Off Season and No Surgery

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.