I guess I should re-hash the last 3 days

Saturday: I went out and ran a nice and easy 1.8 miles. I felt pretty good and the weather was fantastic. I have been noticing though that I am getting kinda slow. I'm not sure if that had to do with me not running for 10 days, or just trying to take it easy on the body but I averaged a 10:30 pace. That is normally a very slow recovery for me. Overall though some sensation in the shins but not too bad

Sunday: I went big. 2.5 miles. I ran a good chunk of that on grass in a park to keep the impact down. I felt pretty good, but man it was hot out yesterday. I'm not used to running in 85 degree weather, especially after a very cold winter/spring. It also did not help that I realized that I had not drank any water that day, and I ran at 6:00pm I was not feeing good, but a little bit of water fixed that. Shins for the most part felt good. Pace was ok 9:00, but fatigue wise it felt like I ran it at a 7:00 clip or faster.

Monday: I'm going bonkers now! 3.6 miles! Pace was 8:48. So I'm running longer and faster, but even today this fatigued me more that it really should have. Again shins felt good I guess. There are some quarter mile stretches were I can feel the pain, but it goes away pretty quickly, and I am not noticing any pain whatsoever in my daily life. I also did my strength training today, feeling good all around.

Tommorow I think I will forego my speed training and just go for a slow 2 mile jog. Take it down a notch, and see how that goes. But man it's hard to keep pulling back on the reins like this. I just want to run and run fast! Ahhh.

I ran a mile!

Yay! I felt ok for the most part. I had a couple stretches where I had some pain in my shins, but I also think that when I was out running I was payin way too much attention to my shin splints. I mean if I am sitting here now, I can try and feel pain in my scalp if I want to. Walking around today I felt no pain after my run. Perhaps I am almost done with these shin splint bastards. We'll see tommrow when I try two miles! gasp!

Yet another update

My shins are feeling Ok. I am in the middle of a dance performance through the weekend, and every once in a while when I am dancing I feel pain in my shins, especially when I do big leaps and land on my left leg. Other then that, walking around feels great. I know I have been saying I was going to do a test run soon, and I just want to make sure that I am ready for it, and I am fully healed. We'll see.

Also, I will not be running in the 5k this weekend. Its a good thing I did not send in any money, because that was a somewhat expensive race ($25). Anyways I hope to be running at full steam sometime next week, perhaps early in the week if I am feeling good.

Status Update

I have come to the conclusion that for my particular body, wraping my shins when I have shin splints does not work, and it amplifies the problem. Saturday I did not wrap my shins, and I felt rather good. I did not do anything really out of the ordinary that day to irritate it. Then Sunday came and I forgot to wrap it as we had load in day for dance, where we spent 12 hours getting lights and stuff like that ready for our dance performance. My shins felt great. Today I wraped them for the first half of today and they hurt. It took it off and a couple hours later the pain was gone.

So bye bye Mr. Ace Bandage as far as shin splints are concerned. Given my lack of progress I only jogged a quarter of a mile today after the ace bandage came off, and I felt ok, a little tender at the end of the run. Tommorow perhaps I will go for a whole mile and see where I am at.

4th day rest

Today is my 4th day of rest after bad shin splints. Two weeks ago I took 4 days off, and I felt pretty good the week after, but then I got injured again. So perhaps I will take it another day or two. Perhaps Monday I will go for a short jog. I don't know, I will take it as it comes.

But right now I am icing, and taking ibuprofen. Every once in a while if I am shopping and walking a lot I will feel my shins hurting just a bit. I will then sit down for a while until I am good again. This is probably not a good sign, but it takes a lot of walking to get that to happen.

I'll update you all agian on Monday at least, perhaps even tommorow.

Keep on running!

Today was GREAT! But I lost some shoes today...

Today I rested. Granted I did have a dance rehearsal, but that does not do NEARLY the same to my legs as say running. My shins were to be honest a bit sore today, and probably will be tomorrow, but I plan on taking them out for a test drive. Not the 45min fartlek that is scheduled, (unless they feel great) but rather something more like a jog around the block a couple times.

I am also beginning to suspect that my every day sneakers are to blame for this. I recently threw out my old shoes because they had many holes in them. I then unearthed in my closed a pair of Nike running shoes that I had a couple years ago. I am pretty sure I did not even get 500 miles out of them, but I know I was close. But the reason I replaced them was because I could start to tell that they were causing me discomfort during my runs. But I thought that if I was just walking in them and not running, I should be fine.

