I woke up pretty weary today, really fairly deep in a fatigue hole. Some people might say I rode too far and too fast yesterday. Some of those people might be my coach. Some of those people may well be correct.
Anyway, tired or not I got myself out the door for a run this morning, a bit of an interval session, similar to what I have been doing during the week. However, about 1km into the run I had a bit of a muscle spasm in my thoracic spine. Hard to explain, just a bit of really tight muscle. I have had it a few times in the past and I think itself is a sign that I have been pushing my body's ability to adapt to exercise. Usually the pain goes away in a day or so leaving just a it of residual soreness and in a couple of days it will be gone altogether. The first time I had it, it freaked me out and I went straight to the physio because it hurts quite a bit. However, he gave me a massage and it went right away, since it is just tight muscle. Nothing that a massage won't fix. Something that I might look into this week.
Anyway, when it happened during the run today it stopped me for a minute. I tried to get going again, but the pain in the middle of the back makes it quite hard to breathe and the more I tried to run the more it hurt. In the end I gave up and walked home to start doing some stretching and massage. I knew there was nothing to do about it until the pain reduced.
By the end of today the pain has reduced quite a bit and by tomorrow I will be fine. Also by tomorrow my legs will be a bit fresher, which will help a lot. With that in mind I will be doing a bit of a run in the morning instead. In this way this morning's session was a case of my body protecting from myself.
Not that today had no training at all. Around mid morning I had a lovely swim in the Swan River with a mate from the Swim Smooth squad. I was a bit unsure how the back would cope after the aborted run, but it was actually fine. Surprisingly I don't think I use the muscles right in the middle of my upper back much when I swim, I would have thought I would, but oh well. Being the Swan River in Autumn it was of course a wetsuit swim, that is unless you are my son who is swimming mostly naked behind me in the photo below.
This week has had a lot of open water swimming, but I don't think it has been a bad thing. You don't tend to think of open water skills as getting rusty, but I was finding today that perhaps mine have a bit. Certainly my sighting has been a bigger movement that it needs to be, something that I worked on today.
Swimming with Chris from the squad was good too. He is more that a little quicker than me at the moment, so doing a few kms with him was a good way to keep me honest. It can be easy to let the effort drop away when swimming solo in open water. Swimming with somebody a little quicker forced me to keep the effort on. Time spent is the new Mako wetsuit is always good too. The more time in a new wetsuit the better is my view.
Still really enjoying the new wetsuit. I have said a few times that I think the highest praise you can give a wetsuit is that you don't really notice it. Sounds a bit strange that the best benefit of a bit of gear is nothing, but I think it is true. If you don't have to modify how you swim for a wetsuit it means that it fits you well and it well designed and made. That is how I find the Mako B-First. Sure the additional buoyancy is noticeable, you are never going to avoid that, plus you sort of want it since that is where some of the additional speed comes from. But it terms of comfort and movement, I feel nothing. The only thing that really tells me I am wearing a suit is that I am a lot quicker and I am warm. Just what you want.
More swimming tomorrow, but this time in pool. And this time no wetsuit. Awwwww.
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