House of Pain

Last night I had a quick workout on the elliptical machine and then headed over to Bella Sante for my massage. I don't get massages on a regular basis; usually just when I have a gift certificate I get the basic Swedish one because it's the cheapest. This time I decided to pony up the extra $5 and got the deep tissue massage, which is described as: "A deep pressure version of our award-winning Spa Massage works to fully relax the muscles and relieve muscular tension." I've been feeling a lot of tension in my back and shoulders, so I thought, Bring it on. Prior to getting started, my masseuse told me just to speak up if he was "killing me." In college, my karate sensei usually would demonstrate self-defense techniques on me because I could handle the pain, so I wasn't worried... 20 minutes into the massage, Darryn had my neck, back and shoulders loose as a goose, and then he moved onto my calves. Apparently they were a lot tighter than my back muscles, because any relaxation I felt quickly melted into searing pain as he worked through the knots. I tried to be a trooper about it, but I realized at one point I was biting the cushion that surrounds your head when you're on the massage table. Poor Darryn got the message when he was massaging my left calf and my right leg started kicking up and down in agony. He gave me some pointers on stretching and lo and behold, today I feel a lot better. Overall, it was sort of the emotional equivalent to getting a [insert body part here] wax. You don't want to do it, you know it's going to hurt, but afterwards you're happy you didn't wuss out.

Tonight are quarter mile repeats.