One of my biggest fears on this Journey is the dreaded overuse injury. Which is why I take extra precaution to slowly build my training volume, for running in particular. It is the reason why, though my legs easily could have handled it these last couple weeks, I am still holding in the mid 40 mile per week range instead of 50+. Everything was going wonderful, in fact. As of a couple days ago, I was completely pain free in all the areas that normally hurt during running. My legs were a bit tired from a hard bike ride into the worst wind I've seen outside of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia, but, as always, they were still moving just fine. I had a long run scheduled for the day. And, though I didn't think I would make it 5 miles at first, by mile 10 I was starting to feel revived and strong. However, at mile 13 something was hurting worse than usual in the knee and didn't quite feel right. I shrugged it off at the time. Everything hurts at mile 13. Heck, I'd been struggling through most of the day, what's slightly more joint pain than expected going to do to me? Shortly after, I picked up the pace for the finishing tempo intervals and didn't notice it again until I finished. Ok, so walking on my knee was harder than normal, I'll just ice it down and it'll be good to go tomorrow, like always. Except this time it wasn't. That little worse than normal, little different than normal knee pain, turned out to be bad. Very bad.
How did this happen so fast? So unexpectedly? Could it have been the shoes? Poor form from running tired for so long? The uneven surfaces next to the path I often run on? A combination of these? I don't know. But to be safe, I will be retiring those shoes. Because now it's got me in a situation which could be a full blown injury. I don't know for sure yet. I won't run on it until it's completely healthy. My scale is, if it takes longer than a week, it's an injury. It's been a few days though, and it's only gradually getting better. It's still sore to touch. It still hurts to walk when it's not warmed up. And I still can't run on it. It's likely some form of Runner's Knee. Doesn't matter though. The formula is the same for almost all injuries. RICE. Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. I can still swim. And I can still bike. So that is what I will do. Along with making sure that I don't get discouraged mentally. I expected something like this to happen. I figure it's almost inevitable. The key is to make sure to not let it get you down, and to make sure to fully heal it before running on it again. Easier said than done when running is the base your training revolves around and it is almost all you do. But a very important part of coaching yourself is having the self-control to rest yourself when you need it and for as long as you need it. And I will do that.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Tulsa Weekend
Last Friday, I decided (on a whim, as usual) that the beautiful upcoming weekend would be best spent in Tulsa, where I can see old friends and revisit my favorite running and riding trails at the place where my triathlon adventures started a few years ago. Coming off a big rest week, I expected to have to struggle to reign myself in from doing too much too fast as energy simply burst out of me. I didn't. And it didn't. I didn't really feel any different. And after a good, hard, but fairly normal trail run, I actually felt like maybe I was right back to where I was before the rest week as I took to the road for some additional miles my legs felt as they nearly always did now. Tired. Slow. Slightly lethargic. But still handling 8:00 minute per mile pace with relative ease. So the next day, starting to become sore from the difficult trails, I decided on another hour long trail run. This one quite a bit slower, however, and without the second run. I figured my body had gotten plenty of rest. It was going to respond. I just needed to push through and wake it up again. And so the next day came. Martin Luther King Day. It was a beautiful one. Temps were already nice at 8AM and they looked to stay that way throughout. I had nothing to do this day. Nothing. Except train. It was time to test that theory about pushing through. Forget what I said about doing too much too fast. Today was too nice not to go big. Really, really big.
The morning started off with, again, another trail run at my favorite place in the country to run trails, Turkey Mountain in Tulsa, OK. Yes, I have ran trails all over the country, and though I might agree that some, are probably better for various and differing reasons, Turkey Mountain still holds that special place in my heart for being the place where I discovered how wonderful trail running can be. It doesn't hurt that the constant difficulty and largely varying terrain keep one focused the entire time, and that this weekend I still discovered new trails and areas that I had never before seen. With it's proximity to downtown Tulsa, it truly is a gem to be treasured.
