Well, the shoulder has felt quite a bit worse in the last couple of days, and I've decided it's not a good idea to go up to Missouri and do a 12-mile race this weekend. It was a hard decision to make because I really, really wanted to check out this event. There's a whole series of races up in the Missouri River watershed each year and I've never done any of them, and I was looking forward to seeing how I would do against unfamiliar competition.
But after doing my strength routine yesterday I could feel increased pain, and the pain bothered me a lot when I paddled this morning. I'd planned to paddle for 60 minutes and do my usual pre-race sprints and stuff like that, but in the end I returned to the dock after 40 minutes.
Tomorrow, instead of driving up to the greater Jefferson City area, I'll be sitting in a doctor's office. I think the first order of business is getting an MRI or some sort of expert opinion on what this injury is--I'm worried that it's something like a torn rotator cuff. I've had more than my share of aches and pains over the years and I've gotten pretty good at self-therapy for many of them, but this one is not in my body of experience. So I've made an appointment with a sure-enough doctor.
I haven't yet described the new strength routine that I started up last week, so I guess I'll do that now. It consists of several core exercises on a stability ball and several arm exercises with dumbbells. I learned the core exercises from this video featuring Chinese Olympic slalom racer Jing-Jing Li.
Starting yesterday, I incorporated several rubber-band exercises that I was hoping would remedy the tender spot in my right deltoid muscle, but seeing as how they might have worsened the problem, I'll have to see what I find out tomorrow before I do them again.
The routine goes like this:
1. Rubber-band exercises
2. Exercise where I kneel on the stability ball (not in the Jing-Jing Li video)
3. Military press with dumbbells while seated on the stability ball
4. Stability ball exercise shown at 1:03 of the Jing-Jing Li video
5. Bicep curls while seated on the stability ball
6. Stability ball exercise shown at 1:57 of the Jing-Jing Li video
7. Front and lat raises
I guess I'll call this the "April-May Strength Routine," since I plan to do it into the middle of next month before switching to a new routine.
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