Trainer Rides, Winter Arrives Full Force, and My Injured "Man-Boobs"

It has been about two weeks since my last post. I wanted to update you on how the training is going so far. A few things have happened since my last post. Northwoods Endurance got their first bike trainer (no more blaming the long winter for poor bike training!). Winter, after teasing us for practically all of November, decided that she would dump a few feet on us in a week (most of that in one or two separate days), and I injured my pectoral muscle (aka: man-boob) while strength training.

I will have to write a whole separate blog about my first experience with bike trainers. So, briefly, Coach Rick and I decided that Northwoods Endurance needed a bike trainer. It not only comes in handy for our training, but we will be able to fit our clients on their bikes and offer trainer rides to clients without trainers. It is already getting much use as Winter decided to show herself finally. Good thing too, I've been looking forward to cross country skiing since the end of last winter. AND, the pool will be closed for most of December and the beginning of January, so I will need to cover my twice a week swim workouts.

Anyway...winter is here. We had the "storm of the century" yesterday, along with the rest of the country. The disappointing thing, though not surprising, was Michigan Tech was not canceled yesterday...go figure. I was looking forward to waking up to a blizzard, spending much of the day at home and working on the Northwoods Endurance website (Check it out!). Nope, I went in to the office like normal, spent much of the day in anxiety over grad school stuff (to be continued in a future post), and was able to not venture outside till later in the evening, after training of course.

Yesterday we had our weekly group run on Wednesdays. I've been focusing on having fun while running. This is not an ultra serious period of training for me so I am trying to build some confidence and have fun for the upcoming season. Luckily, I have a great group to train with that really make every training day enjoyable. After the Fun Run, I had a strength training session. This week has been a pretty easy strength training week for me. This is mostly due to an injury I sustained while in a strength training session of last week. Last Wednesday I started off my session with Body Dips. In my last set I felt a sharp pain on the right side of the sternum. It was just a sharp pain, and that was all. I tried a couple more dips, but knew that things weren't 100% alright. I finished my session with no problems. Later that evening I did start to feel some soreness, and by the morning my chest was definitely sore. I decided to go see my chiropractor (who also specializes in sports medicine) to make sure that I hadn't suffered a small fracture or something. To my relief, it wasn't anything very serious. It turned out to be a strained pectoral muscle (man-boob), and I most likely strained the cartilage that connects the muscle to the sternum as well. Though this was not a serious injury, injuries period are not fun to deal with. I tried swimming later that day, and just couldn't do it without some pain, so I was forced to forgo my swim workout. I was still able to bike (on our new trainer!). Currently, I am still recovering. There is only residual soreness now, and I've been trying to not do anything that will aggravate the injury. I feel like I'll be 100% sometime next week. Injuries are going to happen during training (its just a fact). Luckily I have a great coach and program that does everything they can to minimize injury and still provide the tools for success.

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