Left Arm Bandit

Shortly after I returned from the ParaTriathlon World Championship I gave an interview to one of my sponsors, Trigger Point Therapy.  Well it was published about a month ago and I totally missed it.  I absolutely love using the Trigger Point products. 

In fact as soon as I get home from work tonight I'll be using them to work on my quad's and calf's.  Whenever I travel for work or for a race I take them with me.  Rolling out my legs after being on a plane allows me to get a good solid workout in even the same day as travel.  Not everyone can have a full time masseuse like your on the one of the Pro cycling teams during the tour.  The next best thing is using Trigger Point to self massage.

I'll share the link with you now: http://tptherapy.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/interview-with-trigger-point-sponsored-athlete-joel-rosinbum/

Well its off season. As you may be able to tell by my conspicuous lack of blog posts the last 4 weeks.  Every athlete needs to take a bit of time each year at the end of the season to get away from the riggers of training.  Give the mind and body time to recover.  Not taking a bit of time leads to physical and mental fatigue usually injury and burn out.  Off Season is usually 2-4 weeks.  It is extra important for me because this has been my first hard year of training since the skiing accident.  So for the last several weeks I've just done what I wanted to do.  No training plan, no prescribed work, no pressure.  Run and bike when I feel like it.  I've only swam once.  Taking time to reconnect with friends, family and church whom didn't get as much time the last 2 months of summer while I was training hard and traveling for National's and World's.

I had been planning on taking a longer off season to have more surgery done.  With that in mind I went to St. Louis again to see Dr. McKinnon.  While I was there she had me do a EMG (nerve test).  It was the most painful thing that's happened to me since I had a that chest tube inserted between my broken ribs.  I had full on tunnel vision and just about passed out.  However the pain was wort it!  The tests show that the nerves are still coming back! Dr McKinnon to one look at it and said, "This test is not permission from God to do surgery. Your body is still healing. (yes its been 2 1/2 years) Come back and see me in 6 months and no surgery for at least a year."  That is awesome news! No Surgery!!

And also means that I don't get quite as long as an off season as I thought I was going to.  So I'm embarking on changing my running style to something that is faster and more efficient.  Coach Lara and I have been working together twice a week for the past month and a half.  45 mins of strength and core work then 15 mins of focused treadmill running.  Last week was going to be my first week back building into a full time training schedule again.  But I cam down with the cold that's been going around.  So I took the week off.  Next week I get to build into full training again.

Congrats to all my paraTriathlete friends from the USA who cleaned up at the ParaTriathlon World Championship.  Here's the article from triathlon.org

http://www.triathlon.org/news/article/usa_top_paratriathlon_medal_table/

Hope to join you all on the podium next year!!!

Saturday September 12 was the 2009 ITU ParaTriathlon World Championship. The competition was tough and I was very nervous at the start.  Usually I go for a nice 15min jog before the start to clear my head and warm up my muscles.  However I ran out of time and was only able to do about 5 mins and then had to rush to get into my wetsuit.  I had a little bit of swim warm up to but mostly my head wasn't in the right spot and I felt rushed.

The gun went off and away we went.  I picked a great starting line and didn't get clobered like in NewYork.  I managed to stay fairly cloe to the leaders into the first bouy at about 200 meters out.  After that we turned parallel to the shore.  Here's where things started to fall apart.  I was swimming long and slow thinking that the tide was coming in and pushing us along.  Come to find out later that it wasn't.  The water was shallow and clear so you could see the bottom for most of the race.  I slowly watched the pebbels and sand go by.  It was rather frusterating. 

About half way through the swim one of the Tri-6 (blind) Italian athletes with his guide swam by me.  I jumped on their feet to catch a draft.  For the next 400 metes or so things started looking up.  Here's where I made a fatal mistake.  I left the draft. It looked like they were headed a little off course and I felt like I could swim faster on my own.  The Italians were out of the water almost 5 whole mins before me.  This was the worst swim I've ever done.  Slower than when I was racing with side stroke back in the spring.

I got out of the water, looked at my watch and thought wow, I'm toast.  That was quickly confirmed on the out and back 2 loop bike course when I saw the leader headed back almost 20 mins up on me.  I chased on the bike, probably not as hard as I could have.  With about 8K left to go on the bike I ran over someone's helmet number that had come off.  It stuck to my wheel and mad this wooshing sound, very annoying but I wasn't stopping.  In the last kilometer I caught Brandon, however I had a problem with my race belt in transition and he was out of T2 before me.

The run was ok except that my pacing was off.  I ran the magority of the run in the low 8's and high 7's but ran the last kilometer at a 5:15 pace.  We call this not having good mental toughness.  Idealy the pace should be just about even with a bit faster for a finishing kick.

