vacation

From east coast to west coast to far east.  Peter and I are headed to Japan!  I think this will be a good week to rest up and heal completely.  I’ve got the feeling that it will be inconvenient to all for me to run every day in Japan, and I’m hoping that a few days off will restore the pep to my legs.  I am actually pretty happy with my endurance, if I can just get back the speed from a few weeks ago, I’ll be in pretty good shape for track in the spring.  Oddly, this is the first time in my life that I feel limited by muscular issues rather than cardiovascular capacity… heal right hamstring, heal!

Sunday 12/25/2011:  Harvard Bridge via Elliot Bridge (11.9 miles), 1:30:42 (7:37 pace).  Merry Christmas!  Golf course jog with Mom, then took my new compression tights out for a spin by going on a “real” long run!  First 90 minute run in years… Actually I thought this run was 10.8 miles, but the extra mile turned out fine.  Did not feel great for the first few miles, but started feeling stronger a little bit before halfway.  Felt a little more tired coming up the last hill than yesterday, but overall the run felt completely manageable.  Was happy to do a run of this length even though it was really slow.

Monday 12/26/2011:  Charles River Loop (5.3 miles), 43:20 (8:11 pace).  Holy moly, this was the most painful and slow run so far in this training cycle.  I really thought I might have to stop and walk coming up the steep side of the hill at the end.  Legs just feel heavy and tired.  I actually felt pretty good this morning, very little soreness from the long run yesterday, but when I actually got moving my legs felt heavy and dead.  My Mom is improving though, the golf course jog took us under 18 minutes today!

Tuesday 12/27/2011:  Off, packing and travel to Japan.  NO SLEEP...

Wednesday 12/28/2011:  Off, I think this day got lost to the time zone change.  Got to Japan in the evening after dark.  So, so full from tons of food on a marvelous business class seat :)

Thursday 12/29/2011:  Japan River Trail Random Loops (7.7 miles), 59:57 (7:47 pace).  Ooof, this run felt horrible.  Maybe its the flight, the jetlag or lack of sleep, I don't know, but just couldn't get rolling on this one.  Also, R hammy still feels super fatigued and bad.  Might need to take a more significant chunk of time off :-/.

Friday 12/30/2011:  Off, a cool little hike in Japan with Peter, my cousin and his friends.  Beautiful sunny day with a nice view of Mt. Fuji.  R hammy seems fine as long as I don't try to run.  Downhill portion on the hike was brutal, though no one else seemed to be tired.  Do I just not have quads anymore?  Hot Springs and Okonomiyaki to round out a fun day.

Saturday 12/31/2011:  Off, hike into the Nagano mountains to see Snow Monkeys!  Legs feel dead.  

Week #9 Total:  24.9 miles, a good long run... not much else.  Why so dead, legs?

the week of stupid

When I first started running, I thought that doing stupid things was kinda awesome.  10 hilly miles with no training? Super!  Back to back 15 milers?  Fantastic!  Throughout the years, it’s become apparent that my body no longer tolerates these indiscretions… but it’s still hard to shake the psychology that pain = gain, and that things have got to hurt once in a while if you’re working appropriate hard.

I was tired going into Patrician last week, then after hopping straight onto a red eye and pulling an all nighter, I felt absolutely destroyed.  But runs had been going so well the past few weeks, I didn’t want to back off.  I also didn’t want to admit defeat on this measly mileage total of 35 miles per week.  So I kept on trucking until I realized mid-week that it hurt to walk, and the muscles in my right hamstring had become so tight that I couldn’t touch my toes without sending sharp pain shooting all the way down to my knee.  Runs had slowed to a crawl… but I kept thinking one more day of jogging and things would feel better!  False, M, false.

After spending a day, sitting on my aching right buttock and contemplating whether or not I had managed to give myself some odd stress fracture of the pelvic structure… I was a little bit freaked out by the fact that I couldn’t really remember exactly when it had gone from good to bad.  Which was the day that put me over the line from acceptable fatigue to “you are headed for a serious injury”?  Looking back at my logs and spreadsheets, I can’t really tell.  I didn’t really start to slow down significantly until this week, but thinking back really honestly, the right hammy wasn’t okay dating back to Napa… I just didn’t really want to deal with it because I was busy and as long as I could crank out those 7:20 miles, it didn’t seem worth worrying too much about.

Anyways, it all goes to show that older is not always wiser.  Making good choices is a constant struggle and not just a one-time lesson.  I started stretching and doing my PT again every day since Wednesday, and my right leg feels tons better.  The weird pain in my L ankle is also stabilizing… I still feel sort of wiped out in general, and runs don’t feel peppy and strong as they did before, but I think I’m headed towards recovery.

Sunday 12/18/2011:  Off, traveling home.  Legs exhausted today, did some light jogging, 3 miles (total) to and from Dad’s apartment to deliver cookies and cakes, but I don’t think I’ll count this as mileage.  Uphill segment I timed at almost exactly 9 minute miles, the downhill segment was probably slower, turns out its slow going trying to run while holding delicious comestibles.

Monday 12/19/2011:  Second Smallest Charles River Loop (6.8 miles), 53:52 (7:55 pace).  Legs still feeling a bit heavy and dull, also mis-timed this run so ended up running the last stretch of crappy trail/pavement in darkness.  The sketchy footing probably made this already slow jog even slower.  Wasn’t super amused.

Tuesday 12/20/2011:  Fresh Pond from House (7 miles), 53:15 (7:36 pace).  This run felt terrible.  I felt like I was huffing and working hard, but in reality my HR was low and I was going really slow.  Though my right hamstring/glut/everything else in there felt like worlds of pain, I thought perhaps I just needed one more day to recover from Patrician…

Wednesday 12/21/2011:  JFK St. via Elliot Bridge (6.5 miles), 49:08 (7:34 pace).  The first thought I had when I woke up today was “gahhhhhh, my hamstring!”  My right upper leg had frozen overnight into a solid, useless block of pain.  In order to get the thing out of bed and moving forwards, I felt like I had to physically lift the whole leg up and then plunk it down slightly in front of where it used to be.  Refer back to the intro as to why I ran today… 

On the plus side, Mom was inspired to run today, so we went on an 18 minute jog around the golf course.  She did great!  I also don’t think I could have gone on my run without this jog to loosen up my R leg.  It was also pleasantly drizzly today.

Thursday 12/22/2011:  River St. via Elliot Bridge (8.0 miles), 1:01:30 (7:41 pace).  Warm up with Mom on golf course, followed by another slow jog.  R leg felt a little better after stretching and PT yesterday, so ofcourse I had to push my luck by going on another run… Less pain but so, so much fatigue.  Felt a little bit better on the uphill leg home.  

Friday 12/23/2011:  Off.  Finally, a good decision. Though to be fair I was contemplating jogging to Harvard Square and back (approximately 5 miles) to meet a friend.  Was saved from this horrible life choice by timing and a ride from Mom.  Got back and did the 18 minute golf course jog with her again (actually the same loop took us 19 minutes today… probably because I was slacking on my pacing duties).  Frankly, this was about as much exercise as I could handle.

Saturday 12/24/2011:  River St. via Elliot Bridge (8.0 miles), 1:00:55 (7:37 pace).  I think this was the first day that I woke up pain free and it didn’t hurt at all to walk, so I was hoping for a faster run, but I guess that might fall under “unreasonable expectations”.  Felt pretty good in the beginning, then deathly tired, then good again.  Weird.  Also day 4 for jogging with Mom, so proud that she's sticking with it!

Week #8 Total:  36.3 miles, all jogging, but still managed to hold training volume while healing the injuries, that’s gotta be worth something!

all i want for christmas is sleep

After an amazing week of running, now a tough one.  Its hard to take one's proverbial foot off of the gas pedal when things appear to be going well, but this week was about survival, not running fast.  The sleep deprivation was already getting pretty bad towards the end of last week, and I did not recuperate properly in Napa (maybe 7-8 hours a night, not enough to undo the damage of all nighters) then I got hit right off the bat with another all nighter upon my return.  Since then its just been touch and go... most days I got two naps instead of any consolidated sleep.  Most runs were done late a night after nap #1.

Needless to say, I am not feeling super well... and that has percolated into my running as well.  That said, I think it was still a win to get in some solid miles this week.  Everything was survived, now hoping to rest, recover, and do plenty of PT and core strengthening over break!

Sunday 12/11/2011:  Rose Villa / San Gabriel / Lombardy / Hill (4.65 miles), 37:43 (8:07 pace).  Did not get a chance to run again in Napa before we left.  Feeling totally wiped out and facing another all nighter, I elected to do a "better than nothing" jog, instead of the intended Sunday Long Run.  This route is rapidly becoming my recovery jog route.  This one was a lot slower than intended, but frankly, I just could not be bothered to go any faster today.

Monday 12/12/2011:  Completely off.  Honestly don't even remember what happened today, other than that I didn't get fired, despite the fact that the all nighter wasn't enough to completely finish my project.  I'm pretty sure I spent the entire day in a fog, and then had to take an emergency nap in the evening.  I think that's how I got started on the 2 naps a day / no consolidated sleep schedule, because then I had to get up and work late again, resulting in another short nap before getting up early in the morning.... wash, rinse, repeat until all deliverables are complete.

