Going With The Flow

AM - 15 minutes easy on the bike and yoga. 

PM - 1.6 miles. Felt fine but afraid to do more. 

AM - Woke up with glute-to-hamstring pain - could only handle about 15 minutes of biking before getting irritated. Frustrated...

PM - 25 minutes of arm weights and a little walking. 

Maximum Performance Running (Mark Hadley) wrote a post on 16 Workouts for Distance Runners. Some great ideas here and in his other posts as well.

It's my 26th birthday today! :)

AM - Met Amiee and walked for two loops around Liberty Park then ran for two loops. All my injury annoyances subsided during the walk so I felt great running. What a great present. Hope it lasts!! 

Then we met up with Fritz, Adam C, Allie, James, Devra, Jake, and David for brunch at Ruth's. I made sure to wear my brand new sweater. Can anyone guess who made this for me?!?

AM - Walk to the Cottonwood Complex, 3 miles around the perimeter, then walk back home. Good run overall, just weird that the pain that I had in my piriformis is now completely gone but I now have other weird pains that come and go. 

AM - 12 minutes on the elliptical and 10 minutes walking on the treadmill. Irritated muscles from breaking up scar tissue last night, but I feel like we are close to figuring out what's wrong with me.

PM - Felt much better as the day went on. 30 minutes of pool running and arm weights for 25 minutes.  

AM - 20 minutes on the exercise bike then 20 minutes of yoga. I seem to always feel the worst in the morning and better at night. 

I'm going to Nate Graven (of Graven Sports Therapies) today. He's been recommended to me by 4-5 people now, so he better not disappoint! 

AM - Run/walk mix on the treadmill. I was watching myself run and noticed that my right knee seems to collapse slightly inwards on impact (valgus knee). I was only running at 9 min pace and for 0.5 mile at a time, so I imagine that it becomes more pronounced as I got faster/further. This makes sense with a strained and weak gluteus medius muscle and can cause a lot of compensation pain as well. I had a co-worker film me so I will post the video when I can...

PM - Arm weight training 30 minutes.  

AM - 20 minutes walking on the treadmill and 15 minutes of yoga. I'm starting to feel a tiny bit of progress...finally. I anticipate it taking until the end of the year to heal, but that's okay. 

Here is the new theory - I strained my iliopsoas muscle when I was hiking (tight hamstring muscles and anterior tilt put extra pressure on that muscle). I kept running on it for a few weeks and it caused a lot of other muscles to compensate. One of those muscles was the gluteus medius muslce and I strained it on a long hard run right before I couldn't run anymore. That made for a pretty shaky pelvic/hip area. Both muscles now have scar tissue which causes more pain, muscle restriction, and lack of healing properly. A weak/poor gluteus medius muscle can cause your hip to drop and the knee to move inward on impact. I noticed this yesterday in me while running. The distal hamstring muscle helps to stabilize the knee joint so it's being stressed to prevent the inward movement and the reason why it's not healing. Whew...so I have three problems - iliopsoas strain, gluteus medius strain, and hamstring tightness/pain. Talk about a fiasco. It makes sense to me...all part of the kinetic chain. Interested to hear what others think.

Heading home to TN this weekend for a wedding in the Smoky Mtns and some family time! 

Hip/glute/abdominal region felt terrible after lots of traveling. Bad day :(

Walked around Gatlinburg, TN for 90 minutes while Jake was running. Had to stop a few times from irritation.

Nothing. Didn't feel good enough for anything but standing and laying. Flight back to UT was really rough. 

Got back from TN late last night. Exercise recap of the weekend - no running, minimal walking, and lots of dancing. Traveling is terrible for my injury, so I never felt good enough to be able to exercise. Otherwise recap of the weekend - the wedding was beautiful, we had lots of fun, and Jake's college XC friends are crazy! 

PM - Arm weights for 45 minutes. Short walk and jog around the track for snow fun. 

Just yoga for 20 minutes. Bad injury day for psoas and glutes.

PM - Pool running for 30 minutes.  

PM - Weight training for 35 minutes. Lots of PT work, feel a little better than yesterday. 

AM - 20 minutes of yoga. Feeling better after some deep tissue work yesterday by Teena.

PM - 1 mile walking.  

FYI - Running Warehouse is having 20% off all gift cards until Saturday. They have some of the best prices and free 2-day shipping.  

AM - Yoga for 15 minutes. Lots of PT. Feeling extremely lazy - 9 days and counting without running or any other real cardio. Probably the longest I've ever gone since I was 3.

PM - Exercise bike R=5 for 20 minutes. Arm weight training 40 minutes. Walk for a mile.  

AM - 20 minutes on the recumbent bike R=5 and 30 minutes pool running. Happy about being able to ride on the bike the last two days, even at a low resistance. Goal is to get up to an hour on the bike in the next few weeks and then graduate to the elliptical. 

