Starting the Year with a Bang!

Well more like a crash…

I’ll spare you all the details but the elevator pitch is, I was riding in the aero position, hit a pothole at around 25mph, wobbled a bit and slowed down and then flipped over the handlebars and hit the road with my face.

Nothing broken on me, lots of road rash; arms, hands, one knee and one shoulder. TriBeccaTo called the EMT and they checked me out and then I went to ER to get cleaned up and patched up. Lots of X-rays and even a CT scan but was given the all clear. I have a referral to a Plastic Surgeon this week to check out my nose which took the brunt of the fall.

Minimal damage to the bike! A snapped of shifter, and scratched brake hood, some minor paint scratches, the biggest thing is a scratch to my 3T aero base bar which is carbon fiber so I am looking at how to repair it and not replace it…that’s the most expensive thing to replace.

Here are some photos. If you’re not keen on the sight of blood you can skip this!

Exercising or Exorcising?

I am not sure I should write this, yet alone post it! Not that I am suspicious or anything really!

After nearly two weeks I think my faux injury has gone! I mentioned it in the past, it’s been in my left quad, intermittent pain; literally one or two big Big BIG throbs (that’s three but you get my point) and then it would stop, it throbed when I was running, walking or even standing still! No swelling, no bruising and no identified cause. When I poked it didn’t hurt, I elevated it, rubbed in Flex Power, did Yoga, foam rolled it, iced it, even electrocuted it with my new Compex muscle stimulator and the thing that probably did it the best…time and rest!

So the last two weeks training have been a bit of a bust, two weeks ago I peaked at about 48 miles running and 45 miles on the bike; last week was 9 miles, lot’s of yoga and a solid 40 mile bike ride, this week I dialed it back even more to really shake it off and spent my morning running time at work arriving at 6 or 7:00am. Fingers crossed it seems to have worked…I am shooting for a long run this weekend, so we’ll see. I have two weeks to Long Beach Marathon and one 20 miler under my belt…well 10% undertrained is better than 2% over right does that work for 25% undertrained?

Coincidently it’s this time last year I wrecked my left quad at 100 in the Hood…maybe I should be exercising and exorcising my demons!

Twinge be gone; killing and rotating shoes…

My knee/quad tendon is better…yay! Hopefully this will not be listed as my famous last words!  Two strips of KTTape over the space of 10 days, some icing, some babying and we’re back on track. One thing that I did do was retire my shoes; 325 miles on my Brooks Adrenaline 10s, a little earlier than I hoped; about 50 miles shy of what I was expecting.

One thing I wondered was what the impact of wearing my runners to the gym, not a drama on an elliptical machine but when using a leg press there’s a lot of squishing going on! Add to that calf raises and few other things and there has to be some impact, excuse the pun. So I have dug out a pair of old shoes for the gym specifically!

The other thing was shoe rotation typically I rotate my shoes but I got out of the habit, switching orthotics and all that it’s a bit of a faff, so I am going to make the effort. In case you’re wondering on the wisdom of shoe rotation here are some soundbites and links to articles:

“Buying two pairs of identical shoes and rotating them each day you run will give your shoes the amount of time you need to decompress and help prolong the useful life of your running shoes. There is an old saying, buy two, get the life of three”…full article

“Whenever possible, you should avoid running in the same pair of shoes more than once a day, and would preferably not wear the same shoes two days in a row. When you run in a pair of shoes, even on a warm or cool day with no precipitation and a dry surface, your shoes still get a little wet. Your feet sweat, and the fabric can absorb some of the humidity from the air. By not wearing your shoes two days in a row, you will allow your shoes to completely dry out”…full article

“It takes up to 48 hours after just a few miles of running for the midsoles of running shoes to fully recover their shock absorption properties. Allowing them time to recover at least that long reduces one's risk of injury and extends the life span of the shoes”…full article

So the next pair enter the fray with 123 miles on them I will be rolling a second pair into rotation, of course, inevitably, Brooks is about to retire the 10s so it might be time to stock up!

Swim, Bike, Run – Yes, Nearly, No!

Five weeks no running; yep cabin fever is setting in and I just ordered me a pair of these sweet rides! But having said that the swimming is going well, well as well as two sessions can go. Nearly 2000 yards this week, I could have gone further but as usual I was pushed for time. After tweaking my knee Tuesday I took it easier on Friday. I also invested in some larger hand fins to take the pressure off my legs otherwise I am bit like a log in the water! Using a pull buoy helps as well for the buoyancy and a swim cap helped with the cold, so now I at least look the part.

I tried my benchmark pedal rotation on the bike and there’s further improvement; forwards I am up to around 2:00am and backwards around 11:00pm, it’s a little sore to go this far but not to the point of doing any damage. Finally I have made in dent in my weight gain so that’s a move in the right direction.

I hosted this week's Runners Round Table podcast, the topic was "Going Long; Ultra-marathons and IronMan", it was a great show and well worth a listen, check it out on iTunes and take it for a run.

All in all everything is good news, but I would really like to go for a run!

Prognosis...

So today I went to see my GP. I really like him, he’s very no nonsense and isn’t one to order a bunch of tests just ‘cos. He’s also an athlete; he Mountain Bikes and he knows I am a runner, there’s no teeth sucking or the usual "well running is bad for you" BS. He actualy said something like "100 miles, wow, that's seriously impressive"! You can see why I like him!

