Category Archives: Weekly Update

06.23.14
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Week of 6/16/14 – 6/22/14

week of 6/16/14 to 6/22/14

Monday: Rest day
Tuesday: Rest day
Wednesday: Treadmill ladder workout
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: 3.15 miles (11:40 min/mi average)
Saturday: 11 miles of canoeing (aka, cross training while drinking!)
Sunday: 3.53 miles (11:20 min/mi average)

I was still recovering from Bonnaroo at the beginning of the week, but I managed to make it to the gym on Wednesday. (It’s been in the upper 90s all week. Running outside is not happening.)

I decided to do the following ladder workout (I wrote this out in text and you would be scrolling forever so I decided to make it an ugly graphic):
Treadmill Ladder Workout

My OCD also kicked in and so I actually ran for about 3 minutes right before my cool-down at 5.0 just so I could get an even number of miles.

I also did another ladder-ish treadmill workout on Sunday where I didn’t walk at all. That one felt GREAT, and, bonus, my knee never hurt at all! That’s the first time since the pain started that it hasn’t hurt for a run over 3 miles.

Friday’s run was actually outside in the humidity. Ugh.

Highest weekly mileage in over a month! Ha. I’ve barely run more mileage in this entire month than I did in a week when half marathon training. That’s craziness. My goal is to get up to 15 miles a week (with little to no pain) before I start structured training again.

06.18.14
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Week of 6/9/14 – 6/15/14

week of 6/9/14 to 6/15/14

Monday: 3 miles (11:36 min/mi average)
Tuesday: Hill skipping workout
Wednesday: 3.6 miles (12:06 min/mi average)
Thursday: Bonnaroo
Friday: Bonnaroo
Saturday: Bonnaroo
Sunday: Bonnaroo

I refuse to call Thursday through Sunday rest days because I was more sore after that weekend than I usually am after running.

So you’ll probably notice I did some weird workout on Tuesday. I read about hill skipping on competitor.com. It sounded fun, so I decided to try it.

So, yeah. Skipping up a hill is much harder than just running up the thing. I picked that hill on the greenway that I absolutely hate because it’s pretty steep (about a 15% grade) and a decent length (around 0.15 mile).

I warmed up by lightly jogging to the hill (about a quarter of a mile from where I parked). Then skipped up the hill. It took me about 2 minutes and 45 seconds to get up it. And, honestly, I couldn’t make it the whole way. I paused in the middle to catch my breath and again just before the end. It was hard.

I jogged back down, then skipped up again. This time took me even longer (over 3 minutes) and again I had to pause halfway up to catch my breath.

After jogging down again, I decided to prove to myself that skipping was actually harder than running, so I ran up the thing in a minute, 43 seconds. Without pausing. Yeah, still not fun, but easier.

My plan is to include hill skipping every week or two. I’m hoping by the end of the summer (or end of the year, who knows), I can skip up the thing without having to take a break for multiple intervals.

Anyway, here’s some pictures from Bonnaroo. My rear-facing camera is messed up (everything comes out blurry) so I mainly took a bunch of selfies. I will spare you.

Bonnaroo Ferris Wheel

The Bonnaroo Ferris Wheel

Bonnaroo rainbow

It rained a bit on Thursday, but then we got this!

World Cup watching at Bonnaroo

A large crowd was watching the Brazil-Croatia game on Thursday.

Bonnaroo arch

The Bonnaroo arch at night.

06.09.14
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Weeks of 5/19/14 – 6/8/14

Time to catch you all up on what I’ve been doing! Feel free to skip this post; it’s really boring, and I don’t have any fun photos to liven it up.

Monday, May 19: injury screening #1
Tuesday, May 20: 30 minute elliptical (aerobic setting, level 1) and 10 minute stationary bike
Wednesday, May 21: injury screening #2
Thursday, May 22: 30 minute elliptical (interval hill workout) and 25 minute treadmill hill climb
Friday, May 23: rest day
Saturday, May 24: 2.5 mile walk to the gym, 30 minute elliptical, 20 minute stationary bike, 2.5 mile walk from the gym
Sunday, May 25: rest day
Monday, May 26: 1.9 mile run with 3:1 intervals
Tuesday, May 27: rest day
Wednesday, May 28: rest day
Thursday, May 29: rest day
Friday, May 30: rest day
Saturday, May 31: 3.5 mile run/walk
Sunday, June 1: 2.5 mile run/walk
Monday, June 2: rest day
Tuesday, June 3: rest day
Wednesday, June 4: 3 mile run with 3:1 intervals
Thursday, June 5: Walked to the store and back, 1 mile total
Friday, June 6: rest day
Saturday, June 7: Barrel Fest 5 Miler (recap coming soon)
Sunday, June 8: rest day

As you can see, I spent most of the first week on the elliptical and in injury screenings. I had only tried the elliptical a few times before, but I was aiming to get some good workouts on it while I was taking a break from running for my knee.

Wow, it takes a lot to go a mile on an elliptical.

