I love my health insurance

April 1st I improved my health insurance situation by receiving benefits thru my employer, better than what I had. I've had some nagging physical issues in regard to my body and riding, musculature issues, specifically my lower right back and hip get so tight it hurts, especially after a ride and my lower back can hurt during a ride too if it's rigorous enough. I wasn't sure what this was all about but just dealt with it as part of the deal, I'm not getting any younger, right? I've been doing stretches, etc to help but it only feels good at the time and doesn't help long term. So I used my lovely health insurance and headed over to The Boulder Center for Sports Medicine to get evaluated and I'm so glad I did. For a very affordable $25.00 copay the nice doctor looked at my shoulder that I injured in March and he gave me strengthening exercises and elastic bands for that and he did one x-ray of my pelvis area to check things out after examining me. Turns out my right leg is 11mm shorter than my left, 17mm if you measure from the top of the pelvis, apparently anything over 6mm is considered significant and can over time impact your body in a negative way, like lower back and hip discomfort. So to make a long story short and I so wish I had a image of my xray to post here, we're going to use my health insurance to correct things.

• I will begin some physical therapy to correct the damage that has already occured and strengthen the effected area.

• I will get a fancy little shim to put in my shoe

• And best of all I will get a professional medical bike fit so that I'm not compensating with my right leg as much and I can find out if the fit and geometry of my BLT is good for my body type and going forward what type of frame and geometry would work best. All for a affordable $25.00 copay, how sweet is that since the bike fit alone is close to $600.00 if they use their imaging machines. Yahoo!

So needless to say I'm pretty stoked to have figured this out and that I can do something about it and not go broke in the meantime. On another positive note Craig and I are heading to Salida area this evening for a long weekend of riding, camping and some fly fishing for Craig. We're bringing the dogs and meeting some friends out there and it's gonna kick ass! The weather has turned lovely as well and everything is super green right now, maybe we'll even take a dip in the Cottonwood Hot Springs. Time to get a little dirty!

Tributary to Arkansas River with Collegiate Peaks in the distance