Hi There!
Yep, still alive…..just in a bit of pain.
I guess on the bright side…… I do not lack motivation to workout.
However….. I may try to do a bit too much too soon.
So when I last blogged, I had swam & biked on Tuesday. (oopsie has been a little while) All went well though despite the hubby getting a flat.
Wednesday I hit up Kettlebell, nothing out of the ordinary.
Thursday was beautiful out! I swam 1600m in the morning, ran 6 miles at lunch time and then headed out for a 17 mile ride with the hubby after work.
Friday morning I woke up IN PAIN. I could not turn my head to the right….. and now 4 DAYS LATER….. I still cannot turn my head to the right.
Back to Friday, I got up at 5:30 and started getting ready to go to Kettlebell. But my neck just hurt too much, so I went back to bed. I figured I must have just slept funny and that was why my neck was hurting. I popped a couple Advil and moved on with my day. Problem is the pain never went away. After work we worked on our Adopt-A-Spot, even weeding caused some pain….. NOT GOOD.
I figured things would improve in the morning…… nope, still in need of Advil. I managed to do some cleaning around the house, but decided I would take another rest day as I was racing Sunday.
Sunday arrived…. STILL a sore neck. But I had a group mud/obstacle run to do, so I went. More Advil and I was off.
Some of my Reach the Beach team, plus a couple others, decided to do a new mud/obstacle run near us.
The team pre-race, all nice and clean.

None of us quite knew what to expect. The race could be completed solo or you could run it as a team. The teams just had to finish together. We obviously ran as a team which was fun as we were able to experience the craziness together. Fortunately we were in the 1st wave, so the course wasn’t too crowded.
The race started off with about 2.5 miles of paved course, then we ventured off into fields where we encountered our first obstacles, the tires and then a small stream crossing. From there we tackled a steep hill climb & decent, hurdles, a 5ft wall, and then crossed over into another field area with more obstacles that involved jumping, crawling under things, etc. The course covered a 10K distance with the various obstacles thrown in along the way. The last mile or so involved more steep hill climbs and then a decent back onto paved road, a final 5ft wall and then the grand finale……. the MUD PIT.
This is actually my team going through…. I’m at the pack of the pack in the mud. Everyone just dove in and I kinda had to get my courage up to go I guess. LOL The muddy dude at the end turned around was on my team.

As you can see they had wire across the mud so that you had to crawl through it. Certain areas weren’t too wet and soupy, but I did hit a couple of suck areas…… super soupy and they just kind of sucked you in. Ugh. I got worried about my wedding rings getting sucked off….. stupid me, I should have taken them off. So attempting to hold them in place slowed me down a bit.
But I made it through…. me and the guys running towards the finish.

And a final muddy group shot.

Another fortunate thing about wave 1, we were able to hit up a pump truck with water to clean off. They had to call in backup as the pump truck quickly ran out of water! So most folks that finished after us had to stay muddy for quite awhile. After seeing how banged up my legs got from the mud I was very happy not to have to wait.
I have fairly sensitive skin and the small rocks & other stuff in the mud scratched up my legs big time. They were all red and puffy for awhile. They are not going to look pretty for awhile……
How they look today.

Back to the race…… After we finished, we cleaned up a bit, grabbed some food & beer and watched the rest of the crazies.


It was definitely different than your average race! We weren’t really concerned with our time (10K in 1 hour and 16 seconds), one of the girls on the team was a bit slower so we actually waited for her and one of the guys just before the mud pit. It was rather amusing to watch folks hop in the mud before us…. it kind of helped me building my courage…. maybe.
Oh and of course we are already talking about next year!
So I was hoping that maybe running might loosen my neck up a bit…… NOPE.
This morning I woke up with not only a sore neck, but my peroneal tendons are really sore too again! I think the trail running and uneven surfaces killed my ankle. So now I have a sore neck and a sore ankle. Did that stop me from kettlebell this morning? No. Cause I’m crazy like that.
Abs- hanging knees to elbows, max reps x 4 (mine was more like knees to waist, 12 reps x 4)
Workout- 8 thrusters & 8 snatches per side then a 400m run. Every 4 minutes for 20 minutes (so 5 times). It usually took me just about 3 minutes so I got close to a minute to rest.
I did try to take it easy this morning though, I figured the running might help loosen my ankle up some. It actually felt ok while I was running. But once I got to work and sat for awhile, it did NOT feel good when I stood up.
So here I am… sore ankle and neck. To be honest the hardest part about the neck thing is driving, it really hurts to look right for traffic or to see behind me when I’m backing out of a parking spot. I have to turn my whole upper body to do anything.
I did call PT today, but the earliest they can get me in is next Monday. In the meantime I’ll try to lay off the workouts a bit….although I may try swimming tomorrow, I think I can turn my head & body enough to breathe. Ugh, am I pathetic or what?! I’m also tempted to try getting a massage too, maybe there is a major knot somewhere?
I think my neck issue might be due to biking though. I should probably bring my bike in to double check the fit. I know my bike is a bit small for me, so we modified the neck a couple years ago based on a fitting….. but I’m wondering if I really just need to get a new one. I have biked some decent mileage on it in the past…. like 30-40 mile rides. I do get tight in my shoulders but NOTHING like this. So frustrating but I guess it is best to deal with this now, rather than near the middle or end of my half iron training….. right?
So riders/triathletes thoughts? Do you deal with any shoulder/neck issues from riding? Its not like I have even done any real long rides yet…. mainly just an hour or so.
Hope your week is off to a good start and that you are a little less sore than me!
Oh and a HUGE CONGRATS to Lindsey who BQ’d over the weekend at the Pocono Marathon!!!! Woo hoo!!
Britt