My First Ice Bath

This morning after our run, Marisa had some homework for us.

"Everyone go home and ice," she instructed. "I don't care if nothing hurts. Pick an area and ice it. It helps."

Ice is the miracle cure. I've iced before with success (see the infamous "ass peas" incident) but have never taken an ice-bath. Since nothing in particular was hurting me after this run, I decided to literally take the plunge and ice everything.

I arrived home and found Blair. "I need your help," I said. "I want to take an ice-bath."

"Do you need me to get you some ice?" he asked.

"No, I'm thinking I'll more likely need you to hold me down and force me to stay in it."

He declined to help (coward), so I was on my own. We have a claw-foot cast-iron tub that I filled 1/4 full with cold water. Only the water wasn't super cold--probably closer to room temperature. But it dropped a few degrees when I added a bucketful of ice.

I put my feet in the water and sucked in air. Cold. When I knealt in the water, I actually screamed. And kept screaming as I lowered myself to sit in the tub. It took a full minute of deep breathing before I could ease my shoulder blades to rest against the back of the tub. Blair sat downstairs ignoring the yelps coming from the upstairs bathroom. 

Once I was "in" it wasn't so bad. I managed to stay in for about 6-8 minutes and soak my legs and lower back. Did it do any good? Who knows. I probably didn't stay in long enough for it to have any affect.

On the bright side, we did 17 miles today and my back didn't hurt once! I attribute this to my ab work, but Blair wants it noted that another variable in my routine is the dinner he fixed last night and perhaps it was his "magic spaghetti" that did the trick.

Sure, honey. Whatever works.