Tuesday 12/13/2011:  Rose Villa / Rosemead / California / Hill (7.0 miles), 50:10 (7:11 pace).  This one was really really late at night, so much so that I slightly feared for my safety but it turned out alright.  Feel like I've been hit by a bus.  Tuesday was supposed to be tempo... but kept a relaxing pace for most of it.  Tried to tempo a little bit on the way back and failed.  As in, I was breathing hard, but not going fast.  That's like the opposite of a tempo.  Fail!

Wednesday 12/14/2011: Huntington / Oak Knoll from Chester (7.6 miles), 56:54 (7:30 pace).  An easy late night jog.  Wanted to check out the Huntington median, brought head lamp.  Road debris was much improved... I guess this is a higher priority for San Marino than it is for Pasadena.  Grass section felt good... really made me miss trails, meh.  A nice run.

Thursday 12/15/2011:  Another completely off.  Was intending to go to swim practice, but didn't quite make it in time.  Decided instead to allocate the time to baking cookies for Swim Club Holiday Party tomorrow.  New recipe, woohoo!

Friday 12/16/2011:  2 x Rose Bowl Loop (Non-tempo 10K), 44:17 (7:08 pace).  Had to squeeze this in before the holiday party.  Allergy shots this morning, so I was feeling wheezy all day... but I secretly kinda hoped I could crank out a tempo... er, false, M, false.  Did the first lap pretty easy, feeling good, but was sort of horrified to see the 22:15 5K split and decided that it would not be productive to do a tempo today.  Then, I felt tired the entire second lap.  Its so weird how big of a psychological effect seeing that first lap split is for me.  Last week, I felt crappy, but saw the fast split and suddenly felt energized and awesome.  This week, I felt good, but saw the slow split and then suddenly it felt like lead bricks got added to my feet.  I know that I should just give myself a break.  I still haven't gotten a solid night of sleep, and its really starting to break me down physically... its clear why I can't tempo and why its not productive to try right now... but I can't help but feel like I'm losing fitness by skipping a week!

Saturday 12/17/2011:  Patrician (10 miles), 1:15:30 (7:33 pace).  Hills, hills, hills.  Patrician probably wasn’t the best way to ease into some longer runs, but I wanted to do a 10 miler, and this was the first thing that popped into my mind.  Honestly I had hoped it would be a little bit faster, but in retrospect I think I underestimated those hills.  Garmin says that I was positively crawling on that middle section of Patrician Way.  Legs actually felt decent, but the breathing was pretty choppy on the climbs.  I guess I just haven’t done a lot of hills recently.  But on the plus side, the longer distance felt totally manageable, didn’t feel particularly wiped out at the end.  Finished strong with a 6:40 last mile (slightly downhill, I think).

Week #7 Total:  35.45 miles, a little slow this week but still a solid week of training!

small breakthroughs, some niggles

Woah, this week was unreal.  First week over 30 miles per week in 2-ish years, and I hit it out of the ballpark.  Not that significant week over week increases are a particularly good idea for injury prone runners newly running a mostly pavement diet... but I'm so happy with this week, so happy.

I haven't done an 8 mile run in the same 2 year period, and this week I did THREE (3!).  I also did two runs that I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I did two runs that vastly exceeded expectations pace-wise.  I actually feel like a real runner for the first time in long time, and I'm just so excited to get out for each run.  Its scary though, like I'm walking a very fine line.  It all just seems too good to last.  I feel like an injury or some inexplicable slowdown must just be around the corner...

I've had some niggles develop this week.  My L anterior tibial tendon has been flaring a little bit lately, which makes me favor the L leg, which makes my R hamstring inordinately sore... and all of this could be fixed pretty easily by doing my ankle exercises... but time has been in short supply lately, and like I said... I'm treading a very fine line right now.  Need to really work on this over break and banish the ankle pain!

Sunday 12/04/2011:  Art Center Bike Loop (8.5 miles), 59:25 (7:02 pace).  The crazy apocalypse state of road in Pasadena has provided the push I needed to finally implement this run that I've been wanting to do for years now.  I did the easy Art Center Bike Loop going up Highland and coming back on Berkshire on foot!  Love love loved the uphill parts, felt really good and strong, but the downhills felt really long and onerous.  I was so glad for that last little hill that I hate so much coming back from the AC on the bike.  Felt really good at the end!  I got back to the Rose Bowl where I parked and was blown away that the Garmin said 59:25... starting out, I figured this would be maybe a 64 minute run.  Amazeballs.

Monday 12/05/2011:  Somehow made it to swim practice again for the first time in 2 weeks.  3650 yards, man this one was tough!  Things didn't seem that bad in the beginning, but my arms were completely and utterly dead before we even hit the pulling.  Needless to say that it was ugly.  I was pleased that I didn't feel wheezy and out of breath as per the other times that I've taken some time off from swimming. 

Tuesday 12/06/2011:  10K tempo at the Rose Bowl (2 laps), 42:05 (6:46 pace).  This run falls into the category of 'complete surprises'.  I felt tired... legs felt tired, everything felt tired... and I really really did not want to do a tempo run.  But I knew that I was not likely to get much sleep for the rest of the week, so it seemed prudent to get this out of the way now.  So I headed to the Rose Bowl, again for the reason that it had the least amount of debris so far as I could tell.  (Goodbye for now, Arroyo Tempo Loop!)  When I started, I still wasn't sure whether I really wanted to do tempo today, but I told myself to just do one lap comfortable and see if I could pick it up for the second loop.  Honestly wasn't feeling that great, but I was really encouraged to see 21:32 as a split for the first 5K, so I figured I had it in me to pick it up a little bit.  Second lap felt like a good effort, but still completely under control, a perfect tempo effort.  Felt so good, I threw in a little sprint for the last 400m or so!  Second 5K I guess was 20:33, not too bad at all. 

It felt like a mental breakthrough for me to be able to just get out there and run sub-7 minute miles.  Typically, I've always felt like I needed the flatness and regularity of the track to run these paces.  To balance out the awesome-nesss of this run, apparently the powers that be decided to send my car battery to Car Battery Heaven after this run, which resulted in me being stranded at the Rose Bowl for an hour in rapidly falling temperatures.  Would have completely frozen if not for my compression socks that I love so much!  I guess the universe has this way of returning you to the same places sometimes.  Not sure why transportation issues + Rose Bowl + really really cold is some sort of energy minimum state for me...

Wednesday 12/07/2011:  Rose Villa / San Gabriel / Lombardy / Hill (4.7 miles), 37:30 (7:59 pace).  This run was hard and sort of unpleasant.  My body felt "off" in a way that I haven't felt in a long time but which felt so vaguely familiar... then it hit me:  Oooooohhh, well hello there fatigue, not so nice to run into you again...  This is how I used to feel on days after track workouts and Bailey Canyon climbs.  So nostalgic and yet so unpleasant.  I guess I've already logged some pretty quick runs already this week = body needs a break.

Thursday 12/08/2011:  Cordova / Orange Grove / Mission / Los Robles (8.1 miles), 1:01:48 (7:38 pace).  A really nice super late at night jog around some of the old South Pas routes.  The sleep deprivation is hitting me pretty hard now.  All nighter yesterday... feel like I've been hit by a bus.  Had to take a nap after dinner, woke up discombobulated at 10 pm, but the first thought that popped into my head was that I wanted to go on a run.  So I bundled up and headed out, just nice and easy.  It turned out to be a nice run.  First run over an hour too.

Friday 12/09/2011:  Off, travel to Napa with the gang!  There was no way a run was happening today.  So, so tired and so, so stressed.  Basically only got three 3 hour naps in the past 72 hours.  I honestly don't remember Caltech being this bad.  Good thing I got that tempo run out of the way before this hit.

Saturday 12/10/2011:  KB Cabin to School Building (8.5 miles), 1:02:42 (7:25 pace).  Beautiful run across pleasantly undulating terrain.  Love, love, love.  I had to check the Garmin map and gmaps twice to confirm the distance, because I certainly did not feel like I was going that fast.  This was the first day that I really noticed the anterior tibial tendon issue.  It made it really tough to run on the banked road, and I just couldn't land / push off with full force on the L foot.  R hammy was just insanely insanely sore afterwards as a result.  Amazing dinner in Sonoma and stretching a bit in the hot tub helped.

Week #6 Total:  35.9 miles.  Woah, just woah.  The comeback train is rolling on through!

dude, where's my compression under pants???

I've gotta hand it to people who do sports that require sprinting and coordination... and side-to-side movements.  It's been two days since the run in with 2 hours of tennis, and I am still flat on my back.  It hurts to stand up, it hurts to swing my arms, it hurts to take steps forward.  Yikes.  Its sort of like a whole body smackdown.  But the worst of all for running is the intense pain in my glutes.  I've got on my thigh high compression socks, but geez, where's the compression underpants when you need them???

I think I'm going to turn this week into an "off week".   That wasn't the plan, I had wanted to start off December right with 30 miles of quality training... but you've got to adapt.  There are two jogging days in here, so I'll call that a good down week, even if the mileage is about the same as last week.


