Hot and cold therapy is widely used method to treat and
prevent sports injuries. Cold reduces pain and swelling after an injury whereas heat relaxes tight muscles, opens up blood vessels and increases blood flow and oxygen supply to the site of injury. Usually it means applying a warm gel pack or warm
water for hot therapy and an ice pack or cold water for cold therapy. I used slightly different
approach. First I flew to Thailand and spent the Christmas holiday there in
over +30C heat to give myself whole body hot therapy and then came back to
Sweden to -20C for true shock treatment. I have to say that over 40 degrees’
change in temperature was quite a shock and took a while to adapt… Anyway, as
horrible as coming back felt, it worked, and I got rid off my injuries. Nothing
to do with the fact that didn’t run for 6 weeks…
I believe I was very near to develop a tibial stress
fracture in the beginning of November but for once reacted fast enough and took
the needed precautions before I was quite there. Tibialis posterior tendon reacted
first but I could also feel pain in the lower tibia when I stopped running. I
skipped the marathon that I had planned to run at the end of November and
cross-trained most of the December too. Then, at the last week of December, I
started gradually to run again. Some gentle jogs on the beach in the sunrise before
my daily yoga session. Sun, warmth, yoga, swimming, massage, stretching, and
relaxation provided my body and soul everything I needed for coming back from
injury and getting back to training.
First week of January I used for acclimatization to a
climate change, in other words I stayed mostly indoors on a spinning bike. I
had no desire to start running on icy roads in freezing temperatures but then I
realized that there was fair amount of snow outdoors and discovered that I
could go cross-country skiing. In Stockholm skiing is very different from the
places where you actually have snow but as soon as there’s a few centimeters
snow, classic ski tracks will appear on almost every meadow and golf course
around Stockholm. Conditions are mostly poor and in Northern latitudes no one
would want to destroy his/her skies on that kind of tracks, but here people go
nuts of little snow and those few grassy kilometers of ski tracks get packed in a flash. It is
unbelievable how popular skiing is here and how many enthusiastic skiers there
are despite very limited skiing possibilities. I went along to that movement
and gathered about 100km of double poling in a week on nonexistent ski tracks before
Linné’s annual ski camp in Grönklitt.
Weekend in Grönklitt was very different from skiing in
Stockholm. It offered great tracks for both classic and skating and plenty of
snow. Skiing there was pure pleasure, despite my somewhat rusted skiing and
waxing skills. Classic racing skies that I remember working perfectly fine for me
five years ago suddenly seemed too stiff and I just lacked technique to get a
good grip on them. It meant only that I had to work harder. But the good news is
that I got much better training. Training something that your body is less used
to do makes you work harder than when you train something that you are used
to do on a daily basis. What a wonderful feeling it was to sense soreness in every muscle
after the last training there! Feels good to be back on track and able to train
again!
Adios winter, time to move back to summer!
Adios winter, time to move back to summer!
 |
| Hot therapy at its best, Beyond Resort, Khao Lak |
 |
| Magical moonlight run before sunrise |
 |
| Sunrise in Orsa Grönklitt |
 |
| Cold therapy at its best, Orsa Grönklitt |