I explained what happened and what was feeling good and what was feeling bad, lots of manipulation and poking about on my ‘lump’ followed. Now all the swelling has gone you can actually get to the root of the issue. His opinion; a 2-3” tear in my vastus medialis that’s the inner (closer to the other leg) muscle that is part of the quadriceps.

So what's next, well, some gentle stretching to start to free it up, I can ride on the trainer, not on the road, with a consistent cadence; no hills, no sprints and then see where we are in two weeks. It could take another 6 weeks to heal completely, that takes me through to end of November so pretty much my season is over.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, clearly this is not that way that I wanted to end this year, but looking on the brightside this actually allows me to de-program my body of those slow slow miles. It does means that I can start with a cleanish slate in December/January and I’ll be able to re-program myself with the fast fast miles that I’ll need for next year.

Well at least I am not stuck doing just pushups!

Bobbing along on the doldrums...

Two weeks ago was my last run. My ankle is fine, the swelling on my knee has gone down completely, Ace bandages are back in the drawer. What I am left with is a lump about 4 inches long and 2 inches wide inside my quadricep, it’s not sore or tender but it’s preventing me from bending my leg! I can bend it about 40 degrees backwards and when I raise my knee from the hip forwards it’s about the same! And when I do these bends it really hurts. I tweaked during the week by over bending it and I was climbing the walls in pain.

I’ll give it another day or so then I’ll head to my GP, who will probably refer me to my Physiotherapist, she’s really good and they fixed me when I fell apart in 2007. Hopefully some ultra sound and massage will start to free it up. In the meantime I am doing some core and upper body stuff but I can feel my cardio fitness seeping out of my body day by day!

Sigh, no running, no biking, maybe swimming but come on, seriously, how excited am I supposed to get about doing pushups!

Like I said …doldrums!

Creepy and Crawly!

After all the excitement of last week, this week I just wanted to get back into my training groove and move forward. Having written off the last few training days and taking Saturday as my regular rest day, I had a planned 35 miler for Sunday night. With that in mind Sunday night came and I hit the trails around 8:00pm, my expected return time was sometime between 3:00-4:00am; it’s quite amazing how quickly your pace drops when the sun goes down. I was running local trails at Cheeseboro Canyon which I have run many, many times although never at night, it's a nice mix of climbing and downhills, some fireroad and single track, there's so great views in the daytime but I was expecting nothing much at night. The moon was waning and wasn't due to be high until really late and I would be running on it's lee side anyway.

The course was a figure of 8 which I planned to do twice, re-plenning at my car halfway round and after making sure I had parked ‘outside’ the park gate I set off. An uneventful first loop and half with the exception of bumping into the little (about 4") guy above who was out doing his own trail creeping at night; we gave each other a wide berth! Halfway through the second loop I felt that familiar little tingle which rapidly escalated into the usual nagging, grimacing, squinting, crap I have to walk pain of my ITB!

Yes back by popular demand an irritated ITB, this is my Achilles heel of sorts. Despite my stretching and rolling it has decided to rear his ugly head, again; see here and here for previous episodes…gah!

So without fanfare and discretion being the better part of valor I stopped after the fist loop crawling in with just over 20 miles on the clock…well Forerunner in four hours.

Back to rolling twice a day and stretching twice a day, I am pretty confident I can shake this off; I had it earlier in the year and shook it off, given that it only comes on when I am in the late teens my weekday run top off around 15 miles I should be fine.

Ho hum…there’s just never a dull moment! Here's the Garmin Connect data, see how my pace falls off after mile 17!

And so here's some humor on the topic of Achilles' heel...

Back to business...

A week has passed and I have now regained the use of my legs, the Sunday after race day was an interesting proposition I considered removing the tray from our youngest's high chair and using it as a Zimmer frame but didn’t in the end, oh the shame! I have also picked up a delightful “pack of cigarettes a day cough”, that gave everyone much entertainment as I reeled about in hacking fits which were muted by non functioning muscle groups. My assumption here was that my immune system had just thrown it’s hands up in despair, although it could, I suppose, be that my body was actually channeling an old age pensioner!?!

Going out for dinner Sunday night as a family proved more entertaining for the restaurant patrons, then I, as they pretended not to watch as I groaned and grimaced while sitting down to and getting up from the table. It was beyond fortunate that we live in a ranch style hours with minimum stairs as they proved, shall we say, challenging up until Wednesday as did getting in and out of the car, still I have no one to blame but myself. With hindsight I should have endured a little more pain on the finish line instead and gone through an extended stretching routine rather than the “ow it hurts, it hurts, that’s enough!” one, so let’s call that lesson #1, I’ll list the others below.