Sunday 11/27/2011:  Smallest Charles River Loop from house (5.3 miles), 40:17 (7:36 pace)  I haven't taken two days off in a row since I started, and I wasn't going to start today, ass pain be damned!  All I can say about this run is that I gutted it out.  For about 20 minutes, it felt like being swiftly kicked in the behind with every step I took.  Try to ignore the pain, and keep moving... I told myself.  Eventually it became more of a moderate ache instead of a sharp stabbing pain and then the run was moderately tolerable.  My only goal for this run, other than not keeling over, was not to run any > 8 minute miles.  Against all odds, I succeeded.

Monday 11/28/2011:  Off, some brief core exercises with Mom.  The ass pain is much improved since yesterday, but I still feel pretty rickety even today.

Tuesday 11/29/2011:  Rose Villa / Rosemead / California / Hill (7.0 miles), 50:52 (7:18 pace)  This run was like an amazing and unexpected gift.  I felt horrible, after getting 2 hours of sleep, traveling back on 2 flights and 2 delays, almost missing a Biology quiz, catastrophe at work... but I wanted to just get a short easy run in as a shake out after a long day.  Headed out after dark, not particularly feeling great in the first few miles, but then, it all started to click and I felt so great I decided to extend the run out to Rosemead.  Coming back on the uphill felt unreal.  Just so smooth, easy, fast, powerful.  I don't think I've ever felt so great on a run before.  Got back and was totally not expecting it to be so speedy because I didn't feel like I was working hard at any point.  Wow, like these are the runs that you live for.

Wednesday 11/30/2011:  Off, starting to feel slothful... was trying to get out of lab early enough to run in the Arroyo, but got home pretty close to sundown, and then some work related catastrophes had to be addressed ASAP.  Decided I should just get some errands done and run tomorrow instead.

Thursday 12/01/2011:  A 1 hour jog/walk interspersed with a large proportion of bushwhacking from Monterrey to Rose Bowl... back on surface streets (7.2 miles) ... yikes.  If I had known that this was about to happen, perhaps I might have made a bigger effort to run in the Arroyo yesterday.  This entire city looks like the apocalypse just came through... including a lot of big trees collapsed in the Arroyo.  First bridge is impassable, the stretch between Monterrey and second bridge is particularly bad on both sides.  Sad to see all of the trees :(.  Jogged into a heavy headwind to the RB, then exited on California and headed back on surface streets to avoid repeating the bushwhacking in darkness.  Felt kind of awful in addition to the conditions, Garmin says I was going ~8 minute miles when I was moving, though I didn't bother to stop it while I navigated the obstacles.  Sidewalks weren't great either, hard to gain much momentum with all of the debris.  Swim practice canceled due to the winds.

Friday 12/02/2011:  Off again.  This week has been terrible for exercise.  Also, feeling sleep deprived and awful lately.  Probably should have run at night anyways, but instead elected to eat and get a decent night of sleep for the first time this week.

Saturday 12/03/2011:  Huntington / Oak Knoll (6.1 miles), 48:35 (7:58 pace) Skipped swim practice to sleep in and go on a morning jog with Clara and some folks from the team.  Street debris was manageable, though I could foresee this being bad after dark.  I still wasn't feeling super... not sure why since I felt so awesome on Tuesday.  Perhaps it is the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation. 

Week #5 Total:  25.5 miles, a lot of super duper snailing this week.  Ugh, gotta nip this in the bud!  Next week = time to get serious!

gobble, gobble, here comes trouble

It's that time of year again, when free holiday goodies get left in the workplace kitchen... when family force feeds you delicious feasts... when egg nog and pumpkin pie and holiday cheer abound.  A good time to gain 5 pounds, unless, ofcourse you've already gained them prior to the holidays, well... this is going to be trouble!

I've been struggling with getting my weight down since the last few weeks of the running layoff, and I'm just THIS close to throwing in the towel and embracing the rotundity... but all told, I want to have made SOME progress this year.  On January 1st, 2012, I want to run faster and weigh less than I did on January 1st 2011.  I'm pretty sure there is a zero percent chance that I will swim faster on 1/1/2012, but I think I've come to terms with that already... at the end of the day, you win some, you lose some. 

Sunday 11/20/2011:  Monterrey to Rose Bowl (7.1 miles), 52:34 (7:24 pace), an awesome run in the drizzle then rain!  I never want to run in the rain, but when I get out there, I usually end up enjoying it.  Saw a fair number of other runners out there too, which was cool!  Clothes got very, very, saturated and heavy though... had to keep pulling pants up.  There is no jogging in the rain, you sort of just have to embrace the blurry vision and the soggy shoes and the adversity.  Felt pretty okay, fatigue was minimal.  Glad to see how well I held up on the longest run yet.  Delicious burger and fries afterwards.

Monday 11/21/2011:  3800 yards in the pool.  Holy macaroni the pool was cold today.  It was kind of okay if you kept moving, but between sets and kicking/pulling, it got to be pretty frigid.  Freestyle still feels like death (just super tired), but the other strokes felt like they were improving.  People must think I've gone nuts because I take every opportunity to mix up the strokes, which I usually never, ever do.

Tuesday 11/22/2011:  Rose Villa/San Gabriel/Lombardy/Hill (4.7 miles), 34:55 (7:26 pace), what a busy and odd day.  Swim practice got canceled because of pool temperature.... oh boy.  I guess it turned out okay because I had to work late anyways.  Wanted to do something tempo-ish, but I forgot to stretch on Sunday and ended up with some weird calf soreness/shin splint-like pain that hasn't quite resolved yet.  Instead, went on a nice, leisurely run around the neighborhood to take it easy on the calf.  Felt really really good this run, HR was back down to normal-ish parameters too.  I love running at night and I love running in my Newtons!  Running on pavement still feels like a novelty to me.  Its so much easier than running on the trails...

Wednesday 11/23/2011:  Huntington/Virginia from Chester (6.45 miles), 47:42 (7:24 pace), started my break from swimming a little bit early.  The crazy busy-ness and after dark pavement run continues... Grossly underestimated the mileage on this one, making it my second longest run so far.  Route had a little bit more by the way of hills than the runs I've been doing lately.  Glad to see that the pace was still decent and the legs felt strong, though the breathing left a little to be desired.  HR still pretty low though, which is encouraging.

Thursday 11/24/2011:  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  On the plane almost all day, no exercise.  Non-traditional thanksgiving meal afterwards.  Pretty tasty, did not overeat too much. 

Friday 11/25/2011:  Fresh Pond from Home (7 miles), 51:02 (7:17 pace), this run was hard... perhaps even "unpleasant"... but when I got home and saw 51 minutes on the Garmin, I felt a lot better.  Maybe it was the combination of long flight, big dinner and two cats, but I was just feeling a bit off today.  Then, I fell head first into a giant mud pit on the dirt section of the Fresh Pond path... ugh, that is how you can ruin a $155 pair of shoes... this section of trail was an amazing disaster... I never realized before because its usually frozen over when I am here.  Anyways, this was one of those days where I felt like a rhinoceros having an asthma attack and every segment of road was uphill... but it turns out I was actually keeping a solid 7 minute mile pace until the last extended uphill.  I think I'll count this as my tempo segment for this week even though it was not particularly speedy, because the effort was there.  Then played ~2 hours of tennis with the dad, it was pretty fun but I think this totally did me in.  Completely wiped out from head to toe afterwards.

Saturday 11/26/2011:  Off again, so, so, so sore.  I don't really think I've felt this sore... ever.  In fact, I could not sleep well yesterday because it hurt too much to even turn over in bed.  Whole body hurts, eeeee!  Tried to see if things would loosen up towards the end of the day, but I still felt like I've been hit by a bus.  Figured week #4 was not the time to push the limits.  Ooof.

Week #4 Total:  25.3 miles, hmmmm, looks like I am not doing so great with my goals... but this week is still decent, and I'm keeping a pretty steady pace.

curse you, can of pumpkin puree...!

Arghhhhhh... toe still feels like a truck ran over it, when in reality it was only a can of pumpkin puree.  Perhaps the pumpkin puree is being wrongly maligned, maybe I need to change the title to "curse you, careless Trader Joe's employee who did not stack the pumpkin puree can display properly"...

In other news, I think I'm going to start having "goals" again in some unstructured manner.  For the rest of November, the goal is to get to ~30 miles per week of running, while maintaining quality and one day per week with some tempo-ish component.  The more ambitious goal is to do my core strengthening exercises at least 2 x week.  We'll see how that one turns out.

Sunday 11/13/2011:  Monterrey to Third Bridge (5.2 miles), 39:34 (7:37 pace), snailing.  This run would have been okay except for that I was feeling incredibly, uncomfortably full for the first two miles and slogging painfully along.  Felt a lot better after a minor barfing incident.  Though I have long logged this route as 5.3 miles, the Garmin has persistently been saying 5.2, and since it matches my gmaps distances for all of the other permutations of the "Monterrey to X" routes...  I've decided to concede the point on this one.

Monday 11/14/2011:  Return to swim practice, feeling mentally a little bit better today.  3850 yards, a light day but there was a bunch of butterfly and IM pulling in there.  Eeesh, the toe was killing me though, and it kept throbbing even after I got out of the pool!

