http://howlingcommando.fastrunningblog.com

Sounds like another nice ride. How great to be able to share it with your mom and sister. Your rule did you a favor today.

:-D ghee! Thanks Michelle! It was fun! And I got a muffin out of the deal! And yeah it's so great to spend time with my Mom and Sister! I'm just hoping that all this riding is going to pay off. Do you think it'd be out of the question to run the 5k trail race at the end of the month? It's on the last Monday of June. I wouldn't race it, but probably try to shoot for 8:30-9:00 miles? It's just I've done all the series the last two years running, so I don't want to skip.

You should be OK jogging it. You seem to have done that in your training over the last month with no consequences.

I had a thought about what you could do for your recovery. Get out 6 days a week and run 2 miles at 12:00 pace. You will probably feel some tenderness, but the focus is not keeping it stable. After a week see if your achilles is still stable. Try 3 miles at 12:00 pace on the same schedule if yes. Then gradually up it to 5 miles. Then speed up to 11:00 pace, then 10:00. Go that far and see what happens.

Okay, Sasha. I will give that a try. Question for you: Can I still bike the usual amount? Or should I scale back on that.. Also, I assume you'd suggest i do a light warmup.. maybe I could bike to the track ~4.5 miles away, stretch, and do my jog and then continue my bike ride? I just can't wait to get back on track for building my mileage up again.

Benn - that is a great idea. My thinking is since you can run at all, we just fine tune the distance and the pace so your body will train the achilles to not tear while running. And, of course, we bike as much as possible to keep the cardio as high as we can.

Another thought - how is your diet? Is it clean and controlled, or do you have slip-ups?

I've been reading the new blog Sarah started and I have to admit that I have slipups. I eat really well sometimes, but then if something not too good is put in front of me I'll eat it. I don't eat fried food or red meat though. Never have. But I really need to cut back on manufactured foods you know? I will try keeping a food journal and try to make myself not indulge too much. I think that once I cut out that stuff I'll be feeling better as well, you know?

Benn-I still think you need some medical treatment on that achilles or it may be torn for quite a while. Have you considered going to a sports or physical therapist? It's covered by my insurance. I am not sure, but if you are always dabbling with the running it may slow down or prevent healing.

Okay. I'm going to try to take the rest of the month off of running then until the 5k at the end of the month. Maybe jogging that will be an indicator about the healing? I mean I think it's getting stronger. And the achilles doesn't hurt as much when I'm working now.

Benn, thanks for the congrads. Also, nice biking adventure, with the great muffin. I wonder if you have scar tissue that is giving you trouble?

Stay Kool, B of BS Rools out

I doubt scar tissue is an issue. That is all that holds mine together and I have had no issues with it since I started running again 16 months ago. That is now eight years since I tore it in half.

Hey, Lance Armstrong, nice to have the whole Armstrong family biking together. Tell mom hi. Paul

Michelle:

I think dabbling as it testing the waters will prevent healing. However, consistently running at low intensity and doing just enough volume to where you come back at least the same the next day will help the body adapt and correct the cause of the problem. The cause itself is probably too complex to be understood by anybody. However the body has magic healing powers and it seems in this case they may work.

So we do not run to build fitness, we bike to build fitness. We run as a form of PT. If we can make to the start of the next day not worse off than the day before it should work. After all, this is how any form of training works. We run and it causes micro-injuries all over the body. Then we eat and sleep, and by the time we run again the micro injuries have not only healed but our body has increased in strength and it now would take more stress to develop the same amount of micro-injury. However , if we go too long and/or too fast, and/or eat poorly, and/or sleep poorly then the micro-injuries do not heal and eventually become macro-injuries.

If we do nothing, our body might heal from the (micro or macro) injury but it does not improve its resistance against running stress. So when we run again after a break, we get injured and are back to square one.

The above theory might explain why I have never had any serious injuries while running so much and for so long even though I do have my fair share of muscle tightness, inflexibility, and structural imbalance, and I take my shoes to 3K+ miles. Running has essentially become my PT, and my body over the years has naturally become very resilient.

So the idea is that we stress the achilles and the whole system around it, then use the body's self-healing ability to rebuild it. Eventually, we hope, whatever it is that was weak will become stronger, or something else that can compensate can become stronger, and the whole beauty of it is that we do not have to know what was lacking.

Sasha- I guess that is what I meant to say. I tore my achilles in half. Had surgery that just put the two bundles of spagetti near each other again and waited for scar tissue to form and hold the whole works together. I'll pass on posting the photos. Point is once I started to heal I started a treadmill walking program. Hard and slow it was but soon I was walking at a 15% grade and needed more. I started jogging and had a wide range of small to moderate injury. Quit more than once due to pain. Now, while not competitive, at age 51 I can run 15-20 miles without pain and even better can ignore the tendon and run a mile near 6:00(on a very good day). So slow build up, in my opinion, will allow good things to happen without serious injury. My PT told me it is not common for achilles tear older folks like myself to ever get back into the50-70 mile a week program, in my case it is only work that prevents that. So bottom line work with your body to get where you want to be.

Benn- sorry to hijack your comments, I just feel really strongly that pushing yourself, well short of injury of course, is a good thing. In your case I would have a professional look at it. Too much time has gone by with little relief. You might havea partial rupture that needs attention. Or maybeyour mechanics of walking lead to tendonitis. Anyway a few bucks spend in an experts opinion might be a goodplaceto start.

See Benn I am not the only one who is telling you to get professional help! I have been telling him for months to find a good PT or sports doc. Now in the case of scar tissue. While it doesn't give some people problems, like the the case of saamijeff, it can give others bad problems. So this could be an issue for Benn. But getting someone to work on the area is really the only way to tell. Sometimes I feel like I am beating a dead horse.

He's not a dead horse, just an injured horse!!!!

I wasn't saying he is the dead horse, the subject is.