Here we go

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!