Tuesday 11/15/2011:  2 x Arroyo 3-mile Loops, (6 miles), 42:37 (7:06 pace), an unexpectedly encouraging run.  Did the first loop at a comfortable pace (21:57), then picked it up to a tempo-ish effort on the second loop (20:40).  This is the fastest I've run both one and two of these loops, and I felt really strong and good at the end.  Pleasantly surprised!  Honestly felt sort of worn out when I started and was expecting the tempo portion to become a painful slog but it wasn't at all.  4200 yards in the pool afterwards, if I squint and look sideways maybe the snailing is improving a little bit?

Wednesday 11/16/2011:  Both PF a little sore today.  4500 yards in the pool, this started out decently, but good golly I was completely and totally destroyed by the end.  I don't think I've ever swam so slow as during that last set... at least the toe didn't hurt as much today.

Thursday 11/17/2011:  California to Salvia Canyon, (5 miles), 37:27 (7:30 pace), snailing along.  Feeling antsy, legs wanted to pick it up, but the cardiovascular system wasn't having any of it today.  Usually I like to hammer the downhill return leg, but forced myself to chill out instead.  I feel like I'm just in such an odd place with running right now, not really sure how to proceed.  Swim practice had to scrapped in favor of frantically cleaning the apartment for Peter's arrival tomorrow.

Friday 11/18/2011:  Rose Villa/Madre/California/Hill (5.95 miles), 43:50 (7:23 pace), pavement/Newtons day!  Another pleasant after-dark run around the neighborhood.  Felt a little bit tired in the middle, but then energized again on that last stretch coming back on California, which is odd because its slightly uphill.  A lot of the time these days, it just feels like my legs have a mind of their own, and the rest of my body and my poor cardiovascular capacity is just holding them back.

Saturday 11/19/2011:  3800 yards in the pool, on a cold and gloomy morning.  Tired, but glad that I went, because almost all of the old crew showed up today!  Great to swim with these folks again.  Feeling kind of nostalgic about earlier this year, when my swimming was faster and I was more excited about going to practice...

Week #3 Total:  22.15 miles, still going strong!

house of cards

Week two blues... historically, the second week is the hardest, because you're no longer "well rested" but you haven't appreciably gained fitness.  This feels different though, physically I actually feel pretty strong, at least pertaining to running.  Running every other day more or less preserves the "well rested" feeling, I guess.  I think this week, the general life funk that I'm feeling is just bleeding over into my running. 

Though in reality, this feeling that everything is on the verge of crashing to the ground in one fell swoop is something I legitimately still need to worry about with running (among... other things).  These first few runs have felt good, but my feet still feel much more rickety than I'd like, and I'm not convinced of a solidly upward trend quite yet.

Sunday 11/06/2011:  1 x Washington Park Loop (3.6 miles, Denver), 27:10 (7:33 pace), this run was all sorts of disaster... Ran the first 8 minutes or so at an uncomfortable pace in order to warn Peter of the toilet overflow disaster... then snailed along the rest of the way.  Since I forgot the Garmin on this trip, it is not clear exactly what happened, but all I know is that I much prefer the feeling of negative split runs.  Oh, well.

Monday 11/07/2011:  AM:  travel home, had to fly in steerage for the first time in several years!  PM:  4450 yards in the pool.  Wish I could figure out how to fix the snailing... but maybe the 3 days off did me good, because at least my shoulders didn't feel quite so achey. PF felt great yesterday but a little sore today... not sure if something is wrong, or if it is because I overdid the golf ball arch rolling, per Andre's warning... meh.

Tuesday 11/08/2011:  Monterrey to Second Bridge (4.6 miles), 33:01 (7:11 pace), this was actually a solid "put a smile on your face" sort of a great run!  Enjoying the extra oxygen here, feeling strong and smooth.  It got pretty dark at the end though, so the footing was a bit sketchy in the last stretch, but no complaints here.  A nice lady in the Arroyo told me I was speedy and my form looked great, which I actually really really appreciated, especially after the mess that's been the past 2 months.  4100 yards in the pool afterwards, low-ish yardage day but there was some hard stuff in there.

Wednesday 11/09/2011:  Unexpected completely off day.  I've been feeling really terrible with respect to swimming for the past few weeks, but the plan was to try to hang on until I got a little bit of a break when I went home for Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, I realized I just wouldn't make it 2 more weeks when I found myself unable to pay attention in class today because my arms and shoulders were so painful.  Like not the sore, "good" tired... but like a warm, inflamed, aching feeling.  Ugh, I don't know.

Thursday 11/10/2011:  Monterrey to Second Bridge (4.6 miles), 33:41 (7:19 pace), hungry, dehydrated and grumpy today.  Legs just felt really weak.  Also, strange pain in L ankle didn't work itself out for the first mile... that didn't help either.  I guess not every run can be a good run...  Also, felt cold and tired.  Took a nap afterward instead of swim practice.

Friday 11/11/2011:  Rose Villa/San Gabriel/Lombardy (4.65 miles), 35:20 (7:36 pace), a nice, relaxed semi-dark run around the neighborhood.  I so heart my Newtons.  Both PF a little sore, but this was a pleasant run.  Day off from work due to Veteran's Day.  It would have been a really nice day except for that a poorly stacked display of pumpkin puree cans fell on my foot, and the casualty was my right big toe.  At first it looked completely fine, but then 5 minutes later I looked down and there was just blood everywhere!  Ugh.... blood has still been oozing out from the periphery of the nail all day, but I patched it up with some gauze for the run.  Fortunately it doesn't hurt on the bottom of the toe, so it didn't affect my run... but I'm moderately concerned about the potential for infection.   Bah, humbug!

Saturday 11/12/2011:   Ah, the sign of failure... completely off day #2... :(  Decided to keep the Franken-toe out of the pool as a public service, and to be prudent in not running 3 days in a row at this juncture.  So, on my ass I do sit.  It's been weeks now since the secondaries have been submitted, but I still feel as though I've been hit by a bus.  I wish at some point I could stop feeling like I need 15 hours of sleep per day. 

Week #2 Total:  17.45 miles, still of decent quality.  At least the mileage ramp so far is going faster than before, and I've gained the ability to run on pavement.  Two things to be encouraged by!

return of the curse of the training log!

Ugh, so here I am, two months later... having just logged my first "real" run in... two months. 

For the past few years, I've been plagued by the curse of the training log.  Every time I post something here, I get horribly injured, without fail.  That is the curse of the training log.  It is real people, and it is powerful.  Just after my last entry in August, I tore the edge of my left plantar fascia, just under the cuboid.  &#%$.  I was thinking at first maybe it was just a locked cuboid, or maybe it was just a petty little strain... but in the end, it claimed 6 weeks... basically the same as a stress fracture.  $%@#!  I've been jogging 3 x a week for the past 2 weeks on the treadmill and finally got the go ahead to run outside.  

So, here we go again.  It is time to retire the curse of the training log, I will not be cowed by this irrational coincidence!

Sunday 10/30/2011:  Arroyo 3 mile loop, 21:03 (7:01 pace), PF felt a little tight in the morning, so I wasn't sure about this run, but it warmed up very nicely throughout the day, and there was no pain during the run.  Wore old racing flats, orange/white Brooks in which I set most of my PRs 6 years ago (ouch!).  Felt kind of cathartic to just blast through all of the rocky parts, after a year of having to tip toe carefully around them in the Vibrams.  Anyways, so maybe I started out a bit too fast (Garmin says 6:42 for the first mile) and there was maybe a bit too much huffing and puffing, but on the whole I am pleased with this run, as I think it means that I am not completely devoid of fitness, even after 2 months!  Yay?

Monday 10/31/2011:  Happy Halloween!  Woke up with no PF pain, what a relief... AM:  PT with Andre, core strengthening stuff, drills and the like.  PM:  4000 yards swimming.  Still snailing along in the pool, not really sure why... but somehow rallied to log some non awful 200y intervals at the end.

Tuesday 11/01/2011:  Arroyo 3 mile loop, 20:54 (6:58 pace), woke up and arghhhh... the outsides of my feet were sort of sore... can't imagine why... but it worked itself out nicely by the time the evening rolled around, so went for my next scheduled run.  Really, really thought that I did a good job of dialing it back today, but apparently I failed!  It just feels so good to run fast...  I guess I will just have to try harder to snail along on Thursday.  Then jumped in the pool for 4550 yards swimming.  It still feels exhausting and bad, but I think I felt inspired to snail a little less today.  Not a bad day for exercise.

Wednesday 11/02/2011:  4600 yards in the pool.  Feeling sort of beat up, shoulders are sort of accumulating this dull fatigued ache... plus the outsides of BOTH feet are still sore.  Argh.  Don't think its PF related, maybe the shoes?

Thursday 11/03/2011:  Arroyo 3 mile loop, 21:04 (7:01 pace), feet significantly less sore today, but lost the battle against coffee... didn't feel all that great, but oddly enough, ran about the same!  Legs kinda just seem to do their own thing, like they have their own rhythm... I'm pleased at how strong and good they feel, maybe there's something to all of those weird PT exercises.  3600 yards swimming afterwards.  There was above average amount of dawdling today, so the yardage suffered, but given the amount of soreness in my shoulders, maybe this was for the best.

