The battle continues...
Lately I feel like I'm making a bit of ground. Emphasis on bit. I'm laying off the MTB for now and lately I've really been trying to avoid pronation and supination (rotational wrist movements) as much as possible. Lately it seems like that is causing me 80-90% of my pain and avoiding it and making modifications to my day to day dealings at work and at home seems to be working.
I met with my ortho this morning and he is still pretty hell bent on me having inflammatory arthritis and RA specifically. He was ready to refer me to a rheumatologist and put me on steroids but I told him to chill out and that I wanted to try PT and continue with pain management and activity modification first to see how far I could get. So I've got a referral to an upper extremity specialist and I start in just under two weeks. I'm hoping they are so booked because they are really good.
As part of this process I also made a few purchases this week to change up my riding position a bit on some of my bikes. Shorter stems for my road/cx and MTB to bring the bars in and put a bit more weight back and off my hands. Gel pads for under the bar tape and some road gloves full of gel as well (SO MUCH GEL). Also got some riser bars for the MTB to bring the hands up and back even more. I'm also going to try double wrapping my MTB bars in padded gel bar tape instead of grips to see how that works.
I have high hopes for the PT. I'm trying to be optimistic but I really do think that I could get to a much better place if I was doing the right stretches and strengthening exercises regularly. I'm hoping that between a stronger joint and some ride position modifications I can at least ride pain free if not quite as intensely as I'm used to. I think I can eventually let go of the drive to become a faster racer/rider. What I really need at this point is to be able to ride (on and off road) and not be completely wrecked in the following days.
But seriously, who wants to ride some Gran Fondos? June 14th. VT. Be there.
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