Run Away Fast

Sally Effin' Forth

2012-01-27T23:09:00.000-08:00

I am happy to report that I am really enjoying my post-Trials recovery. After sitting with the outcome for a while, I am content with all of my decisions and the result. My choice to finish the race and end up DFL was a good one for me. I look at my finisher's medal with pride. It symbolizes a journey that started back in 2006, when I first began to dream about running in the Olympic Trials. I didn't have a choice but to finish the race and fulfill that dream.

For the last 6 years, I have either been training with the intent of qualifying for the Trials or attempting to train for the Trials race. I have not had a break from that. I recognize that this is one of those brief moments in my life, like the window right after graduating from college or being in between jobs, where I have the opportunity to truly rest and reset. I'm taking advantage of this moment. It hasn't been easy to let go of those ingrained reflexes that require me to rate every daily decision based on how it will impact my running life. None of that matters right now. I eat the candy bar my co-worker offers me. I have 1-3 glasses of wine with dinner every night. I do not feel guilty that I didn't do a lick of exercise all week.

I will admit that this process was made easier when I got my post-race instructions from my coach. He didn't advise me on the eating or drinking, but these were his instructions for running for the month starting January 15th:

Week 1: do nothing;
Weeks 2 & 3: jog a little if ready, but not more than 4 miles per day, no cross training;
Week 4: 35 miles per week of jogging if ready, no cross training.

Overall Goals: let my body get out of shape and enjoy the break.

I'm meeting these goals. In fact, you might say I'm exceeding them. I didn't do my first post-Trials run until this morning. This wasn't because I was hurt. I just didn't want to run yet. A year ago, I would not have been able to do this because I would have been too paranoid about allowing myself to get out of shape. It was refreshing to be told to get out of shape. This takes practice and a small leap of faith to trust in the fact that 1) I won't lose my fitness forever; and 2) it will come back relatively quickly.

I spent 17 training cycles worrying about losing fitness every time I completed a marathon. I hated taking any time off and was always anxious to get back at it. I hated the fact that my tempo, marathon and 5k paces had to be dialed back following the race and then I'd have to work on getting my speed back to the same pre-marathon level before being able to get any faster. I always had a voice nagging in the back of my brain telling me that I wouldn't get back to the same level let alone become faster. I ripped out her voice box the other day when I realized that the old approach left me stuck in a continuous training loop that was limiting my potential.

I am in Arizona presently, enjoying some wonderful weather and fantastic hospitality from the Camberg family. Kerry Camberg is an inspiration to me and is someone I would not have met had it not been for our common goal of making it to the Trials. We were both part of Julie Threlkeld's brainchild called Houston Hopefuls. I'm not quite sure that Julie knows how this pet project of hers connected so many of us masters' marathoners across the country. One big regret in Houston was not getting to meet Julie in person. She had to leave the day before the race because of a tragic death in her family.

Aside from getting to visit the Cambergs, I am here in AZ to see Dr. Ball. Before the Trials, my biggest fear was that I would come out the other side of the race injured and unable to run for months. In order to placate my inner worrywart in the weeks before the Trials, I made plans to come to Arizona post race to try to knock out any of the shiznit left in my hizzouse.

Lucky for me, the two treatments that Doc Ball did in Houston left me feeling pretty darn good post race. I actually felt better 3 days after the race than I did as many days before the Trials. I was also fortunate in Houston to meet Doc Ball's friend Tim who designs strength training plans for athletes. I took his card and told him I'd contact him after the race to talk about designing something for me.

Tim works with Doc Ball and his team by first addressing any functional strength issues. Tomorrow, I'll go through a series of strength and flexibility tests to identify my weaknesses and strengths. Tim will develop a strength plan for me, and I'll give him feedback as I implement it. He will also help me figure out when to do the exercises based on my run training plan both within a weekly schedule as well as within my training blocks. Once my functional strength is good, he'll help me develop a strength program to improve my performance. I'm pretty excited about this next phase of my training.

Today, Doc Ball dug in hard and I'm not walking quite right at the moment. He also had me run through a set of exercises designed to maintain/improve my range of motion. As he explained it, our bodies respond to the way we use them. Most runners, myself included, spend the vast majority of their training time running at a pace that utilizes a very limited range of motion. So, our muscles adjust and tighten to that limited range. This generally leads to cemented hip capsules and hamstrings and quads as tight as a tick. This range just gets worse the more we run unless we introduce that full range of motion often enough in our training to maintain or improve it. These exercises are not easy, and I have a feeling that I will resemble Quasimodo in the morning. But, I believe they will work.

I plan to spend the next few weeks jogging around aimlessly in order to find my joy in running again. I have run with pain and fear for so many months that I lost that spark. I started to see it glimmering in my short run today. These next few months will start to lay a strong foundation off which a mighty progression of training will be built and will culminate in.....

Nah. You'll have to wait to hear about that!

My Trials

2012-01-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

That's one big ass medal!

By now, many of you have seen the results for the OlympicTrials Marathon, and you probably saw my name listed next to the slot for the 152^ndfemale finisher. I am proud of the fact that I met my goal ofcrossing both the start and finish lines of that race despite the emotional andphysical costs associated with that accomplishment. However, I will not lie to you and say I am happy with my performance. An entire marathon cycle of mistakes and losttraining played out along that 26.22 mile course yesterday. It took every ounceof focus I had to refrain from succumbing to self pity as my legs became heavyvery early in the race and my undertrained body wasn’t letting me run as fastas my heart wanted to go.

The experience was absolutely bittersweet. I was excited and overwhelmed to be part of thisprestigious event and to share that experience with friends and family. I had to pinch myselfwhen I saw elite runners like Ryan Hall, Desi Davila, Magda Lewy-Boulet, DeenaKastor and Shalane Flanagan in the same meetings and warming up in the samestarting corral as me. I felt like I hada ridiculous grin on my face walking around the Hilton and Convention CenterFriday and Saturday. At the same time, Iwas running this race having just four weeks of good marathon training out of the last 16, and all of those were in October and November. My legs both hurt and weren’t working theday that I left for Houston. I knew thebest I could hope for was to try to manage the pain from my injury and try torun a pace that would keep me from further damaging my body.

The Pre-race Crazies

I was very excited to have my family and The Genius inHouston to experience the race with me. My Mom is my number one marathon travel buddy, having been to six of myprevious marathon races to watch me run including my qualifying race in Chicago2010. My sister came for her firstmarathon spectating experience and has been my number one fan, though my Mom might argue with that. My brother and my sister-in-law have always given me tremendous support, and I was excited that they made thetrip as well. My family and The Geniusknew what I had gone through these past few months and were understandably tentativeabout the trip until late December. This was especially the case after I sent them a picture fromthe hospital of my full-leg cast in an email with the subject line:“Houston, we have a problem.”

Friday night, my brothertold me that he remembered several years ago when I first mentioned my goal ofrunning in the Trials. Hesaid he nodded and smiled at the time, but thought it was a bit of astretch. He said, “and now, here weare.” My family assured me that, nomatter what happened the next day in the race, they couldn’t be more proud ofme.

In addition to a fab support crew, I was also extremely luckythat Dr. Ball was in Houston and available to treat me on Thursday and Friday. He had numerous athletes to treat, and I was extremely grateful to get some of his time. I had two main issues on Thursday. The first was that horrible pain in my shinthat caused me to limp along for the first 2-4 miles of every run but loosenedup later in the run as long as I didn’t stop. The other problem was a right leg that wouldn’t work. My test for this was hopping up and down onone leg. I couldn’t get lift off from my right leg at all. I had pain low in my hip, but pain wasn’treally the concern. I suspected whatever was causing my hip pain was keeping my leg from working. If I couldn’t push off with myright leg, all kinds of bad compensations followed as well as majorinefficiencies that meant I couldn’t run very fast for very long.

After some screening tests from Dr. Ball, he was ready tostart working on me. He stopped at thatpoint and told me that we needed to be clear that what he was doing was notgoing to help me magically run a 2:40 marathon. At best, he was patching the boat so I could stay afloat through thefinish, hopefully with minimal pain. Hewanted me to acknowledge that I understood going out fast would likely lead toan epic failure and possibly unnecessary damage. I explained that I wanted to finish and thatI would run whatever pace allowed me to do that with the least amount of painand lasting damage. In short, I had tocheck my ego in the start corral and accept the fact that I was going to be atthe back of the pack.

Dr. Ball treated my gluteal area and had me do testruns in between tweaks to check for progress. By the end of the night, my test runs felt better,and he sent me away with instruction to return the next day for moretreatment. I was a bit surprised bythis, but acknowledged that he was the doctor. The Genius and I got back to the hotel room around midnight and orderedroom service for dinner. We got to bedaround 1 a.m. So much for getting a goodnight’s sleep two nights before the race.

These were Effin' easy to see.

The next day was full of tasks that included registration,water bottle decoration, athlete meetings, uniform check and other pre-racepreparations. This stuff was reallyfun. It definitely helped get me into themarathon mindset. Up to that point, Ithadn’t really registered that I was running a marathon on Saturday. This race had been tentative in my mind forso long, that I just couldn’t bring myself to believe that I would actually bein Houston getting ready to run the race until it was happening.

I was excited that my friend Kerry was in town towatch the race and that she was able to join me and my family for dinner Fridaynight. We had a great time chattingabout running. She is an inspiration to me,and I felt supercharged after our conversation. I still needed to see Dr. Ball at that point, but the logistics were amess. His hotel was pretty far out oftown, and he had limited time to see me.

I was trying to find a cab to get to his hotel when thebellman told me that the hotel shuttle could take us there. I questioned this since it was so far out oftown, but he assured me that the shuttle could go there. We got in the shuttle and suffered throughtraffic to drop off another couple headed to the theater. Soon after dropping them off, we started toslow in front of a hotel. The Geniusquickly realized that he misunderstood which hotel we were going to and thenthe shuttle driver told us that he wasn’t allowed to take us where we needed togo. 45 minutes wasted! He dumped us off at a McDonald’s,where we found a cab to take us to Dr. Ball’s hotel.

I was frantic. It wasnow 8:00, and I was anxious that I wasn’t going to get to see Dr. Ball. Luckily for me, he was still able to work onme that night. I’m convinced that second treatment was the key to my being ableto finish the race the next day. Heworked on the hip more but also worked on a tendon in my shin--a big source of my pain. When I told himthat my arch was hurting during my test run, he pressed on the place where thetendon attaches to the foot, and I jumped off the table. He said, “Looks like we’re going to need sometape.”

He pulled out his supplies and called The Genius over towatch as he did a mock up tape job of my arch and shin that he would need to replicate race morning. He gave me the supplies I needed and sent meon my way. We got back to the hotelaround 9:30 or 10:00 and I was feeling pretty stressed out. I made my final preparations for the race, got horizontal and tried to sleep. Ididn’t do much of that. My mother becamea lumberjack in the middle of the night and sawed logs all night long. The Genius either caught a nasty virus or atesomething bad and was up all night losing his stomach contents. It was quite a party in the Marty suite.

Race Day

My 5:30 alarm came quickly, and I hopped out of bed to getready. I put on my racing costume, foraged for food down at thebreakfast buffet, painted blue stripes in my hair and got all of my race geartogether by 6:30. The Genius replicated the tape job Dr. Ball showed him the night before, and it actually really helped with the arch and shin pain. I tried hopping around a bit and the right leg was working.

Those Crazy Impalas!

As Iwalked into the athlete gathering area in the Convention Center, I finallystarted to feel the race day excitement. Everyone was busy pinning on numbers, listening to their theme songs, and slathering on Body Glide. I met up with many of my Impala Racing Teammates and our Coach Tony Coffey. We sataround taking pictures, smiling and laughing a lot. Before I knew it, we were being called to thestart, and we headed down the stairs to the starting corrals. We were allowed to run around a bit to warmup, and elite runners were zooming by me left and right. It was all a little surreal. I stood at attention as the National Anthemwas sung and heard the gun go off for the men’s race. We had to wait for the men to clear the first2.2 mile loop of the course before we could start. That happened right on schedule, and we weresuddenly headed to the start line. Iglanced over my left shoulder and saw my Mom and Sister standing on thesidelines holding up my now beautiful bi-valve cast, painstakingly decorated by my sister thenight before. It made me smile.

Jill decorates the cast.

Minutes before the start, I started frantically looking around for my race buddy,Susan Loken. Susan had also suffered frominjuries that kept her from being able to train the last couple of months. We also shared the same goal of getting across that finish line come hell or highwater. We were blessed to have RuthPerkins running with us. Ruth has asacral stress fracture that is healing but isn’t fully baked yet. She wanted to run as much of the race aspossible but knew she’d likely have to stop at some point. She wanted to enjoy every minute that she wasout there running.

The gun indicating the start of the women's race went off and the pack charged forward. Ruth, Susan and I were at the back of thepack immediately. By the time, wecrossed the finish line the first time, our pack was clearly established. We would run together for the first half ofthe race, lose Ruth and then Susan and I would stay together more or lessuntil mile 23 where I started to fall behind her.

The three amigos-me, Susan and Ruth.

I felt absolutely blessed to be running with these two womenfor as long as I did. Ruth wasinfectiously positive and her enthusiasm for 1) being able to run at all, and 2)running in the Olympic Trials was viral. The crowd loved her arm waving and wide grin. I appreciated the electricity she was givingoff because I was hurting within the first two miles. Susan kept us going, reminding us to bepositive. Ruth kept yelling to the crowd that injury wouldn’t stop us. She would yell, “We are running in theOlympic Trials!!!!” It was awesome.

I so needed this energy around me. I felt like Debbie Downer. I was not feeling good from the start, and myinstinct is to turn inward and focus my energy on gutting it out. As much as I could, I tried to free my mindup and relax so I could take in the moment I was experiencing. Susan and Ruth kept snapping me back to the wonderful reality of how incredible this experience was.

The crowd support was ridiculous. We couldn’t see the rest of the runners afterabout 2 miles, so we were alone. After a bit, Ruth asked someone on the sidelines ifwe were winning. That visual helped melater in the race. I started to pretendthat we were the lead pack as the miles got tougher. Ruth was a ball of energy and Susan was ametronome with her pace keeping. Thefans cheered us on, calling us the three amigos as we ran by. Around mile 5 or 6, I promised Susan and Ruththat I would write a rap song about our experience.

As we rounded the corner to complete the first 8 mile loop,Ruth informed us that she would be needing to drop around 10 miles. She said that she wasn’t feeling horrible,but she wanted to be smart. We passedthrough the finish line the second time and spontaneously sped up from theelectricity being generated by the crowds screaming our names and urging us on. Ruth decided to stick with us longer sayingthat she wasn’t feeling any worse and thought she had more in her. So, we kept chugging along.

Around our mile 12 or 13, we heard cars coming up frombehind, and we knew the lead pack of men was gaining on us. We tried to clear a path to allow them to cut thetangents on the course. The next thing I knew, Ryan Hall was brushing my shoulder as he, Meb and Abdi sped past at break-neck pace. Ritz followed a few minutes later but wasclearly still in the hunt. I could notstop smiling after that close encounter. How awesome was it to see the race in progress from the perspective of a runnerin the race? The rest of that lap, wecontinued to try to reserve the tangent for the other men who were passing usas they completed their final loop.

Susan and I lost Ruth around the half point and continued to soldier on. I was clearlyhurting and was just trying to keep up with Susan for the second half. She would get ahead and call back to me to bestrong. I would put in a little moreeffort and catch up, feeling my muscles congeal just a little more with eachstep. More than anything, I was feelingthe lack of training in my body. Iactually had very little real pain for the first 20 miles or so—none in my shinor my hip. Mostly, I was just suckingwind.

I hit my lowest point in the race when I began thinkingabout missed opportunities for cross training and strength work that might haveleft me in better shape for this race. Ihad to admit to myself that I had given up on my training over a monthago. I was only able to run 11 out of the last 35 days, mostly in pain, but I could have come into the race fitter had I cross trained when I couldn't run. Never mind the cast I had on my leg, and the week that I couldn't walk. Maybe I should have used the hand cycle. At that low point, I told myself I had become defeated in the face of setbacks, and I was embarrassed aboutthat. These were the moments that Iwanted to quit the race. I felt like Ihadn’t given everything in my training and here I was in last place in theOlympic Trials, exposing my laziness to everyone watching.

Good thing I’m not a quitter. A friend of mine told me that he knew I would cross that finish lineeven if I had a bone sticking out of my leg. I will be the first to admit that I have a healthy ego, but quitting topreserve that ego was absolutely unacceptable. So, I charged on. Susan and Ipassed through the finish line a third time, and a huge grin stretched across my face and I started to cry watchingthe men’s Olympic Team celebrating their accomplishment wrapped in an AmericanFlag. Then I heard the crowd yelling, “goJaymee and Susan,” and that put the spring back inmy step.

By far, the most emotionally difficult part of the race wasthe final 8-mile loop. By this time,Susan and I were a good 4-5 minutes behind anyone else and the spectators hadstarted to disperse. Thank goodness forthe ones that remained to cheer us on. Susan became even more critical to my race at this point as she pulledahead, and I tried to hang on. As longas I saw her ahead of me, I had something to aim for. The crowd kept telling me to stay strong andreminded me that I was in the Olympic Trials. They said I was their hero and that I inspired them. I believed every word of it.

My right hip flexors started to grumble around mile 15 andby mile 20, it was painful to lift my right knee to propel my leg forward. I think sheer force of will and momentum musthave kept me going those last few miles. By mile 23, I was worried about making it to the finish. I slowed more to see if I could get some ofthe pain in the right leg to diminish and that worked. Both of my legs were like cement blocks fromsheer muscle fatigue, since I hadn’t run longer than 18 miles in 6weeks. By mile 24, however, I knew I wouldmake it to the finish.

I was in last place at this point and had the rest of thecourse to myself. I would get there whenI got there, and I was going to finally let myself enjoy the final moments ofthis amazing experience. The dedicated crowdscontinued to cheer for me and told me to be strong. I waved and pumped my fists and smiled atthem to let them know I was not defeated. I was proud to be on the streets of Houston, nearing the finish line ofthe most memorable race of my life. Istarted to connect with the spectators’ faces around me and began to hear the shoutsfrom friends and family who had nervously awaited my arrival, wondering whetherI was still out there on the course.

I heard mad screams from my family as I turned the corner to cross the finish line for the 4^th and final time. I heard someone yell, “Yo Houston.” I laughed and repeated it as I crossed the line. I was immediately wrapped in the arms of my race sister, Susan who told me she couldn’t have gotten through the race without me. My eyes welled up with tears as I told her how important she had been to me. We made our way through a gauntlet of race officials and escalators and finally, somewhat unceremoniously, were handed our finisher's medals. I have never been one who cares much at all about medals, but this one, I wanted more than anything on this earth.

Major big hugs!

So happy!

Susan and I donned our medals and smiled from ear to ear looking ateach other just slightly surprised by what we had been through. What an amazing experience. Susan told me this race bonded us forlife. Yes, indeed it did. What a wonderfully amazing ride.

Proud Olympic Marathon Trials Finishers! Thanks for the photos Bill!

Thank you to each and every person who has supported me along this journey whether I've met you in person or know you from the internets. Your support and encouragement has meant the world to me, and I would not be wearing that finisher's medal without it.

Here we go!

2012-01-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

Normally at this point in the training cycle, I would be reminding myself that the hay is in the barn and that I've put in all of the hard work to carry me through the race. That is not true this time around. My body hasn't allowed me to put in any hard work for over a month. Each time I've pushed myself to get in some good miles, I end up barely being able to walk let alone run the next day. This is a new experience for me and one that leaves me pretty anxious about Saturday's race. If my body functions normally, I can pull off a sub-3 hour marathon. But, I can't use my right leg right now and that might be a minor factor influencing how fast/if I can actually run. Rather than continue to torture myself, I've decided to just rest these last few days. I did take a stab at using the Alter-G yesterday, but I was in pain even at 80% of my body weight.

I know that rest alone will not heal my mystery injury, only a good diagnosis and treatment will do that. I do know that running will only exacerbate it. My Hail Mary pass will come when I get to Houston and get a chance to see Dr. Ball one last time before the race. He's worked magic before and hopefully can again. There's nothing he can do about the lack of fitness I have right now, but to be able to run most of the race without pain, and maybe use my right leg for a bit, would be a true gift.

My goal remains to start and finish this race. There are women who will toe the line that are in worse shape than me and many more who won't even make it to the start. I am lucky to even be going to Houston and know that there are women out there that would give their eye teeth to be in my position, bum leg and all! I am blessed and will not forget that.

My sincerest thanks go out to everyone who has supported me along this journey. It has been an amazing ride and I look forward to soaking up the experience in Houston. One thing you can be certain of is that I will do my very best on Saturday.

Yo Houston!

Oly Tees

2012-01-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm on my third taper this training cycle and was thinking I could:

A) throw a tiz fit about the fact that my damn leg still hurts if I run too much
B) rap about my unfortunate situation

The following is the product of that decision (you can also access the video via this link if the the embedded one doesn't work):

Of course, I expect this song to go viral soon on account of my mad rappin' skillz. If you want to add this song to your playlist and send me an email, I'll share the MP3 version with you for free!

Yo Houston!

Must. Have. Plan.

2011-12-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

Get this cool journal and other fun stuff from Believe I Am

I am lost without a running/workout plan. I have a really hard time taking things day by day without some sense of the bigger scheme that it all fits into. I don't have to actually follow the plan. I just need to have one. I think that's one of the things that's been so mentally debilitating about this injury: I want to plan my workouts for the next 3 weeks, but I haven't even known whether I would be walking without crutches the next day.

I ran 6 miles this morning. I had all of my fingers and toes crossed that the acupuncture treatment I had yesterday would help with the pain. It worked! My lower leg did not fall off and didn't even hurt. My hip was still acting up, but that was minor and lessened during the run.

Given how good I felt, I thought it was safe to make myself a plan. Rule 1 for this plan is: I will not go overboard with running mileage. Rule 1 refers to goal 1: crossing both start and finish lines in OT race. I will supplement my running with my Elliptigo this and next week just to keep my muscles strong. I will also continue to get acupuncture treatment as needed. I also made an appointment for a sports massage on Thursday with a not so gentle man that my girlies have been raving about.

If nothing else, I will be the most rested runner going into the Trials race in 3 weeks. That's right, it's only 3 weeks away!

Merry Christmas peeps!

Charlie Foxtrot

2011-12-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

Monday came and went with no call from my HMO to schedule an MRI appointment. I pretty much sat and stared at my phone most of the day, willing it to ring. Tuesday morning was more of the same. Nada. I finally called them. I was told that the request must first go through protocol screening by a radiologist and then they could call me to schedule. She told me there were still appointments available for next week, so I was lucky. Yes, that made me feel really lucky.

Frustrated, I decided to take matters into my own hands and find out where I could get an MRI on the cheap. I found a place close to my house that charges $500 for uninsured patients including the radiologist report and could get me in at 1:45 that day, no doctor's referral needed. Music to my ears.

I asked to listen to Mumford and Sons on the headphones they gave me, though I couldn't really hear the music over the loud clunking and thudding going on inside the machine. In about 30 minutes, I was done and received a lovely red rose from the technicians for my troubles. Okay, that was a bit odd, but nice nonetheless. I got a hard copy of my pictures and a CD with a viewing program on it.

Is this a slice of meat for our Christmas dinner or the inside of my right leg?

The next two days were a bit of a blur. I learned to read MRI images thanks to the profusion of information on the internets. From my readings of the images, I had everything from gout to cancer to edema of the periosteum. Oh, and of course I saw a stress fracture somewhere on there too. I thought I had become quite savvy at reading these things and had my diagnosis ready to go waiting for the real doctor to tell me what was wrong. The result that was supposed to come Wednesday afternoon did not. I started to get really impatient. I began worrying more and more, looking at the images in various levels of saturation and contrast to pick out new and unusual features that I hadn't been able to see before. I'm pretty sure I forgot to shower for a couple of days too.

Couple all of this with the fact that I'm doing absolutely no exercise, my leg still hurts to stand on it, and I have taken the entire week off from work. I can't concentrate on anything but this pain in my leg and the consequences of that pain. If it is a stress fracture, should I wear a boot and still line up at the start of the race as some suggest? Wouldn't I feel like a complete idiot hobbling over the starting line only to quit the race in the first few feet? What if I just went for it anyway? I had heard many remarkable stories of people with worse pain than mine showing up at the start line and running completely pain free. Then I recalled the stories of those who didn't heed the warning signs, ran anyway and ended up with a nice full fracture. I didn't want that.

Thursday late afternoon, I finally received the report from the radiologist letting me know that there was nothing remarkable on my images. Nada. Soft tissue was even "unremarkable". I got this news after being fit for a walking cast (thanks Mike!).

I am clear to run. Well, there's the small matter of still having pain in my leg when I walk, but staying off of the leg has reduced that quite a bit. In celebration of the news, I rode my Elliptigo last night in the dark for an hour, pushing my heart rate up into the high 150s. I felt awesome and was so much happier. Exercise is indeed a great mood booster.

I could sit around and bemoan the last week of nothingness and whine about the fitness I've no doubt lost. That's not my style. My body was definitely telling me it needed a break. More than anything, this last week has given my immune system a chance to fight off whatever the hell infection I have going on. I'm 6 days into the antibiotics and just now starting to feel slightly better.

I learned one other thing that I think is worth noting for those of you who push yourselves as hard as I do. I had started regularly measuring my resting heart rate a couple of months ago and keeping record of it. I had never really done this before. It's just so easy to do now that there are iPhone apps available that can take a fairly accurate reading in a matter of seconds. And, they record the number for you too!

I was a little surprised when I started doing this that my heart rate when going to bed was about the same as when I woke in the morning. I was also surprised that my resting heart rate was in the low 50s consistently. I thought it was in the low 40s, but I thought maybe I was mistaken about that.

A couple of days ago, my resting heart rate plummeted: both the nighttime and morning readings and they've stayed there ever since. My resting HR is in the low to mid 40s. It has been elevated for the last 2-3 months. I had dismissed those who say that resting HR is a good measure of overtraining, but I have now learned the lesson for reals. The other lesson learned is that a baseline needs to be established during a time when you're rested and healthy!