Friday 11/04/2011:  Completely off.  Allergy shots, travel, so on so forth.  Free food abounds!  Not a good combo, though managed to stick with going cold turkey on candy, chocolate and desserts.  Word on the street was that the free desserts were super delicious... :'(

Saturday 11/05/2011:  1 x Washington Park Loop (3.6 miles, Denver), 26:46 (7:26 pace), Hmmmm, I don't know about this one guys.  The altitude sort of makes you feel like you're running through molasses... it felt like I was going super slow, but finished the loop in 19 minutes, which is unusually fast.  Saw some other fellow Newton-ites :)  I think I've lost the ability to snail... maybe tomorrow.

Week #1 Total:  12.6 miles, but all of high quality.

evolution / non sequitor...

In this year 2011, after many years of being kicked around the running/track scene, I learned something new about myself as a runner.  But upon further reflection, I decided that it was less that I discovered something new about myself, and more that I have evolved both physically and mentally as a runner.  

As of this year, I, of "how can anyone be so slow over 400m???" fame (see below), actually enjoy running fast.  To be clear, by "fast" I mean, 6-7 minute miles, not sprinting or racing fast, and by "enjoy" I literally mean, I enjoy the physical process of doing, rather than "its sucky while I'm doing it, but I feel so good afterwards".  

How to tell if you're not a sprinter:  What, what???  Me run 66.93, yeah, when pigs fly... I ran 76.93 that day, and someone took it upon themselves to manually correct the fully automatic timing system results... because, well who could possibly, possibly be so slow?  Note:  the subtraction of 10 seconds still makes me last.  Sad :(

It probably all started with the whole barefoot running dealio... which naturally forces one to land on ones forefoot, thus transforming my running style from a "cockroach mashing" midfoot strike to a spritely toe-strike.  For the first time, I started hearing people say "wow your form is so amazing!" instead of "wow, its... so loud every time your feet land!"  Anyways, there is something about my new stride that makes running faster feel like the way running was meant to be.

Suddenly, picking up the pace has gone from stressful and taxing, to satisfying and delightful.  I so love the sound of even breathing, the pumping of arms, the picking up of knees and a smooth, quick, kick-back.  It feels like freedom and joy...  something sublime that I don't really remember being there in the endless hours of my past training.  Part of the reason why its taken me so long to increase my running mileage is because I've been loathe to add volume if it meant decreasing speed.  The logs from January to August of this year can be found here:

2011 Lukas Verzbicas inspired Swim/Run Injury Prevention Training

Some quick notes:

• I was super lazy about running in December, which accounts for some of the slow runs in January
• Footware are mostly vibrams, G = green bikilas, R = red sprints, S = normal shoe (lightweight trainer from 2004), N = Newtons!
• "Washington Park" indicates Peter's place in Denver, at altitude --> slow, and "Bailey Canyon" is a significant, steep hill climb --> even slower!

The comments are not always useful, but hey, this is a direct upload from my own personal log.  I won't be updating this google docs in the future, as I greatly prefer the additional functionality of my Excel file... mostly its just out there to cover the January - August time frame so I don't have to write specific posts about that :).

oh, hi there bloggity blog!

Its been some time, hasn't it?

On one hand, I really no longer have time to chronicle my athletic pursuits (or lack thereof), but then I was thinking about it the other day and I've kept this training log since 2006... so it seems a shame to lose a record of some of the more physiologically interesting (if not competitively fruitful) training  that I've had in the year or so that I've been away.  So, I will make a renewed attempt to post... some stuff... sometimes.  Deal?  Deal.

Okay, well lets start with the reallllly old stuff.  After femoral neck stress fracture (diagnosed May 2010), I lolled around in my misery for a while until I went, kicking and screaming to the pool around July.  Started running in Vibrams on grass with 385m of infield every other day sometime towards the end of August.  Both of these enterprises can be seen chronicled through the end of 2010 here:

2010 Injury Training Log

I was actually just perusing this file with some amusement a few days ago.  Quick thoughts:

• Running:  Hey, actually I was kind of a trooper to stick to those paces despite my extreme lack of fitness and extreme abundance of mass. (Pats self on back).
• Swimming:  Some of those earlier entries are so adorably slow!  Its kind of a good feeling to be new at something and hence still have the ability to improve rapidly.

Alrighty, onwards and upwards (or whatever the "-wards" derivative of "more speedily" is).

Signs of Life (May - August)

So, its been a while...

From that you can extrapolate that the injury situation played out closer to the "worst case scenario" side of things. It turns out that I did manage to give myself a mild stress fracture of the R femoral neck, another one of those obscure injuries only seen in elite athletes and the extremely extremely stupid/unlucky. I'll let you guess which bucket I'm in. Anyways, welcome to "you may never run again... " take two.

I've generally found motivation to be much lower than last year. Last year I was extremely motivated to keep up my fitness and pursue a super conservative transition plan to running... but since that lead to... this... well, let's just say I'm feeling a little bit more on the "fuck this" sort of mindset. Nevertheless, the worst of it has all come and gone (fingers crossed) so I'll report on what's been going on:

May: Hmmmm... a whole lot of nothing. Really, literally... lots of sitting around, eating, fattening and disgruntle-ating. I tried to use crutches for a while, but gave up because it was so painful, I don't really know how I endured this for 6 weeks last year. Instead, I tried to stand on my left foot a lot, and avoid walking places. The rate of healing slowed a lot after I got back from Japan. I blame stress, sleep deprivation and unhappiness. Oh yeah, there was a heck of a lot of insomnia in there too. I wasn't built for the sedentary lifestyle.

June: Some PT, half hearted attempts at exercise. I learned from the PT that I run leaning too far back so that my center of mass is braking into every step... I guess its sorta nice to know that my slowness AND stress fractures are being caused by the same basic problem... but on the down side, the 3 minutes of running on the treadmill to ascertain this fact made my hip hurt :-/. Tried to do some light biking and swimming a couple of times a week but mostly failing. Discouraged by residual aches and pains.

July: More of the same, but started to get serious about swimming every day about halfway through July. Swam after work at the Caltech pool, something between 40 -60 minutes, maybe 5-6 days a week. Hard to get out of work early enough to make it to the pool by 6 pm (get kicked out at 7 pm). Started with 15 x 100 yards, on 2:30 cycles. Felt pretty crappy. Tried to incorporate some drills from Peter, with limited success.

August: Just as I was losing focus on this swimming thing, got opportunely "adopted" by the Caltech Masters swim club and their awesome coaches. Organized workouts make all of the difference. Practice is Mon-Thurs 7 - 8:30 pm and Sat 7 - 8:30 am. At first the 90 minute blocks were a stretch for me, so I only went a few times a week, but gradually committed to going every available day, and swimming easy on my own for 40 minutes on the off days. Also started adding in some cycling on the weekends, at first just long-ish commuting rides to/from errands, maybe 15-20 miles total. Did a few "real"-ish rides, including 7 laps of the RB at 10:10 - 10:25 per lap, which is actually a decent pace.

Started my running recovery regimen too, starting with 1 lap of the south field. Had some inordinate trouble with my calves in the pool which made things go a little bit more slowly than I'd like, but plugging along. Also got sick somewhere in there. Implemented weight loss plan super extreme to ease the transition to running. I was 107 immediately before the hip injury and back up to 120+ within a few months of immobility. Battled it back down to 110, which means that I think I'm in relatively good shape to ambulate in a manner that does not resemble the Michelin Man. Awesome!

The in-between space

03/28/2010 - 04/03/2010

The in-between space is where you go before you know whether it's going to be 3 days off, or 3 weeks... or 3 months. It's really very rare for me to have muscular injuries, so I'm not really sure what to expect. Though, it's still kicking around the back of my mind that backing off my calcium regimen has caused a stress fracture of the femural head. It's actually not THAT crazy, given the diffuse hip pain and painful ambulation.

I've been resting vigilantly with minimal movement in hopes of being able to run a little bit while in Japan for the next two weeks, but so far it isn't looking good. This week produced little improvement in the general state, with new pains emerging every so often. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly what the issue is, other than that it affects my ability to lift my R leg. Iliopsoas strain is likely with some groin involvement. According to the internet, recovery is about 2 weeks. Grrrrr... arghhh...


04/04/2010 - 04/10/2010

Flew out on Sunday, which was coincidentally the first day that I could almost kind of walk normally. Monday was sort of lost due to the time difference, but I decided to make the most of my new found semi-mobility by going on a 60-90 minute walk on Tuesday and Wednesday. Wow, it feels good to be mobile.

Thankfully, the walks did not produce new pain, so I decided to embark on the planned upon short hike with my cousins on Thursday. Climbing for about 90 minutes felt really good, but a steep-ish decent on the other side made my hip ache. Uh-oh. Stretched out real good at the hot springs on the way back, felt not horrible after that. Took it easy through the end of the week, and it seems like I haven't done any permanent damage. On the other hand, discovered that anything remotely resembling running is still very bad... as evidenced by when I tried to hurry back to the car, and almost crumpled to the ground. Ouch.