I know that I had a better race in me and am a bit frustrated I was not able to execute it.  Especially give the stage it was on. This winter I'll be focusing a lot on my weakness and next September be ready to go to the World Championship in Budapest and get myself a podium.

I want to thank all the people who helped support me financially and other wise at the last second to make my trip to Worlds possible, thank you from the bottom of my heart and God Bless you.

(Pictures are coming eventually)

So I'm in Australia for the ITU ParaTriathlon World Championship.  I have a few days before the event on Saturday morning so I'm hanging out getting acclimated and just enjoying the awesome weather here.

The travel time from Portland, Oregon to Gold Coast, Australia is about 25 hours.  Often when I travel I end up with dead legs afterward.  However this time I tried out a few things during the flights and I'm happy to report that the legs feel awesome!  Here's what I did.

1) Wore Skins Travel and Recovery tights from the Portland airport all the way to Gold Coast.
2) Did some light Trigger Point work on my legs during each of the 3 layovers.

I assembled my bike shortly after arriving and went out for a easy ride with my roommate, Rob.  We did not do anything hard but man I felt great, which is shocking after all the travel and the time change.  We were cruising along and I said, "this nice easy pace feels great, 17 mph is nice." To which Rob reply's, "You realize we are doing 21 right?"

So if you don't already use compression gear AND Trigger Point when you travel, what are you waiting for?  Get on that!  I highly recommend the Total Body Package

Here's a sweet shot of me in SFO using the Trigger Point footballer, representing Arizona State (Go Devils!) and listening to HillSong.  Normally you would use the foam block to elevate your leg but I didn't have space to pack it so I'm improvising.

I'm a huge fan of books and articles that have alternate titles. So I'm making a alternate title blog post of my own blog post.
Portland Triathlon is the last tune up race before ITU World Championships and I was all set to have a great race. I had been swimming the course almost every Thursday for open water practice and felt fairly confident about it. Also I received a new wetsuit from Paul at one of my new sponsors Fit2Race (F2R) The suit is a huge improvement over the seven year old Ironman suit that I have been wearing. Coach Lara has really got me working on sponsorship stuff and I've been able to get a few. More on that in another blog post.

On the bike I was using a different set of wheels, real carbon race wheels. I've been riding on a set of alloy wheels and what a huge difference carbon and a deeper profile makes. The run course was a two loop course that covers a section of one of my standard training runs so I knew that one too.

The swim was awesome! I made the turn at 17 minuets and headed back. The return trip took only 15 minuets. Total time 32:02! That's almost 4 minuets faster than I've swam any open water 1500m before. (Except for the Hudson at Nationals but with the massive current that hardly counts).

I had a reasonably fast transition except for someone putting their wheel spokes around my breaks that I had to untangle. The bike section was a slightly technical three loop course with some good climbing and nice down hill. I rocked it.

Now comes the bad part, the run. It was bad. I cramped up in my abbs so badly that each stride hurt to land. I'll summarise to say that I almost didn't even finish and a 54 minute 10k is not a good time for me at all.

Next week is Hood to Coast and then I'm off to the ITU ParaTriathlon World Championship.  Wish me luck!!

Hi Friends and Family,

I hope all of you are having good a summer as I have been.  As you are probably aware, I was in a horrific skiing accident in March of 2007 which paralyzed my right arm.  Since that time, I've had a lot of surgery and physical therapy to re-innervate the paralyzed muscles with varying degrees of success.  I currently have good elbow movement, but my shoulder, wrist and hand don't work that well. 

Last year I decided that I wasn't going to let my disability get in the way of being active and started to run again.  In October I completed the Portland Marathon, in September I got back on my bicycle and in November back in the pool swimming with one arm.  Since then I've been doing a lot of hardcore triathlon training.  July 26 was the US National ParaTriathlon (like ParaOlymipcs) Championship.  It was my fourth triathlon this year, and the first time I have competed against athletes with the same kind of disability that I have.  It was an incredible experience, and I won my category by over 5 minutes! 

My time from US Nationals qualifies me for the ParaTriathlon World Championship in Gold Coast, Australia on September 12 this year.  I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to compete on the world stage representing the USA.  However, there is a cost of about $3500 to go.  That is something I simply cannot afford, so I'm asking for some help.  If you would please use the "Help Sponsor Joel" Pay Pal donation widget (on the right and it takes a little bit to load) to donate $10, $15 or whatever you can I would greatly appreciate it.

Over the next months I'll be blogging my experiences as I prepare for the World Championship, as well as periodic updates on my other adventures.  Stay tuned!

Edit: The widget to the right is not working for some people so you can use this button as well


Thank you for your support,