2. Think about the mileage your bag will be at when packing it; I packed it pretty well with “may need” items but on the day what I really needed was a fresh tasting drink, the Amino Vital around mile 42 would have helped earlier in the race along with more of it at that station
3. On the drink front I need to find and way of freshening up Perpetuem; maybe mixing it with a gel will help, I just read that you can mix the gels to get extra flavors; raspberry/chocolate or vanilla/coffee, sounds like a fun night in?
4. I need to try the Perpetuem paste theorem; here you fill a small, think 6 oz bottle, full of Perpetuem in a batter consistency and then chase it with water, so maybe a handheld of water and one of drink would work, the problem is that to trial this you need 16+ mile runs
5. Ensure is a great source of calories but only take one bottle at a time; I think taking two at once caused my stomach sensitivity
6. My race vest is always heavy, it’s packed with all sorts of bits and pieces but most of the weight comes from the water, I could drop a lot of weight if I ditched the water.
7. I could actually ditch the whole vest on the last leg or switch to my lighter race vest, the same goes for out and backs where I pass through the same station twice
8. The Hammer products worked well but I need to be more consistent with them, I stopped taking them when my stomach was icky, around mile 30 and I should have least kept taking the Endurolytes, my face was caked with salt by the time I finished
9. Turn off the moving time function on my Forerunner and use the stopwatch one only; this threw off my timing calculations for the first 30 miles as I forgot to allow for the time lost at the stopping at aid stations

This week I have bee re-reading Mark Vestegen’s book Core Performance Endurance and I can see where there are a lot of chinks in my amour that this can fill. I have been looking at the races that are open for me later in the year and there are a couple of ones that appeal Mt Disappointment in August is one and the Sierra Nevada Endurance Run in September is another, the latter gives me an extra 6 weeks so it has more attraction and it also gets me onto the trails of WSER which is not a bad thing either. But first I need to address the ITB and core. So for the next 6-8 weeks I’ll be laying the foundations for those and working on my running base with the remaining time working up to race day. I am going to tear apart my last training program and redesign it, as mentioned previously it’s too long for me and it needs to be paired down, I’ll post it once I have put it together. I’ve enjoyed the week off, kind of, but now it’s back to business!

Running the numbers

I am covering several bases with this post, firstly it addresses my own analysis of my actual mileage vs. my training plan in an attempt to identify where I went wrong (again!) and ended up injured (again!) and secondly it hopefully provides some insight for any would be runner on how not to do it and thirdly Runner's Lounge Take it and Run Thursday this week is about Training Plans so that just seemed like great timing.

Being that I am in Los Angeles I'll give you some backstory as they call it around here. When I started training for my first Marathon last year I had been running consistently for the three years prior, I had run before that but had had a hiatus where I spent several years mountain biking. I never really kept tabs on my mileage but it averaged around 25 miles a week over three or four runs. I set myself the target of completing it in 3:30 or less, I had no real appreciation of if this was fast or not but it sounded like a challenge.

In preparation did I choose my plan after great deliberation and research, after a review of the literature of the great marathon runners and planners, Lydiard, Galloway, Noakes or Daniels and after long consultation with coaches and other marathon runners? Well no, I found one in a freebie magazine and thought “huh, this’ll do”. Of course as any new disciple of something does I immersed myself, consuming Runners World each month before breakfast and plowing through the literature, nutrition, shoes, clothing, GPS I read about it all. I did however stick to my plan…well I mean I kept using the same one. The plan itself was aimed at a newbie runner and took them from zero(ish) miles to a marathon over the course of 26 weeks.

Mistake #1; I was already ahead of the curve and should have started 4-6 weeks or so into the plan.

Along the way I picked up a Nike+ chip primarily as a means to measure my mileage, I was running a lot on beach paths and was unable to get an accurate read on the distances, from there I discovered the Nike+ forums and the challenges that people created there and jumped in feet first.

Mistake #2; I veered away from my plan, running on my rest days.

My target marathon was to be San Francisco in early July, along the way I built in several half marathons and even a full marathon as a training run despite the fact the longest training run on my plan was only 22 miles.

Mistake #3; exceeding the training mileage and extending my long runs even further.

I ran the San Diego Rock’n’Roll Marathon in early June as a training run and finished in 3:45:09, nearly fifteen minutes faster than my target time of 4:00, I thought I was set, 3:30 was in my sights and I had tone, it was a done deal, you could take it to the bank. The day before I was due to leave for San Francisco, my son was sick, not just a "brought it home from school have a runny nose sick" but full blown sky high temperature on the phone to the Doctors and monitor him closely sick. It’s at this point that everything else goes to the sidelines, I spent an hour on the phone canceling flights and hotels and cuddled up with him on the couch for the rest of the weekend, of course 48 hours later he’s a right as rain and tearing the place up in his usual manner. It was totally the right decision but it was also six months of training gone up in smoke. I signed up for a local 50k at the end of August and it was during mid July that my miles caught up with me. I had run over 1100 miles in 28 weeks and my IT Band had had enough, basically it stopped working, point blank refused to function. Not just on one knee but both along with one hip. I DNS'd for the second time in as many months.

I’ll save you the recovery story, it’s documented here, but the short version is that 10 weeks of physiotherapy put me back on the straight and narrow.

This brings me to this training cycle I find myself 18 weeks into a 20 week plan and once again I am faced with an IT Band issue. In an attempt to detect a pattern I looked at my running log comparing this year to last, and yes there is one, providing you squint and tilt your head 30 degrees to the left you can just make out the profile of some nice hills!

