Mark's Blog

Sorry to hear you are sick.

On Tuesday, I went to the doctor about my shoulder. I had mentioned my problem with it, getting steadily more sore over a period of many months, at my three-month appointment the week before. (My doctor schedules appointments for me every three months -- I am not completely sure why, maybe his boat payment is due every three months. I do not object because I usually have something to ask him about and this way I do not have to decide if it is important enough to make an appointment because I already have one. The cost is not important because once I cover my deductible on insurance, the insurance pays 90% so I pay $5 to $7 for the visit. My deductible is $400 and since my annual complete physical check-up cost more than that, there is no way I can save more than $5 -$7 by not going to the doctor.) He sent me to get an x-ray to confirm it was not bone related. So on Tuesday he gave a cortisone shot in the muscle/tendon where it seem the pain was center, gave me a prescription for naproxen (same as the OTC drug Aleve,) and gave me several pages of poorly described exercises to do. He said if this does not work the only thing he can do is send me for physical therapy. My shoulder is only painful when I make certain motions but is worrisome because it has gotten gradually worst over six months or more. I thought it was brought on by conducting and had assumed it would go away when I stopped.

I have been riding my bike some indoors. I have a fluid resistance trainer from Performance. The trainer itself is small and the rear wheel skewer rests on the supports of the trainer and a spring holds a small roller against the back wheel as it turns. The rear wheel is about 2 inches off the floor. I set a 2 inch block of wood under the front wheel to level the bike. It has a wireless readout that attaches to the handlebars. One screen give instanaeous information -- speed, energy output in watts, the percent of (virtual) incline, distance traveled so far, and elapsed time. The second screen give average speed, watts, incline, along with distance and elapsed time. The third screen gives maximum speed, watts, incline, along with an odometer and total riding time since the memory was last erased. My cyclocomputer is still on my bicycle so I can have a cadence readout on it. I have been riding 45 minutes. It seems harder to ride at a given speed on the trainer than in real life but that is the same as with the treadmill -- I suspect it is mostly physcologicl rather than physical. Also, the trainer has you riding up an incline it controls -- about 1.5% around 12 MPH, 1.6% at 14 MPH, 1.7% by 16 MPH and I think around 2% AT 20 MPH.

I may work myself up to an hour of riding. I have also run three miles on the treadmill after riding 45 minutes on the trainer and may try to do that workout once or twice a week.

Hope your doctor manages to have your shoulder problem diagnosed correctly. One of my colleagues has had a problem in her right shoulder for the last few months, and has been going to physical therapy, which improves things but hasn't made the pain go away entirely.

I get the impression that muscle troubles are more difficult to diagnose than other problems. Even after taking an ultrasound of my leg back when I was having problems, the doctors couldn't say for certain what was happening. Luckily the combination of orthotic inserts and different shoes seem to have prevented the problem from coming back.

You're probably doing the right thing to ride a recumbent bicycle instead of an upright at least.

The fluid resistance trainer also sounds like a good thing. Even if you only ride 45 minutes, you don't have to go out in the snow, cold air, and ice. Maybe one thing that makes 20 MPH seem harder in the basement is that you don't have a strong breeze cooling you off.

Matt told me he used to train running on a treadmill, mainly working on his technique. He would do things like run in front of a mirror to see how much his body moved up and down, then aim to keep himself, especially his head, at a constant height. He also tried to run as silently as possible. The idea was to convert as much power into forward motion as possible.

Matt's in pretty good shape, and was perhaps even more before. He's done two Ironman triathlons in around 10 hours, and his fastest 10 km is under 36 minutes.