What's Up Today

Some new developments on my training. First, after the entire summer and most of the fall, I’m finally ready to move onto Level 2 on my Compex. I’m using the endurance program on my quads right now. We’ll see if I survive!

Next, I signed up for another race. The Rotary Resolution 10K on January 1. So last night I began planning some key workouts to get me from where I am now through the 10K, to American Zofingen, and then to the Richmond Marathon. I’m planning to use the Pace Zone Index system developed by McGregor and Fitzgerald in designing and tracking my running plan. I’m really interested in how this will help me improve as well as how it will work with the idea of Training Stress to help me stay healthy and consistent in my training throughout the season.

Third, I just finished attending a great seminar on bike training with a power meter by Coggan and Allen and I’m looking forward to installing my power meter and using power to plan and analyze my bike training for the next season. I think that there is a lot that I can learn about my bike strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, knowing the challenges that I’ll face at American Zofingen - especially with my lack of hill climbing ability - I’m going to need to use the best techniques I can to conquer that race.

Finally, just in time for this new motivation, I did 7 straight days of training last week so I’ve hit the marker that I set for myself to return to organized training. I’ve learned a lot of this last year. In addition to reading the books above, I’ve also read Daniels’ Running Formula, and Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald and I have some new ideas and techniques that I want to include in my plans for next year. One of the things that I want to do first is a swim focused block. I think this will be a good way to start challenging myself and improving my skills while I continue to build my run and bike endurance.

Getting Ready for Next Season

After having to miss last week’s race, I’ve been turning my focus more toward preparing for next season and I’m happy to report several positives. First, I have a promising diagnosis for my knee problem: I have a ganglion cyst on the knee cap which became irritated when I strained my quad. As long as I focus on stretching my VMO and my anterior tibialis and am careful about how I place my knee on the ground, I should be able to reduce and then avoid irritation. Thankfully, I’m able to use my Compex on my quad almost every day and so far, most of my runs and rides this week have been without pain. (A little bit of a backslide when I had to run on a treadmill this morning but not too bad.)

Second, I registered for two key races for next season both of which are taking care of some unfinished business. The first is the American Zofingen Long Course Duathlon in May. I tried to do this race a few years ago, got sick shortly before the race, and was pulled from the course with one lap to finish on the second run. Pretty disappointing after already running 15 miles and biking 84. With all that went wrong for me this summer, I decided that I needed something that I could count as a success so its time to go back, finish the race, and check this one off my list. The second is the Richmond Marathon. As I didn’t get to even start the race this year, I’ve decided that I want to do it next year and hopefully achieve that PR.

Third, right now I’m at what is proving to be a great clinic on training with a power meter. If getting healthy and registering for races wasn’t enough motivation, learning some new tools to focus my training for next season is certainly helping. I’m looking forward to getting back home, installing my power meter, and beginning to use this tool in my training.

So lots of very good things for me and I’m continuing to enjoy reading about all of your successes. Hope that the Arizona athletes did well today and best of luck to those of you doing Cozumel next week!

The Cold That Killed My Race

I’m going to start by saying how frustrated I am right now. Over the last two weeks, a bunch of my coworkers have had a really bad cold but I, surprisingly, have been fine. Until Tuesday morning. I woke up with a really bad sore throat and my eyes felt more tired than they should have, plus a bit red and itchy. I kept drinking tea and thinking I just hadn’t slept enough. By mid-day, I had a horrible headache, my nose was congested, and I was starting to look a bit like a drunk after a weekend binge. At that time, I gave up on my denial and began taking cold medicine, drinking even more tea, eating lots of vitamin C, neti-potting like crazy, and sleeping (because my head hurt too much to do anything else).

My goal: somehow get over this cold by Thursday night so that I would wake up just fine this morning and be able to drive down to Richmond for my race tomorrow. Sadly, despite everything I tried, I woke up Friday morning still coughing, still red and itchy, and still far too tired (but thankfully no longer with the headache!) to run. Or really to even drive for 2 hours. I was probably even worse than I thought I was because when my mother called this morning, she wouldn’t stay on the phone with me because she said I sounded too bad too talk. And when my neighbor came by to see why I hadn’t left the house in 4 days, she took one look at me and offered to run out and get me medicine - and her husband just came home from the hospital.