This run, however, I cut quite a bit shorter than the last two for a nice 4 mile loop through my favorite terrain, as I struggled to get my legs warmed up from the soreness already kicking in pretty hard. The plan from there was to pick up my bike from the shop and ride it the rest of the day until I met up with my good friend and training buddy, Paul, for a good 7-8 miles on Riverside (or however much I could handle by that time). Problem was, I came to find my bike shop did not open until noon on Mondays. So how do you kill 2 beautiful winter hours on a big training day? Well I decided some more running and eating would be appropriate and hit up another 5 miles on the road to try and keep my legs loose. It wasn't particularly easy. I had to stick to an 8:30/mile pace to keep my heart rate in recovery mode and by the time I finished, I felt it very likely I would be done by the time I got halfway through my bike ride. I couldn't have been more wrong.
By the time I picked up the bike and got back to the trails, it was looking as though 50 miles was going to be a stretch to get done by the time I had scheduled for my last run of the day. But I picked out the route and stuck to it, and hit 51 miles with time to spare, riding a good pace the whole way as I cut through the wind and climbed effortlessly up the hills. I was definitely feeling the resting effects of not riding at all the previous week. Surely this would be it, though, and my run was about to be doomed, right? To my pleasant surprise, not at all. The bike ride, somehow having revitalized my legs, seemed to propel my heart rate back to where it should be as we clocked off a 7:30/mile average for an hour with surges thrown in to spice things up. I finished feeling stronger and more energized than when I started the day (though that feeling did not last long...). Not to mention much faster. This day marked my biggest single training day yet at 51 miles biked and 17 miles ran. The rest week did work. It just took some time to realize it. Pushing through was the right call.
The morning started off with, again, another trail run at my favorite place in the country to run trails, Turkey Mountain in Tulsa, OK. Yes, I have ran trails all over the country, and though I might agree that some, are probably better for various and differing reasons, Turkey Mountain still holds that special place in my heart for being the place where I discovered how wonderful trail running can be. It doesn't hurt that the constant difficulty and largely varying terrain keep one focused the entire time, and that this weekend I still discovered new trails and areas that I had never before seen. With it's proximity to downtown Tulsa, it truly is a gem to be treasured.
This run, however, I cut quite a bit shorter than the last two for a nice 4 mile loop through my favorite terrain, as I struggled to get my legs warmed up from the soreness already kicking in pretty hard. The plan from there was to pick up my bike from the shop and ride it the rest of the day until I met up with my good friend and training buddy, Paul, for a good 7-8 miles on Riverside (or however much I could handle by that time). Problem was, I came to find my bike shop did not open until noon on Mondays. So how do you kill 2 beautiful winter hours on a big training day? Well I decided some more running and eating would be appropriate and hit up another 5 miles on the road to try and keep my legs loose. It wasn't particularly easy. I had to stick to an 8:30/mile pace to keep my heart rate in recovery mode and by the time I finished, I felt it very likely I would be done by the time I got halfway through my bike ride. I couldn't have been more wrong.