What's next for me? Hopefully, I'll be back to running. I plan to start a very long and drawn out taper from here, listening to my body the whole way. Goal 1 is to cross both the start and finish lines at the Olympic Trials. If I can do that in a decent amount of time, then that's icing on the cake. Given the fact that I'm still in a fair amount of pain from this injury, whatever it is, my next few weeks will be about pain management. I'm going in for acupuncture today to see if that relieves it at all. I'm taking Tylenol for the pain and icing as needed. I will attempt to wrap the leg in various ways to see if that helps. And I will keep my fingers crossed that nothing else crops up these next few weeks!

Thanks to everyone who has reached out to me throughout this ordeal. I really appreciate all of the support and well wishes. You have reminded me that it is truly a privilege to be invited to this race. You inspire me to get past these setbacks and run my heart out on January 14th!

Oh, and I finally got that call from Kaiser, my HMO, yesterday afternoon to schedule my MRI. I'll be getting that on January 5th at 10 p.m. Great timing.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

The thin black line

2011-12-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone for all of your support these last few days. I'm sure you can imagine how I'm feeling faced with the thought of having to sit out the biggest race of my life after what happened on Friday. If this whole ordeal weren't so damned funny, I would probably be crying a lot more. I thought I'd update you on how my appointment went this morning. It is a good story.

I was slightly concerned that the orthopedic doc I was seeing this morning might be upset that I had taken the cast off Saturday. Good thing she didn't know I had made it into that fashionable lamp. She didn't seem concerned about that, especially since she had looked at my X-rays and didn't see any evidence of a fracture.

It's a major award.

She said she had read through my history, and she knew I was an athlete. She asked me for the low down on the injury, and I gave her the short version. She started the physical exam by palpating the bone from my ankle up then from the knee down and asked me if I felt any pain. I told her I did when she got to the place where I feel the pain when I stand on the leg. She measured this place with a ruler and told me that she would need an MRI to get more information. Yay!

She then took another look at the X-ray. I squinted at the thing, straining to find the thin line I had seen Friday night. I was perplexed. Had it disappeared? She zoomed in on the image, and then, there it was, that thin black line. I pointed it out (yes, I am an idiot). She said, something about how the ER doctor was pretty perceptive to have found that when both the radiologist and she had not. She then told me we didn't need an MRI, because I had a complete fracture. I was in shock. Really? But it didn't make sense. I argued all of my points about walking around on it, running on Thursday. How could it possibly be a full-on fracture? She explained that stress fractures are different and that they are very subtle on X-rays at first. Once the bone starts to heal then they show up. But, she said this line was a clear fracture. I was stunned and started to feel like she had punched me in the gut. She said I could get a follow up X-ray on Wednesday, because by then we might see some change in the bone as it heals.

I then started to cry. I don't cry much but I started telling her about how I needed to be certain about this because I had reservations to cancel and there were others who were making plans to come see me run. She handed me a tissue and softened a bit. She said that the best she could do was to get an X-ray on Wednesday. Luckily, I kept my wits about me rather than succumb to the sorrow. They had taken 2 X-rays on Friday night from different angles. I said, "Well, wouldn't you think that, if this was a full fracture, that it would show up in the other X-ray view they took on Friday?" She told me this was a good point and zoomed in on that image to the place where the line showed up on the other image. Nothing.

So I proposed that I should get an X-ray today to see whether or not the line showed up. She repeated that it didn't matter because the bone wouldn't have started to heal. She finally got what I was saying when I said, "yes, but assume that it's not a fracture for a minute. If you don't see that line on the film today, then we know that it was an aberration on the image and that it's not a full fracture, right?" The light bulb went on and she said, "You're right. I was stuck on it being a fracture and didn't think of the possibility that it wasn't." She ordered the X-ray.

I sat in the waiting room wondering if I had been a fool to remove the cast and make it into a lamp. I thought I must be some kind of tough beast to run on a grade 4 fracture. The doc sent out an assistant to tell me that the X-ray was negative and that radiology would call me to schedule an MRI. I don't know if the doc just didn't have time to see me, or if she was fed up with me. Perhaps she was embarrassed to be wrong. She didn't give any other instructions, so I had to ask the assistant to go back and ask if I should stay off of it or not. I was told I should not bear weight on the leg.

So, I am being good and staying off of my leg for now, waiting to hear about my MRI appointment. I'm not even attempting any cross training. It's no fun. My dogs are pissed off because they won't get their walk today. Oh well, we'll have plenty of time for that soon, I'm sure. I will keep you updated as the saga continues...

You can't make this stuff up

2011-12-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

Where do I begin?

How about where I left off. After my 9 great days of training, culminating in a fantastic long run, my body told me I had pushed too hard. The cold I had been fighting started to feel worse and a short shake out run on Saturday left me wondering how I had managed to get run over by a bus in the middle of the night. I shook it off and tried again Sunday. The cold was still bad and 10 miles of running felt okay, but not great.

I went to see Dr. Lau on Monday to have him work on my hip since I seemed to still have some residual bad tissue in there that needed to be taken care of. I ran a double that day and felt okay, but not great. On Tuesday, the cold was really making me feel awful so I actually took a day off from all exercise. Wednesday, I went to see Dr. Lau again since I still felt hip and calf soreness on my morning 4 mile run. He worked on the hip but mostly jammed on a large knot that had formed in my inside shin muscle. He told me I would probably feel that for a couple of days. I went to the track that same night to attempt a hard workout of continuous 400s, and it became clear to me after the sixth one that my rundown body was unable to move very fast. I was surprised that the cold was still making me feel crappy after a week, but I so rarely get colds, I didn't know this was unusual. I knew I needed to stop there and call it a night. I did a short cool down run and headed home.

The next morning, when I got up and started walking around, I couldn't put pressure on the right leg without some pretty good soreness in my shin/calf. I met up with the Bat for an easy 6 anyway. I felt soreness as I started running, but it subsided the farther I went. I was limping after I stopped running. I know enough to know that I shouldn't be running if I can't walk without pain. However, it made sense that this was from the hard work Dr. Lau had done on the shin the day before.

I went to see Dr. Lau again yesterday to work the hip again, but I also asked if he could show me how to tape my shin since it was still bothering me. That's when he floated the possibility of it being a stress fracture in my tibia. This was based on his experience with that injury and the way I was describing the pain. Here's how I describe it:

I can't feel anything when I press on the bone. I can pound on the bone and there are no sensitive spots. He even did the tuning fork test with a completely negative result. I feel pressure and soreness in what feels like my calf muscle when I squat down on one leg as I'm going down. If I continue to squat up and down on that same leg, the soreness goes away. However, I also feel residual soreness in the calf/shin after I release pressure on the foot, so when my foot is no longer in contact with the ground. That sensation lasts for about two seconds and goes away. Because these are funky symptoms, he felt like I should at least consider that it might be a stress fracture.

So then my mind started running on its own, formulating a new plan. Should I just continue to run on it? I guess I'll know that it's a bone issue when it breaks, right? No, that's not the best plan. Maybe I should get a bone scan. I had one of those 20 years ago when I had a stress fracture in my femur, and it lit up the area like a Christmas tree where the fracture was. That would tell me for sure. Dr. Lau said he would feel better if I at least had a test done to rule it out.

My Kaiser Primary Care Doctor, who has been amazingly supportive of me through the years sent a request to nuclear medicine for the bone scan, but no action would come from that until next week. I sought advice from others who explained that a bone scan isn't the best tool for diagnosing these issues. I was told an MRI will give me the information to decide what to do about my training. I found out that there's a gradation of stress reactions and fractures that I could have, and what I do next really depends on where I fall along that gradient.

I sent another message to my doctor requesting an MRI, but he won't see that until Monday. Even then, I'd need an ortho consult and then, if I was lucky, could get the MRI. I became impatient. I wanted some information--any information. I could seek out an MRI from a private facility and pay for it myself. However, I pay good money for health care and hardly use it. I wanted to pursue my provider's options first.

I decided that at least I could get an X-ray of the tibia and, if I was lucky, maybe an MRI if they had a 24-hour MRI service at my hospital. So, I went to the Emergency Room and described my symptoms. As a side note, they took my temperature during processing, and I had a fever of 100 degrees. This is actually a big fever for me since my body temp naturally runs low. It confirmed what I had suspected about my cold having become something more. It was a good thing I had asked my doc about this, and he had prescribed antibiotics yesterday for what he suspects is a sinus infection. At least that will resolve soon.

The ER doc looked at my shin and pushed on the bone and told me that it was probably just shin splints. She said I could get an X-ray if I really wanted to. I was well aware of the diagnostic challenges of X-rays for this problem but decided another piece of information and a small dose of radiation couldn't hurt. Or maybe it could...

The radiograph came back with a strange thread-like, perfectly straight diagonal black line stretching from one side of my tibia to the other, right at the place where I was feeling the pain. There was nothing else anomalous about the bone--no white material indicating that my bone was healing from something. But that line was weird!

The doctor explained that it could be nothing, like all of the other lines that she pointed out on other parts of the image, but that it could be a fracture. I didn't really understand the implications of what she was saying at that point since my head was spinning with the vision of that line running through my brain, but she said that I would be put in a splint. Okay, fine.

The Orthopedic Assistant came in to fashion my "splint". He was very serious about his calling, and this truly was a calling for him. He explained that he was a perfectionist when it came to splint making and that his aim was to make the most comfortable splint possible for me that night. He told me I needed to take off my sweats, which I thought odd since we were dealing with my lower leg, but I had running shorts on underneath. Then, he slipped a long sock onto my right leg that went all the way up to me groin. I became a little worried. He started pulling out all of the materials, and I suddenly realized that he was going to create a fiberglass cast for my lower leg! What the what? I thought we were dealing with a stress fracture here. I was picturing a removable boot.

He completed the fiberglass cast on the lower leg and then told me to lay back for the rest. I was stunned. A full-leg cast? Yes, he explained. He needed to isolate the knee joint since I had such a high risk fracture in my leg. I asked if he had actually seen the image. He said he did and that it looked "suspicious". He decided to put a bi-valve cast on me and, of course, I took advantage of the opportunity to tell clam jokes. This was very lucky for me. It basically meant that he split the fiberglass part of the cast completely on both sides, leaving the sock and gauze intact. He showed me why I should not be afraid of the cast saw because it was specially designed to not cut through skin. As proof of concept, he turned it on and pressed the spinning blade against his jugular. That's trust in your tools, right there.

After cutting the cast, he wrapped three large ace bandages around the whole thing so that it could expand and contract as my leg swelled and unswelled. I was given a follow up orthopedic appointment on Monday morning and was instructed to lay around until then.

The finished product.

This was not a walking cast. I was not to put any pressure on the foot and was given crutches to get around. I also could not drive. The Genius came and picked me up from the hospital, looking a little stunned to see me in a full leg cast crutching out the door. He dropped me off at home and the oddness of my predicament started to sink in. How in the world did I end up with a cast on my leg?

I started to realize how little I could actually do with this thing on my leg and crutches under my armpits. Filling the dog's water bowl and carrying it to the corner of the kitchen was impossible. I had to scoot the bowl across the floor with my casted foot. This wasn't going to work.

I tossed and turned all night and then just started cracking up when I looked down at my leg in the morning. This was actually hilarious. I had texted a picture of it to Dr. Ball, and he responded with something like "that is fucking awesome." He remarked how impressive it was that I could develop a grade 4 stress fracture in 2 weeks and walk in the door of the ER: actually run on it the day before for 6 miles. I finally realized how absurd it was to think that I had a full-on tibial fracture, end to end, as they diagnosed.

So, I blessed the technician for the clamshell cast and ripped it apart first thing this morning as my puppy dogs looked on with confusion. I was not advised by anyone to do this. I did it all on my own. I walked around tentatively at first and then with conviction and very little soreness. Grade 4 fracture? Yeah, right.

The remains of the bi-valve or as BW, calls it, the EFF-THAT.

The good news is that I will see an orthopedic on Monday morning, who hopefully won't be pissed off that I cut the cast off of my leg already. I hope that he understands. I was mostly worried about leaving my leg in an immobilized state like that. I started getting uncomfortable soreness and then the pressure I was putting on my other leg, trying to crutch around couldn't be good for me. I wanted to know whether it was still sore today. I wanted to cross train on something other than the fucking hand cycle. Can you blame me? I hope that I am able to get an MRI soon, or else I will probably pay out of pocket to have one done. I have too much at stake here to just assume it's a stress fracture and throw in the towel.

This soreness in my calf may well be a stress reaction or a stress fracture or it might just be pissed off soft tissue. We have diagnostic tools for a reason and I intend to make sure I get what I need out of them.

I don't really have a plan at this point except to use pain as my guide. I can walk around fine today, with a little soreness when I first start off. My dogs got a short walk and they are happy. No running until I know more, but my Elliptigo is out in the garage, winking at me right now. At least I have options. For now. More to come Monday...

Onward!

2011-12-10T10:59:00.001-08:00

Playing some tunes with LF. The girl has chops!

Our devoted audience, Kerry and Kevin, and Josh, the Dancing King!

Since my last post on November 30th, I've run 120 miles including two 20-mile runs and two speed workouts. That's a lot to pack in to 9 days! I also got to spend more time with Lauren Fleshman, Kerry Camberg and the rest of the Camberg family. We spent a fantastic evening playing guitar, singing and dancing around the Camberg house. Lauren is quite talented! I look forward to her launching a musical career once she's done with this little running thing she's so fond of.

While I'm thrilled to be able to train hard again, the road back to healthy running has not been without its challenges. Dr. Ball pronounced me cured a week ago Thursday, but I still hadn't run anything harder than a few strides. I suggested that I run a speed workout the next day (Friday) just to make sure I was cured before heading off into the sunset. He agreed that this was a good plan.

I did a workout that I had done back in early November: 13 total miles including 2 x 1.5 miles hard + 2 x 1 mile hard with 4 minutes rest between the repeats. I had no pain during the workout, which was brilliant, but I was disappointed in how slow I was compared to the last time I did the workout, being off by about 10 seconds per mile for each repeat. It was hard to know whether this was a loss of fitness from 3 weeks of little to no training or whether my legs were just figuring out how to run fast again. Regardless, it felt good to train hard again.

I left for home that afternoon and got to my half-way point, Edwards Air Force Base, late Friday evening. I left early on Saturday so I could get home in time to take the Genius to dinner for his carbo loading extravaganza for the California International Marathon the next morning. I was so excited for him and everyone I knew running this race and was grateful to be healed in time to make it home to watch.

I cried both tears of joy and sorrow watching some of my friends' dreams fulfilled while others' came to an end. My Genius met his goal of a huge PR and is now a 2:40 marathoner. Twenty-five women met the B standard and qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials, including 6 of my Impala teammates! I was so impressed watching the huge pack of women along the course on their way to this major achievement. A couple of my friends missed the qualifier, but impressed me nonetheless with their determination and commitment to their goal. Kerry Camberg posted about her experience here. I have to say that her commitment to the goal and attitude about the journey make her my new heroine.

I was all fired up after watching the race and took on my own challenge of running my first 20 miler in a month. I wasn't sure how I would feel. My legs were sore from my speed work on Friday followed by 14 hours in the car, but I negative split the run and felt particularly strong the last few miles. I was also surprised that I had accumulated 80 running miles for the week.

My coach told me I needed to get back on schedule with my training since there is not a lot of time left to get in big miles and bigger workouts. So, I jumped back in with a double run on Tuesday including an evening track session of 12 miles including 10 x 800m with 2 minute jog rest. I felt like doggie doo and my splits reflected that. I started out running 2:50-2:51 thinking I would cut down from there and I just didn't have the legs for it. I had a minor breakdown around the 4th repeat and thought about throwing in the towel. That's when I thought of Kerry and came up with my mantra for the evening, "Kerry don't Kwit!" Running hard was what really mattered at this point, and I wanted to have the satisfaction of completing the workout.

I told my coach about this and he said I was absolutely correct in completing the workout at whatever effort I could muster. He also pointed out that my body was telling me I needed two days of rest between workouts rather than one and that I was likely feeling the effects of my body not being able to absorb the training. We adjusted my schedule for the week so that my next hard workout would be a long run on Friday.

Thursday, I came down with a cold, of course. I got in my morning run but wanted to make sure I was feeling well enough to do my hard workout the next day. I skipped Thursday afternoon's run and went to bed early that night. Friday would be a vacation day from work (though I still managed to work for 5 hours-FML!) but at least I got to sleep in--12 hours of sleep has amazing restorative powers.

I needed to wait for some work issues to get resolved before I could head out for my long run yesterday. I finally got out the door at 3 p.m. I wasn't sure whether I would be able to do the workout or not, but the cold symptoms had subsided some with the help of Dayquil. The workout was a ball buster: 20 miles including the middle 13 miles hard. What does hard mean? Well, I wasn't quite sure, but my coach said that the idea was to start out comfortable and speed up. I had some rough paces in mind, but I wasn't exactly sure what I would be able to muster. I broke the middle 13 miles into 5 splits consisting of 2, 2, 4, 4 and 1 mile with no rest in between.

I was pleasantly surprised with how the workout went. I warmed up for about 4 miles and did some strides, then launched into the workout:

2 miles @ 6:45
2 miles @ 6:37
4 miles @ 6:31
4 miles @ 6:22
1 mile @ 6:21
3 mile cool down for 20 total

I wanted that last mile to be faster, but my legs were not giving me anything more. Nonetheless, I was thrilled to feel so strong in those last 5 miles. My average was 6:30 pace. That's the pace I ran a few weeks ago at the Clarksburg 1/2 Marathon, except the mile splits for that race were reversed! Better yet, the tightness in my hamstring and IT band that I had been feeling off and on throughout the week completely went away during the workout. I woke up today feeling better than I have in a month! I still have my cold, but it is more an annoyance than anything else. I will run a little over 90 miles this week.

The best feeling in the world during training is when you start to feel the strength in your legs building. I'm not sure how to describe the feeling, but it is as if you can feel the power in your muscles just while walking around from all of the work you've been doing. I felt that before I did my long run yesterday and had a feeling it would go well.

My next two weeks are killer. I will shoot for 100 miles each week and have some hard workouts on my schedule. I need to do everything right in terms of rest, recovery and fueling in order to make them count. I found out the hard way earlier this training cycle that I can't do it all. I nearly missed my chance at running a race I can be proud of at the Trials. With the rumors flying about new qualifying standards for 2016, who knows whether there will be another OT race for me. I want to make this one count and thoroughly enjoy the journey.

Magic

2011-11-30T09:39:00.001-08:00

Arizona or bust.

And, just like that, I'm running pain free again. How did this happen?

As I said in my last post, I had been in contact with Dr. John Ball these last couple of weeks, bouncing ideas off of him about this injury. I was receiving treatment from Dr. Lau, but my body wasn't responding quickly enough for me to get back to hard training. On Sunday, after a few days with no contact, I got a message from John, "running yet?" I told him what was going on and that things had gotten worse--now pain was coming on as soon as I started running. His next message said, "Car. Drive."

So, I kissed the Genius and my puppies goodbye that afternoon, and jumped in my car headed for the desert. I decided to drive rather than fly when I saw that tickets were $700 round trip. A month ago, I had already planned to take most of this week off from work because I needed to burn some vacation time. I also thought, way back then, that I would be in the thick of my hard training and could use the break right about now. Prescient, I am!

B-52 Bomber at the Edwards AFB gate

I spent Sunday evening at Edwards AFB. It was nice seeing the old Buff (B-52) at the main gate when I arrived. I worked on these beasts for a few years when I first joined the Air Force. I woke up early Monday a.m. and kept driving east through the desert. I really, really love the desert.

I arrived in Arizona Monday late afternoon and went straight to Maximum Mobility Chiropractic. I was standing in the lobby talking with my old pals about my trip when a woman behind me said, "hey, you're Jaymee, right?" I turned to see a runner who it turns out is from Folsom, CA and had read about John Ball in my blog. Michelle was in town for work and decided to schedule a few appointments while she was here. She's been off of running for 8 months and had run out of treatment options in the Sacramento area. It was totally great to see firsthand someone benefiting from this blog. I have no doubt she'll be back to running in no time.

John called me in, made me touch my toes and do some lunges and then told me to go run. I ran for about 10 minutes and the pain was immediate and depressing. I reported back. I pointed to the place it hurt and he immediately pressed on that area, deep in my gluteus maximus, though the muscles involved are underneath that monster. He worked on some bad tissue in there, had me do toe touches and lunges again and told me to go run again. I ran for 10 minutes, and it felt better. I came back in, he worked on that area again and I ran another 10 minutes. It felt even better. He told me that was it for the night and instructed me to run the next morning long enough to see how it really felt.

The next morning, I was all excited to test this out and started a run expecting to go for an hour. About 1/2 mile into the run, I started feeling the familiar twinges in my glute and the run soon became unfun. I knew I was fine to keep running on it and wanted to see how it felt the longer I went. The pain/soreness pretty much leveled out after a couple of miles, and I went for a total of 5. I got back to the parking lot and called John. I told him he still had some work to do. He said that the fact that the pain came on 1/2 mile in was progress over my baseline run from yesterday when it had come on immediately. He felt confident he was working on the right thing.

I saw him again at 4:00 yesterday and he had me go for a pre-treatment test run. I ran 2.5 miles and it felt much better than my morning run. I told him this, and he seemed pleased. He worked on my glute again after my test run and had me go out for more. This was the breakthrough run: the run where you know you're on the road to recovery. I felt like I could have run forever, but I stopped at 2.5 miles--10 miles for the day.

He asked how long I was staying, and I told him I wanted to leave Friday afternoon so I could drive back in time to see all of my friends run the California International Marathon on Sunday. He had indicated when I first got here that we had some "clean up work" to do in my hamstrings and other areas, but he didn't want to work on that until we had eliminated the thing that was causing me to not be able to train. He didn't do anything more and told me to test it this morning. I just finished 10.2 miles pain free! Boom!!!!!!!!

While my decision to drive all the way here may seem impulsive or desperate, I had a feeling I would gain more from this trip than just a healed leg. In addition to a great therapeutic outcome, I have also had a great time meeting, in person, some of the ladies that I have only known through Facebook or their respective blogs.

Kerry Camberg is a masters runner that I first found out about from John Ball the last time I was in town. We talked on the phone back in May, but I was never able to meet her in person. We've kept in contact over the past 6 months as she's continued to pursue her goal of qualifying for the Trials (which she's going to do at CIM this weekend!!). I was going to meet her this week in Sacramento and we had planned to talk on the phone last weekend. I emailed her on Sunday to let her know that I'd be meeting her in AZ instead!

She and her lovely family have been so gracious. I have dined with them the last couple of nights and got to watch her kill a goal-marathon-paced run this morning. She also introduced me to Susan Loken, the legend, as she's known here locally. It's been amazing to run and talk running with these fantastic women.

When I contacted Kerry to let her know I was going to be in town, she said that Lauren Fleshman would be staying with her this week too. I was thrilled to get a chance to meet Lauren. After all, she was the one who introduced me (via her blog) to John Ball. It's like the circle was connecting in some crazy cosmic way. I have spent some time with her these last couple of days, and she's just as real and charming in person as she is in her blog. No, more so.

Kerry, Lauren, Jaymee

I feel really blessed right now to have had this experience. I feel so charged up about my training and hopes for the Trials race. Despite John's reminder that I "don't want to get lapped" at the Trials, I feel pretty confident I can set my sites a wee bit higher than that. What I do know is that I can train hard again, and I feel a renewed sense of passion for my running and training that wouldn't have come about any other way.

Thanks to everyone for your encouragement and kind words. You're all rock stars!

And For My Next Trick...

2011-11-26T10:55:00.001-08:00

...I will pull a rabbit out of my arse. That's pretty much what I need to be able to do to get back on track with my training for the Big Race. After I found my marathon legs in early November, the right one promptly broke. As you can imagine, the emotional Zipper ride has been pretty extreme these past few weeks. I haven't felt much like talking or writing about it--hoping I would magically heal and be able to say I dodged the pepper spray. Then, I read fellow Olympic Trials Qualifier, Nichole's, report about an achilles injury she's dealing with and was able to point her to my blog posts from 2010 where I dealt with a similar issue. It reminded me that we often learn more from our triumphs over adversity than from the easy wins.

So, here we go...

This particular problem started with what I was calling twinging in my gluteal area, tightness in my hamstrings and some very sore calf muscles. When I look back at my training log, I was regularly reporting one or more of these issues after most of my longer runs. I was treating these problems with lots of rolling on my lacrosse ball and was trying to make sure that my hips were remaining flexible. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, October was a month from hell in terms of traveling for work. My thought was that I just needed to get through that month, and then I could take time to train hard and recover.

I finally took my last trip at the beginning of November, but it became clear that my body wasn't going along with my plan. I took a couple of days off from running and did a little cross training. I had a race scheduled that week and thought it was a good time to "taper". I also scheduled an appointment to see Dr. Lau. When I first made the appointment, I told him that it was really not a big deal, and I was sure that a quick treatment would be all I needed. A week later, I had started to feel some real pain in my glute and my right shin was unbelievably crabby every time I ran.

Dr. Lau treated me on a Friday and I ran a half marathon on Sunday. My right leg was not in pain during the race, but neither leg was on board with my plan to run fast. It was the strangest feeling: my hamstrings were done with me after the first few miles, and I just couldn't move my legs. I knew I was doomed by mile 3, but I made the decision to ride it out and get in a workout. I was so worried about feeling pain in my right leg, that I sort of ignored the pain developing inside my shoes. I knew I was getting some blisters because my feet were on fire, but my brain didn't register how bad it had become.

Yeah. That's pretty bad.

I got lots of suggestions on how to deal with the blisters and the best advice was to drain them. I did this with a sterilized safety pin, and the pain was relieved instantly. Another friend suggested I cross train a couple of days to allow the blisters to heal up a bit, and so I did. When I ran again on Wednesday, my right leg was jacked up--shin hurt and hamstring/glute were twinging. It actually felt better the longer I ran, but I stopped at 9 miles and rode the elliptical in the gym that evening.

The next two days, I started getting symptoms that felt like sciatica, and I started to panic. I saw Dr. Lau again on Friday and ran 7 miles both Saturday and Sunday. These two runs sucked. My leg was getting worse, not better and now the pain was there when I walked too. We were holding out for Monday to see if maybe the pain over the weekend was caused by the treatment, but another painful run on Monday made it clear that something else was going on.

So, now we're caught up to this week--Thanksgiving week. I pool ran my workout on Tuesday and went to see another chiropractor who took a different approach to the problem. I tried to run on Wednesday. The pain in my shin and hamstring/glute was immediate and run stopping. I indulged in a full-on tantrum.

