Listen to your body.

One thing I feel like I've gotten pretty good about over the past three years is figuring out when to rest, take time off, or otherwise just chill out a bit. Some would call that lazy - Merrill - but seeing as Crossfit can be a bit of a beatdown, it's good to back off occasionally and not just blindly stick to the protocol.

All of which is to say I really hope our little CFE v. Old School experiment isn't coming to an end much faster than anticipated, because I'm fairly sure I've got an onset of a sports hernia. Or as sure as you can possibly be without seeing a doctor, and because sports hernias are apparently just about impossible to diagnose without surgery. Excellent.

I've written a bit about some groin pain and otherwise being fairly sore the past couple weeks, so let's take a look at the potential symptoms:


-Pain in the groin, lower abdomen, or testicles (in males)
-Pain that usually affects just one side of the groin area
-Severe pain when accelerating, twisting, turning, lifting, coughing, or sneezing
-Groin or lower abdomen pain that persists for weeks or months
-Gradual onset of symptoms in runners

So yeah, I've pretty much got all of those except the testicle thing (woo hoo), and I wouldn't necessarily call it "severe," although after yesterday's run, I had to pop some Advil, which I rarely do.

And just for a kicker, "Because of the nature of their sports, hockey, soccer and tennis players are at highest risk..." This first came about after my soccer game a couple weeks back, and while it seems these are typically overuse injuries, versus acute, the soccer could have exacerbated things.

For some family history, I actually had surgery years ago for the more standard inguinal hernia, and apparently my grandfather regularly suffered from hernias.

My plan for now is to rest from everything until this weekend. Last week when I took two days off, I felt like a new man, but it came back hard after yesterday's run. And then I need to compete in another birthday WOD - unfortunately involving running and deadlifting which should set back any hernial progress I've made. Pain is temporary, pride is forever, right?

And I'll ice down the peep area regularly, as recommended. We'll see what happens, hopefully this is just a weird one-off thing and I can get back to it soon.

Merrill, maybe this is your opportunity to get your calf better too, since I'm resting anyway?