New Year - New Pain in the Arse

Literally.  New pain in the ass.

Why no new posts about running in so long?  Can’t post about it if you’re not doing it.  My two main goals in my second marathon were to go under 4 hours, and not end up back in physical therapy.  One out of two aint bad.

As I progressed in my self-directed therapy to get my knee back in working shape, I was noticing increasing soreness on a daily basis in my right hip.  More accurately, I was having issues with my right butt cheek.  Most accurately, now I not only am a pain in the ass, I have a pain in the ass.

Spent some quality time with my favorite orthopedist today, and it appears I’ve added piriformis syndrome to my collection of running ailments.  A true pain in the ass in more ways than one, and it means I get to spend more quality time with my therapist buddy Jeff trying to get humpty dumpty back together again.  I had considered another Spring marathon this year, but instead I’m going to focus on properly rehabbing my assorted leg issues, cross-training and weight training my legs throughout January and February, easing back gradually into running, and hopefully be back building a mileage base again by March as the weather warms up.  Not going to let it get me down.  I shall return.

Thanks to my ailments I got my lazy on in a big way to close out the year.  One major upside to being out of a training cycle while on holiday vacation is lots and lots of sleep.  It’s a whole different world when you’re well-rested.  I haven’t gotten up before 5AM in nearly 2 months, and I’m not complaining.

In a strange twist of fate I managed to win the fantasy football title in my rookie season.  I don’t think the rest of the folks in the league are very amused by this, since this is their 11^th year as a league.  Apparently I earned some cosmic karma points by dragging my liquor-logged self out for my running workout the morning after the draft/drink/drunk day back in September.  I owe a fair share of the glory to Jeri at JerBear Shares, whose undying confidence in Greg Jennings and the Green Bay Packers convinced me not to trade him after a rough start to the season, and he was a stud down the stretch.  Another plus for the running blog world – fantasy football mojo.

I’ve been badly out of the loop in the blog world, not just in terms of posting but in terms of following.  Non-cyber life got a little too hectic as the year came to a close, but I’m looking forward to catching up on my virtual friends.  Planning to live vicariously through the Spring marathoners, and try to get out and spectate/volunteer at a couple of the Spring races.

Run swiftly my friends.

No Run for You

I am still in my self-imposed exile from running as I work on strengthening my knee and resting my feet.  Also finally dealing with some medical issues that I had been postponing out of concern that they would derail my marathon training.  I definitely miss running, but not as much as I thought I would, which leads me to believe my need from some downtime was both physical and mental.  Looking forward to starting the new year strong and getting back into training for some yet-to-be-decided event.

Work and life have been a bit crazy, so I've fallen far behind in terms of blog posting, and following other blogs.  On the few occasions that I can reflect on this past year, where I went from never doing any race, to having completed two marathons, I try to track the tools and techniques that truly contributed to this marathon push.

Garmin - a necessary evil for me to track mileage and pace as I move along.  I'm a data junkie at work, so this is right up my alley.

FuelBelt - I'm a creature of habit with running, so this allows me to fuel at my own rate and hopefully stay ahead of dehydration when it hits 100 degrees with 800% humidity in the Carolinas.

Superfeet green insoles - Kept my Plantar Fasciitis largely under control.  Use them in all my shoes now.

Compression gear - started with compression shorts to help support a pulled hamstring.  Added 2XU calf compression sleeves for my training for my first marathon to deal with a strained left calf.  Added CEP compression socks for the last month of training for marathon 2.  The socks are great for recovery after a long run, and the fact that they squeeze your feet too really seems to help with the PF issues.  Added bonus in that my whole family thinks I look like a dork wearing them, which, although this is mostly correct, makes it more fun to wear them around the house.

iPod - my little musical friend.  Sadly, the screen on my Nano fell victim to a major downpour while in the middle of a training run, but it still works and was there for just about every mile, including the races.  Hoping to get a new one for Christmas so I can see what I'm picking to listen to.

Accelerade, Ultragen, Gu, Hammer gels - None of these things are very tasty, but they all do seem to work.  Haven't had any issues with cramping other than a minor hamstring twinge around mile 23 of my first marathon.  Wish these things were a little cheaper, especially the Ultragen.