Wrong. I think I will stick with shoes that do not hurt me now, and these shoes of mine, even though they look just fine are crap now. I have to add them to my garbage and kiss my shin splints good bye.

So the moral of the story. Converting old running shoes into everyday sneakers may seem like penurious advice, but not only are they not stylish, but they will hurt you.

Final Hill Repeat of the Spring!

Today was my final hill repeat of the spring according to Hal, and he took me out with a bang. I was to do 10 of them. And oh boy, for as much as I like the challenge of hill repeats, I am very glad to be finished. I guess some of it does have to do with the hill I run. Its a cement sidewalk which is not always very forgiving on the bones, the hill is fairly steep, and runs up the middle of a valley. This creates large gusts of winds that blow down it, and right into my face as I run up it. And to top things off, there is a highway overpass that seemto channel the wind even more as I reach the top. It was tough, but damn it I did it!

Aside from today being my last hill repeat, it was also WARM and SUNNY! So for the first time this year, I got to take off my shirt, put on some sunblock, and go running. I really like the feeling of having the sun on my back as I run, it just feels good. Plus the tan I end up getting is not half bad either. It really feels like summer is starting to come after a very wicked winter!

One down side to today was some real bad cramping I had in my calf today. This I believe stemmed from a slight cramp I started to get Sunday and even Monday. Then today the cramp got to be very bad and even though I was able to run my repeats pretty fine, I did have to walk the last .5 miles back home. Not a terrible thing, but OK.

Then while I was walking through Target with my girlfriend, I started to get shin splints :(
I am going to try and take care of them just like I did before, and I might even skip tommorow's recovery run and replace it with some biking or perhaps some walking/slow jogging. We'll see but just when I though I was back on track...nope.

But I am still optimistic that perhaps this episode is attributed mostly to my calf muscle and not the same one that was troubling me earlier in my training.

Two Recovery Days = Half-Marathon?

Sunday and Monday I was supposed to just do a couple of recovery runs. No big deal, just jog a little bit and get ready for next week. Well on Sunday I started running, and just did not want to stop since I was feeling very good and knew I had another recovery day on Monday. In the end I ran 11 miles that day. Then yesterday I ran 2.5 in real recovery run fashon. So for two "recovery days" I ran 13.5 miles, which is just over a half-marathon.

I think I should have just stuck with 3 miles a day for those two runs, since I feel a little run down right now, but it is not too bad. I guess we'll see when I run my 10x Hill repeates today, which just so happen to be the last hill repeats I will do for Hal's spring training. After today it will be all track work on Tuesdays.

The results are in!

19:30

I finished 3rd overall out of about what I estimate to be about 250 people so I was very excited. I got second place in my division and now have a shinny new medal. What I guess is really cool is that I was able to stay within sight of the leaders at all times. All of these experiences are new to me so I am just busting.

The race started out at 8:35 in the morning, so it was just starting to warm up and the frost was thawing on the grass. I started in the second row, not wanting to get caught up in the quick start, but not wanting to get behind everybody. Funny little kid was in front of me, he had to be about 12. I did not have the heart to tell him that he would never be able to keep the pace of the front couple people, so I let him sprint out of the start. He lasted about 200 meters until I passed him, but he was still running pretty quick. I think I saw him cross the finish line in a little over 30min.

But at those 200 meters I was about 15 to 20th, and we started to run up a hill. It was not a very big, steep, or long hill, but when I reached the top I was in 5th. I stayed behind a guy with a white shirt for the frist mile then since the wind was blowing in our face, and I wanted to use him, plus he was running at a pretty good pace. Then once we turned the corner I passed him up and started working on the next guy.

The next guy stayed with the leaders for the frist mile and then started to rapidly drop off. I finally passed him at about 2 miles and just had the leaders in my sights. I was counting the times between me and them and I realized that I was starting to catch up to them. I tried to pick up the pace just a little bit more and see if I had a shot. But it was too little too late and they beat me. But that last surge of mine put a good min or so between me and the guy in 4th. So I finished my frist race outside of middle school track in the top 3. top 10 even!