04/11/2010 - 04/17/2010

Didn't have a whole lot of time this week to worry about running, which I guess was good, because my hip continues to make progress only about at a glacial pace. The beginning of the week was devoted to furniture sort and lifting boxes, during which I almost threw out my back. Supposedly you're supposed to lift with your legs... but not so if you're trying to heal a strained... something. I figured my back was more expendable than my legs.

L calf has also started bothering me, not really sure whether it's some sort of compensation for favoring my R leg, or whether my calf strain never completely healed. Gah, you just can't catch a break around here, can you? Had a little bit of play-time left at the end of the week, but most of it was spent seeing long lost relatives, so I wouldn't have had time for my planned day trip to run at Fuji Five Lakes anyways. Started testing out about 10 steps of running on Friday and Saturday and it feels slightly strange but kind of like it might be okay.

Back to the US on Saturday. Gained 16 hours, was awake for about 36 and then was completely exhausted. Trip was actually pretty fun, despite being full of family feuds and furniture sorting. I noticed that simply not having to go to work makes me feel happy and relaxed. While I'm anxious to start running a little bit again, I'm kind of also thinking that running is going to have to take a back seat until I figure out what to do with the career/job situation. Maybe that's good, take the pressure off a little bit.

Things fall apart

03/21/2010 - 03/27/2010

As Chinua Achebe says, things fall apart. I guess sometimes you can help the process along too. I got so excited after last week, that I did something stupid. To my credit, I haven't done anything stupid for a good long while. Sometimes though, the one time you don't look before you cross the street is when you get mashed by a car. I think I strained some hip and groin muscles pretty severely. As in, to get out of bed, I have to use my hands to lift up my right leg because my hip flexors have completely stopped functioning. Gah.


Sunday 03/21: 14.3 miles, 2:12:14 (9:15 min/mile) High Line Canal Trail (Denver)
I wasn't feeling awesome after yesterday's run, so I was disinclined to do a long run today, especially if it involved more than 2 laps of the park. So Peter plunked me down at a nice trail head so that I would have the motivation to do a proper long run. Given feeling crappy and being at altitude, the original plan was to do 10 miles, nice and easy. Unfortunately the trail was marked at 0.5 mile intervals, and there's something about demarcations that make me want to say "just one more!". Started out feeling unusually good, despite the fact that there were some pretty rough spots where snow and slush had made the trail a quagmire of shoe sucking mud.

I had to backtrack a little bit after getting lost, but the 5 mile marker came and went pretty happily. I had started to notice some twinges in my R hip, but figured it was a cramp and would work itself out. Then the 6 mile marker was kind of in an unsatisfyingly un-scenic location, so I decided to make it a 14 miler like last week. It was only when I reached the turnaround point, that I realized that I was actually quite tired... but there were 7 miles left to get back. Miles 8 - 11 felt like pulling teeth, but I was hanging on to 9 minute miles... then with ~3 miles to go, I was totally out of gas. It hit almost instantaneously like a ton of bricks... I imagined that this might be what it feels like to "hit the wall" in a marathon, but I was done. I slowed to a shuffle and even so, I had to stop to stretch my hip at every mile, was completely dehydrated and could barely sustain my 10-11 minute mile pace. At last, after 30+ minutes, the car became visible and I have never been so glad, nor so unsure that I would manage the last 50 meters without walking. So, so, so, so, so, tired.

Monday 03/22: 1.25 miles, 9:47 (7:50 min/mile) 4 x North Field Laps (barefoot)
A little shake out after work. Felt completely drained and achey and sore all day, but somehow it all dissipated for the short duration of this wonderful barefoot run. It's sort of like... impossible to run any slower when I'm barefoot!

Tuesday 03/23: 5.3 miles, 47:11 (8:54 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Today was the first indication that something was seriously wrong. Beyond being sore and achey, this run... hurt. Every step on my right side felt like a weird stabbing pain in my R hip. It became somewhat bearable after 10 steps or so, but didn't let up throughout the entire run. Afterwards, R hip hurt doing my exercises, and then I could barely walk the rest of the day. Felt awful.

Wednesday 03/24: Off. Still hard to walk, ergo... no run :(

Thursday 03/25: 5.3 miles, 44:52 (8:28 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Felt significantly better after a day off, so tried another short run. Felt a lot better than Tuesday, but I could definitely feel my R hip with every step. Thought it was getting better, but towards the end of the day things started to clench up and complain loudly basically through the entirety of my R hip/groin/upper thigh area. So painful it really wasn't possible to figure out exactly what was hurting.

Friday 03/26: Off. Pain seems to be getting worse. Can't lift R leg really at all, have to walk funny... like I'm about to do a faceplant with every step. Still can't really pinpoint what exactly is wrong, but it seems like the groin, hip flexors and upper IT band are involved at a minimum. R quads also really sore, that's not helping either.

Saturday 03/27: Off. No improvement from yesterday. Still hard to walk/lift up R leg. Very unhappy.

Week Total: 26.2 miles, I have this bad feeling that a lot of time off is forthcoming...

The first/last good week

03/14/2010 - 03/20/2010

As such things go, we're due for a meltdown pretty soon... but somehow I've been lulled into a false sense of security. Which is why I figured that it would be a good idea to actually start training now, like REAL training, with different days devoted to different elements, rather than 4-7 days per week of nondescript medium/short runs at a medium/slow pace. This week was pretty neat because it had a real long run, and a tempo run and a barefoot run. I was pretty happy. Little did I know how short lived it would be...

Sunday 03/14: ~14 miles, 2:01:36 (~8:41 min/mile) Cherry Canyon Adventure Run
Happy Pi Day! An auspicious day for an auspicious run: super awesome long run through Other Arroyo/Cherry Canyon with Talia. Maybe I should have taken my first day back from the calf issues a little bit easier, but who could resist a long run with the Ogliores? Arrived a little late, but managed to intercept the group (Ryan, Talia, Ian and Evelyn) a few minutes in. Talia and I took the scenic route through Cherry Canyon along the single track. A few parts towards the top of the hill were too steep and washed out for running, but we arrived at a cute little loop that descended back via the fire road. Headed back to the RB via Other Arroyo and tacked on an extra 20 minutes south towards the Arroyo Tempo Loop to make it 2 hours. Felt surprisingly good and non-tired! Calf hurt a little bit on the steeper uphill parts, but loosened up again after a little stretching at the turnaround. Delicious breakfast at Corner Bakery afterwards with Ian and Evelyn.

Monday 03/15: Off, resting. Calf okay. Phew.

Tuesday 03/16: 5.3 miles, 44:18 (8:22 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Slept in, but felt good. Took it easy, no ill effects from the long run, and calf seems back to normal. Today was the trial run for whether I will attempt a tempo tomorrow, and all signs point to yes.

Wednesday 03/17: 7.6 miles, 1:03:32 (8:22 min/mile) 2 x Arroyo Tempo Loop Workout
A relatively acceptable little tempo. The goal for today was just to not bail on the second loop. Warmed up with one loop in 14:18, then two more at "tempo" pace (11:29/11:17), then a long-ish cooldown around the 3 mile loop in 26:28. Felt surprisingly good, kept a very comfortable, controlled, "breathing out of nose" pace for the first 1.5 of the tempo loops, and pushed a little bit coming back on the downhill. Was glad to see the negative split. Somehow I find it really reassuring when the times match perceived effort. Felt a bit too worn out on the cooldown for striders though. Maybe next time.

Thursday 03/18: AM: 5.3 miles, 45:32 (8:36 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Tired today. Took it easy but thankfully didn't completely blow up. I guess that's okay, calves are still okay, that's the main thing. Looking forwards to testing out a short barefoot segment after work.

PM: 1.25 miles, 9:45 (7:48 min/mile) 4 x North Field Laps
Barefoot after work. NF is nice after dark, felt good, but a little bit less spry than last time... perhaps because I felt a little bit more tired. Nonetheless, calves felt fine, probably okay to add this back in to the weekly routine!

Friday 03/19: Off, shots and travel to Colorado.

Saturday 03/20: 6.2 miles, 53:01 (8:33 min/mile) 2 x Washington Park Loops
First time from new house, which is conveniently exactly 0.5 miles from the park! Felt not so good though... part of it was because there was a lot of snow/slush and the trail was really slippery, but I guess I'm also not used to the altitude anymore after a few months away. Just kept getting slower and slower, so made a conscious effort to run a little bit harder the last half mile back home.

Week Total: 39.7 miles, not bad for 2 days off. Overall pleased with this week!

My calves will never be the same

03/07/2010 - 03/13/2010

This was a week entirely dedicated to jogging in order to calm the horrible pain in my calves. Rather, I suppose the affliction was more localized to my R calf, which in and of itself is a sobering reminder to me regarding the weakness of the L foot. I did notice that it was harder to do a proper forefoot plant on that side while I was running, which would explain why that calf didn't really work as hard as the other one.

