If You Hit The Ground, BOUNCE!

This week has been a mixed bag so far.  I have had some massive stresses at work, both due to the fact that this is World Hunter Rider week in Wellington and that the person that I hired to take care of my work back home decided to quit and leave the state without telling me.  There is nothing worse that seeing something that you care about deeply twisting in the wind 1500 miles away and being nearly powerless to stop it.  Fortunately, I was able to get it resolved without having to get on a plane and head back to Texas, which due to the magnitude of the classes here would have been very damaging to this side of my business.

Sleep was the sacrificial lamb.  I have had very little enough for about two light nights since Monday.  Insomnia has meant that I have had more hours in the day to deal with the crisis and get my training done.  It has also meant some long, difficult nights on the ladder feeling like I was ready to drop, and moments of "raw nerves" frustration.  However, it also meant that I had to cry uncle and recruit some help for the work load here in Florida, giving a nice girl a chance to make a living and possibly developing a future working relationship, as I cannot do this alone (no matter how much of a control freak I am).

My hip has continued to be a problem, though today is the best day so far.  I did some ROM exercises after my last run and found a huge weakness in the adductors.   Now I am trying to gently work it so that the muscle can unknot and hopefully begin to get strong enough to avoid this in the future.  It also pressed me to find someone for sports massage and chiropractic work down here, head back into a strength program to address weaknesses, and pay better attention to some of the awkward positions I tend to hold while working or even just sitting on the computer.

In the middle of all of this, my foot which had been causing mounting concerns, very quietly got better.  I am not sure if it is 100% since I have not run yet today but I certainly can report a marked improvement over the last several weeks.  I have been icing it religiously and becoming increasingly aware of imbalances in my way of moving and standing.  It took a while for the improvement to be seen (it waited until I wasn't paying attention to it... watched pot syndrome) but I am grateful for it.

All of this, along with really giving the problem solving skills some crazy hard workouts has yielded a nice result.  My melodramatic crisis of confidence has resolved itself, at least for now.  All the way through the week, I have been dedicated to caring for my body, making the healthiest choices, and continuing to strive for consistency in my program.  I have become aware of just how much damage I have to to my body (something I knew but never understood and appreciated).  I realize that the struggles I am facing right now are the result of poor choices in the past.  I have never done the things necessary to allow this body to heal itself.  As a result, I have a lot of physical baggage, most of which can be resolved with a focused, consistent, ongoing effort.

I am trying to shift my outlook a little and realize that every time an old injury flares up it is not the end of the world (I do dramatic well), but rather an opportunity to identify and correct damage.  It is another layer of the onion to be peeled back, revealing (what I hope is) a better athlete underneath.  I spent 30 years breaking myself, it is not going to be right in 30 days.  Patience is going to be the most critical component to getting to the finish line now.  But seriously, this will definitely make for a better athlete and a better person.

In other news, during my bike session on the trainer last night, I had the first of two good, old-fashioned slapstick moments.  During a threshold interval, I was in a big gear and out of the saddle hammering when the bike suddenly broke loose from the trainer.  I crashed ungracefully into a picnic table.  I picked myself up, remounted the bike, went right back to work.  I only lost about three minutes and had little more that a cut on my arm to show for it.  Later that night, one of the horses hooked my ladder with his foot and jerked it right out from under my feet.  This one was a little more graceful.  I fell/leaped backwards and got tangled in the ladder on my way down but somehow managed to land on my feet.  Aside from not scoring a 10 for my dismounts, I am pleased to announce that I did not suffer injuries to anything but my dignity.

CHEERS!!