Posts Tagged ‘injuries’

I’ve hinted here and there about some things going on since late fall to get me back to good running, but I have admittedly not been very detailed. I think it’s a fear that if I backtrack in the process that I seriously jinxed myself by talking about it.

Well enough of that. I think it’s important to be a little more upfront about things that I’ve been doing to help me “come back.” If I ever go down this path again, I need it for my own sake, but I also hope others can learn from this.

• I mentioned a long time ago about going to a chiropractor for treatments. I feel this is by far the No. 1 reason I’ve been able to get back to running. Dr. David Wimmer of Wimmer Chiropractic in Forest, Va., has been great. When we first started adjustments of my pelvis and spine back in December he was straight-up honest with me in that if I didn’t get back to running soon that he’d recommend other options. Within a month I was able to get back to 2 miles comfortably and the rest … well, the history is being written now. I’ll be doing a video Q&A with Dr. Wimmer sometime this month to talk about my treatments even more. In the meantime, feel free to “like” him on Facebook and check out his blog here.
• I’ve been very good about getting core workouts in a couple of times a week. I know I can do more, but exceeding my max plank goal last month and aiming for 50 consecutive push-ups this month is how I will continue to commit to the core. As I prepare for another marathon later this year, I know that having a strong core will be one of the main reasons of getting to the start (and finish) line healthy.
• I ditched the foam roller, sort of. This may have come up on here, and I know I’ve vocalized it on Twitter, but the foam roller isn’t for me. I may use it from time to time to make sure I don’t have some crazy knots, or to give myself a back massage, but it was not an effective treatment for me. I have a few stretches that are working well for me right now that I will continue to do.
• I am continuing to work on my cadence. One foot last week was right about 90 strikes. In Saturday’s race, I caught myself a few times slipping into my “old” way of running, which I find very uncomfortable despite my brain sometimes wanting to run that way.
• I am avoiding just going out the door and starting my run. I try to walk at least a quarter mile before I start my run and try to end it with a walk of about the same distance. I think too many times last year I just went out the door and ran, and then just finished up directly outside myself and came inside to log my workout on Daily Mile. I believe that my body is thanking me by doing a warm-up and cool down.
• As much as I hated to cut back on this, I run less with my dog Duke. As spring rolls along I may change this, but I realized after it was too late how much my dog pulled me to the left … which is the side of my injury. I believe that my running form is much to blame for my injury, but Duke contributed to it.

There are so many lessons learned here, and so many things I probably should have been talking about all along. What’s done is done, though, and all I can do is keep moving forward with all these things etched in my brain.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Coming back from my ITB injury, my plan was simply this: to come back smarter and stronger. If that meant faster, then all the better. Today those “comeback” plans to came together perfectly and the results were so surprising.

I ran 48:08 in the Monument Avenue 10k in Richmond today, 3 seconds faster than my PR two years ago, which was the last time I raced this distance. Even better is that this PR came with a negative split. I ran 24:06 in the first half and 24:02 in the second half. All week long I have said that I’d see how things were going at the halfway point before “going for it.” Truth be told, I “went for it” the whole race.

After I hit the first mile under 8 minutes and the second mile in 7:35, there was no backing down. I felt like I struggled a bit in the middle miles, but I was still pulling in miles under 8 minutes.

As I neared the last minute, I could feel the emotions hit me as I thought about my grandfather a lot in the final mile, just knowing he probably would have enjoyed being in the crowd at the finish line.

I love it when I have a race that I can walk away from with no regrets. I may have let a few seconds slip away in certain parts of the course, but this was my race today. It was so unexpected, but so awesome. Nearly 6 hours later I still can’t find the right words to explain it.

I’ve talked before about how much I don’t like the 10k distance — too long if you start too slow, too short if you screw up going out too fast — but as I was racing today I realized how important running 6.2 miles very hard is. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be tackling this distance again very soon.

Headed out on a cool, breezy run this Month.

If I ever stop learning while running, I’m going to hang up my shoes and do something else. As the first quarter of 2011 comes to an end, I’m realizing how much of a learning experience the past few months have been for me.

• There are more important things in life than running. Take it away from me and I’ll find something else.
• My core was weak. Very weak. I’ve learned to take better care of my core; now I have to continue to strengthen it and get stronger and stronger. I think I’ve logged more core workouts in the past three months than I did all of last year. Seriously.
• Last year I learned to enjoy running and not complain about it. I’ve learned to appreciate the ability to run even more in the past few months.
• I’ve learned to love the Bosu ball — it’s great for push-ups, birddogs, sit-ups, squats and just standing on, among other things.
• I have learned to block other negative people out. Please people, stop complaining about the hill work or speed work or long run you HAVE to do. No, you don’t have to do it. You’re choosing to run. Don’t tell me that you’re happy with running and then approach it with a sense of dread. I’m actually staying away from Twitter as much as I used to because I’m kind of tired of all the negativity.
• I feel that I am becoming a better runner with my new stride. My foot strikes for a minute the other day were just shy of 90 with one foot. In just a few short weeks, that’s an increase of nearly 10 foot strikes per minute. Surprisingly my normal, everyday comfortable pace is about 20 seconds faster per mile than a month ago. That’s without much intentional speed work. It feels weird, but when I slip into my old way of running, I can quickly tell how bad it was for me.