I was honestly really bowled over about being so completely vanquished by a tiny little 3 mile run. It really took the entirety of this week for this horrible sharp pain and general warm, inflamed feeling to dissipate from my calf. One could potentially argue that it was worsened by my lack of backing off of the mileage in the days immediately after the soreness was acquired, but that's neither here nor there at this point. I'm going to try for a shorter barefoot session sometime next week once I'm able to walk normally again... some day.


Sunday 03/07: AM: ~10.8 miles, 1:34:10 (~8:43 min/mile) Lot K to Cherry Canyon Gate
Yesterday's jog convinced me of the veracity of the theory that if you jog slowly for long enough, the pain will subside. So today, I set off on my extra long jog, eager to explore the new Arroyo trails again. Unfortunately, I got off to a bit of late start, so I was a little bit warmer and a little bit more dehydrated than I would have liked. Perhaps more unfortunately, my calves loosened up pretty nicely in the beginning, but started cramping and complaining loudly again after about 45 minutes, which made the remainder of the run relatively tough. Thankfully it was mostly manageable with a slow pace. Distance uncertain, but extrapolated based on pace for the Rose Bowl perimeter part.

PM: 45.7 miles, approx. 2:53:00 (15.8 mph) Peter's Short Long Loop
Rainy afternoon ride with Peter, started out with KB, Ian and Ben, but fell off the pace significantly once the non-downhill parts hit. Felt pretty awful by the end. Had some shot bloks a few miles into the lousy part and felt better for a little bit, but the exhaustion was more or less overpowering. Also not used to the shifting on Big Red, which made it a little bit harder. Man, I am out of biking shape... this ties my slowest ever Short Long Loop, which occurred on the day after Wrightwood. On the plus side, kept my heels down and got some nice calf stretching in.

Monday 03/08: Off, arghhhhh.... soooooo.... tired. Also, calves hurt significantly more than yesterday--crapppppppp!

Tuesday 03/09: 5.3 miles, 47:16 (8:55 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Felt tired and lousy still, but mostly the problem was that R calf was still bothering me. It just wouldn't loosen up, and felt crampy and weak the entire way. Jogged slowly and considered if I really just needed to take a few more days completely off to make it heal. The pain actually subsided in the hours after the run though, so I'll try one more day.

Wednesday 03/10: 5.3 miles, 45:58 (8:40 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
R calf still achey and weird feeling, but there is definite improvement from yesterday. I think the 5 mile jogs are manageable for the time being. It's kind of hard to get a good push off from each step though, which means that I'm traveling at a snail's pace either which way.

Thursday 03/11: 5.3 miles, 45:03 (8:30 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
A little more improvement, but there's still some intermittent cramping and weakness. Walking around during the day is okay now though, so that's a relief. R calf is still a bit warm and weird feeling to the touch though, which is sort of disturbing. Can't believe it's still not 100%!

Friday 03/12: Off, lazy, tired. I guess I decided that taking another day off wouldn't be so awful for my poor R calf either.

Saturday 03/13: 5.3 miles, 44:38 (8:25 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
First day that my calf basically felt normal. Was thinking about trying a bit longer run, but it worked out such that I didn't get up early enough and it was uncomfortably warm out. Decided that doing one more easy short day wouldn't hurt. Best to rest up for a big day tomorrow. Felt really good to run with a semi-normal stride again! Calf held up pretty well throughout the run and afterwards. Phew.

Week Total: 32 miles, I guess this down week was an investment in my future of continued ability to run.

Barefoot

02/28/2010 - 03/06/2010

Against all odds, I did my first barefoot run this week. I'm not a fan of trendy-hype-y things, and well, that's what barefoot running has started to seem like lately. In addition, I have abysmal arches, and previous attempts to deviate from my orthotics have lead to bad things. Nevertheless, I've noticed an improvement on the injury front after making an active effort to transition myself to being more of a mid/fore-foot striker. Upon hearing Dr. Shapiro's treatise on the benefits of not having a heel to one's shoe... I decided to test out the theory by running barefoot on the North Field.

My barefoot run, despite being serendipitously placed as a late night double on my one "hard" day, was surprisingly awesome! Running has never felt so much like flying--easy, natural, fast. Towards the end, I was hitting paces I haven't been able to touch in years with ease. Wow, super awesome run... almost worth the 2 weeks of being crippled that has ensued.


Sunday 02/28: Both distance and time unclear: 8.5 miles, 75 minutes for the sake of book-keeping, The Other Arroyo Adventure with Ian and Dennis
Felt inexplicably "off" from the get-go, which made this run moderately miserable despite the snail's pace... but that was compensated by the coolness of the new trail. We were originally destined for Brown Mountain, but apparently that route is now patrolled by rangers, keeping folks out :(. Instead, headed into the Art Center hills via the heretofore theoretical Other Arroyo Trail. Really neat discovery, will definitely explore further when I feel a little less lousy.

Monday 03/01: 5.3 miles, 46:44 (8:49 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Arrrrghhhh.... lousiness continues. Whole body feels tired, just plodded along, and then eventually I finished this run. Also 6 am run has re-deteriorated to 7 am run... nuts...

Tuesday 03/02: AM: another lazy person's workout: Mini-tempo in the Arroyo + 6 x striders
1 lap warm up jog around Arroyo Tempo Loop (14:22), then one lap sub-threshold tempo (11:24) was hoping to do two, but for some reason I'm really scared to push the limits these days... so I stopped while I was still feeling good. To atone for this deficiency, I did a long-ish cooldown along the Arroyo 3 mile loop (26:10), with 6 x striders embedded, ~6.1 miles total. Felt sufficiently worn out afterwards that I didn't feel quite as badly about abandoning the second tempo loop.

PM: 3.1 miles, 23:58 (7:44 min/mile) 10 x barefoot North Field Laps
Super awesome barefoot run after work. NF maps really conveniently to 500m, so I decided to do 10 laps. 2K-2K-1K splits were 9:53, 9:30, 4:35 which means that I started out at a little over 8 min/miles and finished off near 7:20 pace. Felt easy and good the whole way, so good that I felt giddy with excitement! Barefoot boggles my mind... calves felt surprisingly good until the 9th lap when I could start to feel the cramping coming on, but the rest of me felt so great, I had to finish the original plan for 10 laps. If the cramping hadn't happened, I was debating staying and running for an hour.

Wednesday 03/03: 7.6 miles, 1:04:21 (8:28 min/mile) Steve's Lil' Engine to Alpine via Huntington/Garfield/Mission
Holy moly, my calves hurt so badly every step feels like I'm about to do a faceplant. For some reason I decided that the way to cure this was to do an easy jog, so I plotted a nice grassy route home from dropping my car off in the morning. I kept waiting for my calves to unclench, but... somehow that never happened. They felt momentarily better after stretching at a few lights, but went straight back to horrendously painful about 50 feet later. Ohhhhhh man. On the upside I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was actually not running the 10 minute miles that I felt like I was running.

Thursday - Friday 03/04 - 03/05: Off. Calves were 100% worse after yesterday's run, so I decided that perhaps I should give it a rest. Unfortunately there was minimal improvement even after 2 days off. I feel like my walking stride is even altered, because my calves do not support any weight anymore. Ouch-y.....

Saturday 03/06: ~7.7 miles, ~1:07:30 (~8:46 min/mile) California around RB perimeter
Me and Dennis were super late to KB's Arroyo run... as a result, Dennis was able to catch up with them, and I was not. Basically, my calves started killing me as soon as I started running, which made it physically impossible to do anything other than shuffle along at an inordinately slow pace. Resigning myself to running alone, I decided to stick with my theory that enough slow jogging would loosen up my calves. Fortunately after about 35 minutes, the pain started to ease up a little bit, enough to allow a more normal stride/pace. In the interim, I fell into a thigh deep water pit during the river crossing at the North end of the Rose Bowl. This was so discombobulating to me that I forgot to re-start my watch... and therefore the time of the run is estimated.

Week Total: 38.3 miles, not bad for 5 days.... but holy crap I hope I haven't incurred permanent damage to my calves....

The horribleness rears its ugly head!

02/21/2010 - 02/27/2010

Gah, I'm not exactly sure what went wrong, but the horribleness seems to be off to an early lead this week. First the lack of a proper long run, then the unintentional day off, then the horrible workout/horrible re-spraining of the ankle. GAHHHHHH...


Sunday 02/21: 7.1 miles, 59:26 (8:22 min/mile) Monterrey to Rose Bowl
The cop-out long run. Didn't sleep well and felt really lousy and stomach-achey through the morning. Finally dragged my unhappy self out to the Arroyo in the final hours of daylight. Felt lousy until the turnaround point, then a little better. I guess given how the day started out, its probably a win to have done a run at all.

Monday 02/22: Off, woke up and my stomach hurt so I slept in until it was too late to do a run. Nuts...

Tuesday 02/23: ~5.3 miles, 5 laps North Field, 2 x mile with 1 lap jog recovery, 5 laps North Field
Horrible, horrible workout. Felt congested and lousy when I woke up, and was already huffing on my warm up. Not a good sign... but per not having enough time to drive back to the Arroyo and not really wanting to run 45 minutes on the North Field (I have a low tolerance for runs that don't go anywhere) I was committed to the work out. Well... maybe not as committed as I could have been. Was supposed to be 3 x mile... but bailed after two sub-standard miles in (7:02/7:10) feeling substantially worse than last week's tempo or the previous week's workout with Susan... isn't training supposed to make you FASTER? To add insult to injury (or rather, injury to insult in this case), I horribly sprained my newly healed R ankle during the last lap of my cooldown.... gahhhhhhh. So sad and unamused.

