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!