Category Archives: Training

07.29.13
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My Sunday walk

For the past few weeks that I’ve been on running sabbatical, I’ve been taking long walks on Sunday mornings. The first week I did a paltry 2.15 miles from my house to the Red Box at Kroger down to Publix and back. The next I wandered around in the awful humidity to do 5.65 miles around the nearby subdivisions. Finally, yesterday, I did an unprecedented 9.38 miles (15k).

I had just finished reading Born to Run (which was really good, by the way). The book mentioned drinking chia seeds (yes, this is what Chia pets are grown from), so I ordered some on Amazon while I was reading it, and they arrived the next day. You mix the seeds with water and the seeds form a gel around them, which then you can mix with smoothies, yogurt, or just drink in juice or water. They are known as a kind of natural energy drink used by the Aztecs, containing an abundance of omega-3s, protein, and fiber. ABC News has declared them the food of the year. Before my walk on Sunday, I decided to make myself a little chia concoction. I’m still perfecting it, but I’ll post some recipes at some point in the future.

That distance came about when I decided to walk from my house down to the greenway, which I plan on running during half marathon training. I knew it was about 3 miles there, so about 6 miles roundtrip. I figured it would be a good idea to make sure that it was a good runnable route, with crosswalks where they were supposed to be and whatnot. The first mile or so you get to walk by (and over) the Hermitage, so it was really pretty. After that, fast food and strip malls take over, and it’s not as scenic. As I walked past a newly built strip mall, they were watering the grass, and I enjoyed the little splashes that hit me. Once I got to the greenway (about 3.2 miles total), my legs felt great, so I wandered 1.5 miles down the path until I decided to turn around and head back.

I only decide to turn around because I didn’t think I could actually handle a 9-10 mile walk (and this was a brisk walk, not just a stroll). I’m not going to say that the chia seeds helped (it could have been the lower humidity), but my legs still felt great 5 miles in. They still felt pretty good when I got back home, although I did promptly take an hour long nap. This really got me excited to start half marathon training. I had to stop myself numerous times on my walk from breaking out into a run, but I knew from trying on running shoes a few days earlier (more on that later) that my hip still wasn’t 100% and still needed more rest.

Splits below (I use Runkeeper to track my walks since it separates the stats out from the running stats). The two miles on the greenway are the fastest, probably because it was all shaded, and I didn’t have to stop for traffic or cross streets.

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07.25.13
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Planning out the rest of the year (and then some)…

With only a week left of my doctor mandated running break, I’ve been thinking ahead to how I want to spend the next few months. The first few weeks will just be me getting back into the habit: some one, two, and three mile runs a few times a week. Then I still have six weeks of Couch to 10k left, so I will attempt to finish them out before starting official half marathon training on September 23. This should put me in a good place for my 5ks this fall.

Right now I have two 5ks and two fun runs planned. The first of the 5ks is the Fremont Oktoberfest 5k while I’m in Seattle in September. I figured it would be nice to do a race there, and we were going to Oktoberfest anyway, so it made sense. (I’m also excited to get in a few runs around Green Lake while I’m there!) Then I’ve got two fun runs: The Zombie Run and The Color Run. The week after the Color Run is my second fall race, the Go Commando Clarksville 5k, where I hope I will get a nice PR.

Then November and December will mainly be spent upping my mileage in prep for the 13.1 I have to cover in January! I’m definitely not planning on truly racing my first half. Since it’s at Disney, I plan to enjoy myself and stop and take photos with characters. No matter what I PR, right? Then after Disney, I get to start prepping for the Country Music Half, where I do hope to PR.

I’m so excited to get back into it!

07.02.13
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The doctor says…

As I mentioned yesterday, I had a doctor’s appointment to get x-rays done on both my hip and calf.

He began by having me hop on my left foot again, just as I had done at the free screening. My hip hasn’t been bothering me as much lately, so I was able to do it without much pain (though I could definitely feel it). Then he had me hop on my right to see if it would bother my calf. Again, I could feel it, but it wasn’t painful.

Then he had me stand straight and took note of all my little lower body quirks, like my high arches and my knock-knees.

After that, I laid down so he could run my muscles through some movement tests. He said that I had good range of motion in my hips and legs. He pressed on a few points and told me to let him know if they were tender. There were a few points in my calf that he found, but it wasn’t too bad.

