Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links…

 

It’s Only a Tendon

I haven’t mentioned it on my blog… mainly because I was in denial and didn’t want to talk about another injury, but sometime in late May I hurt my left wrist (I’m left handed). Initially, when my wrist started hurting the next day after I brought pushups back into my routine after having not done them for several months due to my injury, I assumed I’d hyperextended it while doing the pushups.

About a week or two later I started riding my gravel bike, a lot. My gravel bike doesn’t have electronic shifters and changing the front gear requires quite a bit of force from my left thumb. Add to the mix failing to unclip on my bike when I came to a stop and landing on that hand and I had the perfect storm of incidents that could have lead to the worsening pain in my wrist.

To keep a long story short, I’ve had two x-rays and an MRI and finally on Thursday I got a diagnosis that my tendon is so inflamed it’s close to rupturing. I wasn’t surprised because even the slightest extension backward of my hand had become extremely painful. My hand specialist gave me a steroid shot in the tendon and recommended yet a different brace which keeps me from moving my wrist and that’s helped tremendously with the pain (I have none when wearing it). He said I could keep doing any activities I want as long as it doesn’t hurt.

Interestingly, my doctor said that if the tendon ruptures, the pain will go away and it’s a tendon they reroute or remove to use in surgeries for other types of hand injuries so it’s not that critical anyway. Go figure! I’m hopeful that the immobilization with my current brace and the steroid shot will do the trick and I can finally move past this annoyance.

 

Overview of the Week

Before discussing each day’s workouts, here’s an overview of my workouts from this past week. Scroll down for daily details…

 

Sunday

It was 75° when we met Bill’s brother and our sister-in-law at 7 AM on Sunday for a walk along the beach. Once I’d gotten a mile with them under my belt, I took off for my 4-mile 3-minute run/3-minute walk intervals. Since we were about half way between high and low tide (it was going out), the sand was soft and I could feel a slight struggle with each step. The struggle showed in my performance and I finished my run at a 12:54 average pace, about a minute and a half slower than recent run/walk intervals. After my run/walk, I walked for another 2 miles, giving me 3 miles of walking for the day.

 

Monday

While Bill was doing a little work during the morning, I lifted weights and did my physical therapy homework. Just as I wrapped up my last exercise, I noticed a familiar annoyance in my right SI joint area. I could only surmise that it was from Sunday’s run/walk intervals in the soft sand or from sitting in a too soft chair. Whatever the reason, I decided to nix any more beach running during the trip.

Just before lunch, Bill and I packed up our beach cruiser bike rentals and drove to Corolla for a 20-mile ride in the Whalehead neighborhood. At 79° it was warm at times, but the 15 MPH headwind helped keep us cool. Twenty miles was a great workout on single-speed bikes, even with the lack of elevation changes.

 

We opted to mostly ride back and forth on the 3-mile-long streets in the Whalehead neighborhood to stay away from the heavier traffic on Route 12. With all of the back and forth, the map from my Garmin (affiliate link) was pretty funny looking…

 

Tuesday

I was up early to do a trial run with a client to see how a virtual session would go with our beach house wifi. Everything went great so if we come back for a few weeks in October, I’ll be able to work if I choose.

After breakfast we drove into Corolla to ride our bikes before returning them to the rental place. We had to rush back to the house to meet a contractor so our planned 25-mile ride was shortened to 22 miles. At 69°, the weather was delightful, but the 14 MPH headwinds were no joke whenever we rode northward.

Currituck Sound at Whalehead Club

Wednesday

I lifted weights super early on Wednesday morning before we started cleaning the beach house to leave. I skipped lunges and a few other exercises that made my SI joint angry. Between my regular exercises that I had to skip and the PT exercises that I skipped, I was able to complete my entire workout in an hour.

With Hurricane Teddy churning in the Atlantic, we put the hurricane shutters up just in case. After closing up the house, putting air back in the tires (we drop the pressure from 38  to 24 pounds to drive on the sand), and washing sand off the Jeep, we spent much of the rest of the day driving home.

 

Thursday

It was 55° at 5:45 AM when Bill and I left our house for our ride. The cooler temps must have kept people indoors because we only saw three other people during the first five miles to our initial turnaround. We kept our ride shorter than normal at 24-miles (15.5 MPH average speed) because we both had a busy day on our first day back to work after vacation.

 

Friday

I headed out for my run just after 5:30 AM in the delightful 62° weather for my 4-mile 3-minute run/3-minute walk intervals. After Sunday’s run on the sand that had left me with discomfort in my right SI joint area, I was thrilled to feel completely fine during my run and for the rest of the day. During my run I remembered that I was meeting my first client at 6:30 AM and not 7 AM and had to pick up the pace on my last run interval and finished a little faster than usual at an 11:08 average pace.

 

Saturday

In keeping with my goal to join my Cruiser friend Chuck for a ride at least once a week during the month of September in his endeavor to ride 1,000 miles to raise money for the Great Cycle Challenge with proceeds going to fight kids’ cancer, we squeaked in a ride together on Saturday. It was 48° and chilly by the time I joined Chuck on the W&OD Trail about 10 miles into his ride. As soon as I arrived at our meeting place my Garmin (affiliate link) ran out of battery and since I was early, I rode home to get my running Garmin (affiliate link). Chuck had arrived by the time I got back and together we rode to Purcellville and back at an average speed of 13.8 MPH netting 55 miles for Chuck and 40 miles total for me.

BTW, if you’re interested in donating to help fight kids’ cancer, please click here.

 

Here’s What You Might Have Missed

In case you skipped checking in on my blog this past week, here’s what you missed…

 

Questions:
  • • Have you had to rush a workout because you realized during the workout that you had miscalculated when you needed to be finished?
  • • Have you had injuries that kept you in denial?
  • • Are any races opening up where you live?

 

And that’s my rundown… Have a great week!

 

*********************************************************************

 

I’m linking up with Deborah at Confessions of a Mother Runner and Kim from Running on the Fly for their Weekly Run Down. Be sure to check out not only the hosts’ posts, but those of the other great bloggers joining in on the fun!

 

Disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on the blue product link and then make a purchase, I will receive a small commission for referring you. You will pay no more or less for the product; however, Amazon will show their gratitude for my referral by paying me.