Next I looked at my actual running this year vs. my plan. This brings me to Mistake #4; think macro. I was actually under the impression that I was within 90% of my plan 75% of the time, that is for a big race like a 50k my mileage before and after would drop but for three out of fours weeks I was within an acceptable margin…wrong! Check out the graph and you’ll see that I was off by a mile or two or ten! A picture really is worth a thousand words. The early zero was when I was ill and the last two are projected.

So as you can see four classic mistakes leading up to what I am almost sure will be a DNS for next weeks race, I have yet to vocalize that decision but in my mind it's almost made.

In conclusion I hope that this post helps someone in their planning and that they can learn from the mistakes I have made, I certainly have!

The Great Race of Agoura Half Marathon

The Great Race of Agoura is actually a series of races during the morning of, usually, the first Saturday in April. Offering various distances; 5k, 10k, Kids 1 Mile, Family 1 Mile and Half Marathon, there is a huge expo and it has won numerous awards. The first and last three miles of the Half Marathon is run on the streets and the middle seven miles is on some well worn trails through Cheseboro Canyon. I ran the race last year and have run extensively through the park so I am very familiar with the course, there as some photos, non race day here. Going into this race I had two expectations; if I felt good to go for a course PR, if not go sub 2:00. The backstop was just to finish as I would have to walk it home anyway. What was going to be the unknown race morning was how my ITB etc would hold up, as you can probably tell from the preceding post; it didn’t. I’ll spare you the blow by blow account but here are the high and lowlights.

Miles 1 – 3. As mentioned the first three miles are on the road, you start and the top of a short sharp hill and then run a couple of loops around the neighborhood. I arrived with only 10 minutes to spare and had to run to the start line, while it is a chip timed race but there is a lot of single track on the trail section so passing can be tricky and who wants to be at the back anyways? What this did mean was that I had to skip my stretching routine; did this have any real impact at the end of the day? Probably not but I may have been pain free for a little longer. Anyway the first three miles were fine and I was plodding along at a nice steady pace M1 8:22 M2 8:21 M3 8:34.

Miles 4 – 10. Around Mile 4 you enter the park and the trail section. At Mile 5 I felt it, it started as a dull twinge but every bend in the knee amplified it. Miles 5, 6 and 7 were spent trying to ignore it. By mile 8 it was really kicking in and I was trying to ease it with some self massage as I was running, it felt very familiar and while not as bad as it had been I knew exactly what it was. Strangely it was worse on the flat and up or downhill was reasonable comfortable also the terrain is such that you’re often breaking your stride so that eases things as you're mixing up your repetitive motion. The terrain is really quite varied, you go from almost a grazing pasture, through woods then pop out into a dusty desert scene and it's actually a really engaging stretch of trail and you have to concentrate on not face planting, which judging by the gashed knees and dusty clothes several people did. Rain from earlier in the week had left some of the streams with water in and I picked up a set of wet toes at a backed up stream crossing, I confess to smiling as exited the bank and from behind me heard a splash and the cry of "my new shoes" from someone...whoops! From Mile 2 through Mile 8 you’re climbing, it’s quite imperceptible until the end where it’s quite a steep incline; from here you have a nice two mile stretch of down hill on a fire road so you can open up the throttle and in my case make up some time. M4 9:17 M5 9:11 M6 9:53 M7 10:08 M8 11:18 M9 8:00 M10 8:06 Having long legs really helps on the way down, running fast downhill is something that needs practice and can be a little worrying for some but for me it was pain free and fun.

Miles 11 – finish. Once you bottom out there was a few squiggly bits and then a sharp right hand turn and quick uphill section. There were a lot of people walking, the sun had broken through the clouds and it was warming up, I downshifted into my patented uphill shuffle, faster than a walk and slower than a run and made it to the top, from here there's about 100 yards or so and you are dumped onto the road. By now I knew I would finish and I also knew that there was a large section of flat from Mile 12 onwards and then an up and down. I fixed my sights on a group of runners ahead and made out to catch them up. It was about here that I started going backwards; at least that was how it felt. I was passed by many runners that I had previously passed on the downhill stretch and I was in full teeth gritted and determined mode, my knee/ITB felt like someone was jabbing me with a broken bottle with every step. I rounded the third from last bend, a short uphill and basically limped up, I heard my name being called and looked over to see my wife with our boys cheering me on. Never underestimate the boost of family in the closing miles. The last half mile or so was downhill and as I made the last turn I could see the clock counting 1:59:36 I amazed myself and pulled out a sprint finish crossing the line in 1:59:54. I walked through the chute, was "medaled", with rather a nice piece of hardware and had my chip cut off; I found a very appealing piece of grass and sat on it! My last splits: M11 9:11 M12 8:24 M13 8:47 and the last 0.17 (according to my Forerunner) was 1:07 with a top speed of 12.5 mph!

