Saturday, April 26, 2014

Back and on track to better than ever...

So first and foremost, I need to apologize for my lapse in blogging.  I managed to hurt myself pretty badly and hostly, the past few weeks I haven't been in the best headspace with regard to sharing my thoughts.

As many of you know from my previous entries, 14.5 was a pretty challenging workout for me.  As it turns on, pushing through that workout gave me a moderate case of rhabdomyolysis (aka rhabdo), a rare condition that's prevalent in crossfitters and marathon runners where you over stress a muscle group and the proteins begin to breakdown into your blood stream.  A normal person at rest has a protein count of around 100 units at any given time, by the time I got tested over a week after the workout, mine was around 3,000 units.

While the experience was far from enjoyable and I'm still slowly ramping back into my regular workouts and weights, I'm just thankful it wasn't worse.  Severe cases of rhabdo can lead to kidney and liver failure, as well as a host of other unpleasant long term side effects.

One thing I've definitely taken away from this, is to really listen to my body.  There's a pretty substantial difference between "I want to stop because this workout sucks but I can push through" and "I need to stop because my body is telling me something is wrong."  Being that CrossFit is a community full of people who love pushing their limits, myself being no exception, the idea of tapping out on a workout isn't an idea I love but I do see the necessity of listening to my body.  During 14.5, I remember hitting a point where I just started crying, not sobbing, but just uncontrollably tearing.  In the future, I've accepted that signs like that are things I need to actually pay attention to.

Lessons learned and moving forward, I know what to look for to prevent ever pushing myself past my body's capabilities again.  I've used my recovery time to work on some things that don't require weights and I must say, my handstands and pistols are looking much better.  Silver linings...

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