I have said to many people that injuries are the body’s way to make you stop and think about what you’re doing. I’ve certainly done my share of thinking. I have said to others in the same situation that they’ll come back stronger and smarter. That’s happened to me after every injury.

I’m not afraid to boast about being smarter and stronger, and I feel like I’m right there on the cusp of breaking through some barriers with my running. Whether that translates into PRs this year or just feeling better overall or training for another marathon, I’m looking forward to what the future holds.

Here’s a little known fact about me — I very rarely plan my routes. I usually just have a general mileage range in mind and then run wherever I feel like it. I do have certain routes that I know the exact mileage of and have actually been sticking to them lately in my recovery process, but today was different — it was time to run with absolutely no plans beyond getting to at least 6 miles.

So instead of starting from home, I drove to the local middle school to start my route. Then the goals starting coming to mind — hit some long hills, both uphill and downhill. Considering three months ago I was told to avoid hills as much as possible, I wanted to go out of my way if I had to in order to run hills.

Another goal was to not worry about my time at all. When I looked at my watch I made a promise to myself to just look at the distance and avoid looking at the current pace or time elapsed.

I also wanted to make sure I enjoyed this run — for the first time in a while I stopped and took several pictures, including this pony behind the Elks National Home in Bedford:

Things were going great and a few miles into it I decided I needed to do something to help my mind — run the hill where the pain started in October. So I ventured to that part of town and stopped and took this picture of it:

I posted it to Twitter with this simple message: “The hill where my knee pain started 5 months ago. Time to make it mine.”

I made it mine. And I made this entire 6.2-mile run mine. I ran it like I wanted today. I had fun. I didn’t think about my knee. I hit so many little goals along the way that I almost let my emotions get to me. It was like the finishing line of a big race.

Today I crossed a hurdle — I’m not injured anymore; I’m not in recovery either; and while I am training for a 10k in a couple of weeks, I am officially ready for the rest of the year with all these lessons learned in my brain ready to be utilized. I am, as many people on Daily Mile keep telling me, back.

In seven-plus years of running, plus on and off running in high school 15-plus years ago, one thing that’s never really come up is my running form. Through various training groups and through my own research dealing with injuries, I’ve rarely been concerned about the way I run and never been told to do anything too different. This time around though, it’s different.

As I was running through my ITB injury back in October, I started to think about what had gone wrong. My mileage build-up was fine and I didn’t do anything drastically different in the few weeks leading up to when the problem started. So through various conversations with much more experienced runners, many Google searches and reading excerpts in books, it’s come down to this — my form.

Brandon over at A Healthy Dad wrote about this subject the other day. After I read his post I was reassured that some work I’ve been doing recently was the right thing. I’m not sure why I’ve kind of kept this to myself, but since I got back to running more than a mile at a time, I’ve been working on my cadence. Simply put, to be more effective with running, shorter strides are better. More foot strikes actually leads to less impact with the ground. Sounds weird, right?

Of course I’ve heard this over the years, but I didn’t need to change my form, right? I’ve gradually gotten faster over time and bought shoes people told me to buy, so there was never a need to worry about it. But I think I’ve been wrong about it for a long time and my ITB issue this time around was a big enough wake-up call to change the way I run.

I’m not there yet. I feel far from it. On today’s pretty good 5.1-mile run, I counted my foot strikes twice with one foot — 80 and 82. I have no idea if for my height (5 foot, 10 inches) and weight (186.8 this week, no need for a post on it) if this is good or if I need to continue to work on it. This was for my normal, everyday pace run around 9 minutes a mile. Since I run on so many hills, I need to check my foot strikes on hills, on faster runs, etc.

I do feel like I’m working those uphills the best I have in a while. They feel better than what they did before my injury. Downhills are still iffy, but I think it’s a mental thing. I was going down a nice big hill in October when the pain first hit.

After every injury I’ve had, I feel like I come back stronger and a little bit smarter. This time around, I’m even more confident that I’ll come back stronger and smarter than ever before. It’s just a constant work in progress.

As I sit here near what I hope it the end of my recovery from ITB issues, I’m faced with the question of what do I want to do with my running this year? As I stated earlier this week, I need goals. My most successful running has come when I have both short-term and long-term goals going on at the same time. Goals keep me focused, whether it’s a race or a PR goal or a mileage goal.

The thing is, I just don’t know what I want to do. Sure I’d like to get faster and aim for a PR in a 5K. I’d like to do another 10K sometime sooner or later — I’ve done just five 10Ks since I started racing and none since my PR in March 2009. (I still hate 10Ks, by the way.) While I’m leaning toward a 10K in early April, my goal would just be to make it an initial “comeback” race.

My biggest running goal before age catches up to me will be to break 1:40 in a half marathon. There’s a lot of work to do to hit that mark. I could probably aim for that this summer or fall, but I kind of like the focus of the half in winter/early spring. With the breaking of my Shamrock tradition, though, I think I need to change my mind-frame to make everything else different this year.