Post race. My chip time was 1:58:54, a bit quicker than the gun but that’s usual, I was 334/1266 overall and 41/121 in my age group, so all thing considered a pretty good showing. I could have run faster had I been injury free and would have probably got a course PR (sub 1:49:31) but hey there’s always next year. Now a day or so later and my gimpyness has gone. I spent the rest of Saturday with a neoprene sleeve on my knee to keep it supported and warm. Looking back despite the pain I am glad I ran (and finished) the race, it’s a real early alarm for what I can expect in two weeks and I have to decide what to do. Three weeks of no running with lots of stretching and foam rollering has helped but it’s not cured the issue, my cycling has helped maintain my CV fitness, my HRM peaked at 182 but I averaged at 165 which for me is Zone 4 (149-167) and for race day that’s fine. Put me in Zone 3 (131-148) and I can go all day. I am going to go back over my training logs and try and identify any patterns that can be followed or avoided for the next training cycle and spend the next week self-rehabing with a view to making a decision next weekend about Leona Divide.

Here’s the MotionBased data:

An hour later I ran the family mile with our 3 year old, I actually thought that it was going to be a quarter mile, so I was rather pleased, shall we say, to discover its true length, anyway it was a slow pace, thank you! followed but a bit of shoulder work and then a sprint finish at which point the batteries went on the camera, so no pictures of the father and son team. There were plenty of photographers on the course so there should be at least one picture of me somewhere if not well like I say there's always next year.

Jepoardy!

… "things seem to be pretty good"…you know what these are don’t you; famous last words.

My legs have been filleted! At least my left one has. Put me on the list for replacements. It would seem to be official but I am the recipient of a nice (read nasty) case of ITB! Merv I’ll take southern provinces of Thailand for 10; Phuket (Hard T; keep it pseudo clean)!

I’ve some serious thinking in the next week and one big question to answer, but it ain’t looking good, check back for my Great Race report ran this morning…exits stage left kicking dust and cursing under breath.

As Maverick said to Goose...

So it rained here yesterday…a lot. The are two fundamental problems with rain in Southern California; the first is that the roads have little or no drainage so the water tends to sit in large puddles by the side of the road; where I run and the second is that the typical LA driver who is typing on their Blackberry, while sipping on a decaf chai skimmed extra hot with no foam latte, while tuning in the GPS, shouting at the kids in the back and not actually being able to see anything that is less than 7’ tall in their ‘lifted’ Escalade, likes to go into a complete state of panic when it rains. I am really not sure if this is because they seriously do not know how to drive in the wet or it’s because their car is getting dirty after spending $150 having it detailed...it's probably both!

Anyway what this meant was I was relegated to the treadmill. No problem thought I, my schedule called for 7 miles so it was going to be around an hour. I stretched and strapped on the usual gizmos; Garmin 305 and footpod and iPod/Nike+ and got going. Now during the last 5 months I have noticed that my pace has gotten slower and despite my gizmos I guess it had just not sunk in how slow I had actually become, it wasn’t until I glanced down at the dashboard that I realized I was plodding along at around a 9:30 mile! This is terrible I thought to myself, I increased the speed to 7mph or an 8:30 mile and to my surprise actually found that I had to work at it. I was shocked. The rest of the run I ran mile intervals between 8:30 and 9:30 with a penultimate mile of 7:41, with some aural support from the The Prodigy, until I had reached the target 7 miles, although my Garmin conked out at the 6.4 mark, I think I have a dicky USB port and it’s not charging it properly.

I checked back through my training log and specifically at the Santa Monica Classic 5k and The Wine Country Half Marathon I ran in May and the San Diego Marathon I ran in June; now while these were obviously at race pace I was shocked to see that the average pace for each of these races was: 6:38, 7:32 and 8:30 respectively and here I was struggling to maintain an 8:30 pace every other mile on a treadmill for only seven miles!

I really have no idea where this drop in pace has come from; maybe it’s the longer distances I am covering, maybe it’s the fact that I never got fast again after my injury or maybe it's something else but one thing is for sure if I want to complete the Leona Divide in under 10 hours I’ll need to work on my speed!

Tomorrow calls for mile intervals which really should be run on a track, the problem is the local High School track is being resurfaced so I think I will run hills instead and see what I can make of it…boy do I have some work to do!

I feel the need! Do you?

First the what...now the how!

Well this is the plan, its a modified Hal Higdon Comrades' Ultramarthon plan. I have shortened it by six weeks to avoid over-training, something that I flirted with earlier this year, and much of what I have read has advised that it is better to be undertrained than overtrained. I have also increased the cross training to focus on my ITB and avoid any repeat injury.

The shading is not only to make it look pretty it will allow me to periodize the training and compare period vs. period in terms of power output on both the weights and the bike, I have been looking at CrossFit as a means of cross training so where it reads weights this will not be a pure play on lifting but will build in other exercises as well.

Not mentioned but built in is the stretching routine that I have developed, this is done pre and post run and ideally one other occasion per day. The final thing is the nutrition and hydration plan; I am 90% through reading the Paleo Diet for Endurance Athletes and a lot of what I have read sits very comfortably with me so I will be following the guidelines of that diet and see where it takes me with a review of things after a month.

A race-pace of 9:30 will seem a bit slow compared to the road miles pace I usually run; around 8:30, but I hope to actually be training on terrain similar to that on my 'A' race (American River or Leona Divide, probably the latter due to geography; I can drive to the start line in a hour), that is hills, hills and more hills, and given that the pace at the Pt Mugu was north of 13:00 per mile I am actually looking for a considerable increase in speed!

At least that's the plan...

Turning outside things in...

It’s funny how external things always affect you internally.

