The body says no

Until this weekend, I hadn't been swimming in about ... oh, 10 years or so. It's not that I can't swim — I can — I just don't like it, and I never really have. Sure, I spent half of my summers at the pool like every other Algona kid, but that was a social exercise more than anything else.

After spending about 45 minutes in the pool on Friday, I can confirm that I still don't like swimming. But it's for a new reason: It hurts my back. A lot.

We headed to the Waterloo/Cedar Falls (Iowa) area this weekend for Chris' brother's wedding. We had a motel pool at our disposal, so after a long day of travel and rehearsal and dinner, we hit the water. It wasn't a big pool, by any means, but it was long enough to swim a couple of laps without smacking into anyone.

By the end of the first lap, my back felt funny. After the second ... ow. And unlike when cycling makes my back sore — when it's all muscles — this felt like my spine was completely out of whack. It popped pretty good later, which helped a bit. But still ... ow.

And on Saturday it was the all-day rush of photos and wedding and reception and the endless spans of sitting around doing nothing in between. Ow.

On Sunday I fell out of bed, laced up my shoes and went running with my old pals from Cedar Falls. A lot of them are in their early 50s by now, and I wondered if this would be the time I showed up ready to run to find them all switched over to cycling. Three of them were running, but one caught up with us halfway through the route — on his bike.

I haven't run since Christmas break (the day after the whiskey-and-little-smokies meal), so at about the four-mile mark, I was ready to steal that bike. I ended up just fine, but took my time stretching at the end of the run — about 5.5 miles.

After a bit of luggage ... uh, lugging ... and four more hours in the car, my back is toast — to say nothing of my hamstrings and calves. I'll get moving and out on the bike (the CX bike, maybe?) here in a little bit.

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to spend August cycling-wise. I'd like to do another crit or two, but I'm conscious of the work needed to be at least semi-respectable for 'cross. Hell, doing another couple of crits will probably be pretty helpful. We'll see — like always.