Eventually, everyone needs a rest..

So after a couple days of decent..not great, but not terrible.. Workouts, I thought things were back on track as far as recovering from the weekend and moving on to regular training.. Well.. Not quite.. I'd be lying if I said I had felt great in Tuesdays or Wednesdays workouts, but I was moving alright.. I'd also be lying if I couldn't tell things weren't quite right with my body this week.. Every morning felt really hard to get going. I didn't have my usual 'ready to go' feeling heading in to the gym. I had that cold that just didn't seem to be getting better. I also had a collar bone/neck bruise that was flaring up any time I did cleans or anything front rack..which is pretty much daily.. This had been going on for about 2 weeks. I was pretty sure it wasn't a huge deal, like a fracture or anything that was a big problem.. But I was also pretty sure that my daily re-bruising of it with banging barbells of various weights right on that same spot wasn't helping it heal. I didn't have too much of a choice in this, though I probably could have skipped a practice or 2 that included cleans or shoulder-to-overhead, but 2 of the granite games workouts included those and, well.. I wanted to practice them! Plus, then we had the actual competition, where I would be repeating those moves.. So here I was on Thursday, after completing Wednesdays work, which included power cleans in the strength portion and then a bunch of hang cleans in the workout.. Now it's Thursday and heavy cleans and front squats AND shoulder to overhead are all in the plan.. I really thought I would be ok with the full cleans and front squats and was only concerned with the STO, but I quickly found out that if I tried to catch my cleans properly.. In the right spot.. Right where that bruise is.. I was in trouble. Even the front squats I found myself trying to avoid that proper front rack spot, which put me in a less than ideal position and made the squat that much harder.. It wasn't going so well for me! Add all that to my continued soreness and my cold, which had meandered on down to my stomach and had me feeling queasy.. Things were not looking good for me at all. I spoke with my coach about the collar bone bruise issue.. He could see the bruise and swelling, so immediately agreed that I should avoid anything that caused more pain and try to let it heal a bit.. A gal from the gym who assesses athletes injuries for a living overheard this discussion and came over to add her two cents. She agreed that it appears to be a bruise right where the muscle attaches to the bone, given that most of my soreness is not on the bone, but more above and increasing tightness in my neck and shoulder. She suggested light stretching, ice, anti-inflammatory meds, just to reduce that swelling a bit.. And, of coarse, stop banging a barbell against it for a bit so it can heal! Ok, ok.. I was seeing where this was going.. I continued my strength stuff, but did my jerks from behind the neck.. Adapt and overcome, amIright? I was starting to set myself up for the workout, which I was going to adjust to dumbbell STO to avoid my poor, delicate collar bone, but as I continued to stall, I got into a discussion with Mike and he mentioned that maybe I'm going about this whole recovery thing wrong.. As in.. I'm not letting myself recover and I should stop trying to muddle through things and just take a break, already! This did not take much convincing, as I was feeling pretty crappy and could tell my body was just yelling at me to STOP. He also suggested that since I have a big-ish day ahead on Saturday with the next team series workouts to do.. And then a team comp the following weekend.. I should take a Whole. Day. Off. On Friday.. Again, kind of surprisingly, I agreed to this and was actually feeling good about taking a bit of a rest. I always hate missing workouts, but for once, I can tell I needed it. This whole thing of being this worn down is pretty new to me. I typically recover well and bounce right back after a competition.. Maybe this means I worked harder in this one? Maybe it means I need to up my intensity on a regular basis so that I don't get so wiped from a comp? I'm not sure it's possible to fully train like its a competition every day, or that it's even a good idea? I'm literally spit-balling, here, because I'm kind of clueless.. I'm sure I could up the intensity some in my training, but I think mostly I just need to better anticipate a need for recovery and not try to jump back in so quick. Probably wait til I have that 'eager to get to the gym' feeling before I move on.. I'll learn some day. The only other time I remember taking days off to recover from an event was the ironman.. It took me til Wednesday to feel ready for even light activity, but I was anticipating it that time.. As far as crossfit goes, this is a first. Duly noted! 3 days of topping each workout by minutes from what I had done in practice.. It can knock a gal down a bit! Alright.. So I took today off. I've iced my neck and it's feeling better.. I do have cleans in one of the workouts tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. It's a lighter weight, so I can probably get away with a lower catch to avoid that spot.. Otherwise, definitely feeling better and I absolutely have that 'let me at it' feeling about getting in to the gym tomorrow, so that's a good sign!