I have just returned home from a fabulous massage from sports massage therapist Nancy Gillooly. I've mentioned Nancy here before as we often train together and Nancy has been a great friend and resource to me as I've gotten involved in traithlon. She has also been a constant voice of encouragement to me as I've progressed through the distances. Anyway... as I have a great relationship with another massage therapist that I met and started using before Nancy I had never actually been to see Nancy professionaly for a sports massage. After some rest from the Goofy Challenge I decided it was time to go see Nancy and see what she could do to loosen my hamstring and calves up which are still quite tight and tender almost four weeks after the race now.
Nancy's based in an office building on the east side of providence in an office shared by several massage therapists. Theres a nice waiting room and Nancy has a great office with plenty of natural light and an extremely comfy heated massage table. I asked Nancy to focus on my legs for the entire session as they have been the source of all my troubles. As always with a great massage the time passed way too quickly! I was a little surprised by just how tender my calves still are. Definitely cause for some regular yoga, stretching, and massage as I progress through my Ironman training.
At the end of the session I left feeling like I'm turning the page on this chapter of time off and about to get serious about training again starting next week. My legs feel a bit tender as they always do post massage but I know that they are going to feel much better tomorrow. I'll definitely be going back to see Nancy in the future and I'd definitely recommend that if you are local to New England that you do too! Nancy is herself a gifted athlete and specializes in working with athletes. So she's not going to give you on of those fruity zen music in the background useless zero pressure massages. (although I think she does offer several different types of massage therapy).
Simply put... I shouldn't have put this off as long as I did post Goofy challenge. Great massage... I think I definitely need to factor some degree of regular massage going forwards with my training plan. I'll certainly be the better for it! I think I'll do much better as well if I do it proactively instead of waiting for everything to get all tight and messed up, I'll try and go well ahead of that time as yet another tool towards staying injury free in 2011!
No comments:
Post a Comment