Wednesday 02/24: 7.1 miles, 57:16 (8:04 min/mile) Monterrey to Rose Bowl
6 am run awesomeness with Dennis in the Arroyo. Actually felt really good. I like the early morning hours, very peaceful and calm. A moderate but comfortable pace, I guess I have energy left over from running SO SLOWLY yesterday. I really wish I knew what made the bad days come and go. Let's see if I can get up this early again tomorrow.

Thursday 02/25: 7.1 miles, 1:01:32 (8:40 min/mile) Monterrey to Rose Bowl
Decided to cash in my recovery jog today instead of yesterday. I think the jog on the way out, run on the way back works well for me in this regard. (33:29/28:03) probably could have put some more effort into the jog part, but oh well, sort of tired and groggy--felt a lot better on the run back. Day 2 of getting up at 5:45, but did an involuntary snooze until 6am so everything was 15 minutes late today.

Friday 02/26: 7.1 miles, 58:13 (8:12 min/mile) Monterrey to Rose Bowl
Day 3 of 6 am run. Same route with Dennis, felt pretty good, but not quite as good as Wednesday, so we went a little bit slower, but it actually turned out better than I thought it would. I guess I'm kind of in a rut with this route (4th time this week)... but to be fair, a 7 mile rut is much better than a 5 mile rut!

Saturday 02/27: 5.3 miles, 45:52 (8:39 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Fail on waking up early. Did some light jogging during one of the breaks in the rain. Arroyo was extra muddy for some reason, footing difficult, almost did a faceplant at various points. Felt okay otherwise, just taking it easy in preparation for attempting a decent long run tomorrow. Really hungry today for some reason.

Week Total: 39 miles, not bad considering lack of long run.

A Veritable Assortment of Strange Runs

02/14/2010 - 02/20/2010

In the absence of structured training, I find myself being more open to running opportunistically with whomever or whenever there happens to be an opening. Which is a novelty in and of itself for someone who is normally so constrained by the forces of OCD. Unfortunately, 8 days worth of work got crammed into 4 days of the workweek due to President's day, so opportunistically is really the only way I could fit a decent number of runs into this week. I daresay I did pretty well, but the sleep deprivation was pretty intense by the end of the week.


Sunday 02/14: 7.1 miles, 1:01:35 (8:40 min/mile) Monterrey to Rose Bowl
Happy Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year! Though personally the day was slanted towards the latter due to the fact that my significant other is out of the country and Nathan Lau and Dennis and I cooked a Chinese New Year feast. I didn't manage to wake up a reasonable hour, which meant that I had to wedge a run in during the hottest part of the day prior to picking up a whole Peking duck. Legs kind of felt thrashed, R hamstring kind of bugging me still, went really slow... but overall felt better than other tired, sub-optimally warm runs I've been on in recent memory though.

Monday 02/15: 9.8 miles, 1:16:44 (7:50 min/mile) Whole Arroyo
Nice morning run with Chief, Ryan and Cameron. Well, actually, I arrived late and had to ball it down to Garfield to catch up with them (2.5 miles, 17:42 = tempo run for grossly out of shape me?). Felt sort of wiped out from the early effort, but managed to stick with the group the rest of the way, despite a strong temptation to bail out early onto California. It's actually really nice to have company to pull you along when you're struggling. Strangely felt better once we came out of the trails on the way back. Felt the R hamstring at certain points, but not too bad.

Tuesday 02/16: 5.3 miles, 44:00 (8:18 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Gah, back to work... but managed to get a good start by waking up moderately on time to squeeze in a run. I expected to feel kind of horrible from yesterday, but it was not bad at all! Maybe the new year's mochi/cake thingy that we made is magic.

Wednesday 02/17: 5.3 miles, ??? (??? min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
The funny thing is, I was so tired when I got home from work yesterday, that I went to bed without taking off my watch... but somehow in the commotion to get up in the morning, I TOOK IT OFF... and therefore this run is untimed. I guess that is okay, because it psychologically made it easier for me to take today's run really relaxed. My R hamstring still kind of feels funny, and I think it could really use an very easy day.

Thursday 02/18: ~5 miles, 5 laps North Field + 2 mile tempo on the track + 5 laps North Field
I woke up early but I really needed the extra time because my google earth mapping project is still sub-par. Came home at 9:30 pm and decided I could still wedge in a short workout before starting my next presentation. Abridged warm up felt really good, I considered just ditching the tempo and running easy for 45 minutes, but after 4 laps I got bored of running on the NF so I decided to stick with the original plan. 2 mile tempo in 13:53 (6:59/6:54) running really consistent lap splits. The first mile is a little bit slower because some stupid Fleming people had parked their backpacks and their butts in lane 1. Felt good and in control, like under threshold pace. It's actually fairly relaxing to run just one... usually 2 mile tempos come in sets of 3. Unclear if there are any training benefits from today, just wanted to run a different pace than usual, cooled down still feeling good and less stressed than before.

Friday 02/19: Off, shots. Too exhausted after work to do an evening run.

Saturday 02/20: ~5.5 miles, Random Track with Matt and Dennis
Arrghhh... somehow I let Dennis convince me that Matt's slow pace is reasonably close to my normal pace, which as it turns out is not true. Additionally I'm feeling the post-shots hangover pretty badly today. The system just doesn't feel good. I wonder if this will go away, as I've never noticed the effect until very recently. Ran ~3 miles in lane 2 or 3 with Matt and Dennis then 10 laps of the SF just to be sure I ran more than 5 miles. I'm pretty sure Matt mis-counted a lap though because my watch read 18:15 at the supposed 7.5th lap and it took about 7:45 to cover the last 4 laps. Anyways, I suppose it really doesn't matter... the bottom line is that I felt really godawful running a pedestrian pace of between 7:30 and 8 minute miles. Better luck tomorrow.

Week Total: 38 miles... hey, improvement! Only one off day this week.

Must....keep.... running....!

02/07/2010 - 02/13/2010

It was definitely easier to rely on the OCD aspect of running every day. Now without this goal that is independent of being fast, it's a lot harder to motivate myself to train properly. I remember that getting from grossly out of shape to kind of having some basic fitness is much easier than going from there to competitive race shape. To be completely honest, getting to competitive race shape took me ~1-2 years from the day that I started running. Having been away from that for a few years now, I feel like I've reverted back to square one. There's something really demoralizing about knowing there's such a long road ahead. Nevertheless, the alternative would be permanent retirement, so I guess I just have to suck it up and keep running.


Sunday 02/07: ~10 miles, 1:27:27 (unclear pace/distance) Fire roads in Hesperia w/CMS team and alumni
Had to drive an hour and almost ran out of gas but well worth it for this awesome run! Basically an unlimited supply of muddy fireroads across undulating terrain, so that nowhere was ever very flat. There was one or two significant climbs, but everything else was basically rolling. 40 degrees out and mildly at altitude (4,000 ft) but felt great! Maybe I'm well trained from suffering through Colorado... passed all of the women and kept pace with Jennifer Tave on the way back. I hate miles... why don't they have the Alumni 5 mile hill climb?

Monday 02/08: 5.3 miles, 47:35 (8:59 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Holy crap, sore and tired. I guess it was a big (~20 mile) weekend for me, way more than I've run in recent years. Trying to keep the momentum going for regular training runs to happen though, so I forced myself to do this jog. The bridge underpass is flooded near the horse stables too, which means that you kind of have to trundle through the hovel under the bridge.

Tuesday 02/09: 5.3 miles, 46:17 (8:44 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
Gah, not improving (my legs nor the level of the puddle under the bridge). Another morning, another jog. Felt a little bit better, but pace is still not so acceptable.

Wednesday 02/10: Off, okay I've succumbed to the inertia... gah.

Thursday 02/11: 5.3 miles, 44:38 (8:25 min/mile) Monterrey to Third Bridge
On the way from my car to the trail, somehow I managed to lose my footing and wrenched my R hamstring in an effort to not fall on my face. It kind of hurt through the first half of the run, but I kept thinking it would loosen up if I kept going. Still kind of felt lousy at the end but stretched it out really good, think it will be okay.

Friday 02/12: Off, ugh... no shots but lots of work. Maybe this is a good thing for my hamstring.

Saturday 02/13: 8.8 miles, Workout with Susan (mile, 2 x Oak Groves, mile)
Figured I should mix things up a little bit, seeing as that speed is especially deficient right now. Started off with a mile at the track, Susan paced it at 6:40, which actually felt pretty easy, definitely loads and loads better than last Saturday. Then we ran down to Oak Grove and did two loops (1200m) in 5:08, 5:16. Felt pretty toasted after that, and kind of blew up on the last mile in 7:10, sad! Cool down to Susan's place and back. Actually didn't feel too wiped out, now I just have to build some speed endurance.

Week Total: 34.7 miles, hmmm... really need to fix this two days off a week thing