Maybe it’s just the ellipticals at my gym, but after a 30 minute workout on the 20th, I only went 1.55 miles according to the machine. I felt like I got a pretty good workout on it though, mostly maintaining around 60 rpm (this machine measures rpm on one foot…some do two, so that would be around 120 rpm on those kind). I chose the aerobic setting on that day, which gave me instructions for 1-2 minute periods of time like “push with your arms”, “pull with your arms”, “legs only/no arms”, and “reverse” to keep things interesting and not too boring. Also, going reverse on an elliptical is no joke. That was probably the best/hardest part of the workout.

In place of a long run on the weekend, I walked to and from the gym, which is about 2.5 miles from my house. I thought about jogging it, but I didn’t want my knee to start acting up and then be stuck at the gym.

So I didn’t try to run until Monday and stayed close to home in case I had issues. My knee was fine that day, but my head just wasn’t into it, so I took a few more days off.

My next run was Saturday, which started off well, but soon got really humid outside. So I stopped after 3.5 miles.

The next day I went out for 2.5 miles, but I could really feel my knee towards the end.

I took two days off after that before doing a 3 mile easy run on Wednesday with the Mt. Juliet Flyers. It wasn’t too bad, though I could definitely feel my knee. I could feel it the next day and the next, which concerned me for the race that weekend.

The race went okay, though I was limping the rest of the day. Sunday my knee felt fine. That surprised me.

I’ve been doing pretty well about getting my strength exercises done at least once a day (though there have been a few days I’ve skipped).

My current plan of attack is to take my running down to three days a week. In addition, I will also have one day for plyometrics and one day for cross-training. This leaves two rest days. Hopefully this will help!

06.03.14
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Hey, where am I?

You may have noticed I haven’t posted recently. That is due to two things:

(a) my knee still hurts, and
(b) I have little motivation.

I have only done three runs since the last I posted, none longer than about 3.5 miles, and they all sucked (mostly due to the freakishly awful humidity, but there were other factors in play as well). You may notice that according to the countdown on the right that I have a race coming up at the end of this week. Yes, yes I do. Yes, I am still going to run it. Yes, I am a little terrified that I won’t be able to make five miles. Yes, I do have some sort of vague (and not entirely smart) plan (that involves tape and Tylenol).

I understand that this race is not supposed to be a big deal, and I should probably skip it instead of risk injuring my knee further. But I have my (stupid) reasons for wanting to run it (and run it well, at that).

I am very thankful this knee issue showed up after the Country Music Half and not before.

05.19.14
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Week of 5/12/14 – 5/18/14: Aaaand….injury!

week of 5/12/14 to 5/18/14

Monday

I haven’t ran on a Monday in over six months, but I decided to this week because thunderstorms were looking likely on Tuesday and Wednesday. My knee/IT band was still giving me issues, so I decided some short intervals would make this a truly easy run. I set my watch for 3:1 intervals and was off. Yeah, so, they turned into more tempo-paced intervals than truly easy ones. I ran one at a 9:30 min/mi pace, and most were between 10-10:30 pace. My average speed for the three miles was half marathon pace (about 11:20 min/mi), which is a little mind-boggling when you consider that I was walking 25% of the time.

I’m still not used to the amount of sweat that drips off me at the end of runs now that it feels like summer. I think I must be creating a new ocean.

Tuesday

The thunderstorms were holding off for the evening (though Wednesday still looked like it was going to be a wash, so the decision to run Monday was good). I went out with the Flyers. We met in a new location this week because Active Life Chiropractic was doing a free talk (with free food) afterwards. I kept this one truly easy, doing 3:1 intervals with Lori. Note to self: Charlie Daniels Park has about a 0.75 mile flat paved loop around it which may be useful for 1200m repeats (or 800m repeats with 400m recovery). My knee felt fine for this run (*cue ominous foreshadowing*).

Thursday

Thanks to Wednesday’s storms, a nice cold front settled in! That means the high was only in the 60s! Wahoo! A good thing, considering it was speed work day. Six intervals of 400m at sub-5k pace with 400m recovery.

I wasn’t nearly as consistent this week. I was pretty worn out after two or three. My fourth one was my slowest, but my fifth felt the worst (I felt all over the place pace-wise). Then on my last recovery before the final speed interval, that knee/IT band pain flared up! Owww! I had to stop and stretch. I finished out the run, really monitoring my form on the last interval to make sure I wasn’t doing anything weird with all the fatigue bogging me down.

Here are my interval times: 2:05.7, 2:10.2, 2:08.5, 2:13.4, 2:07.9, and 2:00.6 (speedy speederson!).

I think I might go out to the track next time to see if that helps with consistency.

Saturday

After taking Friday off, my knee felt better on Saturday morning so I went out for an easy 3:1 interval run. Yeah. I got about 1.25 miles in and the pain was too much. Actually I’m not even sure you can describe it as pain. It’s like this stiffness that makes me feel like I can’t bend my knee properly.

Frustrated and disappointed, I went home and gorged on some McDonald’s.

I don’t know if it is IT band syndrome or if I just messed up my knee when I fell on the trail a couple weeks ago. It certainly never bothered me before that and I haven’t been doing crazy mileage since the half, so I really doubt it’s an overuse issue.

I decided I was going to take the next week off and do every hip/IT band stretch/exercise I could think of and maybe then go see the physical therapist and/or the doctor. Sigh.