WARNING, the following contains a whole diatribe that pertains to Nike+ and the 1999 movie Fight Club staring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter, if you do not know or have no desire to know what either is you can skip the next two paragraphs.

I am in, well was – I just won it, a Nike+ challenge with kangator, the premise, a product of the warped mind of PMag; the challenge host, is along the lines of Fight Club, that is, you challenge another member and you fight or in our case you run, or well, you don’t but then you will typically loose, anyway I digress. Kangator had previously challenged me but I was allowed to tap out; stomach flu was raging; Fight Club Rule #4, of course I have actually broken rules #1 and 2 by just writing this, confused, just rent the movie and all will be revealed. Anyway I digress, so I re-challenged kangator, to "The Heinz-man Trophy"; the first to run 57 miles, this was a crude and, I thought, obvious play on Heisman Trophy and Heinz’, as in beans and soup, 57 varieties. Kangator proved to be a worthy competitor, he laid down over 26 miles in the first two days, I responded with 25 followed by an additional 13 by day four, at this point my eldest son, who is three years old decided that my iPod USB cable seemed of particular interest to him and made off with it and then conveniently forget where he had hidden it, this meant that I was unable to sync my iPod with the Nike+ site, a tad frustrating as by day six kangator had notched up 46 miles and was within sight of the 57 miles finish line. Day seven was a rest day for us both and it was looking like it was going to be a sprint finish on long run Sunday.

The arrival of our second son two weeks ago has had an accumulative affect on the amount of sleep I am getting; read "not a lot" and I find my energy levels are generally pretty low. The lack of sleep was taking its toll; I was tired; by the end of the challenge I would have run 150% (59 miles) the number of hours sleep (40 or so) I had got in the same amount of time. The tiredness was evident in my forth run, on Thursday; my hamstrings were tight and I felt lethargic in the closing miles, however Thursday’s upside was while looking for my son’s bedtime story book de’ jour I found my iPod cable, good news. Now to get around to the first sentence of this post, to recap I was tired, did I say that already? And I needed to run 8 miles before Sunday east coast time, we, as a family got home from a day out at the Santa Barbara Zoo around 8pm and we, my wife and I, went through the all signing all dancing performance of getting our eldest in bed, fortunately he was tired so resistance was minimal. I was not really looking forward to running late, Santa Barbara had been shrouded in fog and was cold, remember cold is relative in Southern California, the thermometer in my car said 56F, however by the time we had got home the good news was that the temperature had increased to 71F, much better and more good news. A quick check on my email; Hi, my name is SLB and I am an email addict, revealed that a project lead that I thought had gone stone cold was actually blazing away! More good news, not wanting to waste this run of good luck and the uplift in my emotional barometer and of course not to be outrun by kangator and bettered by the three hour timezone difference, kangator is in NJ, I laced up my shoes and headed out the door to run off the remaining 8 miles needed for victory. I set of on my usual route which allows me to run on autopilot and has me at mile 2.5 before you can say “crap, I forgot to start my Forerunner” I pushed on feeling, well actually pretty good, my glutes had been feeling tight over the last week but tonight everything was aligned, (well not the stars, according to my lottery ticket; maybe next week), and I was happily cranking out 8:45 or so miles and everything felt great, I reached the turnaround point at mile 5 and headed back home, I walked back up the hill, as is my modus operandi to the house and synced my iPod, the rest, as they say, is history. So the moral of the story is to make hay while the sun shines…that is don’t ignore the signs, if they’re telling you to go, then go!

On another Nike+ note the much awaited Q2K7 Quadrathlon hats and visors arrived from HeadSweats, they look great and they will, as anyone who has worn a HeadSweat product, I expect perform flawlessly. October’s Quadrathlon drew to a close, the winners will be announced soon once all the miles and points have been tallied.

OK that’s enough Nike+ tale telling. Time for a quick summary of last month.

My total mileage was 106 miles, some 37 or so miles less than the month before, however when you take into account that I had the stomach flu for 9 days and then we were dissuaded from running due poor air quality; a result of the many wildfires that really only left me 22 days for running, if you work out the month on that number of days and pro rate it for the month that would actually have been 149 miles which is more in the ball park that I need to be, although this will be increasing as my training plan will obviously increase my mileage over the coming months it still maintains my base.

Looking forward, I am still undecided about the 30k or 50k on the 18^th, the consensus so far is to go for it, thanks to everyone who answered, there is, unfortunately no prize. I will make a decision by the end of the weekend/early next week. My participation in Iron Wil’s Through the3 Wall Challenge has been all over the place, we’re about to start week 5 and I have made some progress, the stomach flu forced my to unwillingly drop 6lbs, but despite my best efforts my actual weight has changed very little and my body fat has only moved around 1%. I did manage to find the bargain of the year in the multi-gym market, a bench complete with options for a lat fly and quad curl and 80lbs worth of weights for less than $100, this will help me maintain the work put in at Blake PT on my quads and hamstrings; essential if I am really going to stick to the trail side of things.

So I start another month, a third of the way through the final quarter of 2007, with lots of targets; most of them moving, as is often the case, hopefully I can hit some of them before the year closes out?

The road to recovery...Pt 11 (Journey's end!)