I would like to thank Hal for his training program, and my Nike waffles for making me fast. I'm real excited now and I can't wait for my next race. I just have to decide which one. But I want to run one in two weeks!

Woooooooo hooooooooo

I race tommorow

I am ready to goto sleep and race tommorow morning. The weather forcast is supposed to have temps of around 35-40 degrees F during the run. No to little wind is expected as well. I have my waffles with me, lets see how fast they can make me run!

I'll post tommorow with the time of my run

And for the record today was the frist non-injury day that I have not run for over a month! yay me! (Gotta get those legs rested for tommorow)

I'm caught up again!

I have finally got caught up with my blogging, and I am no longer blogging yesterdays runs! Today was a short 30min tempo run. I normally would have done a 45min one, but since Hal has me running a 5k on Sat, I am in a mini-taper. However that did not stop me from going fast. Towards the middle I was was running pretty well, and even posted a 5:54 mile for mile number 3. I think that I am ready for the race. I feel great both in my wind and in my joints. So after tomorrow's recovery run (or rest day if I feel like it) I hope that I can break 20min for the 5k.

BTW the McMillan Running Calculator says that based on me running a 5:54 mile I should be able to run a 5k in 20:23

So considering that I could have done the mile faster than that had I not already run two, I think I can make this goal.

I guess I have a blogging backlog

As far as yesterday went...

It was a recovery run. I felt good and had to constantly put on the brakes as I noticed I was going too fast. That is one thing that I always find hard to do, is not go out and give 100% every time. In every sport I played as a kid my coaches would always be talking about giving maximum effort. One quote that really stuck with me was

"You will play the way you practice, so practice the way you want to play"

I want to run fast, so how do I run fast? I run slow during practice. Such a strange philosophy in running. But it works.

Also yesterday at my university, the health and human performance department had their annual health fair, and a friend of mine have a yearly competition to see who has the lowest body fat %. The first year we did it, I came in at about 6% and he was about 7%. Then last year I blew his 8% out of the water with my 4%. This year he came in at 10% keeping his trend going, and I keeping mine got 2.9% body fat.

Now this is not a good thing. The minimum amount of body fat to be considered healthy is about 8%. I guess last year my switching from skim milk to 2% and margarine to butter did not quite work. I eat about 4000 calories a day and plenty of fatty foods, I just burn it all up. Perhaps I need to start eating 5000 calories a day, but that would make me sick. Hell last week I got a gallon of chocolate ice cream and ate that in 3 days! How do I gain some fat? I wish I could just have people sell me their fat and I then burn it off for them. That way I would make money by selling burn calories, and I would also save on my grocery bill! Now to find a way to sell burnt calories....

Yesterday's Hill Repeats

Despite my running all day on 3 hrs of sleep from my frantic work the night before, I somehow managed to drag myself out onto the road to do some hill repeats! Since I was feeling a bit lathargic and due to the fact that my 5k is on Saturday and my racing flats are not quite broken in, I wore the Waffles! I did a nice slow jog to my hill, which is a pretty steep section of a hill that rises for about 2 miles (not vertically mind you). Its actually a pretty fun hill to run all the way up, probably because I like the challange.

Like I was saying, yesterday I was supposed to do 9x repeats, and despite being tired I managed to do all 9 at a pretty good clip. I think the shoes helped a bit, even though my body felt like it had gotten beat up at the end. I guess I did not anticipate that I would be running 6 miles in those shoes. I am almost positive I will not be running a marathon in those shoes, but if I give it a little bit longer, I might get used to them and take them out on a 10k race.

On the injury front, I have been doing a good job I think of keeping myself from relapsing into either the shin splints, or the hamstring tendon rupture by not doing any full out sprinting, and maintaining a steady dose of ice and stretching after and before my runs, as well as throuout the day.

Today I got much more sleep, and will be nice and rested for my recovery run today. Such a weird phrase, but I had to use it.

Yay, done with the paper!

My Seminar Paper

Now that it is just about 4am here, I think I will goto bed. I think tommorow's run is going to be a bit rough. :(

Slow Recovery Day

I'm taking a break from writing the final draft of my senior semiar paper entitled:

"Quantitative Verification of the Which-Way Experiment Using Single Photons"

Phew.

anyways once I am done I just might post a link incase any of you physics geeks feels like reading up on my pittiful undergraduate research that just re-does what people with higher degrees than me have already done to more accuracy than me 10 years ago.

