Top of the Mountain, Sort Of...

Tomorrow is the longest run I've ever done. 30 miles. I'm nervous, but not for my endurance. More for my knee. I am wearing the brace today. Ran two short runs (3, 4.5) this week. But basically stayed off it. It feels good, but then again, it usually feels okay until I run long distances. I really hope this is the end of the semi-chronic pain for good.

We'll see.

In preparation for the run, the car will be stocked with pretzels, Teddy grams, Go Lean bars and Kashi chocolate-cherry granola bars. Gatorade for during the run. Endurox for after the run. We will hit the cars as aid stations three times before finishing the route.

My pack will be carrying electrolyte pills, starbursts and maybe a pack of shot blocks. Electrolyte-enhanced water as well.

Wearing long sleeves, shorts and a visor. Knee brace, kinesio tape. Weather will be from the 40s to 60s. Sunrise around 6:30am (about 6 miles into the run).

Nervous, yes. But excited too. I'll twitter immediate results post-run, with a longer blog post to follow.

...


And then another 20 miles on Sunday if my knee holds up. If not on the ground, then aqua jogging in the pool.

More About Kinesio Tape

My fingers are numb from holding a dixie cup of ice, making this post much harder to type...

But I thought I'd share with you my spiderman-esque web of leg wrapping to which I credit the reduction of swelling in my knee. (That sentence was not grammatically correct, I know). This stuff is Kinesio Tape.




Again to recap - my wonderful teammate Liz (who is a Physical Therapist) hooked me up with Kinesio Tape, this magical stuff that purports to take away swelling and improve circulation to injured areas. I had no choice but to be optimistic that this tape would work because I was that desperate.

Liz taped me up last Sunday, and I immediately felt a difference. I kept the tape on for four days (until last night). I knee was feeling much better.

Last night I went over to Marina Del Rey for strength training with team (which was a lot of fun. The Spectrum Club gym is unbelievable! I wish I lived closer!). Liz reapplied the tape (see pics above), I was sore through the training session but iced when I got home.

In the middle of the night I woke up with shooting pain in my knee. I fell back asleep, and woke up in the morning with no pain at all. Not even a twinge. Must have worked something out over night.

I was able to run this morning. Only 4.5 miles. Not the 9 I was hoping. But after icing just now, the leg is feeling pretty good.

Saturday is our longest run of the training schedule - 30 miles. I think I'm going to make it thanks to this tape and a Neoprene knee brace. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm going for a walk

I was able to complete 24 of the 27 miles of our long run saturday before my knee gave up. It just hurt a little too much so I turned back early. Sunday my knee was sore and I manned the water stop at practice with two of my teammates. Monday and Tuesday I have totally taken off from running. This morning I planned to try and run three miles, but my knee is still bothering me.

One of my teammates Kinesio-taped me up on Sunday and that has done wonders for the swelling. All of that swelling is basically gone. But there still is a bit of soreness around my kneecap and patellar tendon. I'm going to Strength and Conditioning practice down at Marina Del Rey tonight where I'm hoping to aqua jog and get re-kinesio taped. I bought an aqua jogging belt at lunch yesterday and I'm itching to try it out.

Since I'm not running this morning, I'm going to go for a walk. It beats sitting around and at least I get to listen to my ipod for a while before work. There is something very drab about going to work without the prospect of getting to move around for an hour before or after I'm at the office.

So a walk this morning, some upper body lifting tonight, and maybe some pool work. Still trying to heal up for Saturday's peak work out - 30 miles.

Why Runners Usually Make Great Employees

Through Twitter post from @just_finish (who was linking it from @virtual4now), I discovered a great article that says a lot of things about running that I really agree with.

Whether you’re training for a marathon, a century or the Ironman triathlon, one thing you quickly find out is that there’s no room for bullshit out there on the pavement. You either do the work or you’re screwed. Politics won’t get you to the finish line. It doesn’t matter who you know or how well you can work the system. When you’re out there, every weakness bubbles up to the surface and stares you in the eye. Lack of preparation, lack of motivation, lack of dedication will all come back to bite you in the ass. there’s nowhere to hide. They will all find you and jump up on your back to stop you dead in your tracks. The choice becomes this: Do you let them stop you, or do you accept them and keep going?

The title "Why Runners Usually Make Great Employees" is an argument I will neither defend nor attack. But the discussion the article lays out to support the claim really hits home for me.

Take a read if you have a moment.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to TNT West Side member Eliana for receiving a $20,000 donation today for her fundraising efforts. That's AMAZING. Certainly the biggest one-source donation I have heard of in all my seasons with the program. She's definitely in the running, if not leading, the race for the highest fundraiser in the nation!

Week Four of West Side training is approaching fast. Sunday's run will have us completing 6 miles down in Santa Monica. Rest up for a wonderful Sunday morning run at the beach!

Knews...

Quick knee update - it's feeling great today. Minor, minor twinges here and there, but nothing bad.

My job occasionally requires me to do a little manual labor, like carrying around storyboards and pinning up panels (surprise, I'm not yet the CEO), and today I had to do a lot of crouching. The knee didn't even protest!

