A Real Pain in the Neck

The day after my last triathlon I noticed that my neck was a little stiff, nothing too painful, just a little tight.  I figured I had just strained the muscle during my swim.  On that day I had already scheduled a Chiropractor/ART appt and a massage.  I told both of them I had a little pain in my neck and they worked on it some.

The next day the pain was worse, but manageable.  I got up and did my morning run, and then went to the gym after work and swam 2000 meters.  When I came home my neck was really sore.  I iced it and went to bed.  Wednesday morning I couldn’t move it.  It was so sore.  It was spasming and just unbelievably painful.  I was miserable all day at work.  It’s all I could focus on; I had a headache and was even a little dizzy.  I did self massage all day and started downing ibuprofen.  Thursday, it was pretty much just the same.  I went and had a short head and neck massage, which helped alleviate the spasms, but only for about 10 minutes.  I also made yet another appt with my ART guy.  He said it was extremely tight and would take a few weeks to heal. 

I have a feeling that I was babying my left shoulder (do to an injury from last fall in that shoulder) during my swim and putting more strain on the right side.  The pain is in the right side of the neck, but radiated all the way into the top of my shoulder and around my shoulder blade.  During the day the pain across the top of my shoulder would actually end up being worse than the neck pain.  I’m sure from being on the computer all day.

I have pretty much been in constant pain for the last 2 ½ weeks, trying to let this “heal” itself.  I’m sure I should have taken some time off to let it heal, but I just didn’t feel like I could do that during my last few weeks of 70.3 training.  So I have been doing all of my workouts.  I have shortened a few swims, but have still been swimming.  Swimming is by far the worst!!!  I have been icing and massaging using a home massager, and have had a couple more shoulder and neck massages.  I have had way too much ibuprofen over the past 2 weeks.  Nothing was helping.  After 16 days I had finally had enough.



This is pretty much what I've looked like the last 2 weeks.



I went to the Dr. last night.  She said based on my symptoms it was very likely a pinched nerve.  She prescribed me a 5 day dose of steroids.  I also went out and bought one of those neck pillows to help keep my neck stable during the night.  And – the hardest part, I decided to take 3 full days off from training to give the steroids time to do their job.

I am very happy to say that after just one steroid pill, and one night’s sleep on the neck pillow it’s amazing how much better it feels today.  Not totally healed or anything, but definitely better than it’s felt in the past 2 ½ weeks!!  So I’m super hopeful this will do the trick and that a little rest and recovery will have me back as good as new for my long workouts on Saturday and Sunday.  I only have 5 weeks left til Racine – and I will be in Washington, DC for 3 days next week…..so I really need my training to go perfectly in the short amount of time I have left.

The KC Tri - The culprit????