And then … well … there’s the allure of the marathon. A few months ago I was pretty determined that I wouldn’t do another marathon for a few years, but then there’s part of me that knows now is a perfect time to go for it again.

I know it’s easy to say to be patient and to wait to sign up for something. I understand that; in fact it’s advice that I often give. There isn’t really a rush, but if I don’t set some goals soon I’ll let my running slack way off. I know me. I know that running to just run will stop being fun sooner or later.

So what you have here is a bunch of rambling continuing my thoughts from “Finding the focus.” Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

Better yet, get the shocks out and get this body going again. My running recovery was coming along so nicely until Friday came along.

Then BAM!

I’ve had some sicknesses stop me from running for a while, but it’s been a long, long time in which I’ve had something absolutely put me back to what feels like square one. I know I’m not really starting over — but with a fully empty stomach, having to hydrate myself as if I’ve never had water, and pretty much taking a week off running, it feels like I’m restarting.

But you know what? This is a good thing. The spinning wheels in my head have slowed way down. I had pretty much decided not to run the Shamrock Half Marathon this year, but the decision to pull out was very tough. That was until I found out recently I could defer my entry fee to next year. Then after getting sick, I didn’t have to think about the decision. It’s what I’m doing.

The Shamrock Half, to me, is not about just finishing. It’s a tradition for me to want to go out and prove something. This year wouldn’t prove anything to increase my mileage over the next five weeks to go out there and risk hurting myself. I’ve come too far already to take that chance right now. It’s not a DNS … it’s a true deferment with very little money lost since I signed up on race weekend last year.

I’m instead going to put my focus on some things in April and then I’ll wait until then to focus on things later this year. Recovering from my ITB injury (uh, result) has changed my frame of mind for now and I have no issues with continuing this way for a while.

So as bad as getting horribly sick was, it’s like it was my body’s way to tell me to completely stop. I always listen to my body and it’s always right. I hope, though, that my body will be ready to keep running 4 miles at a time with no problems very soon.

This ITB injury has re-taught me how important it is to appreciate everything there is to appreciate about running. While I have a long way to go, I’ve come so far.

And every time something happens that hasn’t happened in a while — whether it’s mileage or a certain speed or a certain course — I’m going to take time to celebrate.

Tonight is one of those nights — I’ve ran 4 miles twice this week. It sounds so simple, but the last time I ran 4 miles at least twice in one week was Oct. 18-24, the week after I first started having ITB issues.

Things are shaping up nicely this month as I continue to focus on rebuilding a base and running with no pain. I’m on pace for a little more than 60 miles. I certainly can’t complain about that.

Every injury has taught me to appreciate running more than I did before, and in the past few months I’ve learned even more to not take things for granted.

While I needed a break, it has been frustrating at times. I’ve somehow managed, though, to kind of just go along for the ride and see what happens.

These past few weeks have been very good as I’ve slowly increased my distance and intensity on my runs. Today I hit a milestone that I thought was probably another week or two away — 4 miles.

It was the first time hitting 4 miles (besides the marathon) since Oct. 27, only a day away from three months ago. That seems unreal that I’ve gone a quarter of the year since doing that.

While I haven’t been keeping track too closely of the times on my run, today was one of the fastest “everyday” runs since the beginning of October. I was just a few seconds away from having an easy run under a 9-minute pace today.

I felt good out there in shorts while it briefly snowed. I didn’t think about my knee all that much — I just ran. I’m actually starting the year much better than several other years.

There’s a lot going through my head right now with whether or not to do the Shamrock Half Marathon. Part of me wants to drop out and just focus on continuing to recover. Another part of me kind of aches about thinking of ending a tradition. This would be my fifth consecutive Shamrock Half if I do it. I still have time to get to the mileage I want and I’m pretty sure my fitness from marathon training has stuck with me relatively well.

I’m not deciding anything today, but I’m definitely leaning a certain way. I’m not really looking for advice on what to do — I know what my options are and I certainly know the risks, rewards and potential disappointments with either choice. It’s just a spinning wheel in my mind that I can’t totally figure out yet.

Image: Filomena Scalise / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m nowhere close to saying “I’m back,” but for the first time since my ITB issues started three months ago I have some confidence with my running. I said the same thing in my “It’s a long tunnel” post a week ago, but after looking at my Daily Mile stats this weekend I realized how long of a journey this has been. It hasn’t felt all that long — I guess with my son’s birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas all mixed in, I was pretty distracted for a while. Plus I was relatively content to take a running break after not having one for a while.

I have no idea where things are headed the second half of this winter and early spring. I don’t need to have plans or a come back race planned right now. I just want to keep doing what I’m doing and see how I feel week to week before I decide anything.

Above are my miles from my peak week in marathon training when my problems began to what I did this week. As you can see, I had three weeks of steady decline until the marathon — much more than I wanted — then a spike on marathon week and then some extremely low mileage as I kept doing a little bit to get to 1,000 miles for the year.

It’s very refreshing to see things starting to go back up in the past few weeks. This week I hit 13.1 miles — completely unintentional to hit the half marathon distance, but still cool nonetheless.