Well today was my last day of PT, I am officially signed off, fit for duty and ready to go; uphill, downhill, sprints, intervals etc, I cannot express my gratitude enough to the crew at Blake Physical Therapy, they have, as the t-shirt they presented me with, re-built me! I did in fact cheat earlier this week knowing that I had the last appointment today and put in a quick set of sprints resulting in the fastest mile split of 6:33, yay! Of course the latest and greatest news is that my son and his germ-factory school-friends have decided to fire of the opening salvo of Biological warfare and share a nice case of the stomach flu with everyone round here; the upshot of this is that the house now looks like a scene from the Crimean War, although we are somewhat lacking on the Florence Nightingale front. I curtailed this mornings 12 miler after 7, after my stomach and head colluded to just overwhelm me and it was a there ‘n back rather than a loop; discretion being the greater part of valor. So here is a list the lessons learned during my 10 weeks of recovery:

• Stretching; stretching is your friend, do it before you run, do it after you run, do it in line at the bank…just do it!
• Include the above into your “run time”, I now bookend each and every run with 20 minutes of stretching, once you add the extra time in you can calculate the whole workout time and you can plan your day accordingly.
• Cross train: stretching’s best friend; running concentrates all your efforts in several keys areas; hamstrings, calves etc redress this balance by working on your quads and other muscle groups; cycling, weights and swimming are all good options.
• You don’t have to run everyday, cross training keeps you fresh and helps avoid the hidden trap door of overtraining.
• Core work; keep your core in check and you core will keep you in check.
• You don’t need to spend a fortune in gym memberships or on equipment; a bike, swiss-ball, dumb-bells, exercise mat, foam roller, ankle weights and a stretching strap are all you need…well ok you do need to spend some money but think of it as an investment.

I’ll still be taping my knees for the foreseeable future especially with the trail runs I have coming up, some of it is preventative and some is psychosomatic…but hey whatever works!

The Road to Recovery...Pt 8 (Getting it on tape)

Saw my PT today. After explaining to her about the issues encountered from yesterday's run, she has taped my knees, the tape is designed to pull my kneecap round towards the inside and away from the femur where it tends to rub, there is probably a psychosomatic response to it as well. She watched me running on the treadmill; my gait is, well, my gait, I have a tendency to “spoon” my right foot which collapses my right knee to the inside, to address this I have to concentrate on keeping my feet parallel, as if I am on cross-country skis.

The response to the tape has been positive; I had an interval session on Walter and my trainer without any issue and managed a five miler without incident with the exception of some niggling on the sole of my foot, but nothing that was not manageable. I only have a few more days till I have finished bedding in my orthotics and then I will be able to wear them for running, which should address the sole issue.

It’s a long road but the destination will be worth it.

The Road to Recovery...Pt 7 (One step forward, two steps back)

Went out this morning trying to get my PT prescribed 8 miles in, but I was running short of time. So I decided to, instead of walking down the hill as I have been doing, drive down and start running from the flat. I had already stretched at home before I left so I jumped in the car and drove down the hill, parked, locked up and set off.

From experience the first couple of miles are always a “pipe opener” and this morning felt no different, overnight cobwebs were being blown away and I was enjoying listening to the latest downloads from Endurance Planet on my iPod. Mile three rolled by and my right knee started to feel, well, just not right, three quarters of a mile later the feeling had grown worse and I was sensing the occasional twinge, none of this was on the outside where in the past my pain had stemmed from the IT band rubbing, by mile 4.5 I was starting to get a constant low level pain from the inside of my knee cap, by mile five I was done, time to walk. The pain was not intense but was constant and I was now feeling so sort of pressure point on the inside of my right heel. Got back to the car, drove home, stretched, and wrapped an ice bandage around it for 20 minutes, that numbed the soreness and it gently wore off during the next hour. It still fells tender to the touch but it is independently pain or discomfort free.

I am back to the PT tomorrow, so let’s see what she has to say, call me suspicious but am thinking somehow it will involve less running than more…I am starting to become official bored with being injured now.

The Road to Recovery...Pt 5 (Pedal, run & plan)

It’s been a busy week or at least it felt like it. Sunday’s long ride had a delayed start due to a very early start by my son who decided to get up at 5:30am I was up and stretching etc when I heard the pitter patter of feet coming down the hallway. I was able to get out the door at 9:15am some three hours later than planned; the downside of the late start was the heat, the temperature averaged out at 82.4F some 16 degrees warmer than the week before and I really felt it coming back up through Topanga Canyon, fortunately it is quite shaded. I wasn’t really sure why but I felt fuzzy about the ride, maybe it was the increased level of traffic, there’s something very selfish about having an open road all to yourself, unfortunately by ten in the morning open road is a hard thing to come by. Once I got my head facing the right way I was able to enjoy the ride, the only event happened during, inevitably, one of the fastest sections where I accidentally hit, while traveling at 35mph or so, a cat’s-eye in the road. The impact partially buckled my rear wheel, still it could have been a lot worse! So poor Walter spent 24hours in intensive care and emerged looking sparkly clean with two new tires (I had managed to eek out 1000 miles on the old ones), a re-trued rear wheel and regripped handlebars, however I will need to invest in a new wheelset in the not so distant future.