By the time I picked up the bike and got back to the trails, it was looking as though 50 miles was going to be a stretch to get done by the time I had scheduled for my last run of the day. But I picked out the route and stuck to it, and hit 51 miles with time to spare, riding a good pace the whole way as I cut through the wind and climbed effortlessly up the hills. I was definitely feeling the resting effects of not riding at all the previous week. Surely this would be it, though, and my run was about to be doomed, right? To my pleasant surprise, not at all. The bike ride, somehow having revitalized my legs, seemed to propel my heart rate back to where it should be as we clocked off a 7:30/mile average for an hour with surges thrown in to spice things up. I finished feeling stronger and more energized than when I started the day (though that feeling did not last long...). Not to mention much faster. This day marked my biggest single training day yet at 51 miles biked and 17 miles ran. The rest week did work. It just took some time to realize it. Pushing through was the right call.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Recovery Today
This week has got me thinking a lot about this topic. Particularly since last Saturday when I went out for a good hard ride feeling quite good even, yet, could not seem to pick up the pace like I could with ease a couple weeks ago. And then, after the ride, my legs felt so tired that I couldn't tell if I was in pain or not. Whatever it was, it was extremely uncomfortable. Almost like a fatigue so deep it was in the bones themselves. And I almost felt nauseated when I moved around. All this did not go away when I went for my afternoon run, but it did feel somewhat better after. So I took the next day easy. And the next day as well. Yet, though that day only consisted of a relatively easy swim and an easy run, I again felt the same as Saturday. And to top it off, there were slight symptoms of an illness trying to attack me as well. So I took a good hard look at my recent nutrition to try to find if there was anything I might be missing. An electrolyte imbalance such as low sodium or potassium levels, perhaps? Low iron levels? Or simply fatigue catching up to me. All of these could possibly have been culprits. Though my diet seemed to not be missing any of the important nutrients and electrolytes, so I rested. Took the whole day off. Wasn't an easy thing to do. Even with possible illness symptoms growing, I was still brimming with pent up energy from relatively light workouts the two previous days. But now, with an easy hour long run today, I'm feeling great. And ready to rock tomorrow and build into a big weekend. But I won't. Because this week is a recovery week. And my body already has told me it needed more recovery than I wanted to give it. So I'm going to listen. And give it even more than I think it needs. Because it isn't about going big this weekend. It's about next week. And the week after that. And after that one. And the months and months of bigger and bigger training to come. To put it in perspective, I believe that taking this one day off now accompanied by a few easy and moderately easy days will allow me to go bigger over the next few weeks and keep that all too familiar period of 3 days completely off to recover from illness followed by two weeks of easy workouts to get back to business again.
Recovery
Recovery. It is likely the single most important thing for an aspiring elite endurance athlete. Without it, things get bad. Even ugly. Sometimes very ugly. Promising professional athletes often ravage their bodies in the pursuit of greatness, and seemingly for the ones whose bodies handle it, greatness is achieved. Others, however, become what many refer to as... broken. Either from some recurring injury that refuses to go away or by chronic fatigue so bad that the hard and long workouts required to maintain that elite level of fitness is no longer sustainable. Both of which can take months and even years to recover from, if at all. And at that point it is nearly back to square one, with nearly all of the previous training squandered, because it did not incoporate enough rest.
So if this is so important, how do the ones who succeed get it right? Well almost all have a coach, right there, talking to them every day. These coaches have the knowledge and experience and an outside perspective which proves invaluable in the process of taking an athlete to the elite level and beyond. Many of these coaches have complex formulas based off hundreds of the athletes training sessions with complex gizmos from heart rate monitors to power meters to determine how much and when the all important rest is needed. Some though, seem to just go extremely hard. All the time. As is the case with one particularly high profile coach, who, has produced some of the best endurance athletes the world has seen, along with several ones many consider "broken". But on the other spectrum, is another high profile coach who actually has been incorporating whole days completely off from training, once a week even! And instead of seeing athletes get slower, the results seem to consistently show them getting faster, among being generally healthier and feeling better day to day than they did on previous training with less rest.
I plan to follow the latter philosophy, and am going to try to go as far as I can go, while (almost) always listening to my body and giving it rest when I think it is needed. For many top level endurance athletes, this can sometimes be the most important contribution a coach makes to their training regimen. Simply holding them back when their drive to compete and to win, won't let them do it themselves. I, for one, do not tend to have this problem. Oftentimes, I likely back off too early to prevent injury, illness, or overtraining. Without a coach to tell me when to back off and when to go, I am forced to really listen hard to how I feel and to be able to discern when something is not right and when I'm just trying to be lazy. The result of this is that it could likely take much longer for me to achieve the fitness gains that I need for my goals. However, the goal of this journey is not to see what an elite coach can do for an ordinary athelete. It is to see what an ordinary athlete can do for himself, given adequate time and resources. So as long as I continue to steadily improve, as I have since I started endurance training over 2 years ago, I will continue to go uncoached and to err on the side of caution when it comes to possible injury, illness, or overtraining and give my body more of that all important recovery than it likely needs. At least, until that time comes when I am no longer steadily improving.