Tempo runs, mid-foot strike form - Added tempo runs for M2 training, and worked on mid-foot strike during the training for M2.  The tempo runs really helped to recalibrate my normal running speed at a faster pace than during M1 training.  I'm still working on the mid-foot strike, but being able to do this during M2 really helped my knee to make it to the finish

Lots of other things I could list, but these were the most important and/or helpful of the bunch.

Finally, if someone approaches you to join a Fantasy Football league after you haven't watched football for about 10 years and have very little free time, run away as fast as you can.  My personality is such that I am way too analytical about the whole thing, and devote way too much time to it.  It's been mostly fun, but much more work than I would have expected.

Run swiftly my friends...

20 Fantasy Miles

Made it through 20 hard miles Sunday morning, although technically I should have only been running 6 miles. Why would I choose to add on 14 fun-filled miles? I’d like to say it was due to some noble, altruistic pursuit. Or perhaps a multiple-hour runner’s high. Sadly, the real answer is Fantasy Football.

Not Pictured .... Fantasy Football

I’ll explain in a bit, but first, a look back at week 6, and the painfully obvious reason that the 20 miles was a bit of a death march.

As covered in an earlier post, the week was supposed to start with an 18-mile run last Sunday. Thanks to an unfortunate bit of rain-drenched timing, this turned into 10 late-night miles on Sunday, and 8 early-morning miles on Monday. If I include the 5 miles last Saturday, then by the end of the day on Saturday I had run on 7 out of 8 days, covering 48.6 miles. Compound this with the first week of school for the kids, a heavy workload at my job, and entirely too little sleep, and I was less than optimally rested and fueled for yesterday’s run. No better time to take a nice 6 mile step-back run and turn it into 20 miles of self-flagellation. Here’s where the Fantasy Football enters the picture.

About a month back I got an email from an old high-school friend letting me know that one of the guys in their fantasy football league was dropping out, and seeing if I wanted to join. Most of the guys in the league are old high school friends, including the best man from my wedding whom I have done a terrible job of keeping in touch with. Maintaining friendships with old friends is definitely not my strong suit. I thought this would be a good chance to get back in touch with these guys, so I said yes. Never mind the fact that I haven’t followed football in years, and am completely clueless about fantasy football.

Contrary to what the name implies, this does not involve teams of gladiators waging football-battle in the heavens riding fire-breathing unicorns.  Nor does it resemble any of the ‘sweet’ airbrushed scenes one might find on the side of most any 70’s era conversion van.

Apparently this requires some fairly detailed knowledge of the teams and individual players in the NFL, and, if one wants to have some success, a great deal of time. 0 for 2 for this guy.

Draft Day is the most important day of the season. For these guys, this means coming from miles around to meet up at one house for hours upon hours of drafting, eating, drinking, and trash-talking, not necessarily in that order. Draft day is this Saturday. Per my training plan, I am scheduled to run 20 miles on Sunday. The marathoner-wannabe in me would stick to my training plan and spend Saturday drinking sports drinks while picking my team. The realist in me knows that I’ll wake up Sunday morning feeling like I had carpet installed on my tongue, and wondering why my team consists entirely of kickers with last names starting with ‘J’, most of whom retired sometime in the 80s. Not wanting to risk my 20-mile long run, I decided to swap this week’s 6 with next week’s 20. Looked like a good idea on paper.

The 20 miles actually wasn’t horrible, but I didn’t have a lot of spring in my step at the start, and I knew it wasn’t going to get better. The first 10 miles went pretty well, but the week that was caught up with me in the back 10, and I was definitely wishing it was over. At mile 17 I took a walk break to down my last gel and the last of my water, and extended the walk break to 10-minute stretch of walking as fast as I could. I picked the running back up from that point, and was pleased to see that my pace over the last 2.5 miles was around 9:30. Net result was running 8 of 9 days, covering 68.6 miles. I was pretty useless for most of the rest of Sunday, which may have been hard to distinguish from most other days. Shades of gray I suppose. My PF and ITBS seem to have weathered the 20-miles, and the excessive mileage for the week, which is very encouraging going forward. The real test will be getting out of bed tomorrow morning and going for a run. Probably need to start training my liver for Draft Day as well. This could get ugly.