Good Idea, or Bad?

So, the back has been bothering me. Lately I've been walking around crooked. Yesterday I saw myself in the bathroom mirror before a shower, sans clothes. Amazing! I was standing 'straight' but my pelvis was cocked to the left. My body above that was straight but the rib cage was offset to the right. Holy cats!

The day we did Angie (3 Bars of Death) my back was feeling better but the next day was nasty. Since then I've only been 1) stretching out, especially legs, 2) tuning pianos, 3) scooping snow or 4)motionless.

Going skiing today was a crazy idea. The 'thinking' behind it was to get active and loosen things up. It seems that some combination of stretching, rest and activity gets my back put together again. Mainly, though, I was getting tired of just sitting around.

It felt too soon to be out on skis. As soon as we pushed off into a warmup, I could hear my back talking about the alternating stress from side to side, "What the heck do you think you are doing?" We did twice around the island, then on the back straight of the Oak Loop, we did drills; free skate emphasizing an ab crunch then sprint, finishing with a couple of short sprints.

The workout was 3 x 1 minute on (85% of max effort,) 1 minute off, for distance. We used the back straight on the Isle Royale Loop. The idea was to skate down for a minute, turn around and skate back the exact distance in the same time, then again for a total of 3 times.

CW 300 meters

KW 320 meters

We did them all the same and a good thing, too. There was a penalty of 2 minutes of max-rep pushups if we failed!

I was going to have Kirsten do another set of 3 intervals, but we both decided to call it there. I went back to the truck and Kirsten did a loop and then to the truck.

Temp was 33F. Snow was groomed, rained on and refrozen crusty. Hard, fast and a little dicey!

It feels great to have gotten out and done a workout! I'll let you know tomorrow whether it was a good or a bad idea...

Ciao,

Charles