So I’m frustrated. One more hurdle in my attempt to actually have some kind of race season this year. I guess it’s probably for the best, given the fact that my knee still isn’t at its best and I probably would have done something stupid at the race and hurt myself worse and mucked up next years race season too. Still, I’m really hoping that this is the end of my bad luck for a while. The next race I’m going to try is a local 5K on December 4. Hopefully, I’ll get and stay healthy over the next 3 weeks and this will be the start of a brand new and much more positive run of training for next year.

Should I or Shouldn’t I?

Here’s this week’s dilemma. I’m supposed to run the Richmond Marathon next weekend (the 13th). But while my knee is doing much, much better, it’s not 100%. However, while painful, it’s not throwing off my stride - at least not at the distances I’ve been doing. I’m not sure what it will do at mile 24. I have the option of dropping down to the 1/2 marathon distance rather than doing the full marathon. I’m sure either race will be fun but I haven’t decided what to do. In the past, I did drop out of one marathon when I’d been injured in training. I made it 16 miles before I started limping and decided to stop rather than hurt myself. But here, I don’t think I’ll hurt myself. It will just be slow and a longer time that expected on my feet.

Any opinions? My doctor doesn’t think there is anything actually wrong with my knee, that it’s just quad and possibly ITB tightness - both of which I can continue to work on over the next week with Compex and my foam roller. And running with either my knee sleeve or kinesiotape is making a big difference in how long I can go without pain. I don’t have anything else definite on my schedule for this year but might do a marathon in December, especially if I do the half marathon in Richmond.

Positive Progress

Good news to report from today's run. I made it almost two miles today without knee pain. An easy, slow pace but nonetheless a positive result. A little discomfort on the uphill incline but I'll take a little discomfort. Unfortunately, the Richmond marathon isn't going to happen. Three weeks isn't going to be enough to get from here to 26.2 miles. But I'm sure I can comfortably do the half marathon and I'm looking forward to that. Then I can find another race in December or January and set myself an achievable goal for that race.

Good News and Bad News

I first posted this on the Team Compex blog but wanted to add it here also.

I want to start by thanking everyone for their tips and suggestions for next year’s race schedule. I’m working on finishing up the first draft of that - some things may change based on finances and my future job situation but I think having those goals to shoot for and knowing I might run into some Compex teammates will keep me really motivated over the next year.

I had some good news over the last week. First, my doctor thinks that my knee pain is resulting from straining my quad. And of course, once my knee started to hurt, I started to focus on strengthening my quad to support my knee, increasing the strain. So the last week has been lots of yoga, stretching, ART, and Compex Active Recovery to try to help my quad loosen up. Of course, it still hurts to run. In fact, it still hurts to walk but I’m being optimistic. Second, my biopsy results came back negative so I don’t have to worry about that any more!

Then some bad news. I was perfectly fine and healthy all last week. I was excited about doing the Army Ten Miler on Sunday - even with the sore knee. I picked up my number at the expo as soon as it opened on Friday. Then, right after dinner on Saturday, I started to feel nauseous. I thought maybe I was just tired - I’d worked at the bike shop the last 3 days. So I went to bed nice and early (at around 8:00) and set my alarm for the race the next morning. The alarm went off, I fed the cats and felt okay. Then I went out to walk the dog. And as we walked, I started to feel worse and worse. My tummy was not happy. I was really achy and then began to alternate between being really warm and really cold and realized that the race wasn’t going to happen for me. I double checked and I did have a fever, so back to bed. I never did feel good yesterday but by mid-day today I was feeling fine so now I’m going to look for something fun to do this weekend or next and keep working on my quad between now and then.

Happy News

Two bits of happy news today. First, I found out that my knee injury isn't really a knee injury. It was actually a quad strain that was causing pain around the knee. So of course, my focusing on strengthening the quad to support the injured knee was just making it worse. Instead, I need to focus on stretching the quad and relieving the strain. I know that I'll be using my Compex Active Recovery every day between now and the Army Ten Miler on Sunday. It's already feeling better and I'm looking forward to my next run.

Second, I received the results of my biopsy and confirmed that it's benign. So no need to worry about cancer and I can start planning some fun but challenging events for next season. Kinetic here I come! And the new Xterra wetsuit that is on it's way is going to be very much appreciated at such an early season race.