According to my training/injury log I have been hurt since March 17, 2007. You know you get hurt too often when you can’t thumb very far through your training journal without bumping into continuous runs of pages with notes on old injuries.

Self diagnosed lateral epicondylitis (AKA tennis/climbers elbow). Currently my treatment regime involves copious direct ice four times per day with 1200-1600 mg doses of Vitamin-I spread out across the day. I treat it with a small electric blanket nightly before bed for 30 minutes and every few days give it a good rub down with some BenGay or like analgesic ointment topically. Overall the pain is currently a four on a scale of ten and my best guess at prognosis is another two months.

Mentally, I am at the point where I have totally accepted the injury but often I get bored of the treatment regime and sporadically wonder when, if ever, it will get better. There are days when it feels 90% normal and then there are days when it aches often and has to be babied when handling anything heavy (e.g. washing heavy pots in the sink, typing on the keyboard at non ergonomic angles, cat lifting, etc.).

In hind sight this was the typical bonehead injury that didn’t have to be. I knew for a good month that something was wrong but persisted in climbing in an attempt to finish out the winter indoor training season. Considering I had sustained the same injury to the same elbow twice before one would think the warning bells rang loud - at first they were foggy and later simply ignored in pursuit of the big up. At one point two weeks after I stopped climbing I coned myself that the injury was healing and tried out some exercises. The day after my elbow pain flared up to the old levels and I have yet to do any exercise period.

On the upside I just dumped some $$$ back into my mountain bike and am stoked for the new toys to arrive later this week. I hope to drop it of with the bike shop next week and be riding the trails by the second week in May with any luck!