~A joyful interlude~

A couple of weeks ago, before I knew any of this was coming, I made an impulse purchase through a pro program I get through my affiliation with the military (ProMotive.com). They recently added ElliptiGo to the list of pro deals I could get, and I thought I'd check one out locally to see whether I would like it. I rode one and realized this was the best possible cross training device for a runner, injured or not. It really feels like running in the air though without any upper body movement. Forget the fact that you look absolutely redunkulous riding it. I returned home and decided to take the plunge. I got the 8C model so I could have lots of gearing options. With my pro deal, I was able to get that more expensive model for a lot less than even the basic model.

Big Green

My green machine came in the mail about a week later, but the front fork was bent. The people at ElliptiGo were very helpful and shipped out a new fork quickly. It finally came on Monday, and The Genius swapped it out for me so I could take my first ride on Wednesday. It is really pretty fun. I was mostly surprised by how hard a workout it is. Standing upright, your body is like a big sail, so the air/wind adds a lot of resistance. I see this as a good thing since my job is to get my heart rate up during cross training.

I had a tempo run planned for Thursday, so I decided to see if I could do the workout on Big Green. Getting my HR up on this thing is not a problem. My problem was actually slowing down to rest a bit. I wanted to keep pushing. Here's a graphic of the 57 minute ride I did with about a 30 minute tempo effort in the middle (with a short water break at the turn around point).

Big Green does her job.

The red line shows my heart rate. The faded green line is my speed and the colored slices in the background represent my heart rate zones. The yellow is my aerobic zone, the light pink is 88-92% of max heart rate (roughly my lactate threshold zone) and the red slice is red-line territory. So, if nothing else, I have stumbled upon a cross training device that I enjoy, can do outside (or inside if I buy the wind trainer add on) and will give me a superb workout that should directly translate to my running fitness. I'm excited about keeping Big Green as part of my training in my uninjured future.

~Back to reality~

That face hurts me too.

So, where do I go from here? I don't quite know. I suspect I'll have a few more days spent with my face smashed on Dr. Lau's table. He has been an amazing help through this and believes we've narrowed the issue down to high hamstring tendonopathy. I have a lot of inflammation in the area and am working to reduce that with ice and both oral as well as topical NSAIDs. He continues to work on ridding the area of bad tissue and getting my muscles to slide like they're supposed to. I'm doing daily test runs and have yet to see the big breakthrough run where I keep running and don't look back.

The biggest lesson learned so far? Pain = too late. I have been in touch with Dr. John Ball these last few weeks as well, and he was the one who reminded me of this. He has been extremely generous with his time; offering advice, gentle reminders and zinging reality checks. He asked why I hadn't been in to see Dr. Lau for 4 months, and I told him "because nothing hurt enough to make an appointment." In fact, I had subtle signs that my body was unhappy with me up to a month before I made my first appointment. They were small things, but I should have gone in to get checked out.

The other lesson, which I seem to learn over and over, is that I really can't fit it all in. I should have reduced my running workload in October to accommodate the extra stress of my job. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

A very positive note in this sad song is that I have enlisted the help of a great coach. I realized that I am quickly going to run myself into the ground over and over coaching myself (despite the help of Coach T). The bummer is that I haven't been able to use the training plan he gave me yet because this injury cropped up around the time we started working together. I really do look forward to working with him and seeing what I can do under his coaching.

I continue to hold out hope that I'll be able to get in a few weeks of good training for the Trials in the next 2 months, but my goals will need some adjustment.

Then again, the big win is getting invited to the dance, right? Well, and not getting lapped by the boys (right, JB?).

At last!

2011-11-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

I found my marathon legs! I knew they were hiding from me, but I just didn't know when they would make themselves visible this training cycle. I seem to be suffering from marathon training amnesia this time around. I have had trouble remembering what I am supposed to feel like during the various stages of my training. Throw in the fact that I'm training completely differently than I have before, haven't run a marathon in over a year, and have been traveling all over the place these last few weeks, and you get one tired and confused marathoner.

The training plan I'm using calls for high mileage. I can handle high mileage when I have the time I need to recover. Take away the recovery, and the girl begins to crumble. The week before last was a perfect example of this. I am going to say right now that it will be the hardest week of training I will do this training cycle. It wasn't the highest mileage and didn't have the hardest workouts: I ran 90 miles and did one 10k-paced long interval workout on the track Thursday and a 20-miler with surges on Sunday. It was the stuff in between that ate me up.

Duke Forest Trail

I traveled to North Carolina on Tuesday starting at 5:30 a.m. which meant no running before my flight. I was lucky to be able to fit in a 10-miler in between arriving at Duke University for my meeting and meeting up with my group for evening activities and dinner. The lovely thing about running at Duke was the forested 5k loop course that started right outside the front door of our hotel. The bummer was that it was a loop that had 200 feet of elevation change in 3 miles and the changes were not gentle. Remember that I rarely see 100 feet of elevation change during one of my regular 20 mile runs. Lovely as the forest was to run through, I knew my legs were going to be messed up. I tried running around campus one afternoon and that was no better--no way to escape the hills. In retrospect, I really should have run on the treadmill, but how could I not run on a trail as beautiful as that?

I was reminded of life's fragility when I ran down a side trail and found the Sally Meyerhoff Fitness Loop that connected to the 5k loop I was on. It was beautiful and inspiring to think of her running along this same trail training for cross country or some other race. RIP Sally.

It was nice to have a safe running trail so close to the hotel because I was running in the dark for at least part of every run. I beat up my running partner on the first evening run, and he had to take a rest after the second day. My legs were done by the third day of the trip when I had to do my track workout. I got to do it in Blue Devils' Stadium at least, but it was UGLY! Ironically, my Garmin reset itself and completely lost the data for that workout--not in the device history or transferred to my computer--irretrievable. I'm starting to think this was a blessing.

I became a master of the quick shower and change that week--able to go from lobby to room to lobby in under 15 minutes! My legs were seriously beaten up by the time I arrived home Friday night at near midnight. I finally got to sleep for more then 5 hours that night, but it didn't really help heal the damage I had done.

That damage lasted into this week where I began feeling a series of strange things in my right calf and gluteal region. I rolled religiously and worked very hard to get more sleep, but it seemed like I wasn't keeping up. This week was meant to be another 90 miler, but I gave up on that idea midweek when I had to travel 9 hours roundtrip with an overnight for work. I was due for a hard workout on Thursday, but I knew it was a bad idea given a sharp pain I was having in my right calf. I think it is (was?) what I've seen called posterior shin splints on the internets based on the location of the pain and the fact that all pain goes away after I warm up.

I was able to get in my hard workout on Friday without incident, running 2 x 1.5 miles + 2 x 1 mile all @ 10k pace with 4 min rests between each. That was a tough one and my legs felt fine. Yesterday, I experienced the return of the calf and hip pain during my 10 miler and became very worried about my prospects for a long run today.

After worrying a fair bit about whether to even attempt a longer run after yesterday's painful run, I was pleasantly surprised to have a fantastic 20 mile run today. It wasn't my fastest, but it was certainly my strongest so far. I had no pain in the calf or glute beyond 3 miles. I am planning to run a total of thirteen, 20 milers this training cycle and I have 5 under my belt already. They had not been getting easier until today when I felt especially strong the last half of the run.

Today had two bonuses for me during my run: I got to see the amazing migratory phenomenon of salmon returning to the American River for their last dance before death. I may be a freak, but I tear up when I see them out there building their redds and dancing around one another. I also had my third sighting of what the Genius and I are now calling Grassquatch. This started a few weeks ago when I was running along the American River Bike Trail between mile markers 10 and 10.5. I saw something about 100m ahead out of the corner of my eye that looked like what I would picture a baby Sasquatch would look like. As I got closer, I noticed a huge mound of dry grass and a pile of leaves get up from the side of the trail, run across the trail and hunch back down. Good thing I wasn't finishing my run or I would have believed I was hallucinating. Well, Grassquatch struck again today and (this time) I enjoyed watching the reactions of cyclists and runners that they spooked with their clever trick.

This next week I have a half marathon on tap where I plan to run it at goal marathon pace. This will actually be close to a PR for me if I can manage it. I'm not planning much of a taper for it, so it will be a good test of my strength too.

Finally, I want to send a shout out to all the runners who completed the NYC Marathon today! Amazing!

Letting go

2011-10-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

Lately, life has been getting in the way of my running (and blogging, sorry!), and I have been faced with numerous little decisions that impact my running schedule. I spend a fair amount of energy each week figuring out how to fit runs into my over-scheduled life. Inevitably, I end up faced with the decision to let go of a run or workout. Other runners know well the angst associated with such decisions.

I have attempted to relieve myself of this anxiety by establishing some ground rules:

My weekly plan is my IDEAL plan. If everything goes perfectly in my life, then I should be able to complete my training plan as written.
Most weeks, I will have to shift workouts and runs around to stay healthy and sane.
I can labor over the decision to skip a run or workout, but once I decide, I have to let it go.
I will always make decisions that favor sufficient recovery over getting in the miles or workouts.

These ground rules sort of established themselves over the last couple of weeks. I completed my first week of marathon training two weeks ago and really took the bull by the horns. I had 9 x 90 sec hill repeats @5k pace on Tuesday; ran 10 the next day finishing with 4 "brisk" miles; ran 8 x800 + 1 mile @ 5:40-5:49 pace on Thursday; ran some bastard hills Friday evening; ran a quick 12 miler Saturday at 6000 ft elevation and finished up with a 20 miler @ 6:52 pace on Sunday late evening. What the hell was I thinking.

The horn ended up goring me the following week. Luckily I had Monday as a planned rest day. But, I had to drive for 7 hours to the nether-regions of the Central Valley to monitor a conservation easement. My butt was killing me and I forgot to bring my lacrosse ball/torture device. Desperate, I asked my colleague if she minded stopping in a convenience store to try to find a tennis ball to relieve my aching butt. She found the best device ever. It's a toy that has a hard-as-rock ball with an elastic string attached to a strap. I sat on this ball and rolled. I leaned my butt up against oak trees and rolled my TFL. I used the side of the rental car to get at my gluteus minimus (sorry about the dent, rental car people).

Despite all of this treatment, my body was still tired when I resumed running on Tuesday. I skipped my evening run. My calf muscles had been screaming at me in every run. When I still wasn't feeling the love by Thursday, my next scheduled workout, I just decided this would be a recovery week. I did not run Friday, but I did 10 on Saturday and my 20 miler on Sunday.

I ramped up my training again this week, and have felt good. I had to let a workout go on Wednesday due to a work meeting that ran way over. This was one where I could have gone out in the dark and run the 10 miles, finishing up at about 8:30-9:00 p.m. then turned around to run again at 5:10 a.m.. I decided that I would be better off rearranging my schedule a little to make up for some of the lost mileage. Then, I let it go. This was a great decision. I had a fantastic double the next day running easy with my girlies in the a.m. and then killing my evening workout. I'll still manage 86 miles (originally scheduled to be 90).

New stuff

I have started a few new things with this marathon training plan. First, I have started using some strength training routines that target core strength and hip mobility. I do these twice a week and am still working out the kinks. Once I get them where I want them, I'll share.

I have also begun a new way of tracking…well, everything. I use a Numbers template (a program that only Mac nerds will know) and have a few screenshots of what I track and how below (click on the picture to enlarge). I like keeping track of daily changes to show trends that I wouldn't see if tracked less regularly.

My dashboard with summarized data from all of the other spreadsheets.

This is my run log including a shoe tracker

This is the energy tracker, showing the rating system for the various categories.

The novel addition to the usual stuff people track is the energy index. This is something that is developed in the Squires and Lahane program that I'm following. I have modified it a bit changing leg spring to leg feel, but the rest is theirs. The idea is to track how you feel each day and then track the average energy values over time to see if you're headed for a cliff or primed for a good race/workout. The jury's still out on this, but I'll keep you posted. Mostly, I wanted a place to keep all of my information and a "dashboard" that would help me see at a glance how my training and body data are trending.

Finally, I am trying out a new shoe model that I actually really like so far. It's the Brooks PureConnect. I've run about 40 miles in them so far. The shoe has a bit of a rocker-like sole on it, and, as a mid to forefoot striker, I feel my heel drop with every stride. This puts an eccentric load on my calf and achilles, and is probably responsible for my calf muscle soreness this last week. The soreness has dissipated, and I like them better the more that I wear them, despite how ugly they are.

So, all goods things are happening right now. I'm getting stronger and faster each week. I also might be getting just a little bit smarter...

I Like Pain

2011-10-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

I finally wrote a song about running. It has been a while since I actually wrote a song about anything. My inspiration came after a long, hard workout, and I started questioning my relationship with the sport. So, I debuted the song last night (despite protests from my band, mind you, since we had only rehearsed the song a handful of times), though I did not mention what the song was about. It was a bit rough, but it was awesome to see the audience respond in a positive way to my creation. So, here's an iPhone shot video (compliments of my sis) of the performance and the lyrics follow. You can also view it on YouTube. Rock on!

I Like Pain

by: Jaymee Marty

you kicked my ass again

i thought you were my friend

but friend’s don’t bring you down

why do i keep you around?

Chorus

cuz i like pain

it makes me happy in the rain

it’s like a jacket on my brain

it keeps me on this side of sane

i like pain

you give and i will take

i promise i won’t break

i need you

and you need me

co-dependently

cuz i like pain

it makes me happy in the rain

it’s like a jacket on my brain

it keeps me on this side of sane

i like pain

Bridge

pain pain pain, won’tlet me be

pain pain pain, pleaseset me free

pain pain pain, won’tlet me be

pain pain pain, pleaseset me free

i’ll never let you go

my pain will only grow

oh, you’ll make me cry

‘til the day i die

cuz i like pain

it makes me happy in the rain

it’s like a jacket on my brain

it keeps me on this side of sane

i like pain

Running the Numbers

2011-09-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I know it's been a few weeks since my last post, but I promise I've been busy training.

When I last left you, I was in the middle of a racing frenzy. I had decided to run 4 races in 4 weekends to work on my racing skills and try for a PR. I came very close to that PR in my first 5k back, had a fantastic cross country race the next weekend and then had a stinker of a race the 3rd weekend. I felt like hell before that 3rd race and pretty much knew it was going to stink. I reevaluated my racing plan and decided to take a down week last week. I had planned to take that down week after my first 5k, but I decided to race instead. I knew after my poopy race that it was the right time for a bit of a break. So, I cross trained two days and ran easy the rest for a total of 36 miles. I am very glad I took the time down.

125848610249317818

I've been thinking a lot about numbers lately--the jumble of numbers typed above in particular--which represent my longest run to date, my percent body fat, the number of pounds of body fat I own, my mileage this week, my weight, my serum ferritin levels, my LDL levels and my total cholesterol, though not in that order.

The Friday before my last race, I had my blood tested for iron and cholesterol levels. I had not had either checked in a year. The cholesterol test shocked me. My numbers were the best they have ever been with total cholesterol way under 200 and an LDL level under 100. While my total cholesterol has hovered right around 200 since I was 21 years old, my LDL levels have always been high regardless of how much I exercise. I always assumed that, if I stopped watching my saturated fat intake, my LDL levels would balloon. I stopped tracking my fat intake a few months ago and have been eating as much as I want. So, I really expected to see a big number for my cholesterol. This was a good surprise, but one that I can't easily explain.

My not so good surprise came from my iron levels. They were the second lowest they've ever been including ferritin, hemoglobin, hematocrit--the whole shebang. This should not have been surprising since I stopped really paying attention to my iron intake while I was injured. I now know I can't get away with anything less than 1 tbsp. ferrous sulfate elixir taken daily with orange juice. I hate the taste and I hate the back up that this stuff causes. But, low energy from low iron stores is for the birds. I'm back on supps and should be back to feeling high energy in a few weeks. This is likely why I felt like poo in that third race and why it's taking more time to recover from the three weekend racing fest.

I have had this fantasy running for a few years now where I lose a couple of pounds each year and that translates into faster marathon times. It is a fact that carrying around more weight than you need slows you down. Since my weight has never gotten down to anything resembling too low I have always seen room for loss. I track my weight and body fat levels with a home scale, recognizing that the body fat measures are going to be inaccurate but fairly precise. I had my body fat measured with hydrostatic testing back in 2006 when I first started running, and it was around 13%. I have lost bulk since then, so I retested last week and was shocked to find out that my body fat is pretty darn low. According to most articles on the internets on this subject, menses should have ceased long ago and my brain should be a small nubbin rattling around in my head. Neither is close to happening. My body fat percent is low because I have a lot of lean body mass--approximately 14 pounds more than THE MAX of the normal range for my height according to the chart the testing clinic gave me.

This information has knocked me for a loop. I thought I was going to lose about 2-3 lbs. before Houston, and that isn't going to happen. I am about the same weight and body fat reading (measured on my home scale) as I was before Chicago last year, so I have definitely been in this body fat range for a while though I do pop back up quickly after a marathon. My body functions quite well, actually. I hardly if ever get sick. I can remember maybe 2-3 workouts in the last few years that I totally bombed. I typically have very high energy levels (when my iron levels are right!). Clearly the only way that I will lose weight is if I lose lean mass. Since I'm not a candidate for femur reduction surgery, that means atrophy is the name of the game (if only you could select where this occurs!). I stopped doing any form of weight training about 6 months ago, so that should help me at least not gain any more lean mass. Regardless, I carry around a lot of upper body muscle. My new model for upper body physique and strength is Monty Burns. I won't stop my upper body atrophy until I can lift as little as Monty. The Genius has agreed to be my Smithers--carrying sacks of dog food and groceries for me.

So, this just means that I can't count on carrying around less weight in order to get faster. I have to get fast the old fashioned way--lots of miles and hard work. To that end, this week marked the first week of my build up for the Olympic Trials race. I don't officially start my marathon training plan until the first week in October. I'm trying something completely different this time around and am excited about it.

In my next post, I'll show a cool new tool I've developed to track every single aspect of my running life. Ah, the geek emerges again! "Smithers, release the robotic Richard Simmons" MB!

Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail

2011-09-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

My second race in my self-imposed 4 race series was another fun one: a 5k cross country (XC) race hosted by the River City Rebels at Granite Regional Park. This was only the second cross country (XC) race I've run in my life, and it went sooooo much better than the last one. My intro to XC, some of you may recall, was at XC Nationals in 2010. I not only completely fell apart at that race (because I was overtrained) but I also messed up my foot wearing ill fitting (borrowed) XC flats. It was after that race that my achilles flared up, and I was out of training for a couple of months.

So, I was a bit nervous about how I might do heading into this race. Was I just bad at cross country racing? The main reason I wanted to do this race was to work on my strength. I wanted a chance to run hard without worrying about mile splits and just focus on competing. I got that and a whole lot more!

We had a great contingent of speedy Impalas for the race, which was awesome. We warmed up on the course, running the whole thing which gave us a nice preview. There were some good hills on the course and a lot of turns as you can see from the map below. The footing was tricky and I worried for a millisecond about spraining an ankle. I bought some real XC shoes for this race and, of course, hadn't had a chance to test them out. Not the smartest thing, but they were brilliant.

5k Granite Park XC Course.

Elevation Profile for the course (from my Garmin, so take it for what it's worth).

I knew from watching XC races that the pack goes out hard, so I was ready for that. Luckily, we didn't go out outrageously fast because there was a nice big hill to greet us within the first 400m. We got strung out pretty fast on the first downhill and then bunched up a bit in the winding trails during the first mile. I felt strong going through the first mile, like a deer bopping along through the forest, trying to keep a firm footing. I focused on staying strong in the second mile where the course had the biggest climb. I gained a little on that uphill, passing a few ladies. I knew I was in a good position with two masters runners ahead of me and everyone else fairly far behind me. I just focused on maintaining my effort.

I knew that I had a major hill to conquer before swooping down to the finish and I am happy with how I handled the last hill. I was also very pleased with how I handled the heat on the course. I heard a lot of folks complaining about it, and I honestly never felt hot. Of course, that's what running in 80-90 degree temperatures every day will do for you. I crested the hill and saw the downhill finish and was surprised to see 18:14 on the clock a few seconds before I crossed the line. I looked at my Garmin and the course read 3.14 miles, so it was pretty darn accurate. It was awesome to run that fast and strong on that winding, hilly course.

I was not at all interested in my splits during the race and never looked at my watch. However, I took my splits for future reference. I'm glad I did because they indicate how well I raced this course today. I went through the first mile in 5:47, the second in 6:06, and the last in 5:50 with a :38 second last 0.11 miles. I don't know my official time or place since results won't be out for a while, but my watch showed 18:21 Update: official time was 18:19, 6th overall). Thrilled!

Congrats to all of my teammates for some fantastic performances out there and thanks to the Rebels for hosting a fun XC race! I see more XC in my future!

Hunger

2011-08-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

I ran a race yesterday. A real race. It was my first 5k race (not counting WMAs) in a year, and it was awesome.

My 18:02 finish was 9 seconds off my personal best, but this race wasn't about PRs. This race was about getting back into racing. In order to do that, I needed to have a good race; one where I felt in control and strong the entire way; one that left me with a hunger to race faster and harder. Yesterday's race did that for me.

I have some experience racing the 5k distance and have never liked it. That awful burning feeling in my legs that comes on during the last mile always screams "SLOW DOWN OR YOU WILL DIE" to me, and I always obey. My 5k races have always been run in the middle of marathon training. Over the last 8 weeks, I've given myself the luxury of training for the 5k with race-specific workouts, and I think it made a big difference. First, I now have a consistent warm-up routine: 2 mile jog + 5 minutes of drills + 5 strides. I basically do this routine before all of my track workouts so it is familiar, and I know it is effective. I timed my warm up so that I ran my last stride 3 minutes before the gun.

Second, I really know my race pace. I started a little fast in the first 400m or so, but I very quickly fell into 5:45 pace--my first mile split. I went through the second mile in 5:42 and felt really good compared to how I felt last year at that same point on the course. The third mile was my slowest this year and last year. It's a naturally slow mile because it has 4 out of the 4 90-degree turns on the course. Plus, it was the last mile which is always the toughest. I thought about that last mile at the end of every workout over the last 8 weeks.

My friend Brooke ran her first race in a while recently and gave me the best advice, "don't go out too fast and remember the burn is normal!" I repeated, "the burn is normal" with every step in that last mile. The thing that made me happiest was seeing that I ran that 3rd mile 5 seconds faster this year than I did last year. It's a good thing too, because the 24 year old second place finisher wasn't far off of my tail. I led the whole race, so I had no idea where my competition was.

While I came in 9 seconds slower than last year, I can't complain at all. I was in awesome shape at this point last year, so being even close to that fitness level given how little training I've had to work off of is really promising. Of course, I would love to be faster, but I also feel like I am not yet fully baked. I think I need about 3 more weeks to get back into the swing of racing so I can really push myself and test my fitness.

I am changing my schedule accordingly. My original plan was to end my 5k training with this race, take a major down week next week and then do some base training before starting into a 15-week marathon program on October 3rd. Instead, I'll recycle some of the mid-week 5k workouts from the Squires and Lahane plan and race the next 3 weekends. I'm also going to bump up my weekend long runs a bit each week, so I'll be ready to roll out consistent 20 milers come October. More than anything, I just want to get my body and brain used to racing aggressively. Next weekend I'll run a local 5k cross country race. The following two weekends are 5k road races. I'll then do one week of base and take a week off before hitting the marathon plan.

Countdown to the Olympic Trials Marathon: 138 days!

Peaking and Pausing

2011-08-17T18:00:00.000-07:00

I ran a 17:45 5k Sunday night. It was a workout, with rests in between the repeats, and it was tough. After it was over, I questioned how on earth I will manage to run that time in a couple of weeks without those breaks and then decided that this was not a fruitful way to think.

The dual purpose of a race-pace workout is to stress your body so that it adapts in a way that allows you to hold that pace for longer and to train your brain to handle the discomfort that most certainly accompanies the stress you endure holding that pace. I know these things, but that does not make the workout any easier. I guess I was hopeful that, at some point, 5k pace would feel easier than it does. Then I realized how stupid that is. When 5k pace feels easy, it's no longer your 5k pace.

Last week's workouts proved to me that my 5k training plan is working its magic. My last post described my speedy 12 x 400m midweek workout. I really have never run a faster workout than that. Sunday night, I ran 2 x 2000m @ 5k pace with 4 minute pause rest + 1000m @ 5k pace. This was a tough workout. I ran the first repeat in 7:03, the second in 7:11 and the last 1000m in 3:31. That second 2000m repeat felt really hard, and my slower time reflected what I was feeling. However, when I added the time up, I realized I had exceeded my total time goal and felt content.

I was able to get a little more information about the "pause" rests in some of my workouts from Coach Bruce Lahane, the co-author of the training plan I'm following. I asked him about complete rest versus jogging and told him how I felt kind of sluggish walking rather than jogging during the first workout where I tried the pause. Here's what he said:

"The "pause" comment suggests that the recovery between the runs could be a bit easier than straight jogging. I don't think too fine a point needs to be put to it. Many runners might walk for 30 seconds, then jog for 3 minutes, then walk for 30 seconds and off they go. The little bit of walking restores them a tad more than straight jogging. When greater effort is being put into intervals, sometimes a little walking helps people to recover a bit more.

However, you seem to be experiencing the reverse, that is, you feel sluggish after walking. I'd suggest that you do whatever feels better to you.

The bottom line for any training is the result that it produces in the individual. So, it doesn't matter much how most people react to training, but rather how you react. Part of the fun of running is figuring yourself out - adjusting training according to how your body reacts."

In Sunday's workout, I tried the walk/jog/walk suggestion with much success. I felt recovered, but not sluggish. Thanks, Coach Lahane!

I really loved his response. What a great reminder to keep the focus of my training on me and how I respond to various workouts as well as the recovery. This is the main reason I'm trying a new plan--to see how I adapt to different types of workouts and recovery regimens. I was successful with my previous training, but how can I know that was the best plan for me? Is there actually any "best" plan for any of us? There's no way to know of course. What I do know is that I was not recovering properly in my previous training. There was way too much going on for my body to adapt to, and I actually thought that rundown feeling was how I was supposed to feel all the time. This notion was supported by reports from other friends in heavy marathon training.

Given how I am responding to high mileage, doing very tough workouts, I know that I was working too hard before. Please don't read this and think I'm dissing my previous training plans. They obviously made me very strong and got me to my OTQ! I just think I will get faster and stronger by focusing on smarter recovery. If you didn't see this nugget from Ryan Hall's triathlete coach, Matt Dixon, on recovery, you might be surprised to know that he took one day off completely each week from training (that's right, no cross training) before Boston. It was a revelation for me to hear the obvious: you shouldn't feel like you need the taper at the end of a marathon (or any training plan) to recover from your training. You should be recovered and super-charged going into the taper!!!