Wednesday I picked up new orthotics, which feel great, I have to break them in (or break me in – I am not sure which) gently over the course of the week and I am not allowed to run in them yet. I told my podiatrist that they made me feel like my feet where rolling out; apparently Asics have an asymmetric design which rolls you foot out and the orthotics are exaggerating that, it’s amazing what info you collect as you go about life. The good news is that I can stick with my Asics 2120s and will not need to step up (no pun intended) to motion control shoes, although I found out this week that the 2120s are being retired next month and 2121s will be released in October.

Friday was the only day I was able to get to my PT, however I have been able to do all the stretching and strengthening exercises at home, she cranked up the Sex Pistols for the massage element and the good news was I wasn’t climbing the wall, well at least not as high as last week! The progress report is good news, after a short spin on the treadmill and some suggested changes to my gait and foot placement I was given the OK to run; conditions: a moderate pace, six miles only and no uphills or downhills. I managed to squeeze in the run later in the day. After walking down the hill to get to the flat, I set off, suffice to say my knees grumbled and moaned for a couple or miles but once warmed up they loosened up nicely, that only left me with the weather to contend with, a balmy 98F; whoops! Anyway six miles later at a very moderate pace I was finished and walking back up the hill home, I reported into my PT to give her my feedback and get a green flag for what I would do at the weekend; I have permission to run again on Sunday…note to self; go out earlier than 3pm!

This weekend is the Bulldog50k which I will obviously DNS, I am now starting to think about next season and planning out my training program and races, the Los Angeles Marathon is in March and would serve as a good training run for the Lenora Divide in April, I would really like to get a 50k in early as well so I was looking at the Twin Peaks in February, I am very fortunate to have a great series of ultras in Southern California; they are organized into a the SoCal Ultra Runners Grand Prix Series. In addition to this a group of runners from Nike+ are discussing pulling together a “real” team to run The Relay which is also in April…so much choice! I need to box clever to not overdo things, while it’s relatively easy to run a 5k, 10k or even a half marathon, these longer distances definitely require more up and down time and compressing the peaks and troughs too tightly is a recipe for disaster!

The road to recovery...Pt 4 (Stretch, strengthen & punk rock)

This is the end of Week 2 of Physiotherapy. My PT says that it’s going well but my IT band is putting up a good fight. My therapy has built up from a base of 30 minutes of stretching three times a day, specifically my hamstrings, quadriceps and glutes from week one and now includes strength training concentrating on my glutes and quads. I am fortunate to have a lot of the “tools of the trade” around the house; swissball, ankle-weights, floor mat and a stretching band etc, it's amazing what you accumulate as you go!

I am still banned from running and so I am concentrating on cycling: with a long ride at the weekend currently 40 miles and then a short speed circuit of 10 miles, (increasing to 15 next week) three times a week. In addition each session I am getting deep, and I mean really deep tissue massage, suffice to say; if you think of massage as scented candles and soothing pipe music, this treatment would be accompanied by the stink of fresh asphalt and the roar of the Sex Pistols!

I have my orthotic fitting next Wednesday and I hope to return back to some form of running next weekend...watch this space.

The road to recovery...Pt 3 (cross-training)

Living inland from the Pacific Ocean you can guarantee that to get there is a matter of going downhill, of course the downside (excuse the pun) is that to come back it’s all uphill. Being that I am sidelined from running it was time to unbuckle my road bike; Walter, from the trainer and head out on the roads. I have for the past week been taking a forty minute/ten mile spin most mornings but today I planned to push a little longer and harder.

My planned route would take me from my home through Malibu Canyon , along Pacific Coast Highway and returning back inland through Topanga Canyon. I mapped it out online and it came back at just under 40 miles, about 3 hours riding time as a guestimate.

I set off early not long after dawn keen to miss the heat of the day and although it was a little breezy on some of the downhill’s I was wearing a windproof which I removed at roughly the halfway point, so I was left with feeling in my arms and didn't have that "is someone sitting on my chest?" thought after traveling downhill in excess of 35mph.

Along the way I passed a Coyote heading home from a late Saturday night on the town and an eight point Mule Deer and his Doe out for an early morning graze. The sun twinkled on the ocean as I passed my alma mater. The surf was up along PCH but was only breaking 2-3’, still, I guess, if you're a surfer; surfing is surfing. I tentatively turned into Topanga Canyon and checked my cycling computer up to that point I had maintained an average speed of 16mph. I have driven through Topanga Canyon maybe a 1000 times and know the twisting and turning climbs well enough however on a bike everything looks very different and climbing at a steady and slow pace I got to see the landscape in significantly more detail, although the steepest part is just before Topanga Village itself and that section was definitely spent with my head down and the “bit between my teeth”, once through the village my pace picked up and the climbing became easier, before I knew it that I was at the top, for a total climb of 1552’ over about 9 miles, I topped out with my average speed having dropped to 13.2mph. Needless to say coming down the other side took all of about 15 minutes. A rolling six miles brought me back to my front door, the time 3:13:32, the distance 40.15 miles

It was a great ride and I really felt that I reconnected with my cycling demons who have taken a back seat this year with the increase in my running. It just goes to show that cross-training can be fun.

Here's the Motion-Based data in case anyone's interested: