Going With The Flow

awesome!

thanks for all the great pics yesterday.

Yay! That is really great Andrea.

WOW...it's great to see you running again!

so good to see!

Andrea, I love your optimism and good attitude. But just to throw it out there, I'd stick with the old 10% rule, especially with all you have been through and are trying to rebuild. Maybe back off to 11 instead of 13 this week?

Hmm..I agree that I need to increase mileage slowly. The real question is how slowly? If I did the 10% rule, it would take me 10 weeks just to get up to 20 mpw. That seems a little too conservative. Then again, making a big jump in the amount of running is risky from an injury standpoint (stress fracture, tendon and ligament adaptation, etc).

I've really struggled with a plan because I've never had to really start "from scratch" before. The real goal of the next four weeks has to be not get obsessed with running more or longer or faster (which is really hard for me). If I feel great, then I keep going but I have to be willing to stop short or not run if I don't feel good. The 10% rule might be conservative at times and it might be too much. If I run between 8-12 miles this week I will be happy :) Thought-provoking stuff...I like it!

8-12 miles is within the margin of error for a Garmin, anyways :-)

I think its all about feel. You can't have a set plan beyond the next 24-48 hours. Keep running as you feel good, back off a little before you feel like you have to. And no biking!!! That makes everything worse!

First off, why do you think biking makes you worse? I am just curious

Second, I followed a return to run plan I got from the U's running clinic. It had me running every other day and I was allowed to advance to the next running day as long as the following were true: (1) No sharp pain (under 3/10), (2) No increased pain or swelling for >2 hours after completing the previous run/walk, (3) Pain does not alter your normal gait, and (4) Pain does not continue to increase over time.

I thought those were some pretty good ground rules and they explain why I was stuck at 30 seconds of running for a few weeks...

I used cycling on my non-running days to keep me from going crazy. Is there something you could do on non-running days to keep you from running every day :)

Those are excellent ground rules for progression.

Our theory is that biking works the obliques too much in a sitting /shortened position. We both wish she could bike, but her injury is just so weird. The lowest impact activity sets it off because of the sitting position.

I really don't know why the biking was bothering me last week...could be the sitting position or just that I tried to bike for too long without understanding my limits. I might try to bike 3-4 miles tomorrow and see if it bothers me again.

I feel like I have adhered to the rules pretty well in terms of the pain side, it's just hard to only run every other day, especially when I feel good enough to run. Ill try to find a balance :)