A pain in the neck!

Every year at the beginning of cycling season, I spend a couple of weeks with a sore neck and frequent trips to the chiropractor (actually, the chiro thing just started this year). Today's ride has really messed up my neck. How do I know that my neck is messed up? There is one sure-fire way of knowing that my neck is sore: headaches. I'm not usually a person that takes painkillers, but when it comes to neck-related headaches, I don't really see the point in prolonging the pain. I've been stretching and trying to relax my neck muscles, but the headache is persisting and making my evening and football team's victory seem sub-par. The problem is that it isn't just the muscles, it's the "junk" in the neck that gets inflamed when I spend an extended period of time in my aero-bars, ie. on any ride over 15 minutes. So tonight I'll be babying my neck and trying to stay away from bright lights and loud music, which shouldn't be too hard to avoid on a Sunday night. I'll be seeing my chiro on Tuesday [he doesn't work on Mondays].