He said that things were looking good and from there I went to have x-rays done. Besides my annual dental x-rays, I’ve never had any done before, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. But it wasn’t bad. I just laid there and moved my legs where the x-ray tech told me to. Four pictures later, we were done.

The doctor went over them with me. He didn’t see anything on my hip x-rays to suggest a stress fracture. There was a tiny blip at the top of my calf, however. He told me that he couldn’t tell if it was of clinical significance or not, but even if it were a stress fracture, it was in the healing stage and it was in a location that didn’t typically break all the way through.

“You can run on Thursday,” he finally proclaimed. He said it was okay to take Tylenol (but not anti-inflammatories). He told me to be careful and walk when I needed to, and then after the 10k, I needed to take about four weeks off and do physical therapy to correct anything that may have caused the injuries before starting up my half marathon training. I’m supposed to go back to see him in six weeks.

physical therapy prescription

So it’s official. I’m off to my first 10k this week!

06.20.13
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Injury update!

Yesterday I went to a free injury screening at Fleet Feet Nashville. They hold 15 minute sessions twice a month to see if your running injuries are serious or not.

I first spoke with Dr. Clarke Holmes from Impact Sports Medicine. I explained my two problem areas to him: my soleus strain (which seems to be doing better) and the pain in my upper thigh/groin area (which seems to be getting worse). He first told me to hop on my left leg (the side with the groin pain). I probably looked at him like he was crazy because it pretty much kills me to do anything with that leg. But I did it, grimacing the whole time. Then he had me lie down and he tried bending my leg in a variety of ways, none of which hurt. Then he poked at my soleus, which almost caused me to scream once.

He concluded that I may have a stress fracture in my hip causing the groin pain. He said that I should have an X-ray and/or MRI done to rule that out because if it was a stress fracture, then continuing to run on it would make it worse and I would need surgery. He said he thought there was about a 60% chance that I didn’t. Not very comforting.

He seemed to agree with my assessment of my calf and didn’t seem overly concerned about it, though he did mention the possibility of a stress fracture there too.

Next I saw the physical therapist, Perry Smith from Pro Motion Physical Therapy. He had me stand straight and poked at my hips a bit. Apparently they are misaligned and this is probably what is causing my injuries. Hearing that my posture was a little messed up was not a super surprise to me, since I’m pretty sure that carrying a heavy backpack on only my left shoulder all those years messed it up. (For example, I’ve never been able to carry a purse on my right shoulder. It just slides off.) I was a little sad that my Wii lies to me though.

wii balance

Today I learned that having a perfect center of balance does not mean that your posture is awesome.

So I guess no more running till I see about my hip. Assuming that I actually don’t have a stress fracture, I will gingerly continue 10k training and then probably take some time off. Of course, if I do have one, time off is the only option.

05.30.13
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Baring my sole-us…

I mentioned earlier this week that I had some pain in my right calf. It mainly felt tight and after a warm up would go away for the most part. Until Monday. I was out doing some intervals, and my calf never fully warmed up. And then it just started hurting so bad while I was running that I had to limp back to my car without completing my run.

So, of course, I googled. What could the issue be? I ruled out Achilles tendinitis. And I didn’t think it was a strain of the the larger calf muscle, the gastrocnemius. It was further down on my leg, a few inches above my ankle. What seemed to fit was the strain of a muscle I had never even heard of before, the soleus.

calf muscles - soleus

Source: iRunnerBlog

Let me take a minute here to say that I am not a doctor. I don’t know for sure if what I have is a soleus strain. It just seems to make sense to me. Take this handy PDF that explains the differences between strains of the two main calf muscles: “Soleus strains…often present as a tightening over days or weeks. They can also feel like soreness that gets worse whilst running and eventually causes the athlete to stop running, either during that run or subsequent runs.” That sounds exactly like my problem.

Basically, whenever my knee is bent and weight is transferred to that leg is when it hurts. I confirmed this by trying some single leg bent knee calf raises. They are no problem on my left leg but on my right leg make me wince. Navigating stairs hurt, especially going down stairs.

The solution is the typical RICE advice: rest, ice, compression, and elevation. I’m taking a week off from running, icing my leg (most) every day, and elevating as much as I can. It’s also completely wrapped up in athletic tape right now. Also, ibuprofen is nice, but I don’t want it to fool me into thinking my leg is better when it actually isn’t, so I take it sparingly. So my next weekly report will be pretty sparse, and I guess I need to include these calf raises in my normal daily stretches from now on.