Wednesday, March 07, 2007

I'm So Mad At My Left Arm Right Now

90 laps last night; 32 in 13:20.

60 laps tonight.

60.

Grrrr.

About 2 1/2 laps into my workout, my left upper arm started hurting. It was sort of this stabby pain right in the middle of my tricep. I kept going, thinking it was a muscle cramp and I could work it out. I stopped after 4 laps, the stabby pain having gone to sort of this all around awful feeling in the upper arm, with the muscle feeling a little bit like it was tying itself into knots. So I tried kicking for 10 laps and then went back to swimming. 3 laps later I was at the wrong end of the pool from my kickboard and water bottle, clutching my arm and grimacing.

Over the course of the next forty-five minutes or so I managed to get 3 more laps in, bringing my grand total of swimming tonight to 10. The other 50 laps were kicking, so at least my legs got a heck of a workout.

My left arm has always been a little wonky at the beginning of my workouts. When I pull the stroke through, something clicks and it kind of twinges a little, but it stops after the first 5 or 6 laps. Today the clicking was there, but the pain was so much worse than the previous twinges and it wouldn't go away.

It didn't hurt last night after my workout, it didn't hurt today. I don't know what's going on, but I hope my body shapes up fast. I'm totally in my swimming groove and I don't want to lose it all. I'm going to walk the 3.2 miles home from work tomorrow and try again with the swimming either Friday or Saturday. Hopefully this is just a temporary setback.

UPDATE: My roommate who knows a little bit about physiology checked out my arm and diagnosed a big muscle knot. She said since the pain was localized, it was muscle-related, whereas if the pain radiated, it would be something more serious. She found the knot and worked on it a little bit, but I think I'll just hold off on swimming for a few days because it's still a little sore and I would rather baby the muscle for a little bit, than just make it worse and not be able to swim for a week or something. Sigh.

2 comments:

AnnekeS said...

The best thing to do for muscle knots is to massage the crap out of them (to the point of pain) and then drink lots of water to flush everything out. And have you been eating your bananas lately? Perhaps a potassium boost would help you out also!

Unknown said...

My roommate worked on it pretty good last night. It hurt. A couple of people have mentioned potassium so I bought some bananas today.