So if this is so important, how do the ones who succeed get it right? Well almost all have a coach, right there, talking to them every day. These coaches have the knowledge and experience and an outside perspective which proves invaluable in the process of taking an athlete to the elite level and beyond. Many of these coaches have complex formulas based off hundreds of the athletes training sessions with complex gizmos from heart rate monitors to power meters to determine how much and when the all important rest is needed. Some though, seem to just go extremely hard. All the time. As is the case with one particularly high profile coach, who, has produced some of the best endurance athletes the world has seen, along with several ones many consider "broken". But on the other spectrum, is another high profile coach who actually has been incorporating whole days completely off from training, once a week even! And instead of seeing athletes get slower, the results seem to consistently show them getting faster, among being generally healthier and feeling better day to day than they did on previous training with less rest.
I plan to follow the latter philosophy, and am going to try to go as far as I can go, while (almost) always listening to my body and giving it rest when I think it is needed. For many top level endurance athletes, this can sometimes be the most important contribution a coach makes to their training regimen. Simply holding them back when their drive to compete and to win, won't let them do it themselves. I, for one, do not tend to have this problem. Oftentimes, I likely back off too early to prevent injury, illness, or overtraining. Without a coach to tell me when to back off and when to go, I am forced to really listen hard to how I feel and to be able to discern when something is not right and when I'm just trying to be lazy. The result of this is that it could likely take much longer for me to achieve the fitness gains that I need for my goals. However, the goal of this journey is not to see what an elite coach can do for an ordinary athelete. It is to see what an ordinary athlete can do for himself, given adequate time and resources. So as long as I continue to steadily improve, as I have since I started endurance training over 2 years ago, I will continue to go uncoached and to err on the side of caution when it comes to possible injury, illness, or overtraining and give my body more of that all important recovery than it likely needs. At least, until that time comes when I am no longer steadily improving.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Ringing in the New Year
Staying up all night, dancing in dress shoes and then walking back to your car a few neighborhoods away isn't the best way to celebrate the New Year if you plan on letting your body recover enough for good training the next day. But it sure was a heck of a lot of fun and a rare chance to hang out with my sister and get to know her. Oddly enough, I'm pretty certain it was the dress shoes that got me. I was up early enough and running just fine New Years Day, but the left achilles wasn't having any of it. It had gone from semi-OK to bad after the long night. Bad enough that I didn't even want to bike on it. But I figured not a big deal, this will become the second rest day that I needed as I had only ran 5 miles the day before. The next day would be big and back on schedule. But as soon as I got to laying around and resting it, the mental fatigue of solo training seemed to catch up with me and I could barely get off the couch all the way through the next day as well, despite being plenty healthy and rested in actuality. Which, at this time and place in my training, is likely a good thing and will only end up helping. However, at some point and at some times, I am going to need to push through the mental and physical fatigue that, when it catches up to me at the right moment, lays me out for whole days at a time by destroying motivation even after I am physically ready to go again. And that has caused me to realize that I likely won't be able to do this alone. I am going to need to find others to train with on a consistent basis in the future. People to keep me accountable to my training and to keep the mental fatigue of solo training at bay. I am going to need to find a team. Or the closest thing to it. To see the amazing effects that a team can have on a person, one only needs to look to superstar runner Desi Davila and what the Brooks-Hanson running team has done for her (http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/microsite/article/0,8029,s6-239-569--14169-0,00.html). I am not sure yet where I will be able to find this team or group of people to train with, but for now, my goal is simply to build up my body to be strong enough to have a chance of keeping up. And in the meantime, I am allowing myself to falter, if only ever so often, if that's what it is going to take, to keep me going in the longterm. So today, with less than 15 run miles over the past four days, it's time to bring the long run back in and match that. With a nice swim to cool down. Yes, for now I will have to settle for simply being disgusted with laziness to bring my motivation back when the joys of training itself aren't doing it. But I have a good feeling that once I get through smoking today's workout, it'll be there again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)