One of Those Days

Today has definitely been 'that day'...one you don't want to repeat ever again. The one you wish never happened in the first place, the one where you feel like 'maybe I should have just stayed in bed this morning!'
It started with another early alarm waking me up out of my warm bed. I am looking forward to Daylights-Savings because it is getting steadily darker-and darker at 6:45am when I twist open my blinds...not good motivation for someone who wants to crawl back to bed, not dive into a freezing pool for 5000 meters of hard swimming.
But that is what I did this morning...dove head-first into the pool and ground out 5K of 'strength' oriented sets. That means lots of pulling and swimming with a band...which is where my day started going downhill. After all that upper-body work, I re-pulled a muscle (or tendon or something) in my upper-side-ribs that caused me to throw off my smooth swimming and just fight through the rest of the workout.
So that is going to be sore for a while, especially since I'm not about to take time off swimming (already doing that with the run). But that still leaves me one sport...cycling...that I've been having nothing but great, hard workouts. Today was going to be nothing different as I headed out for a 2.5 hour ride with 2 descending ascents of the entire Gold Camp climb. I was doing a nice LONG warm up, so that I was ready when I came upon the start of the climb, when I got stuck behind a car and a bus that came to a sudden stop. I had no problem stopping; it was the unclipping out of my pedals that caused a problem. For some reason, the two tugs I gave at my left foot were unsuccessful and I just had an 'Oh Sh*t' moment as I realized that I was going DOWN!
Like a real smart cyclist (not) I stuck out my hand and my knee to stop my fall...which is why I now have an ice pack on my knee and a very sore hand! Sometimes I think I would rather crash and slide for some road-rash (at least you can show off the raspberries) but all I've got are some lumps and stiff spots. It didn't help that I was already unmotivated for this ride (okay, not unmotivated, just very tired) and my stomach was not digesting my energy bar properly.
Somehow, someway, I motivated myself to turn up Gold Camp and made my first ascent. 21 minutes later, when I got to the top (told you it was a LONG climb), I was starting to feel good and happy with my effort. So that positive-ness managed to carry over into my second climb (only 45 seconds slower) and into a nice long cool down back to the training center.
When I got back to my room I had to rush through a shower and run down to the cafeteria to grab some lunch because I only had about 30 minutes before my dermatology doctor’s appointment. Some background on this appointment…ever since April when I got home from Australia, I’ve noticed these two spots on my nose that don’t ever really heal. They throb when I’m lying down to sleep and I finally started to get worried. I called the offices this morning…shockingly, they had an opening TODAY, so I grabbed it.
In the span of about 5 minutes from when the Doctor walked in the exam room until he left, I think my heart-rate was in Zone 5 (for the non-triathlete-geek that means it was beating FAST)! He had me lie down so he could look at my nose in better light and then informed me that both spots were ‘Pre-Cancerous Lesions’.
Ummmmm……I wasn’t planning on hearing the word cancer in relation to me until I was at least 75 years old! He said if I left them alone they would probably develop into full-on skin cancer (especially with my daily exposure to the sun). At least one person in the room was still calm…and he continued to tell me that there was a simple procedure where he could freeze the spots, they would scab, fall off, and I would be good to go. Of course I took the opportunity right then to have the simple treatment…now, most of the work will be in my hands: daily applications of hydrogen peroxide, not picking at the scabs, and putting sunscreen on so this does NOT happen again!
I was a bit shaken when I left the office, and called home immediately. When my parents answered, I told them that I had just left the Dermatology doctor’s offices…and my Dad replied that he had just got home from his dermatology appointment!! It was great to have support from my family…and friends, we are going out-to-dinner tonight…perfect way to get my mind off this blasted day!