Monday, January 5, 2009

A Pain in the Ass


Snowboarding is not friendly to one's behind. You usually fall forward on your knees and/or wrists or backwards onto you behind. Occasionally you will do a helicopter flip where you and the snowboard spin until you land on your side and one or both ankles gets twisted in the process.

Well, yesterday I managed to do all of the above multiple times.

It turned out that Mt. Baldy isn't really a place for beginners to go. It's got some pretty advanced runs and some serious slopes. We should have got a clue when we were driving in. The road up to the resort is super steep. The one good thing we did have going for us was the weather. It was a beautiful sunny day. Cold at the beginning of the day and freezing at the end of the day, but perfect weather while we were snowboarding.


However, the conditions were not perfect. The snow was not nice and powdery, but hard and somewhat icy. There hadn't been new snowfall since Christmas and they had only just turned on their snow machine the day before. How does that translate? Bad for beginners. After our very first run, we were all ready to exchange our snowboards for skis. It was pretty defeating. But we ended up sticking with it. I guess we all like to abuse ourselves!

Falling was the worse thing, especially in our case when you do a lot of it. It was like falling on concrete. So yes, I have sore wrists, sore ankles, bruised knees, and a very tender tail bone.

But that's not all...Apparently the full development of soreness from my previous crossfit workout hadn't come into play until then too. It appears I tweaked my neck and shoulder area somehow from those wall climbs and I was still feeling quite a bit of the stomach muscle soreness as well from the L pull-ups. So every time I fell backwards my neck whipped back irritating the already irritated area. And then when I got up I had to use the already sore stomach muscles. Ouch.

Needless to say I am in quite a bit of pain today. Driving was almost impossible. I couldn't even turn my head and walking up and down stairs was torture because of the burning calf muscles.

I started to wonder how nuts I am for putting myself through all this. The pain was so bad today that I wanted to cry. So I did nothing today...drank some wine, ate some chocolate, watched a movie and went back to sleep. Hopefully this won't last long because it really sucks.


The crazy part is that my friends and I still can't wait to go snowboarding again. At least I'm not the only one who is nuts. However, next time I'll be wearing knee pads, a tail bone pad, wrist guards and possibly a helmet. Football gear has been recommended.

That's at least 2 months away. Tomorrow I fly to Boca Raton where the closest I'll get to snowboarding is virtually. My tail bone should be healed by then!

2 comments:

Shannon Franklin said...

Hey Lisa!

Yes, we are crazy! Dan just told me last night that he's ready for more snowboarding abuse. Personally, I can't wait for his shoulder to heal, so I can show him what REAL suffering is like (aka Crossfit)!

Maybe someday we'll all actually be able to claim that we CAN snowboard.

Shannon Franklin said...

Hey Lisa,
Just saw your post about Crossfit Hardcore. I say, "AWESOME!" That looks like an amazing group. You ought to kick some serious ass when you get home.

Keep in touch!