So, a little over a week of sharpening and a short taper should line me up well to shoot for a fast 5k. Incidentally, I do feel totally fresh going into this taper! This will actually be my first 5k race (not counting the WMA 5000m on the track) in a year. That's right--the last 5k I raced was the Race for the Arts last year. While I think I'll be in good racing shape in a little over a week, I also know that there are other factors that play into how well I might actually perform (look at Lauren Fleshman's wild ride this summer). So, I have two other 5k races lined up in September that I will use as back up races should the Race for the Arts turn out to be a bad day for me. The other thing I am constantly reminding myself of these days is that my real race is in January. Regardless of whether or not I get a chance to best my 5k time, all of this speed work and consistent training will pay off in a big way in Houston.

SPIDER

2011-08-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

Okay. I know for a fact I have never run a workout as fast as I did last night. Is it a coincidence that I ran this workout in my new Nike LunarSpider R2s?

SPIDER!

My review? The shoes are fast. I ordered them on a lark late last week from Runningwarehouse.com when I was feeling like I wanted to try something new in footwear. They only come in men's sizes and they recommended my size 9 lady foot would be happy in a men's 7.5. But, they were out of the 7.5, so I ordered the 7. I was certain that they would not fit, but, if I ordered them, at least I could touch them. They look so cool.

When they came, I weighed them on my food scale (currently dedicated to weighing shoes), and they were just a hair under 5 ounces! Crazy light. They looked even cooler than the picture on the website, and I'll be damned if they didn't fit my feet perfectly. I felt like Cinderella with arachnids on her feet. I couldn't wait to do my 12 x 400m workout the next day in them.

My feet always fit well in Nikes because both are narrow. These shoes are no exception. The upper is so thin and light that they just seem to form another layer of skin around my foot. There's plenty of room in the toe box, even though a shoe salesperson might not think so. I've found that I need less room in the toe box when the shoe has less of a heel-to-toe drop. They have a fairly stiff sole, but I really felt like my feet were in touch with the track surface and that made the shoes very responsive. There's hardly any cushion, just enough to protect your feet from serious bumps. As I ran in them, I wondered if I would wear them in a marathon like Shalane did in NYC. No need to decide that now. I'll start with a road 5k and go from there.

I saved my workout for the evening, since I love running at night, but the day was long and I was pooped when I got home. The Genius came home from his run to find me laying in my running clothes on the bed at 6:45 p.m. trying to take a short nap. I got in about 15 minutes before waking and realizing I needed to get out the door pronto.

I downed a Go Girl and headed to the track where I felt super sluggish on the warm up. I slipped on my Spiders and everything changed. I did my drills and strides in them and knew they were special. As I strode, I felt like the cartoon character whose legs are spinning out in front while their torso lags behind for a split second before joining the lower half in a speedy get away. I felt kind of clumsy at first until I got used to the little rockets on my feet.

My workout was to be run at 4 seconds per lap faster than 5k pace. So, I estimated 5k pace to be 84-85 seconds per lap, making my target 80-81 for these. I had 1:30 jog rests for this workout. My first repeat was a blazing 79 seconds complete with a tingly sensation in my upper body and a slight burn in my quads. Too fast. I tried to calm myself down a little and ran the next in 78. Oh well, I thought. Just go with it.

Each repeat felt better and better, and I kept throwing down 78-79 second laps. I got to the last two laps and switched my iPod to my current power song J. Lo's Get on the Floor (don't judge!). This was the first time ever in a track workout where I felt so good I just smiled when I hit the end of my rest and whispered bring it! The last repeat was 75 seconds. Oh, hell yeah!

Splits: 79, 78, 77, 79, 79, 79, 80, 78, 79, 79, 77, 75
average = 78

It's getting ill it's getting sick on the floor!

A Hint of Progress

2011-08-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

I love progress. I've seen slow, but steady progress in my workouts these last few weeks. What makes me even more excited, however, is the progress in my decision making involving my running and recovery.

Two weeks ago was a big, big running week with 85 miles and three tough workouts, so my dogs were understandably tired. I was feeling great in the Nike Frees so I had been wearing them almost every day. A week ago Sunday, I ran a hard tempo in my old Mizunos just to give my feet a break from the Frees. The next day, I ran in the Frees again and noticed a tension across the top and tenderness along the outside of my left foot after I ran. I've actually felt this off and on, but it was noticeably more sore this time. My left calf muscle was also really tight. I knew that I needed to pay some attention to the calf muscle, since I had neglected rolling it a couple of days that week.*

*Note to self: limit training if you can't keep up with the maintenance. If life is too busy to roll every day, then back off the mileage to fit it in. No excuses!

Was this a case of too much too soon with the Frees? Was it actually the hard run in the Mizunos that aggravated my foot? I decided to wear the Mizunos on Tuesday and my foot hurt worse, even painful to the touch. Researching top of foot pain (TOFP) on the internets was a big mistake at first. Every post was about stress fractures and my mind started racing with the prospect. I finally found a site that provided a more palatable explanation for what I had going on and, based on the ultimate outcome, it was probably the right one.

Regardless of the diagnosis, I knew I needed to take a day of rest from running. I worked the bajeezus out of the knots in my calf and iced my foot a bunch of times. I also bought a new pair of Mizunos since my old ones had over 400 miles on them (way more than I've ever run in a trainer). I had been hopeful that I could get away without buying another pair of them and run Free for the rest of my life. I reminded myself that this minimalist transition was something I was making up and was not critical to my running career. I needed to listen to my body.

The bummer about missing Wedensday's run was that I had a track workout scheduled for that day. This is why I am especially proud of myself for resting. It's so hard to give up a day of training, but even harder when that day is a hard workout. I had a double planned for Thursday and went ahead with the morning 5 miler in my new Mizunos. All systems were a go, so I added the workout from the day before in to the evening 9 mile run. This was a risk since I knew fast track running might aggravate the tight calf, but I also knew I could stop if I felt anything bad. I didn't need to stop, and it was a great workout.

Currently, the knots are gone from the calf after a lot of work and the foot is fine too.

My second mark of progress came last night in what I saw as my most difficult workout of this cycle. It was 5 x 1200m @ 5k pace, picking up the pace in the last 300m of each. It was that last bit that got me nervous. This workout had a "4 minute pause" between repeats. This pause thing is new for me, but I figure Coach Squires has good reason for writing the workouts the way he does. I follow them as written, but I'm just not used to having anything but a jog rest between reps. You'd think it would make the workout seem easier, but that's not the feeling I got.

I started this run at about 7 p.m. last night, which is my favorite time of day to run right now for some reason. After drills and strides, I rolled into the first repeat. I was happy with how I felt at the 1000m mark and even happier when I saw the 3:30 on my watch. A few weeks ago, I had done a 6 x 1000 workout and averaged 3:35 for those. This was a good sign of progress--if I could hold it. I can't say that I really picked up the pace much in that last 300m of each repeat, but I certainly kicked up the effort level which may have served to maintain a good clip. I ended up doing every single repeat in exactly the same time 4:13. This result is funny to me because the configuration of each was so different. The first repeat started with an 80 sec first 400m and then I slowed to find the 4:13. I worked hard in the last 2 repeats to make sure I started at 84-85 and cut down from there, and I still ended up at 4:13. I guess that was just my number for the night.

Uncertain of what the "pause" was supposed to look like, I decided to walk for the 4 minutes between each rep. My legs actually felt really sluggish for the first 100-200m of the repeat following the walk break compared to what I feel like after doing a jog break. I'm sure it helped me to hold the paces I needed to though.

This was the fastest workout I've done so far this cycle, holding an overall 5:38 pace which equates to a 17:30 5k. Progress indeed.

The Victory Lap

2011-07-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Summertime for me always includes two weeks spent serving my country out at Travis AFB. During that time, I have to get checked out at the Medical Hobby Shop (aka Base Hospital) to ensure I am still breathing and my teeth haven't fallen out. Well, not all of them anyway. I also have to do my physical fitness test.

Present Arms!

The wear of the PT uniform is mandatory for testing. I was always able to get around wearing it because the person administering my fitness test didn't give a rat's ass what I wore. That is, until a civilian contractor took over the reigns of the testing program. Last year was the first year I tested with these new contractors. Rather than buy the ridiculously cheap and ugly, unisex-sized Air Force PT uniform, I tried getting away with wearing my Air Force Marathon Team outfit. They almost didn't let me take the test because they said the uniform was not authorized. I didn't want to risk being denied the test, so I plunked down the cash and bought the beauty pictured to the right.

The challenge for me is how to work the 1.5 mile run into whatever workout or training I have going on at the time. Passing the test is not the problem, since I can get the maximum number of points by running ~7:30 pace. However, I always want to be ready to take on some unsuspecting young whipper snapper if the need should arise. As it turned out, I had the perfect workout scheduled on exactly the day I was testing:

12 miles total with:
2 mile warm up + drills
3 miles @ 25 sec/mile slower than 5k pace (~6:10)
1 mile jog
1.5 miles @ 20 sec/mile slower than 5k (~6:05)
1 mile jog
1 mile @ 10 sec/mile slower than 5k (~5:55)
800m jog
1k @ 5k pace (~5:45)
cool down

My plan was to warm up and run the first 3-mile interval, then jog for a few minutes before heading in for the test. I would do my push ups and sit ups, run the 1.5 mile test, get my paperwork and finish the rest of my workout.

I did the first 3-mile interval without incident, jogged around until about 10 minutes before the test was scheduled to start, threw on my PT uniform over my running outfit and then headed in to the fitness center to sign in. When I got into the hot and humid room where they conduct the testing, I began to sweat profusely--I mean gush like a fountain. It was actually pretty embarrassing, and I didn't have a towel. I tried to fill out the required paperwork before checking in and absolutely soaked it with uncontrollable sweat droplets.

I must have looked like a hot mess, because everyone was staring at me. In fact, one of the gruff testers looked at me and asked if she could help me, which I thought was an odd question. I told her I was there to test, and she said, with a noticeable amount of snip in her tone, "but you look like you've already been working out." Was this against regulations? I just said that I had run a little before, but I needed to test. Then, one of her partners in fitness yelled to me that I might want to go clean myself up before making someone touch my waist with a tape measurer (waist circumference is part of the test). I ignored this rude person.

I went and stood behind a partition waiting for the lady to weigh and measure me. This was a blessing because I go to use my cotton shirt to "clean myself up". When I went back into the room to join everyone else, I faced a wall of 20 men staring at me. I said, "well, it looks like it's going to be boys versus girl and I think the girl is going to lose." I looked around for a smile, listened for a chuckle. Nothing but crickets. Wow, tough crowd. I was given a red mesh jersey with an 8 on it and told to go sit in the corner.

They called us up by our jersey color and number to separate us into two teams for the push ups and sit ups. Somehow I was not called each time, but was added as an afterthought. Memories of being the last picked for teams in 6th grade softball came flooding back. After finally being added to the roster, I knocked out enough push ups and crunches to max out the test. We then headed out to the track and waited for 10 minutes for the testers.

So, I jogged, back and forth, round and round while all of the boys stood around the track looking at me like I was an idiot. One finally approached me when I stopped and asked me, "so, you're a big runner are you?" I imagine he deduced this from the fact that I was actually warming up before the run. I told him that I run some. He asked if I had done a marathon and I said I ran Chicago last year. He then told me about how he planned to train for the Air Force Marathon, but he got sick and wasn't getting better. He stopped running and gained a bunch of weight, which explained the bowling ball tucked underneath his uniform shirt, and now he can barely run 2 miles. I told him to keep at it and that he should try again next year.

Finally, our testers showed up and we approached the starting line. I went to the front of the group, but didn't need to toe the line since I was going at a slower pace than normal. But, nobody was stepping into the lead spot in lane 1. I started to go for it when the fittest looking guy in the group whispered in my ear, "what are you going to run?" I said, "probably 9:00." He sort of nodded and went to take the lead spot on the track before realizing that I meant 9 minutes for the 1.5 miles and not 9 minutes per mile. He then backed off quickly and said, "Oh, I'm trying for 10:00." Next thing I knew we were off and I had someone to chase. A young airman took the lead, shod in Nike Shox, iPod blaring. I ran with him for the first lap, tucking in behind him along the windy stretches.

We finished the first lap and I realized we were rapidly slowing. So, I slipped around him and held a steady pace, uncontested for the rest of the run. I could hear the testers calling out my splits each lap with a hint of amazement in their voices. I lapped a lot of soldiers, some in their 20s and walking. Unacceptable. As soon as I crossed the finish line, I turned around and jogged in the opposite direction to take my victory lap. I use the victory lap to shout words of encouragement to those who are clearly suffering but still trying. The walkers require heckling.

I got numerous high fives from people as we headed back to the sweatbox to complete our paperwork. I asked the guy who had planned to run the AF Marathon whether he passed his test and he told me he did. He then congratulated me on a fast time and said, "next July, I'm going to be running with you." I told him that was a good goal. I could have said that I could run much faster and that I was doing all of this as part of a bigger workout, but that would just be cruel and vain. As I went up to turn in my completed form, the tester who had told me to "go clean up" looked up at me with admiration in his eyes and said, "Ma'am, you're my new hero. You tore it up out there and looked like you could just keep going forever." I just responded with a smile and quick, "thanks."

I rushed back out to the track, stopping by my car to remove the extra layer of scratchy Air Force clothing and finished up my workout. I ended up beating all of my planned paces in that workout and felt awesome in that last 1k repeat.

It was a good Air Force day.

From 0 to 44

2011-07-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

The day I started breathing air.

I turned 44 earlier this week, and my Mom was kind enough to post my birth picture on Facebook. I will always be grateful to her for deciding to actually claim that 9+ pound pork roll as her own and take me home from the hospital. I'm not sure I would have done the same for that goofy looking bundle with a bow in her shock of bright red peach fuzz.

I doubt that my being a year older has much to do with a shift I've noticed in my perspective on running. I'll call it a more laid back approach that isn't fraught with angst about the daily details of mileage and pace. At first, I had a hard time determining if somehow I had lost that fire to push myself, one of the key qualities I often attribute my success to. I think that is still there, so something different must be going on.

Running the 5000m race at the World Masters Championships was, in a way, a small victory for me over an injury that, when I signed up for the race, I wasn't sure I'd beat in time to even be able to set foot on the track. After the race, however, I realized that I wanted my next race to be one that I felt ready to run fast. My next planned race was a road 5k in mid August, but the timing of that race would only allow me to complete 6 of the 8 weeks of my 5k training before the race. So, I am shifting my schedule to race a 5k two weeks later to get in the full 8 week training program.

This 3rd week of that training program collided with a busy life week that included a musical gig Wednesday from 7:30 to midnight and the start of my annual military tour (think 12 hour days including travel). To fit in my running, I had to jimmy my schedule and prioritize my workload. The meat of my training was in the 4 x 1600m (5k pace) workout on Tuesday and my tempo run Friday night and my hill repeats tonight. All of these quality workouts went better than I expected. I ran at the crack of dawn and after the sun went down, but I got in the workouts and my easy mileage, managing 73 miles for the week.

How many miles was I supposed to do? Who cares? I ran what I could however I could fit it in. Since I write my own plans, I know that the training level I chose in the Squires and Lehane book was pretty random. It's all just one big experiment anyway. I'm finding that I am more proud of myself for making a decision to not do something if I'm feeling tired or sore than I am for gutting it out and risking potential burnout or injury.

Other odds and ends…

My Nike Frees are still a fave shoe. In fact, I'm finding that my feet feel worse when I run in my regular trainers, so I've transitioned faster than planned to the Frees. I've had no issues so far and definitely notice a difference in my gait. I feel like I'm running with better form and my runs are definitely faster for the same level of effort. I've only done one short run in the Merrell Pace Gloves, but it was great too. I wear them for dog walking daily now and will spend more time running in them in the future. If you haven't watched Dr. Irene Davis discuss the research and anecdotal evidence supporting barefoot and minimalist running, you might want to carve some time out of your day to do so.

These last two weeks have seen remarkable improvement in some of the flexibility issues that plagued me before and even after seeing Dr. Ball in May. Hip mobility on my left side was a major problem that Dr. Ball believed was structural in nature since even 11 days of constant soft tissue abusecouldn't free it up. Well, about 10 days ago, my left hip became as mobile as a wet dog on a hard wood floor. I did start, on my own advice, rolling out my hip capsule with a lacrosse ball for about 2 minutes twice a day before doing my hip stretches. I have a sneaking suspicion this has made the difference. I'm just glad that it wasn't some sort of long-term degenerative thing that was going to eventually require a hip replacement.

I feel better than ever right now, free of any nagging issues and fresh enough to train hard. I want to thank Kerry for reminding me that, while it sucked to be out of commission for so long, that time away from running gave my body a chance to heal and regenerate. If most running injuries come from the accumulation of damage over thousands of miles and a long period of time, then it makes sense that time and rest is what ultimately heals the runner.

Note to self

2011-07-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Jaymee,

I know you've been feeling slow lately and concerned about the fitness you lost while you were out of running action for half the year. When you're feeling that way, I want you to remember that cool and windy day in mid July when you were running around the track at American River College at high noon. That was the day that you ran the 6 x 1000m workout at "near goal 5k pace" with 1:20 rests. This was an important workout at the end of an 83 mile week, your highest mileage in 9 months. You were worried about so many things going into that workout, but when you started running fast after doing drills and strides, your body took over and your brain followed. You flew along the track with lightness and strength. You ran faster than you believed you could, averaging 3:35 for the 6 repeats (5:45 pace) leaving a little in the tank after the last rep. Remember that you are fast and are getting faster every day.

Sincerely,

Effin' J

7 long months

2011-07-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

Until now, I haven't had the guts to really look at the state of my training over the past 8 months. I tell people that I was injured for 7 months and just started training 5 weeks ago, blah, blah, blah, but it always feels like I'm making lame excuses. Here are the cold, hard facts:

After creating this chart, I stared at it as a lump formed in my throat. There it is: 7 months of hardly any running and only 2 workouts. In the 6 months from November through May, I ran a total of 479 miles. That's an average of 17 miles per week. Sadly, most of that was test running, and I was in pain. Yes, I cross trained, but cross training only tides you over for a few weeks before your running-specific fitness starts to drop off dramatically.

Tonight, I did my first race since the Athens Marathon: the World Masters Athletics Track and Field Championships 5000m. It's funny to think that I signed up to race this event on April 24th, just before registration closed. At that point, I was still injured but somehow held out hope that I would be able to run a 5k by July. The following week, I would be told by all my local healers that they could not help me any longer. Worse, I was stuck without even a diagnosis. I was devastated by the scary thought that I might never be healed. Of course you know, shortly thereafter, Dr. Ball worked some magic allowing me to start training again.

As soon as I began regularly running pain free, I became excited for this race. I never once thought about not running it. I was not worried about being embarrassed with a slow time. I also didn't have my normal pre-race anxiety. This was a different kind of excitement centered around just participating in a race. In fact, I only had two goals:
1) run around the track for 12.5 laps without pain; and
2) enjoy being part of this once-in-a-lifetime, world championship competition.

I am happy to say that I met both goals and truly enjoyed myself. I didn't have much of a race plan. I just wanted to start out at a pace I thought I could hold for a while and see how that felt. I picked 90 second quarters as my starting pace. Of course, conditions were hot, but they weren't as hot as they could have been for 8:00 on a July evening in Sacramento. I ran my own race, holding those 90s for the first mile, then eased off a bit for the rest of the race realizing that I was completely out of the main competition. I finished in 19:02. I felt like I ran strong, without making myself uncomfortable. From my vantage point, I was able to watch the race unfold for the lead pack. It was a lot of fun to see my friend Mary Coordt take the lead with 3 laps to go and win. Thanks to everyone out there cheering me on tonight. I heard you, and it meant a lot to have your support.

While it is sobering to think of how much work I have ahead of me on my road to Houston, I choose to be humbled and challenged by this experience rather than disappointed or overwhelmed. In fact, as I walked away from the stadium tonight trying to assess how I felt about the race, my first thought was: in 6 months, I will be running 19:02 for my first 5k in the Olympic Trials Marathon. Tonight was an excellent start.

5k training begins now

2011-07-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe it started last week.

I started the Squires and Lehane 5k pre-season training plan last week and reached my highest weekly mileage (76 miles) in 9 months. It was a good week of training including my first double workouts of the season. I ran an 8 x 600m workout on Wednesday in the heat (mid-90s) and managed to keep all of the reps around 2:08 (~5:45 pace), with the last one at 2:05. I ran my long run including a tempo workout on Saturday at noon in the blistering sun and turned it into a 2 x 2 mile workout rather than the planned 4-mile continuous workout. I thought I drank my weight in water out there, but I still lost nearly 5 lbs over the 90 minutes I was out.

This Friday evening, I am racing the 5000m on the track: my first race in 8 months. I don't plan to bust ass in this race mostly because I'm not in shape to. I just want to enjoy participating in the World Masters Athletics Track and Field Championships. I am so excited to watch the events being held pretty much in my backyard over the next two weeks. The Genius is running the marathon, on Sunday, July 17th, and I look forward to watching him loop past me 5 times, as I cheer him on. He has an advantage, having run his last few long runs in the heat and along the course. Go Genius Go!

My body has been adjusting well to the higher mileage, but I'll be taking advantage of this week's race to come down a bit before pumping it back up for the last 5 weeks of my 5k training. After 4 weeks in the pre-season program, I go into full-on 5k training mode for 3 weeks. My target 5k race is the all women's Susan B Anthony 5k in River Park on August 13th. My goal is to PR at that race. It's a fast course, and I think there will be some good competition.

Allow me to present my next 6 weeks of training:

The schedule looks more complicated than it is. The various colors mainly represent my shoe transition. The orange shows my planned strength work (though the days are very flexible). I have just added core work back into my routine and have started doing some exercises to increase hip mobility since I now know this is something that is a real limiting factor for me. I am trying out these exercises to see if they help. I continue to do my hip capsule stretch with a strap 2 x per day, and I roll everything from my feet to my shoulders every day for a total of about 30-60 minutes, depending on how much attention the various parts need.

I was doing eccentric hamstring exercises once a day for a couple of weeks to relieve a chronic hamstring tendinosis on the right side. Those exercises and rolling my butt and hamstrings did the trick, and I am backing off of those as a result. I thought I might be starting to do general strength work by now, but I am really hesitant to add it without having a good focus for the exercises I do. Hanging out with Dr. Ball made me reconsider what I do for strength training. So far, I have limited it to the stuff I need to relieve known problems. I also added in functional strength work in the form of hill sprints. With the transition to less shoe, higher mileage and speed work, I feel this is enough new stimuli for now.

I have been tracking my food intake more or less daily for a couple of years now and finally stopped about two months ago. I decided I was tired of it and could probably do a fair job balancing my diet without my iPad given my years of practice and constant feedback. If my weight is any indication of how that's gone, I am succeeding. Without targeting weight loss as an explicit goal, I'm down to my pre-Chicago "racing weight" of 125. I think some of this is loss of muscle mass in my upper body, and I honestly don't miss it. I don't think a marathoner needs huge lats, traps and deltoids to be fast. These are muscles that get big on me if I just think about them. So, I stopped thinking about them. Well, I also stopped doing exercises that make them larger. Alas, they're still big, as the photo below shows. I guess they might serve a purpose in scaring off would-be attackers on the Bike Trail late at night. If I were a bad guy, I would think twice before messing with that V taper and those guns!

My massive back, after 3 months of no upper body work

I am ready for some speed and excited to see how this 5k plan goes before heading back into marathon training madness. Happy 4th of July, everyone!!

Barefoot Jaymee

2011-06-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

Barefoot Jaymee standing on Dean Street at age 3.

I remember running around barefoot a lot as a kid. In fact, my mother confirms that she had trouble getting shoes on me. When it was raining outside, I told her I didn't want to wear my shoes because they would just get wet. When my Dad and Grandpa Joe were out fertilizing the front lawn with chicken shit, I insisted on helping them in my bare feet despite their claims that the fertilizer would make my feet grow to be freakishly big. I didn't start really loving shoes, for fashion's sake, until I hit my teens. Even then, I was obsessed with barefoot-esque little flats, though I did adore my Famolare Get Theres.

Since I started running in 2004, I have gone through hundreds of pairs of shoes of various makes and models. I switch them up all the time. Dr. Lau asked me once why I did this, and I told him that I just hadn't found a pair that I loved enough to be loyal to. I have always run in neutral, cushioned shoes and haven't had any trouble that can be clearly blamed on footwear. When I started getting serious about running fast, I tried various racing flats for the marathon, and eventually landed on Nike Lunaracers. These were the closest I had come to a shoe I could love. I have raced all distances in them exclusively since they first came out.

I have been fascinated by all of the research, hype, devotion and skepticism that barefoot and minimalist running has generated over the past couple of years. I read Born to Run and actually quite liked it. I love seeing the "crazies" on the bike trail padding along in their Vibram Five Fingers (VFF) and the stares from properly shod runners that follow them. I admit that I bought a pair of the VFFs when I was first bitten by the barefoot bug. I loved wearing them out in the field, walking through grasslands and squishy soil. Feeling the various textures of the earth beneath your feet is a wonderful sensation. Unfortunately, I wasn't sold on the VFF. My toes never got used to being spread out, and I got tired of people asking if I had the rest of the ape suit to go along with the feet. I've never worn them for running.

I started seriously considering going "minimalist" more recently as more science has emerged about the benefits of less shoe. Dr. Ball was the one who spurred me to act on this desire to lighten my shoe by agreeing that the science was pretty clear about the benefits. Ironically, he was one of the first to caution me on making this move after reading my last blog post, telling me I needed to be smart for the next 6 months. He's right.

I fully recognize the risks of injury associated with making this transition, but I believe those risks are low for me. First, I am used to going barefoot. As noted above, I go barefoot and always have whenever possible. This means my feet are probably relatively strong compared to someone who rarely walks about without shoes. Second, I have always run in neutral shoes without orthotics or additional support. I have a nice high arch and easy going feet that seem to get along with whatever shoe I put them in. Third, I race marathons in a very light shoe and have always walked away feeling great--no issues with my feet or lower legs after even the toughest conditions.

