurt to err on the side of caution.

I got in a solid 20 minutes on the bike. I’m starting out easy since I haven’t worked out for almost exactly a month but I should be able to build on this. Hopefully that pudgy belly won’t get any bigger before I can run again.

The Terrible Triathlete

Titanium Man

This is what it looks like from the outside. This is essentially the same view as the x-rays below. I didn't expect the incision to be that long although if you click on the image and look at it full size you can see that the incision is very narrow and (hopefully) the scar will be very thin. Although, let's face it, I'm no spring chicken and clear unbroken skin is not exactly a hallmark of the average 56 year old man.

This is a picture of two views of the post-operative x-ray. Yikes, I had no idea there'd be so much metal. When the Dr. said he'd put a plate over the fractured bone I pictured something a lot more svelte, perhaps more along the lines of electroplating as opposed to boilerplate.

I wonder what the thing weighs? Supposedly it's titanium and, so far all the anecdotal information I have says that, no, I won't set off the metal detector at the airport. I meant to ask the Dr. about that but it'll have to wait until my next follow-up appt. in a month.

I got my first post injury workout in tonight. I did three miles on my ancient exercise bike. Tomorrow I'm buying a trainer for my mountain bike so I can do some "real" riding. Then the training for next year's Xterra season starts in earnest.

Stay tuned.

The Terrible Triathlete

Day 5

This is day 5 after the surgery. You'll notice that I'm not as chipper as I was on Day 0.


I had a great day on Saturday going to the Albuquerque Fit meeting and hanging out as the members did their final long runs. Came home and took a nap. Woke up with THROBBING pain in my left bicep that just wouldn't quit. Took some Tylenol and iced it for a while until the worst of the pain subsided.

Had a rough night. Couldn't sleep very well because I just couldn't seem to get comfortable.

This is getting really old. Maybe I'm just being impatient but I thought that once I got the bones put back together I'd recover from the surgery in a couple of days and start feeling better quickly. Not so far.

Looking forward to training again. It was rough watching everyone take off on their runs on Saturday. Sitting on the sidelines is definitely not my forte.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Beer is not Enough!

OK, I can have beer now, one a day. I have to be careful with the Percoset and beer at the same time. The drug packaging says, "avoid alcohol". So I'm avoiding the alcohol. Just not 100% of the time. I figure one won't hurt me.

I am starting to wean myself off the painkillers anyway. I skipped a dose of Percoset this afternoon and I'm going to try to go all night without another dose. I'm not really in a lot of pain. At least I don't think so. I may find out tonight

I'm planning to go into the office tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. I'm getting really frustrated. I thought the aftermath of the surgery would be easier, but it's been one exercise in annoyance after another. I'm tired of not training, I'm tired of not working, I'm tired of not being able to do things for myself. In short, I'm tired of having a broken collarbone. Being able to drink a beer is not enough. I'm ready to get my life back anytime now.

For a person who isn't a great typist to begin with, perhaps starting a blog when one only has the use of one arm wasn't the best of ideas...

I see the doctor in 6 days.

Day Zero

Today is day zero of The Terrible Triathlete's second season. After the ignominious end to season number one when I broke my collarbone on the same day I got my official invitation to Xterra Nationals I'm launching season number two with surgery to repair my shattered left clavicle. Above is a picture of my left shoulder just before the surgery.

Xterra Nationals are 12 days away. After qualifying for Nationals in my first season, albeit through a bit of a fluke, I'm sitting up on the couch typing with one hand while still a bit groggy from the anesthesia they gave me this morning before they put the three pieces of my left clavicle back together and secured everything with a plate. Not a great start to my triathlon career.

Here's a picture of my left shoulder after surgery:

I have to stay sitting up or standing for 48 hours. Pain killers must be taken every 4 hours so I don't get behind the pain curve. I have to keep the sling on for a week. That'll be fun! No showers. Worst of all, no beer for 24 hours! There will be beer tonight though.