But back to running. Today was a slow run, a recovery run and I milked it for all it was worth. I was running close to 10:00 min miles as my body was a bit fatiqued from my weekend's runs. But I did not mind as who cares about times during a recovery run. Plus I need to keep those nagging injuries from coming back.

I guess the one thing about recovery runs that really suck is that most of my friends know I am a serious hard core fast runner, and while I am out plodding along at a very un-me like pace, I happen to see one of my good friends. Now the question I must ask is why can't they ever drive/walk by when I am doing speed work?!?! They are probably thinking to themselves "pfft, I bet he can't even run a 8:00 min mile, he's just full of hot air"

I guess perhaps that is extra motivation to do well at this weekends 5k. So when I see that person next, they will invariably say "I saw you running." and I can say, "Oh yea, that was pretty slow for me, this weekend I ran a X:XX 5k" and then they go Ok and don't think of me as some big liar, and instead just some arrogant prick who has to tell them their 5k times. I'm screwed either way.

Tommorow is a 9x Hill run. I'm excited to get back into that! And please somebody drive by! :P

Good Sunday LSD

And for you out there that arn't familiar with running lingo, LSD is not the psychedelic drug that the Beatles sang about. In running it stands for Long Slow Distance. So today's LSD was scheduled for 9 miles, and 9 miles I went. My body was a tad sore after yesterdays double run, but it was not bad. I ran a little slower than I am used to, but that is probably a good thing, since I am still trying to make sure that my knee and shin problems do not come back.

One think I really like about LSD is that I can go find some strange country road to run down, and get out of the constant turning and changing of direction the suburbs of my town. I also usually find it worthwile to bring my little ipod shuffle micro miniature music thing. (I don't know exactly what it's called, but it weighs only .5oz, so its small) Its a good time to just go out and relax while running. It was a good day

Today was a 2 for 1

I did get in my extra run today. Since it's late and I want to break my stay up late sleep pattern I will make this quick. I ran a 30min tempo, I felt great, no nagging injuries, I ran fast. I can't wait for tomorrow when I can run again. God I missed running!

All systems are go!

Today I decided to go out and test my body with a short 2.5 mile run, as well as try to break in my new racing flats, the waffles. I will first off say that those shoes are awesome. It feels like I am running barefoot. These shoes are not designed for confort by any means, but I actually had no problem with them. My feet feel good, and I don't feel like I took much of a pounding.

As far as the run I started out kinda slow, but the shoes. I swear it was the shoes. They convinced me that I should run faster. So my first mile was done in 7:19, then my second in 6:48 and my final half mile was at a 6:01 pace! I think I am going to be ready to put on a pretty good show at my 5k next week.

On the knee/shin front I did not feel any significant pain in my knee. There was a little tightness for the first 100 feet, but that went away and never came back. My shins gave me a brief little trouble for a couple strides, and now that I have stopped, they feel a little sore, but nothing like when they were a problem.

So like the title says, all systems are go! I have a 9 mile run scheduled for tommorow, and technicly today was supposed to be a 30min tempo run, so perhaps I will do that yet. I'm really excited to be back.

Dead...Freaking...Tired

I don't know why I am posting tonight, but I am TIRED. In case you did not know, I am a physics major about to graduate. And to get that diploma you have to do a senior seminar on a project of your choosing. Well due to factors, and I state this lightly, BEYOND MY CONTROL, I had to put in string of late nights to get this thing done.

So in hinesight, my injury had pretty good timing. It would have been tough to fit running into my schedule these last couple days as I was leaving the lab routinely at 2am only to goto work on my paper at home until 4am, hence the wacky time of this post.

But on the running front I have good news. I got my new racing shoes today! I got the Nike Zoom Waffle Racer IV. I took them out for a quick spin around the block to both start breaking them in, and to check out my knee situation. And yay! Both felt very good.

So I am excited to start running again tommorow. Back to a normal life, and blogging!

Just Dance!

Today I was feeling pretty good. I iced my shins and knee in the morning. Took some ibuprofen and went off to my classes. Then later in the evening I went off to my dance rehearsal, when the ibuprofen should have been worn off. I was prepared to step out at any time should my knee start bothering me, but that never happened. So I am pretty excited about that.