So, I am a good candidate. Now, why would I take any risk at all? Well, I think there's a risk associated with staying in the cushiony shoes I have been wearing. Recent studies comparing impacts to the body of shod versus barefoot running indicate that the body receives less impact without a shoe for a runner accustomed to running barefoot. This is because the body naturally adjusts to soften the load when there's not a big piece of squishy foam and hard plastic that keeps it from being able to do so. I'll trust that you'll read all about this from some other source (like this one) and stop there with my explanation.

Shoe changes require a transition period because our bodies become accustomed to the shoes we wear regularly. My body won't magically adjust my gait to absorb the impacts right off--it needs time to strengthen tendons, ligaments and muscles that I've not used in a long time and adjust my biomechanics accordingly. Note, I don't plan to run barefoot exclusively, though I will do some barefoot running for recovery and therapeutic purposes (See Camille's blog post about her experience with the therapeutic benefits of barefoot running). And, by barefoot, I mean I will wear some protection on my feet since I don't trust people to not throw glass, nails and tacks in the grass where I'll run.

To start, I needed new equipment. I chose the Nike Free Run 2+ as my transitional shoe. I chose the Merrell Pace Glove, which I call my Vibram one fingers, as my barefoot shoe. I started wearing both of these on my daily dog walks and out and about back in May. I did notice that my feet needed some "breaking in" with the one fingers, but they felt awesome almost immediately walking around.

Nike Free Run 2+ = Love

Merrell Pace Glove aka Vibram One Fingers

I then devised a running plan for the Nike Frees to slowly transition out of my Mizuno Waveriders. I wore the Frees for the first time on a recovery run two weeks ago. I planned to run only a couple of miles and get a feel for them. I promised myself, if I felt anything weird, I would turn around and get my Mizunos. I ran for an hour in the Frees and was in heaven. They were so amazingly comfortable, and I felt so light on my feet. I had finally fallen in love with a pair of shoes. I wanted to wear them every day from then on out, but I knew that was foolish. The next day, my legs and feet actually felt more recovered than I expected, without any soreness in my feet or calf muscles. I really expected to feel something in my calf muscles because of the difference in heel to toe drop between my Mizunos and the Frees. Nothing. I wore them for 15 miles that first week (20% of my mileage), about 26 miles last week (30%) and will wear them for about 30 miles this week (38%). Now, when I wear the Mizunos, my feet and legs feel so clumsy and clunky. I look forward to my runs in the Frees (am I a Nike ad or what?) By the end of July, I should be doing most of my running in the Frees.

As a next step, I will try out an even lighter and more barefoot version of the Free--the Free 3.0. I designed my own at Nike.com, deciding that the added expense of making them cute was worth it since I don't plan to replace the shoes as often as I did my cushioned trainers. They are actually the Free Run 2+ uppers with the 3.0 footbed--the best of both worlds. They have a little Effin' J embroidered on the tongue so they won't get confused with someone else's Nike Free Run 2+s with a 3.0 footbed. I have a feeling I'll like them and will slowly transition into those or might alternate between the Free Run 2+ and the Free 3.0.

I will start doing some barefoot running in my one fingers in about two weeks. I'll do these on my recovery days, starting with 10 minutes running in a grass field. I plan to work up to doing this 2 days per week for 30 minutes max each day if I feel like it helps me with recovery and injury prevention. If not, then I'll just keep wearing my one fingers on my dog walks, getting some strength training benefit for my little peeties.

So, there you have it folks. I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Honey badger don't care

2011-06-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are Facebook friends with me, you may have seen a video I shared about the honey badger. If not, I've added the link below. This video has been making the rounds for a while, but somehow, I never saw it before the other day. Honey badger has made quite an impression on me and has become one of my heroes. I actually found myself chanting, "Honey badger don't care," during my track workout this week when things started to get tough. Thinking of that little badass honey badger out there getting bitten by cobras, taking a short "nap" and getting back to the business of eating the cobra makes me feel like a loser if I complain about pain while running.

This week, I had a full week of training and travel for work. I was at our semi-annual scientist geek fest in Bodega Bay, CA Monday through Thursday, where we spent the entire time sequestered in little cubby holes writing our brains out about the latest conservation science issues we are working on. It sounds all nice and relaxing, but it is very hard work. I always leave these events exhausted. My daily run is truly a highlight while I'm there, giving me a chance to get out into the fresh marine air and spend some time not thinking about writing. I ran 9-10 miles each day on Tuesday and Wednesday in Bodega along the harbor shore and then up onto Bodega Head where there are some newly constructed trails that circle the head. My legs got in lots of good hill work those days.

Thursday night, when I got home, I did my track workout. It was much warmer this week than last for a very similar, but slightly harder workout. I ran 12.25 miles total with 2 x (1600/1200/1600) with 4 minutes jog rest between reps and 7 minutes jog between the two sets. The workout called for 8k pace, but I decided to try to hold the same pace as last week's 10k-paced workout which was 5:55-6:00. My guess is that I would not be able to hold 6:00 pace in even an 8k right now in warm conditions. In fact, The Good Book (Squires and Lehane) says this about this particular workout: "This workout is aggressive, but don't hammer yourself excessively." Well, honey badger probably would have hammered excessively, but I decided not to. Nonetheless, I averaged 5:58 pace for the reps.

Friday, I was tired. I did my 8 mile run and felt pooped the whole time. Luckily, the day called for an 8-mile recovery run and I needed it. I am closely following the Squires plan in terms of pacing for my non-workout runs. He has three different paces for these runs:

recovery pace = heart rate between 120-140 (>8:15 pace for me)
easy pace = < 2 minutes per mile slower than 5k pace (7:50-8:00)
relaxed pace = ~2 minutes per mile slower than 5k pace (7:30-7:45)

The slower pace I ran on Friday paid off in that my body felt great during my run last night. Another small detail that I'm following "by the book" from Squires' plan is doing strides after my run is over. In the past, I would do my strides during the last few miles of my run but would typically still run a mile after that on my way home. Now, I finish my run at home and do my strides in front of my house, which tortures my poor puppy who watches me zoom past the window over and over and doesn't understand why he can't come out and chase me. This also gives me the opportunity to change into less shoe for the strides.

On that note, my next post will elaborate more on why I'm jumping on the bandwagon and going minimalist with my footwear. I haven't started this yet, but I have a plan. Of course I have a plan. In the mean time, if you haven't read The Science of Sport post about this or Camille Herron's account of her switch to minimalist running, you might want to.

Honey badger don't wear shoes. Honey badger don't give a shit.

Smarty Pants

2011-06-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you who were concerned about me following my training plan at all costs, my behavior these last two weeks should allay your fears. I have been smarter than I ever would have expected with my training and recovery. While I have pushed my body in my workouts like normal, I have also altered my schedule as needed to allow for added recovery. I actually like this self-coaching gig for that reason. I have set myself some guidelines for key workouts, but the rest of the schedule can be modified based on how I feel, last-minute work and life crises, etc. Admittedly, this is a relatively easy task when I'm only running 50-60 miles per week. However, I like that I am getting into the habitat of critically thinking about what's important in my schedule, and being willing to make a change that might involve reducing my mileage for the day or week.

All of this follows Coach Tom's point from months ago that I don't have to worry about being a slacker. My concern should be about over-doing it. So, I view everything in that light. I have to say that it is a lot easier to justify a change when I wrote the plan. I don't have to second guess whether or not the change will upset some grand training scheme or harm my fitness in any way. I am the only one who really cares (aside from Coach T, of course) whether or not I follow the plan. I feel a strange sense of freedom in that.

Last week I actually took two days off and this week, one day. Last week, it was just because I could. I decided that I have 6 months of killer work coming up, have ramped up my mileage quickly in the last month and could afford to take some down time. This week, I was feeling residual muscle soreness from my long run on Sunday, in which I ran 14 miles @ sub-7:00 pace. I was scheduled to run a hard 12-miler on Tuesday and knew that it wouldn't be smart to run on sore legs. I also got treatment from Dr. Lau that day. So, I ran an easy 8 with strides on Tuesday, rested Wednesday and did the 12 miler last night.

Last night was my first track workout in 3 months and I had fun. It was straight from the Speed with Endurance book:
2 miles warm up + drills + strides + 2 x (1200/1600/1200m @ 10k) w/ 4 min jog rest between reps and 7 minutes rest between sets + 2 mile cool down.

This workout was a change for me in that the rests were pretty long compared to what I am used to with 10k reps. I really liked it. I ended up doing my repeats at 5:55-6:00 pace and, I think, because the rests were so long, it all felt very controlled and relatively easy. I also don't feel horribly beat up today. I am still trying to get used to my "new" legs, and it became clear last night that my turnover needs some work. I think the turnover will improve as I continue to do strides and form drills in my workouts and just keep up the faster running.

My next hard workout won't be until Sunday where I do 15 miles with some hill repeats. The hill repeats were going to be part of a mid-week workout, but I decided to lump them into the long run instead. It's fun being the boss of me.

Planning for PRs

2011-05-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

I now have a training plan in place that will take me through my next marathon race in Houston, Texas on January 14, 2012. In my last post, I discussed plans to possibly race a marathon in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in July, but I found out last week that they are only sending one female to run the race, the military winner of the Marine Corps Marathon. When I heard the news, I was actually relieved. I was feeling pressure to fit in enough training between now and then to at least make a decent showing. Now, I can focus on short distances for a few months before launching into my marathon training cycle.

I sat down one evening earlier this week and started working on my training plan for the next 7+ months. It follows the programs detailed in the Squires and Lehane book Speed with Endurance. The general outline is as follows:

3 weeks alpha base phase (mileage range 46-59)
4 weeks speed with endurance phase (mileage range 62-71)

3 weeks 5k pre-season plan (mileage range 61-82)

3 weeks 5k in-season plan (mileage range 58-81)

1 week regeneration (no mileage target, just recover)

3 weeks alpha base (mileage range 89-93)

3 weeks speed with endurance (mileage range 85-91)

15 weeks marathon specific training plan (mileage range 63-106)

As I move through the plan, I will post some of the workouts that I do to give you a flavor for the program. I have set goal races sprinkled throughout the plan that I will mostly train through. Nonetheless, my goal is to PR at every distance from the 5k to the marathon during this training cycle. I am shooting for the following:

5k (in mid August): <17:40

10k (in late November): <36:30

half marathon (early October): <1:19

marathon (Jan 2012): <2:42

My first race is a 5k at the World Masters Track and Field Championships being held in Sacramento in mid July. I am training through this race since I know I won't be in shape for anything respectable by then. I do however want to be a part of that celebration of masters athletes and run for the USA. I am targeting a fast 5k later in the summer and will shoot for a big PR.

My plan is not easy, but neither am I (despite what you may have heard on the street). This will be the most challenging training plan, at least in terms of volume, that I have undertaken. It doesn't scare me in the least. In fact, it thrills me to think about what might come out the other end as I crank through the workouts. I had an interesting Facebook exchange going this week where a friend posted her concern about me setting such a long-term plan. I appreciate her cautionary words and can understand how an athlete might feel obligated to stick to such a plan even if it was not working or if circumstances changed making the plan obsolete. However, long-term plans are the norm for me since that's how Coach Nicole operated. I would often get 6 months of workouts from her at a time because that's what I wanted. The plan is just a plan, of course. While I see the workouts and mileage within the plan as changeable, I have been amazed at how closely I've been able to stick to my plans in the past. Since I am not a fan of blind obedience to anything, I don't feel obligated to follow a plan just because.

I am not sure I can convey to you how convinced I am that I will be a faster and healthier runner for having undergone 11 days of pain and torture in Arizona. I am now able to run with ease, something I'm not sure I have ever experienced before. I am no longer fighting my body to move forward in a running stride and that is remarkable. The funny thing is that I never even knew that fight was going on! Dr. Lau, from Sacramento, has now made contact with Dr. Ball, from Arizona, and they have developed a plan for me to gain even more range of motion and keep it there for the long term. I also found out that I don't have any serious degeneration or deformities in my hip joint, though there may be something minor in there that an x-ray can't pick up. Nonetheless, Dr. Ball said this bodes very well for my continued improvement.

It's going to be a tough row to hoe, but I am so ready for this.

The Training Wheels Are Off

2011-05-22T14:41:00.000-07:00

I have completed 5 runs since leaving Dr. Ball in sunny Arizona, and all have been pain free. Up until a week ago, I was still running with discomfort and some part of my brain hasn't really wanted to let go of that memory. When I was running in Arizona, I had an appointment with Dr. Ball each day and knew that he would take care of anything that hurt. I told Brooke that we had our training wheels on while we were there.

The training wheels are now off and I haven't fallen down yet. However, my brain is in a state of high alert for any signs of pain and tightness. I don't have that daily appointment any more to rely on, but I really don't need it. Dr. Ball got me to a healthy state, and I need to do the maintenance work from here on out. The maintenance work involves no stretching aside from an exercise designed to mobilize my hip capsule, though I believe the Good Doctor would not count that as a stretch per se. Dr. Ball is anti-stretch. My maintenance work does require a lot of rolling with a lacrosse ball and the grid foam roller. He and his staff were diligent about showing me the right way to use these tools and what parts to use them on. While I had been rolling regularly, I wasn't rolling the right parts regularly. It's really easy to see why my hamstrings got so messed up over the years, since I was rolling every major leg muscle group EXCEPT them. When I asked how often to roll, he asked me, "how many days a week will you be running?"

When it was time for me to leave Arizona, Dr. Ball mentioned that he still wasn't satisfied with the range of motion in my left hip. He hypothesized that there might be something mechanically wrong with it. He explained that this was probably something that I've had most of my life, perhaps as a result of my parachuting accident at Army Airborne. He emphasized that it didn't really matter. My treatment would be exactly the same. It was just something I had to live with, which means being extra vigilant about keeping the hip capsule mobile. I am going in Tuesday to see a sports medicine doc at Kaiser to see about this issue, if for no other reason than to establish a baseline for whatever it may be.

Now, for the fun stuff.

I ran 59.5 miles this week, completely pain free and did two workouts. One workout was a Squires-style tempo run on Thursday where I ran 9 total with 4 miles at 6:30 pace. His "tempo runs" during the build up (alpha) phase of the program are run 50 seconds slower than 5k pace. So, I might have been pushing it a bit, but it felt good. I ran 14 miles today with pick ups like last weekend's long run (1,1,1,2,1,1,1,2 minutes with a return to long run pace in between). This is the longest run I have done since October, and it felt awesome. I feel confident enough to continue on with my plan to build up for a marathon in July, though the military hasn't announced who's on the team yet for the World Military Championships in Rio de Janeiro. Regardless, I wrote my training plan based off of Squires' 5k program to gear up for the World Masters' Championships here in Sacramento in July. I added in longer runs on the weekends to help prepare me for the marathon, if that opportunity materializes. Either way, I have a target race in July to shoot for. Here's what my training plan looks like for the 4 weeks including this week.

I didn't run 10 miles

2011-05-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

That's right. My run this morning didn't go as planned. I had planned to test my new and improved legs on a long run of 10 miles this morning. Dr. Ball and I had been talking about me running up to 90 minutes this weekend, so I set that as the upper limit. I didn't know how fast I would go.

During yesterday's run, I threw in a few strides to see how that felt. It felt good--smooth. So, I decided today I would try the workout I had set for myself for this weekend a month ago. Back then, I was optimistic that, with enough rest from running, I would be able to slowly ramp up my mileage and would be running 50 miles this week with a 12-13 mile long run. My plan came from a book I bought after seeing mention of it on Camille Herron's fantastic blog. The book is called Speed With Endurance written by Bill Squires and Bruce Lehane.

One of the bread and butter workouts that repeats throughout all of the training plans is a long run with pick ups. You start with baby pickups and progress to some pretty long ones as you get deep into the trenches of his marathon training plan. My plan for today was to do 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2 minute pick ups spread throughout my long run. This looks something like 1 minute fast and smooth, 4-5 minutes at your long run pace, then another 1 minute fast but smooth and then back to your long run pace, etc.

So, my run went awesome. I ended up running 12 miles at 7:02 pace with the surges as planned and at 5k-10k pace. No pain. No soreness. Lots of smiling. I really enjoyed this workout, probably because I was running care free and pain free and surging with some speed. One big thing I noticed today was that paces that have felt labored to me lately felt easy breezy today. I talked with Dr. Ball about this today during treatment and asked whether this could be because I am finally healthy. In other words, I'm not fighting my body to make it run. I am actually running naturally again. He said that this is likely what's going on. This was also something I hadn't expected from my visit to see the Good Doctor: that I might become a faster runner simply because my body was not having to work so hard to run. Cool.

I am so excited to resurrect my training plan and get started on more of Squires' workouts next week. Coach T will make sure I am smart about reintroducing faster running gradually. I asked Dr. Ball today about whether speed work was in my future and he refused to weigh in. He said, "I'm not your coach. But you're healthy now to start training again." I'm taking that as a yes.

Notes from the edge of the desert

2011-05-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

The canal is where runners can

be found in Phoenix.

That is the title I gave to the log I was keeping for myself chronicling my rehabilitation here in Phoenix. I just looked at these notes for the first time since Wednesday and realized I stopped keeping notes when I stopped feeling pain in my knee. That's right--I stopped feeling pain in my knee.

Here's a condensed version of my treatment log:

Day 1: I am effed up. I can't lunge right. I can't touch my toes. My lower back is locked. My hip capsule is locked out and my adductors are fused. He did some stuff to my hip and adductors and told me to run. Ran for 6 miles that night, but it was really more of the same with tightness coming on at 3 miles and remaining on and off throughout the rest of the run.

Day 2: Test run in the morning and started feeling knee pain after about a mile. I ran 3 miles total. Dr. Ball said he expected that and did another round of the same treatment as the day before. Test run in the evening and felt knee pain 21 minutes into the run.

Day 3: a.m. Morning test run and felt knee pain in first 2 miles. Frustrated and afraid of my test runs now. Dr. Ball was frustrated too with my hip continuing to lock down. I could tell he was starting to question his guru ways when he started talking about a possible labral tear in my hip. He worked the crud out of my adductors/hamstrings and hip capsule. I did several 5-10 minute test runs and still felt knee pain. I freaked and drove home in tears. Texted The Genius that I felt like giving up.

p.m. Afternoon test run and no knee pain until 28 minutes into the run. Improvement. Dr. Ball worked on the adductor and hip capsule again during the second treatment of the day. 10 minute test run and I didn't feel any knee pain. Saw Ryan Hall in the office.

Day 4: Started to feel like I was using my hamstrings again during my run. Ran for 32 minutes pain free! Treatment: More work on front of quadriceps, TFL, adductor, hip capsule. Talked a lot with the doc to better understand everything that was going on. 22 minute test run and started feeling aching in back of knee. Doc worried that I am having trouble differentiating between treatment pain and the injury pain. He said he would normally give me a rest, but we had a compressed schedule. So, I decided to stay in Phoenix longer.

Day 5: Test run in the morning completely pain free for 39 minutes! Treatment of some kind because I stopped keeping a log. Test run in the evening of 30 minutes. I ran 9 miles today, pain free!

Day 5 was Wednesday. Thursday morning, I ran for 50 minutes pain free and Friday for 60 minutes (8 miles). It is hard to believe that I went out for a run this morning and did not think about whether my knee would hurt or not. And, I braved a full out and back course rather than repeating a short loop course. Tomorrow, I will run 10 miles with some local fast runners: two of them are also Houston Hopefuls. Here's the kicker: I will run 55 miles this week. Can you believe that? 55 miles. I can now dust off the training plan I had written for myself to take me through the Rio Marathon in July. Unbelievable.

Dr. Ball has said to me numerous times that freedom from symptoms while running does not mean your body is functioning properly. This little lesson has provoked a lot of thought for me. I was one of those runners who was so proud of myself for having been injury-free for 6 years. I was fairly arrogant about it now that I think of it. What seems pretty clear to me given all of the stuff that Dr. Ball continues to find to work on, is that my body is damned good at compensating and has been for years. Running 80-100 miles per week is extreme for a human. There are people who run a lot more, but most people in the world run a lot less--like closer to zero. Why did I think that all those miles weren't having some sort of negative effect on my body? Maybe I'm dense.

To the question, "how do I keep this from cropping up again?", I usually get something like, "stop running" from Dr. Ball. He's right, but he knows that I won't and that will keep him in business.

Hal in his natural environment.

I spent the first week here in Phoenix with some gracious, hospitable friends and their dog Hal. Hal and I had a little love affair going. We spent a few hours swimming together and that is the bees' knees for a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.

Yesterday, my friend Brooke flew in. She read about what I was doing here and decided to join me in the desert for a few days to see if the Good Doctor can help her with a chronic injury that has kept her from training for far too long. She is a fellow run blogger and someone spotted us and shot the video below of us geeking out in our room today, telling our stories of injury, recovery and the magical healing powers of the desert.

Phoenix continued

2011-05-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

I completely underestimated how much treatment for my leg injury was going to take out of me both emotionally and physically. This healing stuff is hard work. I am on the quick recovery program here due to my own time constraints, so Dr. Ball has to work his magic on a compressed schedule, and that is not ideal. We have been balancing the intensity and frequency of treatment with how well my body recovers all the while testing the treatment with short and long runs. It became clear yesterday during my afternoon run that I was having a hard time telling apart the discomfort from treatment and that of the original issue.

So, I made a decision to stay in Phoenix through next Tuesday. I am making remarkable progress (in my mind at least), but Dr. Ball mentioned that, if he wasn't under a time constraint with me, he would give me a rest from treatment to allow my body to recover and to truly test the effects. It seems wrong to push my body harder or truncate my treatment at this point given how far I have come and how much more I have to go. I want to let the treatment sink in and get as much of the junk cleared out of my system as possible.

That's what we're doing here: clearing junk from my trunk. I had no idea how much junk I had in there either and most of it was hidden. I am going to make one sweeping disclaimer here that I may not get all of the details completely right, and that is a factor of my monkey brain, not Dr. Ball's. He does a great job of explaining all of this, but there is a limit to how much I can absorb. He mentioned at some point that I had the most messed up adductor/hamstring "cluster" (my term) that he had seen in a long, long time. Here's how I understand my main problem (there are other minor issues): my hamstrings and adductors are fused together which doesn't let me use them properly when I run. This forces my hips/butt to work overtime to actually move forward with a stride. At some point, my glutes and hips get tired of doing what I'm asking them to do because they're not designed to do this, and they cry uncle. This is usually my tensor fascia latae (TFL) crying out or it might be a quad muscle. The good old IT band is attached to the TFL and starts to get pulled when the TFL tightens. That's when I feel the knee pain.

As part of this exploration, I received a wonderful consult from a coach in Australia, Keith Bateman, who specializes in helping people with form issues. He was able to create stills from a video of me running. It was very interesting to see how awful I looked compared to what I should be doing. For some reason, a prancing horse is what I see in these images. From one shot, it was clear that I am too upright, I use my calf muscles to propel myself (maybe lob is a batter term) forward instead of my hamstrings, my front foot is lazily dangling rather than being dorsiflexed and that all has a ripple effect that plays out in the rest of my stride. When I first saw these images a couple weeks back, I felt empowered with this new knowledge and set out to improve my stride with form drills and paying attention to my forward lean, etc.

What I didn't know then was that I couldn't get there by willing it or even trying harder. My form sucks, in part, because my body is not functioning properly. The most humbling thing I've done with Dr. Ball is simple forward lunging. I posted a video of my flexibility tests on YouTube for him originally, and it is painfully clear that I'm having problems doing a simple forward lunge. He asked me the first day we met how in the world I could run a 2:45 marathon when I couldn't even do a simple forward lunge without struggling. I can't lunge not because I'm weak. No amount of strength work or stretching will make me a better lunger. I can't lunge because my body is stuck. My hips are stuck, my hamstrings are stuck, my adductors are stuck and this has been building up for years and years. It is an interesting take on how I've typically thought about my body and how it functions.

How did I get to this point? Well, by running a lot of miles. Dr. Ball reassured me that my body is doing all the right things. I go out for a hard run and it repairs the damage with temporary patches and communicates with me the next day through muscle soreness that I have done damage. Surely, my body thinks, I will listen to the cries to stop doing this activity and let it do some more substantial repair work, but my brain overrides this and we (my brain and I) go out and do it again. So, imagine all of these little band-aid patches being applied over and over in the same spots. Eventually, dysfunction arises when a substantial trigger point/knot/adhesion forms and the muscle no longer has the elasticity, range of movement and therefore function that it should. So, the body compensates. Adhesions form in other places. Pretty soon there's just a whole lot of compensation going on and a pile of band aids being thrown down on top of band aids. Something has to give. That's where I was 6 months ago after the Chicago Marathon and have remained. Looking back, I thank Dog that my body held up through that race.

The relief I've gotten with the various forms of therapy I've tried so far have served to alleviate a small bit of the problem. As Dr. Ball explains it, I don't just have IT band syndrome, I have IT Band syndrome + glued adductors + locked hips + a locked lower back +.... Relieve one of these things, and you get marginal improvement, but a problem will come back. So, your goal has to be to eliminate as much of the dysfunction as possible to break the chain.

That's what he has been attempting to do with me: jackhammer away at the concrete in my muscles and make it so they function properly. The difference in how my legs feel is amazing. They feel light and free when I run now. I feel effortless. This is a very exhausting process, and he and his team at Maximum Mobility Chiropractic have been working their butts off on me. Dr. Ball uses active release therapy (ART) mostly, but he does it as a team with someone moving my leg through a certain motion while he strips out the adhesions with his hands. All he has to say to his partner is "capsule" and they know exactly how to move my leg. He also uses an EPAT (extracorporeal pulse activation therapy) machine to "soften" the tissue and it feels like a jackhammer smacking your leg. It works. After this abuse, I go out and do a test run and come back in to report back. On Monday, I spent probably 3-4 hours in the office and test ran for about 80 minutes total. I am really starting to notice a difference.

The good news for all of us is that once these adhesions are cleared, they take a long time to lay down again and build up. Dr. Ball hasn't yet shared the simple measures I will take to maintain my shiny new body in this functional condition, but he assures me it won't be hard.

In the end, I don't think there is any magic to what Dr. Ball does here in the desert. He's a careful observer but mostly he knows what to look for. Most of all, he is super dedicated to his patients with a main goal of aiming for functional improvement rather than just symptom relief. Finding someone who has this combination is absolutely rare which is why I've shared the waiting room with a parade of the nation's best runners this week. Yesterday, he kept talking about how he was unique and that I would never be able to find anyone else out there as good as him. It took him about three tries with this comment before I got that he was being absolutely sarcastic. I won't let him get away with that today.

