If one more person pokes and prods me this week, I swear I’m going to haul off and start slapping the happy crap out of people.
The past seven days have all been about my health - I went to see my GP and got the news that, while my D levels are almost three times what they were a few short months ago, I still have a long way to go. My last count was 69 and Dr. MacDonald wants to see blood levels of about 150 before he’ll consider it a decent level for me. At the same time, all of this supplementation has not reduced my blood pressure significantly - hence, I am now on hydrochlorothiazide. Hopefully this will get my BP down to below 130/85; right now my average is around 145/95. Granted, it’s better than it was back in May, but by this time it should’ve dropped dramatically what with my change in diet, the massive nutrient supplementation I’ve been on, and my training. Genetics, however, have decided otherwise. So now I have the lovely side effect of having to almost sprint to the bathroom every hour or so, at least until my system acclimatizes to this new little warrior coursing through my bloodstream.
Then I promptly followed this up by heading over to see Dr. Aaron Case at the Body and Soul Health Clinic in Kits. By this point my elbow issue had become enough of a problem that it was starting to affect my ability to do my job properly; people were noticing my almost-constant level of pain and discomfort. Aaron, in the space of about five minutes, figured out exactly where this pain was coming from, and began treating it at a deep muscle level. It was, quite simply, agony. Agony that I could tolerate for the sake of getting my mobility back, but agony regardless. After running me through a series of stretches, manipulations, edging work, and deep muscle manipulation, I could actually grasp items and rotate my wrist and arm without wanting to scream. I almost hugged the man, I was so happy. Apparently over the past few years, I’ve been creating microtears in my muscles. Due to the bursitis in my elbow from a hockey injury several years ago, I was inflaming my elbow whenever I lifted, so I was constantly favouring my right arm and training my body unequally. The weakness in my left elbow was compounding and when I suddenly started training seriously, the muscles couldn’t handle it, the microtears happened rapidly and in greater frequency and a large buildup of scar tissue took place deep in the muscles and structure of my elbow. Hence, over the next couple of weeks, Aaron’s going to torture work on breaking down this scar tissue to a normal level and I’ll proceed to build that area up slowly and evenly over the next few months. Luckily, I’ve been given the okay to weight train and swim once I’ve iced it for a couple of days after each session. I’m also still able to bike - I’ve been soaking my feet every single day for the better part of a couple of weeks now, and it seems like it’s helping to reduce the infection and swelling in my toe. The acid test will be this Sunday’s 5K, but for the first time in almost a month, I feel like I can actually see light at the end of the tunnel.
Oh, and I managed to get a decent workout in on the bike on Monday - 7.5 miles in 30 minutes, 14.1 average speed, average heart rate of 132, max of 146, 465 calories burned - 65% from fat. That bike is the one thing that has kept me sane over the last little while. I can’t articulate how much I’m looking forward to Sunday’s run…
Filed under: Cycling, Success Journal, Triathlon training, health issues, overcoming adversity, weight training
