Alameda Runners – Get After It!

It’s likely you watched some (or all) of the Tour of California cycling coverage on Versus, but didn’t bother visiting the official Amgen Tour of California website.  It’s understandable if you never thought to visit the site, especially with the commentators being so great at updating us viewers with information.

UnitedHealthcare, which had a strong presence during the race with Rory Sutherland and Marc De Maar constantly in the mix, also offered 12 healthy tips for visitors to the ToC site.

Here’s an introduction to the UnitedHealthcare tips:

Adopting healthy habits in your lifestyle may not always be easy, but we’re here to help. That’s where these tips come in, to give you inspiration and to provide you with some of the basics for healthy living, including important information about health and wellness, exercise, fitness and nutrition. And we gladly support your efforts to reach your health goals by providing tips that can help you live a healthier lifestyle.

Most of the tips are nothing new for athletes, but you’ll find various health tips related to “health and wellness” and “exercise and fitness.”  Even if the tips are fairly basic, you may still pick up some useful tidbits of information.

I am not a big fan of the hot-cold gels.  There is something about putting a chemical on my legs to make them burn that just seems wrong.  The stuff works so I don’t care if it seems wrong.

Biofreeze comes to me with a high recommendation from Dr.  Nejad (chiropractor).  He uses it on my overused muscles all of the time.  He explained how muscles knot up from overuse and how to help speed recovery by massage and the gels.  My younger son has the touch to find the knots and massage them out.

As we get older, our bodies don’t recover from the abuse as well as they did when we were younger.  It helps to do everything we can to help speed recovery.

A massage (more of a rub) on the knots using Biofreeze as a lubricant helps a lot.  The Biofreeze goes on warm and then gets cold when the massaging stops.  For me it gets so cold that I put on sweats after the session.  My legs were sore from the accumulation of this week’s runs.  I was in pain until I got my massage.  Now my legs are just cold and my sinuses are clear from the menthol smell.

I find the sore spot myself, so it can help figure out how to make it feel better.   The person who massages me will apply the gel and find the knots by my reaction to the pain.  After a little while, novice massage people can find knots by looking at the muscles and by feel.  The better your conscripts get at massaging, the better you will feel.  The instructions say “massage not necessary” but it sure does help.  Massages are a bit expensive.  If you don’t want to pay for a massage, get a tube of Biofreeze and a conscript.  Your legs will thank you.

Editor’s Note:  There are different types of Biofreeze products available… we’ll have some things cooking in the next couple of weeks.