Let the adventure begin

2011-05-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

I am on a plane flying to Phoenix, Arizona where I am hoping to find a cure for my recurring and elusive leg pain.  My last blog post, where I asked you to help solve the mystery of my injury, launched me on a wild ride that has culminated in this trip to the desert.

I received a lot of good feedback from many of you.  It was clear that you were able to see the problem, but there seemed to be a split between those that looked to the foot for the cause and those that thought it was coming from somewhere higher up, like my hips.  I responded to many of your comments saying that Dr. Lau was focusing on the feet.  However, the adjustments he did on my foot, ankle and calf did not resolve the problem.

It was at that point that I sent a message to Dr. John Ball in Chandler, Arizona.  I sent him a link to my blog post and a couple of paragraphs diagraming the problem.  I had read about Dr. Ball in a blog post by Lauren Fleshmen.  She had just gone to visit him and posted a link to his blog.  I started to read some of his posts and was really taken by his words, sarcasm and wisdom.  In particular, I found this post addressed to one of the athletes he treats, as a follow up to her treatment particularly relevant.  Like me, she traveled from out of state to seek his help.  There is a lot of great information in that post that every runner could use.

To my surprise, Dr. Ball responded to my message quickly and suggested we talk on the phone about my injury.  I called him that night and he walked me through a few flexibility tests. It became clear very quickly that I wasn't quite getting what he wanted me to do.  So, he told me to take some video footage of myself doing these exercises and send them to him.  He spent a generous amount of time explaining to me what some of the issues might be and what I should expect from treatment.  One thing that really stuck with me was that, when the problem originates in the soft tissue, it shouldn't take more than one or two treatments to see marked improvement.  He told me that, if someone is working on the same spot for more than 1-2 treatments and you're not getting better, then they haven't found the right spot to treat.  That doesn't mean that you won't go back for more treatments for them to try other things, but, when they get it right, it will be quick and noticeable. He also has some very pointed opinions on runners having weak hips as a catch all explanation for just about every problem.  As he said to me, "if you can run 100 mile weeks and a 2:45 marathon, you are not being limited by weak glutes."

I immediately pulled out my iPad, shot the video and posted it on YouTube.

He watched it immediately and sent me a couple of ideas on areas Dr. Lau should work on.  I saw Dr. Lau a couple of days later and he was happy to try what Dr. ball had suggested.  When I asked Dr. Lau if he felt weird about me going to someone else and then asking him to work on me, he assured me that he did not.  He said, "we all have the same end goal, and that is to get you back to running."  He is a class act.

Wednesday was my test run day.  Test runs are unnerving because I can't help but think about every little twinge I feel and wonder if it indicates the continuation of my problem.  Unfortunately, the pain in my left leg came on with clocklike precision, right at about 3 miles into the run.  I was not happy.  I reported back to Dr. Lau, and he told me that he was out of ideas for me.

I sent Dr. Ball a message about the failed test run.  He said he thought this was fixable, but that he needed to get his hands on me.  He told me that Arizona was nice this time of year.  So, I thought about it for about 10 seconds and booked a flight to Phoenix.  I had free tickets on Southwest Airlines, a super hospitable coworker who is letting me stay at her house in Phoenix, a boyfriend who will love and care for my zoo while I'm away and a job that allows me the ability to work remotely.  Dr. Ball Is going to see me this afternoon (Saturday), and we'll see how it goes from there.  My return flight is booked for Thursday night. Did I mention that he treats Ryan Hall?

I still haven't found the source of my problem and I really want to be pissed off about that.  Instead I feel humbled by the generosity of strangers, friends and loved ones and their willingness to spend time helping me.

You're the doctor

2011-04-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

Julie, of the fabulous blog Races Like a Girl, was dealing with an injury last fall and in this post offered a prize to anyone who could accurately diagnose her problem. She was, of course, receiving the appropriate medical diagnostic tests for the issue as well. I ended up being the grand prize winner having guessed stress fracture of the femur or pelvis before anyone else did, but I was shocked at how many people guessed correctly! My prize was a Barnes and Noble gift card, which, ironically, I used to buy ebooks for my iPad to read while I was rehabilitating my own injuries after the Athens Marathon.

So, I am enlisting your help, dear readers, to figure out what causes my left leg to tighten up about 30-40 minutes into each and every run. I have been treating my IT band (stretching, rolling, icing, time off from running, strength training, acupuncture, active release therapy) for the last month and am now quite sure that, while the pain I feel is coming in part from an irritated IT band, this is a symptom and not the cause. I am looking for the root cause here, so I can treat it and get back to running longer than 40 minutes at a time.

During my run, a typical progression goes something like this:

the first 3 miles feel awesome;
some tension just above and to the outside of my kneecap appears or the lower part of the outside of my leg tightens up;
that tension goes away, and I might feel some pulling or tightness below my kneecap;
the outside of my upper leg eventually starts to feel a little weak or achy and;
finally, I get a fairly persistent ache in the outside of my kneecap where the IT band rubs over the end of the femur. Sometimes this is felt behind my knee and even into my calf. This comes and goes later in the run and does not become worse the longer I run beyond 45 minutes, though I haven't done too many runs over 45 minutes. Oddly enough, when I put direct pressure on the point where I feel this tightness, it does not hurt at all. During the latter parts of many runs, I have felt as though my lower left leg is a peg leg, with no ability to push off at all.

I have been doing everything right according to Dr. Lau: stretching every day after my run, rolling out my legs each night, regular strength exercises for my core and glutes. The problem has not gotten any better or any worse over the last month despite all of this treatment. I had a fantastic run last Thursday night, running 6 miles with 30 minutes at 6:30 pace. I felt awesome the entire run, with no tightness at all in my leg. The next morning, I tried to jog just a few miles and felt the tightness within the first 15 minutes. So, Coach T decided it was time to try some cross training over the weekend. I biked and pool ran for three days and did not run a step on land. I ran today to see if anything had changed, and I still felt that insidious tightness off and on during my 8 mile run. It came on, you guessed it, after 30 minutes of running. It's not a run-stopping tightness at this point--so, no sharp pain. It's just there, and I am afraid to push it.

I was traveling for work last week and had to run on the treadmill in the hotel gym. I had my iPhone with me and decided to see if I could get some video footage of myself running. It actually turned out pretty well. I have been carefully analyzing these videos, and I see lots of things wrong with my form, of course. But what I really want to know is if any of you see clues that may indicate what is causing this leg tightness. I'm hoping something will jump out at one of you and that you will add your diagnosis in the comment section below. The quality needed to be lowered so that it wouldn't take forever for you to download, but I think you can still make out the important things. I left the sound unedited so you can hear my feet thudding on the treadmill in a Godzilla versus Mothra sort of way.

If you have trouble viewing the embedded video here, I've also loaded it on YouTube. I will say that I was treated after my morning run today (I won't disclose what part of me was treated since that might give something away) and am hopeful that the adjustment will help. Fire away!

Ch-ch changes

2011-04-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

I made a tough decision this week. I will, for some undisclosed period of time, self coach. For those who think I'm copying Ryan Hall with this move, I assure you I am not. While he is getting help from God, and that appears to be working well for him, I am doing just the opposite and getting my help from Dog. Her name is Coach T, and I think she is highly qualified for the job. She knows how to use a whistle and a stopwatch. She works for treats and has lots of spots. I'm not sure what more an athlete could ask for.

Coach T

All kidding aside, the timing for this decision coincided with my six month anniversary with Focus n' Fly. I had initially paid for my first six months, treating it as an evaluation period. If you've followed my blog over that time period, you know that there has not been much to evaluate in terms of training. I started out broken and haven't been able to stay fixed. One of my main reasons for switching up my program was to be able to train with other runners. Because I have been injured on and off, that has not happened. I have learned a lot from Coach Tom--some very valuable lessons that will indeed make me a stronger runner. However, when faced with the decision to invest another chunk of change without a good feeling about whether training with others or training at all is probable, I decided to look to Dog for help.

I realized as the deadline for renewing my membership loomed, that I was putting way too much pressure on myself. I was taking myself too seriously. I tend to see myself more as a hard working runner that happens to be able to pull off some fast marathon times rather than an "elite runner". I think a lot of this pressure stemmed from the fact that I was spending a lot of money on coaching. In some warped way, I felt that I needed to get my money's worth and that was affecting my judgment. When I think about what really matters to me, I realize that first and foremost I just want to run. I have to get back to it, and I have to get back to a place where I enjoy it.

In reading through my own recent blog posts, I recognized that, somewhere along the line, I lost confidence in my own good judgment. I reflected on my success leading up to Chicago. It was no fluke that I improved enough over a six year period to qualify for the Trials. While I credit good coaching and a solid training plan for a lot of that success, I hadn't realized before how much responsibility I had for my own training and health. Over the last three years, Coach Nicole advised me, but I made the decisions. Before that, it was pretty much all me. Those decisions led me to six years of (nearly) injury-free training. On top of that, in the three years leading up to Chicago, I completed all but one scheduled workout. That's like hundreds of workouts, and it's not like my training was easy either. I did this by knowing myself and listening to my body. Nicole told me that over and over, reminding me that I knew my body well and should listen to it.

Being the analytical type that I am, I have enjoyed looking through all of the running books I own and ordering new ones to see what type of a program I might follow next. I am not foreclosing on the prospect of having a coach in the future, but for now Coach T is cheap and I think being fully responsible for my own training is a good way for me to get my mojo back. I know a number of self-coached running superstars that give me faith that it can work. As far as I know, they don't have anyone like Coach T on their side, so I think I will have a distinct advantage.

As for my running plan: I ran 37 miles last week and have 40 planned for this week including strides and a mild progression run this weekend. I'm back to fitting in some cross training and have added back into my program some of the strength work I was used to, like the Rock Circuit which I did this morning and realized I kind of missed. I think my runner's body is used to and thrives on variety. It certainly kept me strong for 3 years, so I'm going back to the stuff I know worked.

Coach T told me to go out and ride my bicycle for as long as I wanted on Sunday. It was fun to set out without an agenda and just ride. I rode 20 miles to Coffee Republic in Folsom, had coffee and apple pie, and rode 20 miles back home. It was lovely.

Hey! Get your ass to work!

That Coach T is a hard ass.

Pins and Needles

2011-04-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

Despite all my talk about cross training in my last post, I have been running nearly every day. I have also been continuing to get treated by Dr. Lau every few weeks, where he works out the little adhesions I’ve developed and tries to get my limbs and torso to move like they’re supposed to. I added another therapy last week: acupuncture. A friend of mine had gone to see Steve Phillips, an acupuncturist here in Sacramento, with very positive result for a neuroma on his foot. I decided it was time to give it a try. It seemed smart to establish a relationship with one more person with an interest in helping me heal.

I think I was expecting Steve to be dressed in robes and have a long beard when I showed up at his office. Instead, he was wearing khakis and a button down shirt, was clean shaven and had a very inviting and humble manner. (Shame on me for stereotyping). I knew I was going to be able to work with him when I told him it was my first time and that I would like to learn as much as possible. I asked if he would please explain how this whole thing works. He sort of laughed and said, “Well, we don’t really know.” He then went on to explain it from the western-medicine perspective and then the eastern, energy-based model. Either way, he said, it works. I like that. It reminded me that, just because I haven’t quite figured out how something works, does not mean it does not work.

So, he put pins in my hip and all down the side of my hurt leg, then added some electricity to get the muscles jumping around internally. He then used suction cups along the same meridian or line of my leg to further encourage blood flow to the area that needed healing attention. He first asked if I minded having bruises, and I laughed. He said, I thought not. Athletes are often proud of their bruises. He tended to some soreness in my lower back with needles sans electricity. I left with a line of bruises on my legs and a feeling of relief. I then went out and ran 5 miles and felt great. My runs have continued to go well, though my training has been very conservative.

Enter, the Brain...

One night last week, I awoke at 2 a.m. and could no longer sleep. I think I was worrying about this injury, actually, because that was on my mind as soon as my eyes opened. I grabbed my iPad from the nightstand and went to iTunes to look for anything I could find on healing and meditation. Why, I don’t quite know. I found two audiobooks that sounded good and downloaded both. I didn’t listen to them until a few days later. One was a book by Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Marty Rossman about using guided imagery for healing.

The first part of the book had a pretty profound impact on me. It reminded me that healing is something that my body does, not something that somebody else does for or to me. For example, if I go to a doctor with an infection, I will probably walk out with a prescription for antibiotics. While my symptoms probably subsided after taking the drugs (if the diagnosis was correct), neither the antibiotics nor the doctor healed me. Rather, the doctor diagnosed the problem and the drugs reduced the bacteria living in my body to a level that allowed my body to heal itself.

In some ways, it’s convenient to think of all injuries or illnesses as things that happen to us that are only curable with drugs, therapy or surgery. Unfortunately, this can distract us from taking on our share of personal responsibility for both the injury/illness as well as the healing. Doctors and therapists are great at diagnosing illness and conditions and also very capable at applying treatments, but only we can do the healing. Further, we are more in control of our instances of disease, illness and injury than we know. How many times have you blamed a co-worker or child for giving you a cold? They exposed you to the virus, yes, but your body could not fight it off for whatever reason. That reason probably had something to do with being run down, poor nutrition or some other factor within your control.

This is powerful stuff because it makes me see that I can do more about my symptoms and healing my injuries than I thought possible. It also reminds me how powerful a tool my mind can be in terms of keeping me sick and injured as well as helping me overcome these ailments.

So, how am I using this? One big key, and maybe the most important, is I am learning to relax, recognizing that in that relaxed state, my body will heal fastest. That’s why sleep is so important. This applies not just to my injury but also to my training in the future. What would happen if I spent 30 minutes more a day laying around, meditating or in just a generally relaxed state. Will my body heal faster? Will that help with my recovery and resistance to injury? What about thinking about relaxing when I am stretching after my workouts--directing “healing vibes” to my muscles rather than allowing the monkey chatter in my brain to run on about all of the craziness that awaits me in my day. What about doing this when I'm running? Yesterday, I threw on my headphones during my run and just enjoyed running on a sunny day along a beautiful river listening to upbeat music. This is very different from most runs where I spend the time thinking about the report I have due, or the messy house I'll be going back to or, worst of all, thinking about injury and pain.

I think this focus on healing is leading me to make smarter decisions about my training too. Remember my story about my visit to the acupuncturist earlier in this post where I went out and ran right after treatment? I spent $65 on treatment only to go out immediately and (possibly) reverse the healing effects? Was that 5 mile run that important? Sometimes, I can be pretty thick. I am trainable, however. The other night, I not only decided not to run after my treatment, but I decided not to cross train either--just let the needles do their magic. Coach Tom was very proud!

I am a work in progress, but at least there is progress.

Healing hard

2011-04-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

My drive to push myself to the limit is what propelled me to a 2:45 marathon on a hot day in Chicago last October. It is also the quality that keeps biting me in the ass as I come back from injury. Maybe I'm a slow learner or just really thickheaded. However, I think I finally get what Coach Tom has been trying to help me understand about the healing process and the double-edged sword of cross training.

When I was injured last spring, I cross trained like a mofo. At first, this was because I was trying to maintain a high level of fitness to hopefully carry through to a marathon I was training to run in April. When it became apparent that the injury wasn't going to allow me to run that race, I didn't back off the cross training. I kept going. I was doing ~10 hours of aerobic training each week often with 2-3 long, hard workouts in the mix. I did strength training and yoga on top of that. The reward for all of this effort was that I maintained a very high level of fitness--PRing in the 10k within 6 weeks of my return to running. While I don't question the value of cross training for maintaining my fitness, I wonder whether I delayed my recovery from the injury and ultimately my return to running.

So, that is what I'm starting to understand: the tension between maintaining fitness and healing the injury. This tension has become very clear to me as I have tried to "stay ahead" of my IT band tightness. So, I use tension in the literal sense here. If I tighten my muscles more with running, cycling, ellipticaling, strength training, than I can loosen them up, then I end up with a net tightness that will lead to re-injury pretty quickly.

When this injury first hit, my instinct was to go back into mofo territory. Coach Tom said to me more than once that I might be hitting the cross training a little hard. He said that, sure I was maintaining my fitness, but the only thing that would truly make me a faster runner would be to get back to running. So, it's like balancing an equation: I might lose fitness by backing off on the cross training, but if I get back to running, say a few weeks sooner, which enables me to start regaining my running-specific fitness faster, then I might actually be better off.

The thing is: it's really hard to voluntarily give up the fitness. We work so hard to build it up. I have found the key is to put the energy I would be using trying to hold on to every molecule of fitness in my body toward healing the injury. So, say I have 2 hours each day I can devote to exercise. I would normally try to maximize my aerobic-based, frothy-sweat generation time. I would go with maybe 90 minutes of aerobic training and 30 minutes of other stuff. That other stuff would probably be 10-15 minutes of stretching/rolling + strength training or some exercises that I believe will help me heal faster. Instead, I am trying this out: 45-60 minutes of aerobic exercise and an equal amount (45-60 minutes) of stretching/strength training/yoga or some activity that is focused on healing. This is what I refer to as train hard: heal even harder.

I use the time spent on the maintenance activities as a time to heal hard, meaning that I direct energy or concentrate on healing. With a rabid, fitness-maintenance focus, I constantly worry about feeling my injury and, even when I don't feel actual pain, wonder whether I am helping or hurting myself. While I love the rush of a hard, sweaty workout, it further tightens my muscles which then requires even more time to stretch out: time that I can't always devote to it. When I'm stretching, rolling, doing yoga and strength training I know that I am doing something positive to heal myself. So, my thinking shifts from injury-focused worry and negative energy to focus on healing and positive energy. It all sounds very touchy-feely, but I really do think that the constant worry and focus on pain (even the absence of pain) can keep us trapped in a vortex of injury. I need to picture myself running care free (notice I didn't say pain free because then the focus is still on the pain!) and do everything within my power to get there.

The upside to this approach is that it has made me more positive in general about my running. I feel like I'm doing something to move myself forward into a better running future rather than desperately trying to hold on to something that I had in the past.

Semper Gumby*

2011-03-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

*a play on the official Marine Corps motto Semper Fidelis, usually abbreviated Semper Fi, which means "always faithful". "Semper Gumby" refers to the cartoon character Gumby and means "always flexible." (Wikipedia 2011)

In my last post, I revealed that I have not been stretching after I run. Am I the only runner in the world who doesn't know how important it is to stretch right after you run? I have pretty much never done this, so it's no wonder I have such freaking tight muscles. I started doing this after running the last couple of days and felt like even more of an idiot because it actually works! Live and learn.

My tight areas are probably common to most runners: calves, IT band, hips, butt, lower back. So these are the stretches I use after every run now. It takes about 10 minutes to do all of this.

Calves
I mostly focus on stretching out my soleus, but I like to stretch out the muscles and tendons of my toes and foot too. For the soleus stretch, Spidey demonstrates how you do your regular calf stretch but, rather than keeping the stretched leg (left) straight, bend the knee of the leg you're stretching (Spidey's left leg) in order to hit the soleus. For more detailed instructions go here. To stretch the muscles/tendons in the bottom of my foot, I use the stretch pictured on the right. I press my toes up against a wall or pole like our biker chick is doing, and then I bend that right knee, moving it toward and away from the pole/wall to get a good stretch on the bottom of my foot. I hold each stretch for 10-20 seconds and do each stretch 2-3 times on each leg.

IT Band
Hopefully, everyone already knows that you can't actually stretch your IT band. You can possibly deform it, but that takes a lot of work. So, what you're actually after when you do an IT band stretch is stretching out or lengthening the muscles that control the tension in the IT band like one or more of your quads, tensor fascia latae, gluteals, etc. The first of the two stretches I do for the IT band is complicated to explain, but I'll try. It is sort of pictured on the left, except that you don't use a band. You start lying on your back with one leg, let's say the right, outstretched straight on the ground and pull your left knee up toward your chest. You then position the left knee slightly right of center line (so toward the right leg) and then start to straighten the left leg to get into roughly the position the fine gentleman is demonstrating except that you're holding your leg with your hands rather than a band. I usually put my left hand on the outside of my left quad and hold my lower leg with my right hand. You're pulling the straight leg toward your torso and to the right the whole time. You will feel tension along the entire outside of the leg if you're doing it right and it will be uncomfortable. I hold this one for 10 seconds, release by bending the left leg, then stretch for 10 seconds, release and then bite my lip and stretch it for 20 seconds. This is the stretch that is supposed to keep my IT band sliding smoothly over my quad muscles, so I give it extra special attention. I also do the old standby stretch pictured on the right. I feel that more in my glutes and lower back as I twist to touch the opposite foot.

Hip flexors

This is the only stretch I do for the hip flexors. It works. It hurts. Enough said. Sometimes, I will alternate a nice hamstring stretch by simply sitting back on my back foot and leaning forward to touch my toe like the young fawn on the right. For both of these, I hold the stretch for at least 10 seconds, release and go into the other stretch, repeating this cycle 3 times. I'm not sure if that's the best way to do this, but I like it.

The big bad gluteals

These bad boys are giving me problems lately for some inexplicable reason. So, they are also getting special treatment. There are really a number of stretches that you can do for the glutes. My favorite is the sitting glute stretch shown on the left, but I also sometimes do the lying glute stretch shown on the right. You can modify this one to attack other areas like the piriformis as well. I have done and still do the one below, but I swear I just don't feel it as much in my glutes. With each of these, I tend to like to just hold and continue to hold for 20-30 seconds each leg, pushing or pulling more as I feel the muscles release.

Twisting side stretch

One stretch that seems to get at a lot of key muscles is the twisting side stretch demonstrated by the foxy lady on the left. A few things to keep in mind with this one: you're actually sort of lunging with your front foot (left in this case), pushing your right hip with your hand out to the right, and reaching your right arm toward the left as far as you can go. Rather than just a simple side bend, this is more of a twist. You should feel this in the lower back and glutes and even down the outside of your leg. Try twisting more or less and lunging more or less to see what other fun muscles you can engage in the stretch. I hold this one for 20-30 seconds and then do some 5 second pulses to finish it off.

Extra credit

If you can find a partner willing to torture you, you can do the stretch on the right for extra credit. Look how much fun they're having! I won't often get to do this one right after I run unless the Genius is handy or I can convince a girlie to lend me a shoulder. The key here is for the helper to push the lower part of your bent leg (rather than the knee of your bent leg) toward your torso. Dr. Lau was happy to hear that the Genius and I were doing this stretch for each other, but he was concerned that it might become a competition. I, of course, win every time.

So, that's about it for stretching. I covered my rolling routine last summer in this post. According to Dr. Lau, I need to roll daily and can do this in the evening if I want to rather than right after running. One major difference is in how I use the little massage ball. Instead of sitting upright to roll my glutes and hips, I lay down, placing the ball under the muscle I'm trying to roll and wiggle or work back and forth on hot spots until they loosen up. You don't want to mash down on those spots and kill them, you just slowly work them free. A couple of new areas that I roll out with the grid are the peroneus longus muscle on the lower leg and my latissimus dorsi muscles in my back. I hope this helps you, and please remember to stretch after every run!!!

Busted

2011-03-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

As predicted in my last post, things started happening to me. They weren't good things. No sooner did I press the "publish post" button on that blog post than my butt started aching and my illitobial (IT) band started tightening up again. Bummer, right?

I conferred with Coach Tom after a painful run last Wednesday where I did the walk of shame home from about 2 miles out. That is clearly one of the more demoralizing experiences for a runner. You go out intending to run out and back and only get out. I was cold, in pain and very disappointed when I arrived home. It was hard to stay sad, though, when greeted by my two excited, slobbering dogs when I opened the door.

I rolled the crud out of my butt muscles on Wednesday night and gave her a shot again the next morning, deciding to run a short loop around my neighborhood. After a mile, I knew it was a no-go. So, I contacted Dr. Lau to try to get some advice about what I should work on, and Coach Tom decided to have me cross train for a couple of days.

I was cleared to run on Saturday but I didn't bother to ask what that run should consist of. I thought, while running along feeling great, why not pick up the pace and get in that tempo workout that was scheduled on Friday so I don't miss a workout for the week? I felt great throughout the 7.5 miles run at just under 7:00/mile pace and sent a note to Coach Tom telling him what I had done. He was not exactly thrilled with my judgment stating that, in the future, when I have a problem that keeps me from running for a couple of days, I should come back with a 20-30 minute easy effort and start from there. I felt the wisdom of that approach the next day when, during an easy run, I felt my IT band start to tie up again at the end of 5 miles. And, it got sore on Monday after 4.5 miles. I sent Coach Tom a message and quickly got a phone call where his first words were, "How pissed are you?"

Coach Tom explained that I have to be a lot smarter with my training and start thinking like a professional athlete. He explained that I am making a huge investment in this running thing and, if I want to continue to improve, I have to be more disciplined. He reminded me that I am never going to be lazy with my training. My challenge is to be more conservative, and if there is the slightest chance that something might hurt me, then I should opt out. Certainly, I should contact him if I have questions rather than relying on my own judgment. This is why I have a coach. I can't be trusted to make decisions for myself when it comes to my training. I will always tend toward the "more is better" end of the scale. While I have spent 6 years training pretty hard and remained almost completely injury free, my body is clearly going through some sort of adjustment period right now and I have to respect that. I guess I'm just not used to thinking of myself as breakable. I'm not fragile, God damn it!

The good news is that Dr. Lau was able to explain what's going on with me right now, and it's just your basic IT band shizzle. I will be butchering the physiological explanation he gave, but essentially what I feel is the IT band becoming locked up or adhering to my quad muscle. This is partly due to tightness in my gluteal muscles and some of my back muscles. He also confirmed that this is a different problem than the one I dealt with earlier this winter. The pain along the outside of my left leg is from the IT band tightening up and pulling because it can't slide freely over the quad muscle.

Dr. Lau unstuck my IT band, adjusted some other body parts, and said I'm good to go run. No real damage done. We also went over all of the things I should be doing to prevent this from recurring since I felt like I was doing a lot of stuff but didn't know whether it was helping or hurting me. The main thing I was missing was stretching right after I run. I like to lump all of my "maintenance work" into a chunk of time reserved in the evening. Dr. Lau explained that, with stretching, doing it at the end of the day was sort of worthless. If I don't do it while my muscles are warm, the muscles just harden in place (my words, not his).