I love it. I'm excited to get back to running tomorrow morning. So excited, that I've sort of exhausted myself for today.

So I'm looking at the routine training regime, 9 miles tomorrow at 5:45am. Cross your fingers it goes off without a hitch ... or twinge.

Attacking the Injury

"Good things come to obsessive compulsives who fixate"
-Igby Goes Down

I write this now with a week's perspective, approximately half of the time it takes for one to recover from a common/nagging running injury. Okay, so falling face-first on cement is not exclusively a running injury, but at least if I think of it as a two-week setback, I don't go totally crazy.

The pattern of last week probably shines a big bright light on my relationship with running...

Saturday: 27 miles. Tired but wonderful.
Sunday: 13 miles. THEN I FALL. And then 5 more miles. I don't feel the extent of the fall then as I would in the coming days.
Monday: President's Day. Maybe I'll go for a bike ride. I do. An extremely painful one. 10 unenjoyable miles. Knee hurts.
Tuesday: Knee can't be that bad. Let me try running. 2 miles of moderate pain. 15 minutes of reluctant ellipticalling. 10 minutes of frustrated upper body lifting.
Wednesday: Disabled List. I'm out. Knee hurts.
Thursday: Still out. Knee progress.
Friday: Still out. Knee feels better.
Saturday: Normally long run day (20-27 miles). Time to experiment. 14 miles on trails. I made it! Moderate pain toward the end caused me to cut short the 18 mile plan. But I'm feeling a little more sane.
Sunday: 14 miles is looking like less of a good idea. Knee is swollen right on kneecap. Pain is localized and annoying. Walk 2.5 miles at Team in Training Practice, then I stop. Knee hurting a lot. Wonderful physical therapist and teammate Liz evaluates the injury, offers sympathy and advice. Ice, rest, leg lifts, and Kinesio Tape that we can't find on a Sunday morning.

Decision time. I get home from practice and make up my mind that I need to attack the injury with rehab of sorts. I spend my Sunday doing the following:

Contrast icing: 20 minutes icing, 20 minutes in hot shower, 20 minutes icing.
More icing: About 6 Dixie Cups worth. All through the Oscars.
The Stick: I roll out my quad and IT band because they feel oddly tight on the injured leg.
Foam Roller: Again, I really roll out my IT Band just to make sure it's not tightening on me.
Elevation: I sit upside down with my leg up on my table to drain the fluid.
Recovery Food: Blueberries, Salmon, Emergen-C Joint Health Packets x2.
Bending: Liz suggested that the fall may have reawaken (not her word) the scar tissue in my knee from The Great Kneecap Dislocation of Oct 2000. So between icings and during an episode of House, I bent my knee back and forth for full range of motion. Snap, crackle, pop...and I'm not talking about the cereal.

I'm an intense person and I was able to channel that into the rehab yesterday. Now, one day won't cure the knee, but I do get to report that: IT'S FEELING BETTER!! Definitely not 100%, more like 85%. But it's the best it has felt in the past 8 days. My range of motion is back with minimal pain. The local pain area is a smaller one. My quad feels looser, too.

The immediate goal is to be able to run next weekend. The next goal is to complete both our 30 mile training runs two and three weeks from now. The ultimate goal, still, is to race in 5 weeks.

So the plan to meet these goals is: Intense rest and ice for the next two-three days. I'd like to run 2-3 miles on Thursday as a test run for Saturday, but I have made my peace with forgoing them if necessary in order to keep the knee healthy and working. I've also stacked the cupboard with blueberries and canned salmon...which I'm not planning to eat together, but will consume them (and almonds!) throughout the day.

Will I make it through this injury? Of course. Will these protocols minimize my sideline time? I will report back this week.

I live you now with a picture of the puzzle I did this week that distracted me from not running. (Image: paizo.com)

Sidelined

Try, try, try again.

After my fall on Sunday, I thought I’d brush it off and be okay. But I woke up on President’s Day, a day off from work, to find my knee really banged up and in a lot of pain. My attempt at biking 30 miles turned into 10 slow and painful ones and I got 5 miles out on the route and then decided to turn around.

I tried running Tuesday. Two miles in I knew I couldn’t do more. I then tried the elliptical. That wasn’t any easier. I resorted to spending 10 minutes lifting free weights for my upper body.

I took Wednesday, Thursday and today off and I’m getting a little stir crazy. My routine has slipped a little as I’m waking up around 5:45 instead of 5:15 because I’m not out running. Therefore I’m staying up a little later, in bed by 9:30 instead of 8:30pm. I’ve been icing and taking Advil very diligently. My knee is feeling much better than at the beginning of the week, but there still is a quarter-sized area of internal pain that is nagging right to the inside of my kneecap.

If all goes well today with ice and rest, I might try 3 miles tomorrow on the park trails. I hope the soft surface takes some of the stress off my knee. But at any signs of lingering pain, I’ll be stopping. Forgoing a week of +60 miles is a real bummer . It won’t take me out of the race of course. As long as I rest up and recover, I should be right back on track soon (next week is a taper week to easy back into training before our 2 peak week so 70 miles)

The rest this forces me to take is probably a good thing overall. But all in all, I’d rather be running…

Image: Pilotrock.com