Ah, so the fourth day in a row of back-end insomnia produces results. Awesome. Or not. The fatigue and distraction creeps in. Things just not seeming or feeling right.

Come to think of it, I did crash big time last night, ending up in a 20 minute nap and then being fine. Felt the same way tonight, too. Nearly shutting down while sitting and then standing up to prevent that, feeling like nearly passing out.

But if a short nap is all it takes to recover, how bad can it be? Questions I'm not qualified to answer.

After last week's inability to get out on bike or to the gym despite nice weather, I've been much better this week and I've been getting to the gym. Cycling to resume shortly into October.

After nursing my right Achilles to strength to prevent injury (after injuring and healing my left Achilles), the left Achilles has started to cause problems again, preventing me from going faster and farther on the treadmill. So I've been going either fast and short, or longer and slower.

It's been a month since that slow-speed bike crash that injured my pinky and it still hurts. Since I'm pretty sure there was no bone fracture nor other serious muscular or tendon damage, I'm thinking the pain is being caused by something related to nerves.

I don't know what that means, except that maybe the nature of the injury displaced a nerve which is being impinged and registering as "pain", even though there's no detriment to strength in the pinky nor aversion to further stress. I can punch a punching bag just fine.

It's similar to a cervical radiculopathy that I was diagnosed with before when I was drumming a lot in San Francisco. A nerve impingement in my upper vertebrae that caused pain in arm movement, but didn't feel like something was damaged. All it did was hurt. That also may be returning with physical activity in the form of weight training. I'm feeling the exact same pain.

I think I may have even posted about it at the time! This blog has been going on so long, I don't even know, but it rings a bell.

Something I don't know if I mentioned before is that I did see a chiropractor in San Francisco for something else – and that I know I blogged about because it was for a spinal injury resulting from riding a bike around Lake Tahoe (70+ miles) on a rented bike that was too big for me. I remember that well. It nearly killed me (not really, but it was really, really hard).

What I don't know if I mentioned is that when that chiropractor got my x-rays back, she asked me if I had been dropped on my head when I was a child. I think I replied that wasn't the first time I'd been asked that question. At least that should have been my answer.

What she meant, she explained, was that my cervical vertebrae (upper back and neck) were worn to the equivalent of someone 15 years or more older than my age at the time. I don't know if I made the connection back then between Dr. Wonson's x-ray and later cervical radiculopathy diagnosis.

But I do feel something in my neck vertebrae now. They crack often when I stretch. It all makes sense. I might want to take things easier.