I typically finish my run and then sit in my car or at a desk or do something that is probably the opposite of stretching. I need to stretch my IT band and glutes while my muscles are still warm within minutes of running to have the greatest effect. I need to keep that IT band sliding over the muscle rather than sticking to it. Dr. Lau said that stretching does this and that rolling won't help much with that issue. I remember reading a quote from Meb Keflezighi a few months ago related to stretching right after running. He felt it was the key to staying injury free. He suggested cutting your run 5 minutes short in order to get it in. He's a smart athlete! And, he's a professional!

I also showed Dr. Lau the various core and other strength training exercises that I do. He helped me work on doing them properly or not at all so I don't exacerbate my hip and lower back tightness. This requires modifying the yoga workouts I do to eliminate "boat". Apparently, that move strengthens abs but also tightens up hip flexors, and we runners don't need tighter hip flexors. I was doing many of the other core strength moves like pointers, bridges, and even one-legged downward facing dog in a way that tightened up my lower back and wasn't targeting the right core muscles. This stuff is going to take some serious work!

While I need to think like a professional athlete, I am not one and working to get all of this right is exhausting. I am learning, though, and will be a stronger, faster runner as a result. Luckily, I have professionals like Coach Tom and Dr. Lau to help me out!

Things are going to start happening to me now

2011-03-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

I have come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to be a professional runner in this lifetime. I think I missed the window for that opportunity by a couple of decades. Instead, I've tried to do the next best thing: integrate my running with my work and vice versa. A great example of this is the interest that my employer, The Nature Conservancy, has taken in profiling me as both a scientist and a runner. At first, I was surprised by this combination, and was unclear about how these two seemingly unrelated aspects of my life could be integrated. However, they found a top notch multimedia firm that revealed that connection and brought it to life on film. I posted some pictures from the video shoot they did a few weeks back and am pleased to present the video product of that effort here.

While some of my colleagues are concerned that this profile sets unreasonable expectations for personal fitness in the organization, I am excited by the thought that my passion for running and science might somehow compel people to care more about protecting nature. I think many runners make that connection on a daily basis, using running routes that go through parks and natural areas whenever possible. The majority of the rest of the public is not getting out there to see how awesome these resources are and they need to be shown.

Of course, I've also managed to incorporate running into my military career, representing the Air Force and United States as a marathoner in national and international competitions. This is something that makes me a little giddy when I think about it. The experiences are ones that I truly cherish and feel incredibly lucky to continue to have.

So, it's good to be me. Most of the time. These last few months of being sidelined by injury have reminded me how hard this running gig can be, both physically and emotionally. While I still think I'm headed in the right direction, the road is bumpy. Those bumps remind me just how emotionally invested I am in this hobby.

Last week, I ran every day for a total of 61 miles. I had a track workout on Tuesday, a lactate threshold workout on Friday and a long run on Saturday. That was a really big week for me, and I was worried the entire time about making it through in one piece. I was conscious of every little niggle I felt and worried that it was the genesis of my next injury. My aches and pains have rotated around my body during this comeback starting with really bad soreness in my calf muscles for the first few weeks, followed by a wicked ache in my right glute muscle and now my IT band and outer shin muscles are sore. I realize that these are the pains that come with my body adjusting to running again after a 3-month lay off, but they are really nerve wracking! They also take a huge commitment of time. I can't slack off with stretching or strength training for even a day. Dr. Lau has also been an amazing partner in my treatment, and I feel really lucky to have him as a resource.

My workouts have gone really well so far. Last week, I did my first track workout of 7 x 1000m @ 6:00/mile pace with 1 minute rest. I love 6:00 pace. It is a benchmark pace for me and allows me to gage my fitness. Right now, it's my 10k pace. When I'm really fit, it will be my lactate threshold or even half marathon pace. I was happy that, in my first workout back, I felt comfortable holding that pace throughout the workout. Last Friday, I incorporated some short, 100m repeats into my tempo run and was pleasantly surprised with my turnover. I was really worried that my first bout of fast running would feel like I was in some sort of cartoon, trying to run fast but not being able to control my legs. I was whipping along at sub-5:00 pace without a problem and felt very comfortable and smooth.

This week, I'm incorporating double days into my schedule and bumping my mileage over 70. I did my very first Michigan workout late last night in the pouring rain. The Genius was kind enough to accompany me so I didn't have to run it by myself, and it would have been miserable by myself. It was hard for him to slow to my paces, but I appreciated having someone to follow so I could zone out and forget about my shoes sloshing with every step and my legs tightening up at the end of each fast lap. We treated ourselves to some Willie's burgers and fries after the workout. I think we earned it.

My Boring Routine

2011-03-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

The whole fam damily.

I am looking forward to getting back to my boring routine after two weeks spent traveling for work. I wouldn't call my work strenuous. However, there's just something about being away from home, sitting for 8-10 hours per day, eating out every meal and trying to fit workouts into an unfamiliar schedule that I find exhausting. While I did get to see my family this last week while working in Seattle, I am happy to be home again staring at a few weeks of normality ahead.

I saw Dr. Lau last Monday, the first visit in over a month, and he found some good stuff to work on in my glutes and back. My body is holding up fine with the increased mileage, but it is still trying to stabilize itself by tightening up my left side. I have felt this off and on as tightness in my left IT band without any associated pain. It is something I haven't worried much about because it feels like my body adjusting to the increased mileage more than an outright rebellion for the pounding it's taking. I say this because the tightness has come on late in each run since I started back.

For example, when I ran 5 miles for the first time, it came on at about 4-4.5 miles into the run. The next time I ran 5 miles, I didn't feel it. When I ran 7 miles, it came on at 6-6.5 miles and then not again. Yesterday, I ran the Lake Natoma Loop (11.7 miles) and it came on at 9-10 miles. The longest run I had done before then was 9 miles, so this seemed to follow the same pattern. I think I am doing everything right to keep this in check, but I also plan to see Dr. Lau regularly as I continue increasing mileage and intensity over the next few months.

This is the nerve-wracking balancing act that we crazy runners face. When we train hard, our bodies get sore. But, when is the soreness normal and when is it a prelude to an injury? That's what each of us has to divine for ourselves. We'd clearly never train if we backed off every time we became sore. I have my little high-wire shoes and a bright pink tutu on right now and am working hard to stay firmly planted on that wire.

This week I ran 52 miles in 6 days of running. I had one workout of 9 miles with 30 minutes at about 6:52 pace, and that felt easy. My next "workout" was a tempo effort on Friday where I ran 8 miles total with 4 miles at 6:19 pace. It was humbling to run my marathon pace from Chicago for the first time since October and have it feel "comfortably hard". Rather than mourn my lost fitness, I decided to record this as a baseline condition that I can use to compare my progress over the next few weeks--a trick I learned during my brain training extravaganza last year.

Next week, I have a real track workout on Tuesday: 7 x 1000m repeats! I also have a tempo run again on Friday followed by a long run on Saturday. This will also be my first 7-day running week. Bring on the boring!

Here we go

2011-02-27T15:13:00.000-08:00

I am so excited to finally be at the threshold of a new training plan with real workouts and higher mileage. It seems like it has been a long time since I thought about doing an actual workout. I find it a little scary but mostly thrilling.

This week was a real test for me. My training plan had me running six days, 39 miles total, with two longer runs on Friday and Saturday. After running the first 4 days in a row--a post injury streak--I knew I was healed and asked Coach Tom what was next. He reminded me that the hardest part of the week's plan was yet to come, and that we would talk about my next training plan after I had gotten through the week unscathed. I ran 7 miles on Friday at 6:57 pace followed by a 9 miler on Saturday at 7:15 pace and felt great. No. I felt better than ever. I sent Coach Tom a note that said, "Bring it!"

My new training plan is very different from anything I've done in the past in a number of ways. I won't get into the details here, but will report on my workouts as I work my way through them. I will say that, in the next three weeks, my mileage will bump back up into the 70s (assuming my body handles it), and that my hard workout paces will start off relatively slow, while the bulk of my miles run will be faster than I would have run in the past. Also, hard days are not necessarily followed by easy ones. This is fun stuff, and I am really curious to see how my body responds.

I finally have the confidence in my health to start thinking about upcoming races. While I haven't committed to anything yet, my first focus race will likely be Bay to Breakers in May in San Francisco. I have never run this race, but I have always wanted to. There are usually some fast Masters competitors in the race since prize money is on the line.

My big racing news is that my top-US-female-finisher status at the Athens Marathon earned me a spot on the US team to run the marathon in the World Military Games in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil being held in July 2011! But, July in Rio? It's actually their winter and the coolest time of year. So, my effort in Athens and associated time away from running due to injury were worth something really great. I will wait until the deadline (mid-April) before committing to this event, but it is really exciting to think about representing the US Military in another international marathon. Victoria para América!

RAM dump

2011-02-21T13:41:00.000-08:00

This week marked a post-injury milestone for me. I made that mental shift from gratitude for being able to run pain free to frustration with how hard the paces feel compared to how they used to feel. I am actually taking this as a good sign. It means that I'm thinking less about walking home in pain at the end of a run and more about getting back into harder training.

Actually, this is kind of a fun time right now. Each time I run, I feel a little stronger, and I feel my body subtly adjusting to the reintroduction of running. My comeback has been slow, and I think that has made all the difference. However, while my muscles are adjusting to the pounding of running again, the biggest adjustment I have had to make is mental. For starters, I had to forget how I used to train--wipe the brain clean of all training memory. It was very difficult for me to think of 3 miles as a long run, but that was the longest I got for the first couple of weeks back. Here's what my training schedule has looked like for the last four weeks.

Cross training details: You'll notice a lot of yoga and core strengthening workouts these last couple of weeks. I am convinced that core work is the key to stronger running, and I am trying to fit a little in 4-5 times per week. The strength training routine is one that Coach Tom prescribed and includes exercises targeting the core but includes some good stretches too. Two of the yoga workouts are podcasts that I downloaded from yogadownloads.com. The short versions I use are free. They are called yoga for runners and core yoga #1. They are short and sweet, but very effective. The longer yoga routine I do is called Yoga Conditioning for Athletes with Rodney Yee. I have been using this video (3 separate workouts that take about 50 minutes) on and off for 4 years now, and it is still the best overall yoga routine I have found. I wore out the DVD actually, but was able to save it as an MPEG-4 file. I now play it on my iPad when I travel or through my Apple TV at home. Geek alert!

You might be thinking that it is killing me to run so little, but it really isn't. Once I got past the fear that I had lost my fitness forever, I was fine. Last winter, when I was injured, I was paranoid about losing fitness and my cross training workouts were very intense. I did intervals nearly every other day during my bike rides and pool runs to help maintain my fitness.

Coach Tom mentioned something to me a while back that has stuck with me. Back in December, he saw that I had done some crazy bike interval workout, a hold over from the last injury cycle, and he tried to explain to me that this was not necessary. He said, "there's a time for intensity, and it's not now." It struck me that I was used to training at that high-intensity level all year round. I would give myself a week off here and there, but most of the time I was doing something hard either on the roads or in the gym. I think Coach Tom is right. There is a time and place for intensity and too much of it is a recipe for (re)injury and/or burnout.

I ran 7 miles today, and it felt like a breeze. This week, I will run close to 40 miles in 6 days. I like the confidence in that statement I just made.

In other news, I was quite blessed to have a couple of fabulous photographers/videographers follow me around last week on a shoot that will highlight the work I do as well as my running. Ian Shive took some amazing stills that I thought I'd share with you here. Enjoy.

Running amongst the majestic oaks along the American River Parkway.

Running along the American River Bike Trail in Folsom.

Me looking out at Lake Natoma.

Out standing in a vernal pool. My habitat of choice.

Staring at the fantastic critters swimming for their lives in the vernal pool.

Yes, I am using my iPad to record data, and Sara is using hair picks to sift through algae.

New beginnings

2011-02-03T21:16:00.000-08:00

I had to pinch myself today when I got an email from Coach Tom detailing my next three weeks of training and it included miles and miles of running. Glorious running. The fact is, I am running pain free after last Friday's visit to see Dr. Lau. I haven't been back to see him in a week, and the work he did has lasted through four runs.

I had forgotten how nerve wracking it is coming back from an injury. Over the last couple of months, my running had become rather predictable. I'd gear up for my run, hopeful that this day would be the day I was going to run pain free. I'd start out with no symptoms only to feel a sharp pain in my knee within a few minutes. That's when the negotiations would begin. Would it improve with a few more minutes of running or was I doing damage by continuing? At some point, I would stop and hobble home, sometimes with tears in my eyes feeling absolutely disappointed and helpless. By far the worst experience was taking a number of complete rest days, thinking I was doing myself a favor only to experience the same level of pain upon return to running. This was the worst because I knew I was losing fitness AND not getting healthier.

Each day that I have run without pain, I have gained a little more confidence. There are the little decisions: should I be so bold as to run across the Watt Avenue bridge all the way to the bike trail (1.2 miles from my house)? That's a long walk home if I start to feel pain. I have thrown caution to the wind these last few runs and crossed the bridge, all the way out to the 2 mile point, then turned around to head back home. No pain. Not a lick.

I must admit that I am in awe of my recovery from this injury right now--maybe even in a state of disbelief. How is it that I can be hobbling around while walking with severe knee pain one day and running pain free on the treadmill the next after just a simple tweak to my back and butt?

The body is a mystery.

While I return to running, I am trying not to lose hold of the lessons from this experience. A big one for me: we use a lot more than our legs when we run. This is pretty obvious, yet for many of us, recovery and strength activities are focused mostly on the legs. In my case, I could have kept rolling my left quad muscles and IT band for a decade and they would have just kept getting the same knots in them despite my efforts. There is a lot of maintenance to be done to keep me up and running, but at least I now understand the cause and that is worth its weight in gummy bears.

A few months ago, I was talking about how important upper body flexibility was for running to anyone who would listen. I remember hypothesizing that a lot of injuries were caused by a tight upper body, and now here I am: living proof. In addition to core flexibility I have also begun to realize that core strength training is not just about doing planks and crunches. I got a core strength training routine from my coach recently and was a little baffled by the name since there weren't any crunches and only a few minutes of planks in it. It started to sink in that the best core exercises are those that challenge your entire core rather than those that isolate your abs or lower back. Terrance Mahon wrote a great piece in Master The Shift on January 21st that underscores this point and highlights a few of the mistakes runners make with core training.

The word "beginnings" in my blog title is plural for a reason. I am beginning a new running program, and I made a big decision last week to adopt a new dog after losing my best Buddy. Buddy left behind his life-long companion, Sadie, but I thought she would be fine as an only dog. I was wrong. I have heard stories of dogs dying in close succession out of grief for the loss of their companion, but I always thought it was a wives' tale. Sadie was absolutely grieving after her loss, and I felt horrible leaving her alone each day. She is a very good dog, but she doesn't like many other dogs. So, introducing a new soul into this house was a risk.

I am pleased to introduce Logan, a Coonhound, Plotthound, Leopard Cur mix from Hornbrook, California. He is six months old and is a very sweet boy. He has so many of the same characteristics as Buddy (pillow nesting, sitting up like a person, a proclivity for dance) it is a little scary. The most thrilling thing of all for me is how accepting Sadie has been of him and how much spirit he has enlivened in her. Whereas she could barely make it through a 20 minute walk a couple of weeks back, now she is romping around the back yard with this little puppy leaping and hurling himself to her left and right. The other morning, after they were done wrestling I looked out in the back yard to see Sadie sharing her special spot in the sun with Logan, and I knew all was right in the dog world again.

The right brain

2011-01-29T12:56:00.000-08:00

The spiral fascial line.

I am pleased to report that the mystery source of the knee pain that has plagued me for months appears to be solved, and I am just ecstatic that I found the right brain to help me figure this mess out. The mark of a good healer is someone who can find the hidden issue at the source of the chain of symptoms you might be experiencing. Up until yesterday, I had been treating the symptoms of my problem.

This new Miracle Worker is Dr. Justin Lau of Elite Spinal and Sports Care. I know Dr. Lau and have seen him in the past for treatment of minor niggles including recovery after a car crash in 2009. He is very good which also means he's hard to get in to see. Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get in to see him. A quick inspection was all it took for him to locate the massive knot in my left quad, and he worked the bejesus out of it. It seemed pretty straightforward that a tight quad and IT band would pull on my kneecap and cause the pain that I was feeling. He told me to run the next day and let him know how it went.

I ran the next day and my knee hurt. Since I got the cortisone shot in my IT band, I have been running, every other day, for a few minutes at a time with walk breaks for up to 15 minutes total. When I ran last week after Dr. Lau's treatment, the pain in my knee started up within the first 1/4 mile. This pain was a sharp, biting pain that felt like it was coming from my kneecap. I was disappointed, to say the least.

I sent Dr. Lau a message that day, and he told me that this was good information. He explained what he thought might be happening. It is very clear that my quad and IT band are tight, but they may be tightening to stabilize my body because of imbalances elsewhere. He said on the next visit, he would work on my spiral fascial line only rather than my lateral fascial line.

I was in a holding pattern for a week, waiting for an appointment to see him, and I got really anxious about the lack of progress I was making. My knee was now hurting me when I walked around a lot. The time it felt best was after swimming, but it was now starting to hurt after I rode the elliptical. What I did discover on my own during that time was that, when I iced my butt, I felt immediate relief in my knee. So, the light bulb started to come on for me that the pain in my knee was somehow connected to my butt, which doesn't hurt. I also found some little gremlins inside my butt muscle when I rolled around on a ball.

I was starting to get desperate and decided to try to rule out any structural reasons for the knee pain like a torn meniscus, or chipped patella. If I needed surgery, I wanted to know sooner rather than later. I was able to quickly get in for an MRI yesterday (Friday) after calling my doc on Wednesday. Thanks, Kaiser! The results are still pending, but I have a feeling they will be negative.

Because…

I got a call from Dr. Lau's office Friday morning offering me an afternoon appointment, and I snatched it up quickly. Dr. Lau worked my lats, obliques and butt muscles (not sure which ones exactly, but it hurt like hell). At the end of the treatment, I asked why he didn't touch my quad and IT band. He explained that he wanted to see whether or not treating the other stuff relieved the pain in my knee. It was a little experiment. He sent me on my way and told me to run and report back. He also gave me stretches for my butt, lats and the outside of my leg. I wasted no time and went directly to the gym to run on the treadmill. I had my bathing suit on underneath, expecting I would end up swimming soon after I started running.

I started at about an 8:30 pace and 1% incline, and it felt a little weird: like my hips were moving around a lot. I watched the distance click off and just waited for that stabbing pain in my knee to hit. I got 1/4 mile into it and felt no pain. Awesome. I thought I started to feel something cropping up soon after, and I was hoping to make it to 0.50 miles. That came and went. Then, the 1.00 mile mark passed, and I still felt great. I wondered how long I should go. Should I stop and walk a bit? Nah. I kept going for 2, and then 3 miles with no pain. I got the pace up to 7:45 min/mile and that felt great. Dr. Lau had mentioned that I needed to make sure I wasn't running artificially slow because that would throw my body out of whack. I was built to run faster and running slower would cause more problems at this point. He didn't mean that I should go out at 5:50 pace, which I probably couldn't hold for long now anyway, but I had been trying to run 9 minute pace thinking that was a good thing.

I got to that 3 mile mark and decided that was a good test run for the day. I then jumped in the pool for 30 minutes of swimming.

Today, I feel no pain in my knee at all. I suspect my body will go back to its old ways over the next couple of weeks, but I know what I need to work on. As long as all goes well, I will start ramping my mileage up, gradually, over the next couple of weeks and be back to hard training in no time. I watched the USA 1/2 Marathon Championships this morning and didn't feel a bit of sadness about not being there. It was just cool to have qualified to race in it. I'll be there next year anyway to run three loops of that course!

I think (hope) I'm on the road again, but I still say that this holiday away from running has given my body a needed break. I am not at all worried about coming back. I actually think I will be a faster runner as a result of all of this. And, I found another Miracle Worker in Sacramento. We are lucky people, living in this town. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again out on the bike trail!

For Buddy

2011-01-16T13:18:00.000-08:00

I lost one of my best friends on Monday of this week: my 10-year-old Coonhound, Buddy. The thoughts of the happiness Buddy brought to my life are just beginning to supplant my sorrow, but I wanted to honor Buddy by filling this space with memories of his happy soul.

Buddy in the cat bad.

Buddy came to me from Yuba City, California. I saw him on line when I was looking to adopt a companion for my rambunctious puppy, Sadie. From his dogmatch.com photo I could see he was beautiful, mostly white with large black spots on his body in all the best places. When I contacted his foster dad about him, I said I was looking for an energetic companion for my other dog. I could sense the reservation in his email response when he said that Buddy might not be the best guy for that job.

Buddy in the Sierras.

I learned that Buddy had been found wandering the streets of Yuba City and was nearly starved to death. I believe Buddy might have been owned by a hunter originally. The problem was that Buddy was terrified of gunfire. I suspect he ran off after shots were fired never to be found by his owner again. Or maybe he was dumped off somewhere when his fear was discovered. Buddy had separation anxiety that eased over the years but never quite went away. When his foster dad took him in, he weighed 35 pounds. He got Buddy up to 55 before I became his dog mom.

Buddy and Sadie. Friends for life.

The picture on the right was taken the day I adopted Buddy and the day he first met Sadie. From the very instant they locked paws, they were inseparable. I love these pictures from that first meeting because they so vividly capture the joy in their doggie eyes. The two of them spent no more than 5 days apart from then on.

Nobody really knew how old Buddy was, and you certainly couldn't tell by the way he acted. When I first adopted him, people would say, "Oh, look at that nice old dog," to which I would respond, "He's one." He had a predictable, easy-going temperament and that's what endeared him to everyone he met. Buddy loved to dance. He greeted everyone he met by rearing up on his back legs and gracefully falling forward, trusting that his partner would grab his paws and engage in his waltz.

Buddy hiking at Dye Creek.

Buddy was remarkable in that when his nose took over his body, he had the energy of a new puppy, even up until a couple of weeks before he died. As a scent hound, he was a slave to his nose. When I took him out where I could let him run free, his nose would turn on and his ears would shut off. You would hear his hound dog bay in the distance for what seemed miles away. I would call his name until I was hoarse, but he wouldn't return until he was done with his job.

The Dog Van.

Buddy loved to go for car rides and became ecstatic when he heard the word Bu-bye from me. He really didn't seem to care where we were going, he just didn't want to be left behind. For a while, I had a VW Vanagon that I got specifically for my dogs, so I could let them lay down in the bed in back and snooze while we took off for some grand adventure. We went on many camping trips in that van up until I sold it this last summer.

Buddy at the top of Fiske Peak.

One of my favorite camping rituals was our annual Thanksgiving trip to the Capay Valley here in California. There is a small campground near a challenging trail that leads to the top of Fiske Peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I started taking the dogs there for Thanksgiving in 2003. We would hike to the top of the peak, sign our names in the 'guestbook' stored in its protective glass jar, and then head back down. Buddy always led the way up and down the mountain. He also ran more than three times what I hiked, chasing anything that he could track. At the end of our day, the pups would lay in the creek to cool themselves down and I would take them to McDonald's for a cheeseburger on the way home.

Buddy was a very gentle soul and loved everyone. His personality was in stark contrast to his sister, Sadie, who likes few people and even fewer dogs. When we would encounter kids that wanted to pet my "dalmatians" I would send Buddy in as the greeter. He loved kids and would gladly roll over anywhere and let them pat his belly, scratch his ears or even pull on his tail. He didn't care. The video above pretty much exemplifies Buddy's personality.

Buddy and his pink purse.

Buddy was afraid of bed snakes. He would sleep on my bed at night before I would get into bed. But, when I went to get under the covers, the bed snakes would start moving toward him and his eyes would become saucer-like as he leapt off of the bed and headed to his futon in his room. He would remain curled up on his futon until he heard me stir in the morning. I could hear his little doggie nails on the wood floor clicking as he made his way into the bedroom and settled in next to me on the bed, waiting for his daily morning feeding and walk.

Clever Buddy finds the cat food.

There has always been some question about Buddy's intelligence. His pal Sadie can without question do calculus in her head, but Buddy always acted like a simple boy. I now know that this was truly an act. For example, Buddy was a mastermind at getting food off of counters when I would leave anything within Buddy reach. Sadie no doubt got most of the spoils of his efforts but his climbing skills were certainly a benefit to them both. Just a few months ago, I noticed that we were going through cat food like crazy, but the cats didn't seem to be gaining a proportionate amount of weight. I was laying in bed one morning when I heard a clanking in the cat's room and walked in just as Buddy was exiting the convenient staircase I had given him to access the cat food. I wondered how long he had been at this. Clever boy.

Buddy loved to run and could go for miles and miles without tiring--as long as there was a scent to follow. On a leash and at my side, Buddy lagged. When I ran with my dogs, I would feel a little contorted with Sadie pulling on the leash moving forward, and Buddy dragging on his leash from behind. I think buddy just wasn't built to be a hobby jogger. His true running talent was reserved for the times when he needed to get a move on.

Buddy in his pillow nest. The bed was made before he got in. Really.

I still see Buddy on a daily basis when I walk past my bedroom and glance at the pillows where he would make his nest for his daily naps or on the futon where he would lay curled up at night in his room. His hair still carpets the floor of the house and forms Buddy bunnies in the corners of every room. I can't bring myself to vacuum it all up just yet. My life will indeed go on but in a way that is richer for having loved Buddy.

I miss you Buddy Boy.

A Natural

2011-01-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

I find it hard to believe that someone actually used this term to describe me in relation to my swimming abilities. The words graceful and smooth were also thrown in there. I thought this might be a fluke until I heard it again, and then again from complete strangers. I’m not sure when or where, but at some point in my life (perhaps a previous one), I learned to swim.

In my last post, I reported practically drowning the first time I strayed from my pool running routine and attempted to actually swim—without a flotation device. I was pretty embarrassed after that but was also somewhat intrigued by the challenge. For a couple more weeks, I kept tacking on 10-15 minutes of swimming at the end of my pool running. Then, pool running was taken away from me as a form of cross training because it was aggravating my illitobial (IT) band.

With my cross training options dwindling, something miraculous happened when I gave swimming just a little more practice. I became good at it, and it became fun--pretty much over night. I have worked up to swimming (mostly the crawl stroke) for an hour straight and typically don’t want to get out of the pool at the end of the hour. I feel awesome after a pool workout. Granted, I’m not going fast yet. I’m simply swimming steadily, lap after lap. I have even advanced to the “Michael Phelps” breathing pattern of one breath every 4 strokes alternated with two to one when needed. I can even do a flip turn.

Oh, right. This is supposed to be a blog about running.

