2022 Season is Over

Well actually, the season was over after that last race in August. Since then, I have been in a whirlwind of work and babying assorted injuries. Wrapped up some big work projects last Wednesday night, just in time for…

… Meniscus repair surgery early Thursday morning! Yay, finally. 3 days later and recovery seems to be going well. This morning I’m able to walk around without crutches without limping. That feels good.

The work stuff the last few months was bonkers. Too much to do and too soon led to too many hours at the desk and pretty quickly the demise of any attempts at training :-(. I am so very glad that those projects are wrapped up. Feels like I’m crawling out of a loooooong dark tunnel to see some sun light. Of course, there are many new projects waiting in the wings to start, but hopefully they can be managed a bit more rationally.

It also seems that the stress/tension at work and too much sitting at the desk irritated some old crash injuries and flared up issues with my right arm & shoulder. Some MRI work shows rotator cuff tears and a partial bicep tendon tear, but I had been living with those for three years with little issue — until the end of August when things really started flaring up. Some PT and more intentional stretching appear to have calmed that down for now, so fingers crossed. I did end up having my neck MRI’d (a true horror if you are claustrophobic!) and have follow up on that next month. Initial findings seem to point back to that bike crash a couple years ago, but hopefully nothing too crazy needs to happen.

Normally this is where I’d post some Strava links with all the thousands of miles I logged racing and training this year. Not this year though; the running was too sporadic and limited by leg and knee issues and I stopped swimming in July to take a break so… barely over 2200 miles total. More than I expected, to be honest.

I was going to say this was a year I’m not proud of, but that’s not true. I actually had some great accomplishments and finishes. But I will say this is a year I would prefer not to ever repeat.

2023 plans? Nothing too serious yet, I first want to make sure the knee rehabs well (I have no reason to expect it not to) before I start registering for events. Think I will mostly focus on gravel bike events. Definitely want another go at Gravel Worlds. Maybe an aquabike race or two. Also toying with setting some goals around Colorado Trail hiking just to try something completely new. Not racing, but definitely a big challenge!