It may be pretty obvious by my lack of posts regarding my training, or by viewing this years training log in the sidebar, but I havent started out very well.  Its been a combination of factors that have kept me off my schedule for training but the major one has been the weather.  The past few weeks have been wicked cold and I talk myself out of a run almost daily.  Usually I have the gym to fall back on but my membership ended in January and expenses have been running so high lately I havent been able to budget signing back up.  I like to buy the whole year at once to save a few bucks and its getting harder and harder to justify with the amount of time ive been spending outside running and cycling.

As another cruel twist of fate the indoor arena where I play soccer has been undergoing renovations or something because we’ve had a gap of a couple weeks in the schedule.  So I havent been able to get in any games there either which I can usually count on for 20 good minutes of sprinting and by proxy speed work.   Games will finally start back up tonight though so im looking forward to that.
The weather has finally started to warm back up so Ill be able to get back on the road again.  Of course there’s another catch-22 in that I leave Wednesday for Daytona.  Like last year, Ive been invited to spend the week with some friends in the infield and catch the races. I went last year and it was a great time.  I dont know a lot about Nascar or anything but its one of those things that when you’re there its easy to get sucked in and enjoy.  So that will put another week in the can as far as training for the Livestrong Challenge goes.

This has been pretty much an excuse post, I guess.  But hey everything goes in cycles and it wouldnt be honest to say that training is going like clockwork.  Some times it goes smoothly sometimes it doesnt.

After a quiet winter its time to get things moving again. Yesterday I got the notification for registration for this years Livestrong Challenge. I’ve decided to do Austin for a third time this year. There have been many changes with the structure of the Livestrong Challenge which Ill detail in later posts. Suffice it to say that it looks like Austin will be back to its former glory and worth giving another shot.

Here’s my new and improved donation link if you can help support my ride again this year: http://austin07.livestrong.org/gdesmond

Ill also be updating the look and feel of the site in the next few weeks and reactivating the forum. The forum was getting pounded by the scum of the earth, which means spammers if you were confused. They’re wasting their time harassing this site because I’ve disallowed all comments and have gotten more upgrades to the forum to ensure they get no benefit from me. No spammers will be tolerated and if it comes down to it Ill just mothball the site rather than give them a single click through their garbage.

Ill be back to updating this site frequently and try once again to make it a resource for this year’s Livestrong Challenge participants. Hopefully this year we can get things off to a strong start.

The updates have been off this past week because I’ve been getting ready for and travelling to Las Vegas.  Im actually still in Vegas at the moment waiting on my delayed flight back.  Ill be hitting the road hard in the next week or so to undo all the damage of this Vegas trip.  It basically feels like Ive been eating for four days straight, the upside is I probably averaged five miles a day walking.

Since Vegas brings one’s mind to gambling this would be a good point to recap this months poker tournament fundraiser.  It was a fairly big one in relation to the past few in that there were 12 participants.  A couple of which were new players and ones that havent been in quite a while.  This month I out drew players at a few key points to allow me to win the overall.  Winning was doubly good because I put all my winnings back into the charity pot minus my buy-in.  So this months tournament raised $160 for my Livestrong Challenge.

My friend Ron is currently working on locking up our travel plans to Austin.  We’re running a little late in planning so hopefully it wont bite us in the wallet when we finally book.

So its been six days since the ankle sprain and im recovering pretty well so far.  Im at the point now that when i walk slowly i can walk without a limp, going up stairs isnt a problem but coming down is a bit slow, and most importantly i can drive my car (a stick shift) again with no issues.  My ankle actually didnt bruise up until Friday night which i found strange.  It could’ve been walking to and from the Carolina Hurricanes game plus up and down the stairs to my seats that stressed the ankle.  Its now several shades of yellow, blue, and purple but even thats fading.  I guess the fact that i never really get sick is also helping me to heal up faster than i should expect with the ankle.

Im still going to keep myself out of the triathlon in two weeks even though i expect to be walking normally any day now.  I figure with the loss of a week of training in addition to the residual tenderness and instability thats bound to be in my ankle doing something of that challenge level wouldnt be smart.  Im also going to keep myself out of my last two soccer games this season which are this monday and next monday.  Since its so close to the break between seasons Ill just sit these two weeks out and have the advantage of the week off between seasons as well before really working the ankle again.

On another note i have been doing rehab exercises all this week and will continue to do so the next few weeks.  I have been reading up a lot on severe ankle sprains and from what i can tell 25% of those who get sprains like this have permanent instability and are prone to reinjure the ankle again.  As a workaround they recommend several exercises to do to help strengthen your ankle and keep the scar tissue from building up.  Its the scar tissue that leads to instability because it prevents the muscle and ligaments from growing back correctly and the scar tissue is much weaker.  There are a few exercises that are recommended to help break up the scar tissue and strenghthen the new muscle.  The first is to trace the alphabet in the air or with your leg outstretched with your ankle.  The second is to put a towel around the toes of your ankle and pull the ankle towards you and push back away.  The final is to set a towel on the floor and, using your toes, pull the towel end towards you.  These exercises should be done 3-5 times a day but be careful to not overdo it and stop if there is any pain.  The pain means you’re trying too hard and doing too much and could potentially reinjure yourself and extend your healing time.

Well, as if my workout regimen needed to be setback any further now im out of doing any kind of training for at least three weeks with a severe ankle strain. Last night at my soccer game i was going for a loose ball and planted my foot for to cut back to the inside and when my ankle planted and i pushed off i heard a loud pop and next thing i felt was being on the ground. Imagine the sound you hear when you pop your knuckle and multiply that by 10 and thats about how loud the sound was, at least for me. The goalie about a dozen feet away said he thought he heard it too. The rest of the team said they heard me yell which i only hope wasnt like a little girl but i laid on the ground for at least 5 minutes or so. Every time i tried to get up i couldnt put any weght on the ankle which initially made me think i had broken it. After a while though i was able to move around on it and found that i could bend it and move but couldnt bear much weight on it at all.

I ended up spending the rest of the night with my foot up and iced then overnight with one of those icy hot patches on it. I was able to make it to an urgent care center this morning. The x-ray showed bone fragments but no breaks, which is good overall. The fragments shows that i either teared the ligament of popped it off the bone. Hence the doctor told me not to try any kind of sporting activities for at least three weeks. If i still cant put much weight on the ankle by two weeks he instructed me to talk to a sports medicine orthopedist to get things taken care of. So here’s hoping for the best and a quick recovery from this.