Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Triathlon Update

I had to take some time before I posted this one, considering every single person in Boulder was right about my last post. When I told my buddies that I wasn't going to race triathlon this year they all laughed in my face and started making bets as to how quickly I would be back at it. The total time away was 3 months. And in that three months I really found out how much I actually love training and racing in the sport. I also was fortunate to reunite with my real true love which is skiing! Aspen, Taos, Mammoth and Eldora were hit pretty hard.

What I don't love is injury. While I made the remarks that my main reason for stopping was so that I could focus on my real estate business, I kinda lied about that. Obviously I knew that trying to build up a business and train/race would be a bigger challenge, my main reason for stopping was that I was ALWAYS injured. It is a hard thing to accept.

In this spot, the athlete is in a constant battle with "something". With me that something became chronic and not totally diagnosable. My running rant about that whole issue has been that I have a male pro right leg and female age group left one. I wanted to see this time around if the time off would help clear up the issue and then also see what happens when I start back up. It is a major downer to try and become better at a demanding sport like triathlon and have to constantly miss workouts and have pain not only in training but day to day life.

I started things up about a month ago and to my surprise, I was REALLY out of shape. But to my even bigger surprise, the out of shape thing didn't last very long. Neither did feeling injury free. It only took about 2 weeks for that mysterious issue in my left leg to come back. I wasn't sure if I was even going to bother seeing someone about it because nobody could ever give me a clear answer before. But I did with a little push from the ever optimistic JZ.

The conclusion was either that I had a nerve in my lower back that was "shutting off" my leg, which then led to injury because smaller muscles would have to take the load of my whole body, or that it was from my hip surgery that I had in college. I broke my femoral neck and had it fixed. The nerve in the back is something that can be dealt with but the surgery is what it is.

One of the biggest places to look when it comes to a nerve being pinched is in your bike fit. We spend a lot of time in the saddle and if something is not right you are going to have problems. So I went in and made changes and it actually made things even worse and now my left leg really started to shut down and continued to atrophy. Well, that was depressing at first, but turned out to be a good thing because we at least knew that something wasn't right on my bike. JZ made me come over and deconstruct my bike. I swear that women could charge top dollar for bike fitting if she wanted to. In only a few hours we had made some serious progress due to her changes. I think the biggest change was going back to the Adamo saddle. Yes, I know it is ugly and not "cool" but I really don't care The thing works and keeps my junk from going numb!

I also saw Bob Cranny, The Wizard of Boulder, and Sara Berg my Chiro and they both got to see that my left ass was not working and I could barley get my calf to fire. Clearly a nerve! Everyone had hope about things at this point but me. I know that sounds pessimistic but I was at the "Show me the money" point. And they did. Over a few weeks time the leg has improved. I can run about 20 min now which is not ideal but I can bike and swim without issue and that is a good start. I have a running background so I am going to be calm and patient about it and see what happens. At least now, on the bike, I don't feel like I would be better off with a prosthetic. That is no joke.

I really want to race Ironman this year and am going to give it my best shot. Full Vineman at the end of July is what I want to do followed by either the REV 3 Full or Ironman Cozumel late November. It is hard to say what will happen as my confidence in this issue clearing up for good is not super high yet....but it is there. My main goal, I suppose, is to always be able to train which is what I love the most. Racing is just the icing on the cake.

AS part of my training this year I decided to do the AIDS Life Cycle again and raise money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. The ride is the biggest fundraiser of the year and is always an amazing event. It is from June 6th-12th so if anyone reading this would like to sponsor my efforts you can go to www.tofighthiv.org/goto/brandondelcampo Everything helps!

Now that I am back at it I will keep things on here updated a bit more, especially when on the ride! Hopefully there will be a good story to write about, as Blogs like this last one I just wrote put me to sleep!!!! Let me see if I can end it with something funny....hmmmm.....Holy crap. Nothing funny has happened lately. Maybe Carole will read this and put a potato at the bottom of the pool during masters that looks like a turd. Now that was funny!

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