Well, I have not run for nearly 10 weeks now. I have attempted to run to test my IT band, and I still have pain on the outside of my kneecap that tells me that I’m not fully healed. Someone asked soon after the Athens Marathon (where I did this damage) whether I regretted running it. I joked, “ask me in a month when I’m still not running.” Prescient, I am.

It’s now been more than two months since I incurred this damage, and I still don’t regret it. There have been some mighty lows in this injury roller coaster ride, but it has also been rejuvenating. When I feel really low, like I’ll never be able to run again, I feel sorry for myself and wallow. But, those times have been few and far between. Mostly, I remind myself that I haven’t taken a major break from running in 6 years, have run 17 marathons and countless other races in that time and just qualified for the Olympic Trials. A 10+ week break is merely a blip.

This injury cycle has made me look at myself differently too. Whereas I used to call myself a runner, I now realize I am more than that—I am an athlete. I have chosen to concentrate on running as my primary sport, but I enjoy being fit. I enjoy working out. I like trying new things and becoming better at them.

The future is still unknown.

I’m not sure anyone aside from the Miracle Worker and me fully appreciate just how much damage I did to my leg during the Athens Marathon. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that I’m still recovering, though that doesn’t mean I like it. I think it’s kind of funny that, last fall I was questioning whether or not I was tough enough to handle the pain of running. I guess I am pretty damned tough—maybe tougher than I should be if I want to run injury free. The thing I do know is that I do not want to run with pain. I will take whatever break is needed to get there. There is no glory in running through pain.

A couple of weeks ago, Lino (aka Miracle Worker) took a look at my leg and told me it was time for a cortisone shot in my IT band. Coach Tom concurred with this. While my quad muscle is healing nicely, the IT band has been in a constant state of inflammation and needs intervention to break that cycle. Lino explained that there is so little blood flow to the IT band that it is really slow to heal. The inflammation at this late stage in the game further inhibits the healing.

I was lucky to be able to get an appointment through my HMO for yesterday to get this done. The shot was not very painful, but the injection site is still tender. I have easy cross training planned for the next couple of weeks with a few trial runs, including a short (1 mile) run tomorrow. I hope that pain and running will no longer be linked for me in the near future. I promise to keep you all updated on my progress.

Happy New Year!

It's about time!

2010-12-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

After a bit of a break, I am finally starting to ramp up my running again. Let's be clear here: the ramp in my ramp up is closer to the ADA-approved end of the scale than a Mount Everest-like increase, but I did run 2.5 pain free miles yesterday. These days, that achievement is like climbing a mountain.

I discussed in my last post how my adventure in Athens left me damaged. A few weeks ago, I expected that a rest from running along with a sensible cross-training program would get me back to running fairly quickly. I also trusted my self-diagnosis of a stressed out IT band. Alas, until last week, my knee was not feeling better and every attempt to run left me limping in pain within a half mile.

I finally went to see the Miracle Worker. As always, his enlightened analysis of my injury was key. First, he pointed out that I have a "sprinter's legs" versus "marathoner's legs". This means that my quads are meaty compared to the rest of my leg muscles. The main injury I sustained was damage to one of my quad muscles, the vastus lateralis, and it was cramped up in a little ball. He had me feel the suppleness of that same muscle on my other leg as a comparison. The balled-up nature of the vastus lateralis was pushing out on the illitobial (IT) band. The IT band cannot stretch, per se, so it pulls at the attachment points and rubs along the protuberance on the end of the femur causing my knee pain. So, until I got the quad under control, I could roll and stretch my IT band all I wanted to no avail. He prescribed regular rolling on a tennis ball (not a quadballer or foam roller) to break up the adhesions in the muscle and relax it. I am finally able to roll on it without crying, and my IT pain is gone. I can now run until my quad balls up again and irritates the IT. That amounts to about 2-3 miles, every other day.

The Miracle Worker also pointed out that my favorite form of cross training, bicycling, was not doing my injury any favors. He did not tell me to stop doing it because he really doesn't like to restrict cross training activities. He made it clear that I would be exacerbating my problem by continuing to train hard on the bike and stress my quad muscles. That news sucked to hear because it eliminated one of my cross training options. I am now left with pool running and the elliptical machine.

I have added some spice to my elliptical training by reading books on my iPad. This actually really helps to pass the time, especially when the book is good. I've read the first book in the Stieg Larsson Millenium trilogy and am part way through the second. I can't read and do hard intervals, so I try to limit my elliptical training to the days where I don't have a workout to do.

I save my workouts for the pool. I do all of my running at the local YMCA where I buy a $10 day pass. I throw on my floaty belt, my waterproof iPod headset, my pre-programmed Garmin 310 XT, and I'm ready to roll. One of my favorite hard workouts in the pool is the pool ladder, where I do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 minutes hard with 1 minute easy running in between. I don't mind the tedium of pool running when I have a job to do in the pool and find it to be a really good workout. The "hard" running amounts to moving my little arms and legs as fast as I can underwater. This can become quite exhausting.

I became adventurous last week when there were very few people in the pool and decided I would spend my cool down swimming rather than pool running. I started with a modest breast stroke and felt pretty comfortable with that after a couple of laps. I then busted out my crawl stroke. I wasn't quite sure how to breathe with this stroke, so I recalled that Michael Phelps used a 4 stroke to 1 breath pattern in the Olympics. By the second stroke, I had exhaled all of my air, started taking water into my lungs, and began flailing around very excitedly in the middle of the lane. At one point, I thought I saw the lifeguard running toward my lane with a flotation ring to save me, but he passed by to attend to something else on the other side of the pool. I regained my composure and decided to try breathing with every other stroke. That was much better. I was able to make it the entire length of the pool without having to stop. In fact, I was moving faster than the guy in the lane next to me. I was feeling pretty good at the end of the 10 minutes alternating between breast and crawl strokes. As I got out of the pool, I noticed that the "slow" guy in the lane next to me had hobbled over to an aluminum walker and used it to make his way to the locker room. Perfect. I was patting myself on the back for being a faster swimmer than a disabled person. I felt like a huge loser.

You may have already gathered that I am going to have to pass on the 1/2 marathon championships in Houston. This is really not a big deal to me. It would have been nice to compete in a race of that caliber and preview the Olympic Trials course, but I will not be in any shape by the end of January to run a decent half. Plus, I don't like the added pressure that having an upcoming race brings when recovering from an injury. I want my body to determine when I'm ready to start training again. That was a lesson learned from my achilles injury last winter. I pushed myself to return to running pretty fast. In a way, I think I am paying for that now. My body needs to heal; not just my IT band and quad but the rest of me too. And, I really have all the time in the world to let that happen.

A crampy aside...

I was reminded this week about a commonly held belief that many runners have about dehydration causing localized muscle cramps. Several of my friends ran the California International Marathon and were blessed with fabulous weather conditions: temps in the 50s with no rain or wind. It actually stopped raining within a couple of hours before the race, so the air was humid at the start. The humidity started at 100% but dropped to 80% by the 2-hour mark. The temperature never got over 60 degrees, at least during the first 3-4 hours. There was a lot of muscle cramping going on at the end of the race which led a few people to hypothesize that the "warm and humid" conditions caused them to become dehydrated and that resulted in their localized muscle cramping.

I remembered that the Science of Sports bloggers discussed muscle cramps in a series back in 2007 on the subject. Basically, there isn't a scientifically rigorous explanation for why muscles cramp at the end of strenuous exercise like running a marathon or triathlon. They do cover why dehydration and loss of electrolytes are likely not a causal factor. Here are a couple of teasers from their initial post on the subject:

"Despite the theory that muscle cramps are caused by electrolyte and fluid depletion, it has yet to be shown that people who cramp have lower electrolyte levels or are more dehydrated than those who do not. In fact, the studies have found that "Crampers" and "Non-crampers" have similar electrolyte and dehydration levels. Something wrong with that picture...

If cramps are caused by electrolyte and fluid depletion, which muscles would be most likely to cramp? Would it not be ALL the muscles, because you're losing electrolytes and fluid through sweat, so then all the muscle groups should be vulnerable...yet for some reason, we cramp in the muscles we actually USE. Again, something out of place there."

When I first read this series, I was blown away because I thought that dehydration causing muscle cramping was a law of nature. It turns out that heavy marketing by big companies like Gatorade might be a primary reason behind why so many people still think this is true. Happy reading!

Hello, normal

2010-11-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

When your nose is so close to the paper, you quickly forget that what you're writing is a novel and not just one word at a time. ~Me

I always find it interesting to come out the other side of a major experience or event and look back on the craziness that preceded it. Of course, when I'm part of the craziness I don't realize how skewed my life is. After running two marathons and having two of the most amazing experiences of my life, it's nice to finally settle into a lifestyle that feels somewhat normal again.

I haven't run since Athens. Maybe I should say that I can't run right now. Normally, I would be scratching at the cage, raring to get out and run. Instead, I am perfectly content letting my body rest and heal. This is part of my new perspective.

I made a rookie mistake after Chicago. I did not respect the recovery that my body needed, and it rebelled in a big way. I think I was equal parts drunk on my major accomplishment and tired from the stressful months that led up to the race. As happy as I was that I had reached my goal of qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials, I was also relieved that I could rest for a bit. But, I had another marathon to run 3 weeks later.

Instead of sticking it out for another 3 weeks and doing everything I could to allow my body to recover while maintaining my fitness, I short-sheeted the recovery bed. I did nothing to aid my recovery after Chicago: no stretching, rolling, massage, ice baths. Nothing. Huge mistake. I did however, start running again to keep up my fitness. My body finally revolted during my long run the week before Athens. I THEN tried stretching, rolling, massage, but by that time, it was too late. You know how that story ended: a Pheidippidel assault on Athens and lots of post-race limping.

Lesson #1: Respect recovery.

What I didn't take in recovery post-Chicago, I am taking now, and I am not the least bit sad about it. I don't have that panicky feeling like I might be losing fitness right now because I'm not out there running. I know I can cross train and maintain my fitness. It's also kind of fun getting out on the bike and riding along the American River Bike Trail, seeing my old friend, the somnambulist lifeguard, at the local YMCA pool for my early pool run and reading e-books on my iPad on the elliptical at the gym.

I told The Genius in Athens, as I was paying little attention to what I was shoveling into my mouth, that I was going to let myself get fat. He flipped his head around to look at me, and I saw a flicker of panic in his eyes. I explained, "...relatively fat. Like 2 pounds." Relief. My point was really that I needed a break from the diet bookkeeping and the worry about not getting enough carbs, eating too much fat, getting enough nutrients and general fretting about being lean.

My Chicago Marathon experience actually taught me an important lesson about my previous conclusion that leaner = faster. I think this is still true, but each of us has a personal limit. As it turns out, I was about a pound heavier and slightly less lean going into Chicago than I was when I ran the Twin Cities Marathon the year before, yet I was fitter and ran much faster. This wasn't for a lack of trying either. I felt like I was pushing my lower limits in terms of caloric intake leading up to Chicago, but I just wasn't losing weight. About a month out from the race, I abandoned my pursuit of a lighter physique and upped my calorie intake for fear of becoming either injured or sick. That was the right move.

I have not tracked my caloric intake since Chicago and am quite happy about it. I imagine I will continue to be happy until I notice the buttons on my jeans popping or people commenting on my Swiss genes again. I don't have any factoids to back this up, but it just feels like body fat is a good thing to have around periodically. At some point I'll bust out my iPad and get back to recording my food intake. For now, I'm enjoying the mental break. And the chocolate.

I don't have a training program yet with my new coach since we're focusing on healing, but I have set my first race for 2011. My 2:45 marathon qualified me for the National Half Marathon Championships in Houston in late January. I mentioned to Coach Tom that I was interested in running this but recognized that I won't have time to get into peak shape for it. He agreed that the experience would be amazing and that I should go for it. I don't necessarily expect great things in that race, but I also realize that the opportunity to compete in a National Championship race is very rare. Last year, Shalane Flanagan won the race in her half marathon debut. I will probably come in close to last, but I don't mind being close to last in a race against the best in the country.

I have also put a bug in the ear of The Nature Conservancy President and CEO, Mark Tercek, about landing a spot on a TNC staff team running the 2012 Safaricom Marathon. He just ran his first marathon in 20 years at NYC and mentioned in this post on Treehugger.com that he plans to lead a team of TNC staff in the Safaricom marathon as a fundraiser for the Lewa Preserve in Kenya. This is an amazing race that has you running in this huge nature preserve amongst wild animals on dirt paths. As a grassland ecologist and a runner, this would be the most amazing experience I can imagine and the type of fundraiser that I could really get behind. Mr. Tercek said I had a spot on the team if I wanted it, so you better believe I'll be reminding him of that!

Athens Classic Marathon 2010 Race Report: The Battle of Marathon

2010-11-02T14:34:00.000-07:00

October has been a month of marathon contrast for me. In early October, I experienced one of the most enjoyable and relatively easy marathons in Chicago followed three weeks later by the hardest marathon I have ever run in Athens, Greece. It seems only fitting that my hardest marathon would be run on the original marathon course where the sole participant died after completing the distance.

Running the Athens Marathon was truly a great life experience but in many unexpected ways. As a refresher, I ran this marathon as part of the 2010 World Military Marathon Championships. Each year, these games are hosted by a different country with member countries sending their best active-duty military marathoners to compete. The USA uses the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) as the competition from which to pick its team, and I won the military competition at MCM in 2009 earning my spot on the team headed to Greece.

Every military event is steeped in tradition, military ceremony and lots of time spent mustering. We were housed at a military installation near the town of Marathon, and the accommodations were fine--much better than the barracks we stayed in Belgrade, Serbia for the 2009 Marathon Championship race. This one had its resident pack of stray dogs and cats, a common theme throughout the city, supposedly the result of a government official firing all of the dog catchers in Athens decades ago. This led to the release of all captive animals, precipitated a breeding frenzy and ensuing population explosion. Our military “resort” was right on the water and, aside from overgrown weeds and trash scattered about, it was perfectly livable.

Me and my buddy Joanie.

The opening ceremony for the 43rd military marathon games brought a particularly wonderful surprise for me. As we were standing in formation, listening to the Master of Ceremonies ramble in Greek about something unintelligible but very important, I heard the name, “Joan Benoit Samuelson”. My ears perked up, and I craned my neck to get a better look. Sure enough, Joanie was walking hand in hand with some other woman carrying the Olympic flame up the stairs and lit a larger torch in the stadium. Her escort was Constantina Tomescu-Dita, the most recent female Olympic marathon gold medalist. So, the race organizers decided to bracket the short span of time that women have competed in the Olympic marathon event by having the first and last Olympic gold medalists light the torch for our military ceremony. Holy crap. I was beaming like a star-struck kid and immediately began plotting my plan of attack for the perfect photo opportunity.

It turns out that getting my picture taken with Joanie was a piece of cake. I armed one of my teammates with my camera and approached Joanie with a big smile and outstretched hand, kindly reminding her that I had run with her for a short time in Chicago. She, of course didn’t remember me and probably thought I was somebody that she had passed along the way. She told me that she was also running the Athens Marathon, but this one was for fun. She had also run (at least) one 10k and half marathon since Chicago, so I felt like a serious slacker having only run one marathon in the last three weeks. I couldn’t stop smiling all day thinking about this crazy encounter as I stared at the picture of me and Joanie locked safely inside my iPhone.

The course elevation profile.

The Race

I knew this course was going to be a bitch, and I was mentally prepared for it. According to Wikipedia, it is one of the most difficult major marathon races in the world. The Marathon Start Venue was the actual start of Pheidippides historic run. The course was pretty much a straight shot all the way into Athens from there. It is marked with a faded, solid-blue line that snakes along the roads leading from Marathon to Athens. This is actually a pretty cool thing, because you can simply run on the blue line all the way into Athens and be assured that you’re running pretty close to the 42.1 km distance as measured.

What the course lacked in turns it made up for in hills, both up and down. I knew this was coming, having downloaded the course elevation profile from the web months earlier. I was actually less worried about the 10-12 miles of constant uphill in the profile compared to the 6-8 miles of unrelenting downhill, with 6 of those miles at the end.

I was mostly concerned about this in the week leading up to the race after an overzealous long run the Saturday before the race left my left IT band sore and me limping. I rolled out my muscles and stretched with feverish dedication, but could not seem to loosen up this tightly-wound band of connective tissue. Every run I did last week, though they were all slow and short, aggravated this new niggle.

I am typically a nervous nelly when it comes to niggles, always conservatively fearing the worst and doing everything possible to keep the niggle from leading to full-blown injury. This one left me especially worried. It got better with rest, but flared up with running. I knew exactly why it had happened, what I did wrong and couldn’t do a damned thing to make it heal faster. Even the day before the race, when I ran a 20 minute shake out, I could feel the tightness around my knee. I tossed and turned all night on the race’s eve worrying that I would not be able to finish due to either catastrophic body failure or not being able to tolerate the pain that was sure to set in at some point in the race.

This was absolutely uncharted territory for me. I typically shake my head with a “tisk, tisk” when I hear of other runners that run races when they clearly have an injury or at least the makings of one. I have always prided myself in not being that runner. I think I better understand the type of thing that might motivate a runner to do something so foolish. An all-expenses paid trip to a world championship race commemorating the 2500 anniversary of the original Marathon being held in Athens, Greece could be one of those things.

I’m pretty sure that the US military running uniform stylist drove a Delorean to the 1980s to procure our racing outfits. I expected to have something vaguely rockin‘ and comfortable to run in and was stunned to see the skin-tight Brooks shimmel top and ultra-long, matching 1980’s-style basketball shorts that went with it. I am honestly most surprised that Brooks makes those shorts and labels them as running attire. That’s why I believe Michael J. Fox had something to do with this outfit. My female teammates were much smarter than me and wore alternate bottoms with their uniforms. Had I looked at myself in a mirror or just felt the material of these shorts after they got wet with sweat prior to race day, I would have done the same.

Decked out in my basketball uniform, I lined up at the start with my teammates along with runners from around the globe, readying ourselves for battle with each other and this ancient course. My team did a little motivational huddle and, with the first gun for the elite athletes, we were off. I ran with two of my teammates for the first few kilometers, and held a nice even 6:30 pace. I had absolutely no race plan, no goal time, nothing. My only goal for this race was to try to place as well as I could in the military competition but to do so without literally breaking. I was running completely by feel.

Grabbing some water and on my way to 1982 to shoot some hoops.
(Thanks to Pano K for the photo)

Stray dogs paced us for these first few kilometers but quickly had race officials on their tails trying to chase them off the course. We passed a few small towns and circled out into a lollipop-shaped, 2 km course add-on that extended the original 25-mile course into the modern 26.22. As I entered the lollipop, I watched as the lead pack of men exited, and they were moving.

I was concentrating on staying loose and breathing easy. Mostly, I was trying not to think about my leg pain. Within the first 4-5 km, one of my teammates who was running along side me asked me how my leg felt. I was very irritated with this question, though I knew she was asking out of concern for me and for our team in case I wouldn’t be able to finish. I shot back a curt, “fine,” but also said ”I was trying not to think about it.” She told me she would only ask me once. I already had a nagging ache in my left knee and did not want to be reminded of it. I needed distraction.

Relief and distraction came as we started into the uphill section of the course a little after the 10 km mark. The uphills actually relieved the pain in my knee. I felt surprisingly strong on these hills and was quite happy to see that they were not the steep, steady uphill experience that I expected. They would go up for 1-2 km and then become less steep or even flatten out for a short bit, then head up again. I passed a lot of people on those uphills and was actually quite surprised when they ended just after the 30 km mark. I had in my head that I needed to make it through 32 km before the downhill started.

I would find out after the race that runners unanimously struggled with the uphills and thought they were brutal. I was just the opposite. I felt the best on the uphill portion of the race. I’m pretty sure this was because I was mentally prepared for worse than they were, I ran them by feel and refused to look at my Garmin or my kilometer splits while climbing. I also think that the massive amounts of uphill training Coach Nicole had me doing for the last 3 years paid off in spades on this course. Thank you, Nicole, for making me a strong hill runner--something I once dreaded most of all in races.

I mostly focused on hitting one km marker at a time and getting fluids and gu in my body. It was a warm day with a 19 degree C start, but I think it cooled a bit as we headed into Athens. I was not at all worried about the heat after my experience in Chicago.

For most of this race, I was in no-man’s land, rarely pacing with other runners. I did find a somewhat offensive use for the European male runners on the course. Early on in the race while briefly drafting off of a pack of sweaty, undeodorized Euro-runners, I discovered an alternative to smelling salts. My eyes watered slightly as the powerful essence of runner BO entered my nasal passages. It did perk me right up, while simultaneously making me throw up a little in my mouth. I thought this strategy of drafting off of smelly men might come in handy (ala Constantina Tomescu-Dita in the late stages of the 2008 Olympic Marathon) as a sort of smelling salt effect. I tucked that little brain child into the back pocket of my extra long and baggy shorts for use later on in the race.

As soon as I summited the last hill and started the downhill, I knew I was in trouble. My left knee and calf were absolutely screaming. I mean, on fire. I was in pain with every step until my leg finally became numb and rubbery. I started to feel concerning tightness cramp my left calf. I breathed into the tightness with hopes of averting a race-ending event. By this point in the race, I knew this was the terrain I had to battle for another 6 miles, so I better just suck it the hell up and press on with pride. The supportive, calamitous crowds along the course saved me in the last 10 km. I absorbed their energy and kept going. I needed the distraction of the little kids standing on the streets with their hands out waiting for someone to slap them. I slapped every hand I passed. I waved and pumped my fist as the crowd cheered me on to my own personal victory in Athens.

I could not believe the support for me in my USA-emblazoned uniform on this course. In the Belgrade Marathon in 2009, my Team USA outfit was met with calls from the crowd that “USA (pronounced oo-sah) sucks” and “Bush sucks.” In Greece, I was a superstar. Chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”, “Bravo oo-sah or (yoo-sah)”, “Bravo Bella”, and “Bravo America” were yelled from almost every crowd lining the streets. The crowds were unexpectedly big and loud in numerous locations along the course, increasing in volume and intensity as we entered the city of Athens. I was so proud to represent my country running in this race as I heard these cheers over and over.

Around the 36-37 km mark, I looked ahead and saw another female runner. This gave me something to focus on since I hadn’t seen another female runner in the last 25 km or so. I was now starting to hammer the hills. I was running most of my km splits in the 6:20-6:30 range and I was gaining on this gal. As I got closer to her, I noticed it was one of my teammates and my heart sank. That was not the person I wanted to see coming back to me. I was now really concerned since she is a super strong runner (2-time Olympic Trials Qualifier) and the strongest runner on our team. It took me a couple of clicks to catch up to her, but I passed her quickly and told her that she looked good and strong. I knew that, if I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t want someone to linger and dote on me. It’s your own personal struggle at that point and you need to focus on staying in the game.

What was Brooks thinking with this combo?

I picked up the pace even more as the crowds cheered me along toward the finish. I watched km markers 38 then 39 pass and knew that I was going to at least surpass Pheidippides‘ run once I passed the 40 km marker. I was so focused on keeping my legs moving and not letting the rubber chicken feeling get the best of me. I wanted to finish. I wanted that finishers‘ medal. I wanted to turn in a strong performance for the USA. With 2 km to go, I knew I would finish, even if I was reduced to walking. I also knew that, if I stopped running, I would not start up again. I was afraid I might collapse at the finish line. I kept pounding down the hills, around the corner, and then, finally, into the entrance of the Panathenaic Stadium, a structure first built in the 3rd century BC and most recently restored for the 1896 Olympic Games. I entered the stadium and the crowd roared. I had a wall of male runners between me and that finish line. I kicked it into a gear that I had no idea I could find in the last 100m of a marathon and passed the guys standing still. The crowd loved my sprint finish, and I truly felt like a hero crossing the line in 2:58:46. I stopped running and braced for collapse. It didn’t come. I gave a little “thank you” to my legs as they walked me away from the finish line in one piece. I had survived my Battle with The Marathon.

Majors Potter and Marty in the Panathenaic Stadium with a view of the Acropolis between our shoulders.

I was ushered off to the left immediately and sent into a cave. It was literally this steep, marble encased tunnel that I imagined saw ancient athletes grace its walkway before and after ancient Athenian games. I felt it was a cruel challenge for marathoners to have to climb following the race, but I was relieved to reach the top, have someone unlace my shoe to remove my timing chip and get my sweet finishers‘ medal. Soon, the rest of my team joined me, all of them having run strong races and achieved excellent times. We met up with our USA mens' team and found out they had both run under 2:30 on that course. We enjoyed chattering on about how tough the course and race had been. Joanie ended up finishing the race in 3:05 or there abouts. She ran in to the finish with one of my teammates and raised her arm up in the air as they cruised along the track in the stadium to a roaring crowd. This was a thrill for my teammate, Sue.

And the Gold Medal Goes To...

The 2010, gold-medal winning US Military Marathon Team.

The closing ceremonies for the 43rd Military Marathon Championship race were held on Monday evening back at our base station in Nea Makri. For the third world championship marathon in a row, the American Women's Team took the gold medal. This is an especially gratifying and moving achievement in that only the team awards are given out at the event and the winning team's national anthem is played. We stood atop our podium (all three of us on a very small step) and saluted as the Star-Spangled Banner played. I have to admit to a few tears rolling down my cheeks as I breathed in the fresh marine air and the significance of this moment. While I had sacrificed my legs in this event to lead the team to victory, that moment made it all worthwhile.

In case you think that this competition was full of military slackers, the men's competition was even more fierce. The winning team from Poland had a combined time of 6:48. That's right, 6:48 for three team members, which equals a 2:16 average pace. Their lead runner was in his 40s and ran a 2:15. The next fastest military mens' team had a paltry 2:20 average. Crazy fast.

The Day After...

I could hardly walk without excruciating pain. The good news is that pretty much everyone else was in the same boat. The bad news was that Monday was our "cultural day" and we would be walking, mostly limping around the city looking at the fantastic ruins in the middle of the city of Athens. I am now on the beautiful, remote island of Santorini enjoying some run-free relaxation. I have a few weeks of healing to do before I start back into my training. In the mean time, I plan to fill my gut with good Greek food, drink lots of wine and get fat on life, enjoying the memories of this fantastic adventure.

Me and The Genius at the Acropolis.

Congratulations to all of the brave participants of the Athens Classic Marathon. Special thanks to the organizers of the Athens Marathon for a fantastic event and the Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM) and our Greek hosts for creating a truly extraordinary experience.