Geez, a guy takes a little 40 day break from blogging and his wife won't let him hear the end of it. Apparenty the only way Katie knows what is going on with my running is this blog.
So its been more of the same on the non-running front since I last posted. A co-worker with a crucial job (especially during Year End) decided to leave December 10 to go into business with her husband. The original plan was to split her job up among three different people, but the best laid plans... Basically I took on the brunt of what she did and, considering that prior to her leaving I had no idea how to do what she did it proved to be a challange. I sat with her for a week and absorbed as much as I could. That helped, but the workload has been heavy and I've gone in a few Sundays to keep up. I even showed up at 6 a.m. one day last week.
Couple that with the holidays (travel and all the trimmings) and there was a period of a couple weeks at the end of December where I was in "run when I can" mode. I did pretty well anyways and somehow avoided the self-inflicted guilt of taking three days in a row off at one point.
Since then the consistency has been slowly getting better. I had my last post-surgery check-up and it looks like I'm on track. I'm still tight and have some pain at the end of my longer runs, but it has gotten better. The issue of the moment is still my left hamstring. It will not heal. Not with rest. Not with stretching. I'm getting some physical therapy for it this week and I made my first foray to yoga class last Tuesday. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a challanging workout. When I ran that night I felt the best I've felt in months.
The pace on my runs is progressively getting faster, although that has not been my goal. Going into the New Year I was more interested in lowering my heart rate at the same pace. I've had more bad days than good, but the trend seems to going the other direction.
I don't have my log in front of me, but I would say I've been in the 40-60M range per week with at least one, usually two runs of 1.5 - 2 hours.
I promise to post a more detailed log this week. I was telling Pete the other day that my goal is to run those Lydiard 100M weeks for the next 6-8 weeks, only replacing miles with time. So I believe the traditional week was:
Mon: 10M, Tue: 17M, Wed: 10M, Thu: 18M, Fri: 10M, Sat: 15M, Sun: 20M = 100mpw
I'll adjust it to something resembling this:
Mon: 1hr, Tue: 1:45, Wed: 1:00, Thu: 2:00, Fri: 1:00, Sat: 1:30, Sun: 2:15-2:30 = 11 hrs
Not quite equivalent, but I have to start somewhere. At 8min/mi that is 80-85 mpw.
I'm also going to do the elliptical maching for 1hr M-W-F and do the yoga Tu-Th. All together I'm hoping that adds up to some substantial fitness come March. Then I'll start to think about racing again - something I haven't missed until recently.
5 comments:
Welcome back from oblivion! Good to see you're training reasonably.
Like every runner, I've had hamstring troubles. I find that stretching can be counter-productive until it's healed, which is hard because I love yoga. Cross-frictional massage ("crucifix-onal," some say) and ultrasound have helped.
PR is back !!! Glad to read a new post from you buddy. I always find myself getting a laugh when reading your blog.
Great to see you running again. Amazing how you and Howard Nippert have both had HUGE surgeries and are coming back from zero land and are both running more than I am currently. Yep I wanna make the USA 100k team someday too. HAHA.
Seriously good job, and keep the yoga up. the hammy will eventually relent. lay off the speed until its really ready (could be a few more months)
It's nice to have you back!
About hamstrings ... I had a really tight one a couple years ago that ended up getting all tied up with my sciatic nerve. The cure ended up being a week of prednisone followed by 8 weeks of PT (ultrasound, deep tissue massage, and stretching).
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