The small defeats...

After the small victories of my last post come the small defeats....or at least the defeats that I hope are small. For the last week or so I've been experiencing quite a lot of stiffness in the upper back between my shoulder blades. I thought that this was just the result of the muscles adapting to the increased training, especially given the change in my stroke over the last year which now relies much more on the big back muscles than it used to. I've been stretching a lot to ease it out and assuming that my body would adapt to the training. But in the last few of days, this has morphed into something much more painful, especially when I'm lying down, causing trouble sleeping. I've had two days of enforced rest from swimming while my tooth recovers from my latest bout of dentistry which has helped a little, but it's definitely not right. I seem to be falling to bits. I've made an appointment to see the physio on Monday and I'm sure it's nothing that time, rest, and a bit of poking and prodding won't fix. But the timing is terrible with only two weeks to go before I go to Mallorca, especially since I already feel like I'm on the margins in terms of adequate training.

With this in mind, the urge to press on with training regardless is very compelling - each day of rest no doubt improves my chance of fixing the injury, but each day without training feels like it pushes me further away from being able to do the swim. Grrr.

But I am a grown-up, nominally at least, and will be sensible. For now. I need to keep my eyes on the bigger goal - MIMS - and can't risk messing things up by not fixing this properly. As I said....hopefully, just a small defeat.