AM - 1 mile walking. 

PM - Forget this no running stuff. 4 miles! 

AM - Well, I'm not a total disaster after running yesterday. Sore, but I'm thinking maybe it's a good sore? Rode on the recumbent bike r=7 for 20 minutes, then yoga for 20 minutes. 

PM - Arm weights for 40 minutes then pool running for 30 minutes. Felt good!

So glad it's Thanksgiving week! 

AM - 3 MILES on the treadmill at 8 min pace. NO PAIN! :) Tightness/soreness in the hamstring (residual from my 4 miles on Sunday) but nothing to be too concerned about! I'm so excited!!! 20 minutes of yoga afterwards.

AM - 20 minutes on the recumbent bike and 20 minutes of yoga. 

Heading to TN this afternoon...hopefully the plane ride won't destroy the progress I'm making!! 

AM - 4 pain-free miles!!! Hamstrings are really tight but just need lots of massaging. So excited - 3 runs in a row with no pain...gotta be on the upswing now.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Took it easy today...just lots of PT and a few strengthening exercises. 

AM - 3.2 miles in TN. There is nowhere close to home that I can run flat, so I tried running a few of the hills - probably wasn't a great idea. Still had a good run overall but the psoas tightened up a little near the end (which I am completely trying to avoid). Good news is that I didn't have any hamstring tightness this time. Gotta stick with completely flat and running every other day for a couple more weeks! It will take quite a while to get back to true training, but I'm still running :)

Just family time. 

PM - Surprised that I didn't feel too bad after a full day of traveling. Ran 3 miles with Jake in the afternoon. 

This was in the Grandma's Marathon book they sent out last week...cool to see me so close to Dot McMahon (in her off-season) at the Half Marathon Champs last year. Hopefully I'll be in good enough shape by then to go back next year...we'll see. 

AM - 30 minutes of recumbent bike/elliptical. 20 minutes of yoga. Feel a little achy/burning in the psoas today so going to take the rest of the day easy. Probably just residual stress from traveling. 

PM - 1 mile walk around the track.

Some thoughts on sexism in athletics and the implications of gender differences. 

AM - 3.5 miles on the treadmill ~8:10 pace. 20 minutes of yoga. Trying to decide after this week if I should continue running every other day but increasing mileage or run 2 days on, one day off. Thoughts?

From Functional Path Training - 

"I have a friend who is 5’8” and weighs 165 pounds, I am 5’11” and 195 we cannot wear the same size clothing. That should be obvious, then why do we do that with training. We take one training program and use it as a universal prescription, in other words we make one size fit all. It does not work. It may be convenient to use with a large group but because it is convenient does not make it correct. The challenge is always to make the training fit the athlete and the demands of the sport not to make the athlete fit to the training. Sometimes to achieve that requires only subtle changes and other times it is major changes. It is important to never lose sight of the objective of the training – to get each athlete ready to perform at their best in competition on the appointed day at the appointed time. To do that we must train adaptable athletes not athletes who are adapted to one method of training. One size never fits all."

AM - 30 minutes on the elliptical.

PM - 30 minutes of pool running with Jake. Lots of nutrition arguing and training talk.

Great post by Maximum Performance about Frequency. I like how he stresses not to add mileage/days of running very quickly and that it's a slow process to get the body to adapt to more mileage (something I screwed up)...I really like his point at the bottom (although I think cross training is the smartest thing to do sometimes when the body can't handle so much running yet!) - 

Note:  It is also important to note that running is a very specific sport, in which we use certain muscles fibers at certain intensities and in certain ways. Other cross training exercises, while maybe good in general for increasing heart rate and general fitness or generally working muscle groups, will not specifically work the exact same muscle fibers in the exact same way as you do in running. This means they are somewhat poor substitutes for developing and training these muscles in the ways we need to use them in running. Running is still and always will be the best way to train for running.

AM - 30 minutes on the elliptical. The sports med doctor put me on prednisone (oral steroid) so I'm feeling really jittery and anxious today. I realized last night that there is a huge difference b/w this 12-day prednisone and the 6-day methylprednisolone that I took at the beginning of this injury - I'm on the higher dose for 5 days longer and it's about 3x stronger. The sports med doctor said that he didn't think the 6-day was long enough to take control of inflammation. Interesting stuff...Anyways, I'm taking 5 days off from running while I'm on the medication.

PM - 1 mile walk. Felt better after the walk than all day at work.

Good stuff happening at the USATF Conference!

"The USATF Rules Committee voted unanimously yesterday on Rule Change 18, which, upon approval at the general meeting on Sunday, will remove the USATF’s sponsorship logo restrictions." From here.