Perhaps tommorow I will take that test jog and see what is happening on the knee front. But for now its RICE.

On the Bench

I'll be sitting on the bench for a while. I went for a short test run to the nearby middle school to vote. I kept a slow pace but I could definitely feel the pain in the back of my knee. It was not bad, and were I a couple years younger and dumber I would have just run through the pain. But I have decided to shut it down for a couple of days, enjoy the beginning of baseball season, get some projects done, and strength train my upper body.

So my time should not be a loss, and perhaps this little rest will finally put an end to my brief shin splints episode for good.

To be honest I will still probably go out everyday and walk a bit, perhaps jog a quarter mile and see how I feel. So I will keep my young blog full of posts, and I'll keep reading yours. But for now, Play Ball!

Good News and Bad News

<---------Bad News is that this might be an exaggerated version of my hamstring tendons. Since the pain I felt today was pretty strong, and I did slightly notice it the night before I did some searching, and according to sportinjuryclinic.net:

Symptoms of hamstring tendon rupture:

• A sudden sharp pain in the back of the knee.
• Swelling, tenderness and heat coming from the point where the tendon inserts into the knee.
• Pain when you bend the knee against resistance.

I seem to be having the first two, and none of the other injuries described anywhere in my searches have come close to describing the sharp pain in the back of the knee that I am feeling.


Now for the good news. This can be treated with RICE. Which for those of you unfamiliar with this notion, RICE stands for: Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. I should also be able to keep running, just making sure I don't push anything.

Turns out that this injury pops up mostly when you do fast acceleration and decelerations. This pretty much describes my hill training for tomorrow :( So I will try one, see how the knee feels, and then go from there. But the good news is that this is nothing very serious, and yes that picture is a vast exaggeration.

On another note when I saw the description of the symptoms and saw that picture I shed a couple tears. And since I have done considerable sweating, and have had some bleeding from a toe blister that I got a couple days ago...I have successfully accomplished the Blood, Sweat and Tears portion of my blog title in only 2 weeks or so!

And finally, I added some stuff to my blog. I have some good links to running websites. The last two are great resources for runners. You just have to check them out to realize their vast wealth of information. I also put in a race countdown timer! The geek in me is cheering

What!? Another One!?

Today my shins felt good again. I'm liking the progress I am making here. Now though on the same leg as my shin splints I have a sharp pain in the back of my knee. I have never felt this before, but I don't like it. I was able to adjust my stride enough so that it did not hurt, but damn, I hate these little injuries that pop up, and I sometimes feel like this poor guy to the left. But I guess unlike him I was able to do my 3 mile recovery run today plus some strength training. I know running has more than its fair share of nagging little injuries, but I think I am getting the raw deal here. Anyways I hope to be back and running strong tomorrow when I do my hill repeats. And for the official Hal definition of hill repeats!

Hill training is scheduled for the first six weeks of this program on Tuesday. The speed benefits of hill training are similar to those for interval training on the track (below), but in the early spring it may be easier doing this workout on the road than doing repeat 200s or 400s at the track. Select a hill about a quarter-mile long, but don't worry about pitch or the exact distance. Run up hard, as hard as you might during a 200 or 400 repeat. Then turn and jog back down, repeating the uphill sprints until finished. Be sure to warm up by jogging a mile or two before and cool down with the same distance after.

Before I started this 30 week program I was doing some of these exact hill exercises, and I was only able to do 4 of them, and 4 that were not done well at all. So its great to see progress, but 8 is tough, really tough.

Just pluggin along.

I ran yesterday for 8 miles. My shins hurt only a little bit at times, and during those time I slowed down and they went away. I think the big key to my success last night was that I started out very slow. I ran a 10:30 mile for the first mile, and then once I picked up the pace the rest of the way I was fine. I ended up with an average pace of 8:27.

One thing I am sick of though is this weather. The last 7 runs I have been on have had some sort of precipitation. I don't care if it rains out, and I actually welcome a downpour. It makes me feel like I'm a hardcore runner. But the last 7 runs have had this lingering mist and light rain junk. I also don't think I've seen the sun in about the same amount of time. I think somebody went and stuck me in Seattle without telling me. And today's forecast, light rain and drizzle! AHHHHH.

Soon I will go out for my 3 mile recovery run, and strength training. Then I will tell you all about that one!