Racing Season Starting Up

It's been a long awaited 4 months with no racing for Kim and me. If I remember correctly, our last race was the Bass Pro Half Marathon back on the 1st weekend of November.  We're going to be racing this weekend and using it as a rust-buster type of race (as Kimi calls it).  We've already been doing speed work 2x per week but now get to lace up the shoes and toe the line with others to test our fitness levels for real. Any time you have an important race that you've been training for, (whether that's a half marathon, marathon, or even 10k), it is important to get yourself re-acclimated to the entire race environment by competing in a race shorter than the distance of your goal event.

Last week was a break through week for me. Since my knee issue started several weeks back, I've been unable to complete any significant long runs unless the miles were completed in a tempo run or workout setting. Going faster just seems to help my body feel better.  Over the weekend, I completed a 13 mile long run and didn't have any issues whatsoever. I'm still not 100% confident that I'm out of the woods yet, but I'm getting to probably 80% confidence.

Kimi and I also crushed some mile repeats over the weekend.  If things keep going the way they're going, I think I'll be back on track for some high mileage by mid-April.  It's critical that I get back to normal by then so I can have 2 solid months of training prior to the Grandma's marathon in June!

Last week recap
1 workout - 5x1mile repeats (missed out on the second one due to the terrible weather last week
13 mile long run
55 total miles!!!

Starting to get there again!

If you tuned in to my last blog post, you saw just how injuries can and do get to each and every one of us at some point. When you train hard, unfortunately, you are constantly walking the line between injury and health as you push the limits of training. The best thing you can do is to do your best preventative efforts to keep injuries at bay to the best of your ability. This includes things like stretching properly, strengthening adequately, proper nutrition, and training smart.  A part of training smart is to listen to your body. When you feel fatigued for multiple days in a row, it might be time to give yourself a rest day so that your body can complete the regeneration processes.  If you don't, the body will continue to break down and that's when injuries are destined to get you.  That's not the only way injuries can get you though. Sometimes, it's just a freak incident that is out of your control.

My injury occurred from having a lapse in good training judgement for just a few days. Sometimes, that's all it takes to have problems creep in. Fixing the issues takes longer than if you just keep them away from the beginning.

The good news is that over the last two weeks, my rehab has been going extremely well. I felt pretty darn good by Saturday and so I decided I would give the 10 mile tempo run a try. The plan was to do keep going so long as I was able to maintain a solid tempo run pace and so long as I didn't have any discomfort in my knee. Much to my liking, I started the tempo run and was able to hang on to Kimi for the entire way. We smoked the 10 mile tempo run under an hour. I was a bit shocked I was able to hold it together for the entire way.

Last week, I managed a total of 50 miles for the week. This is still much below where I'd hoped to be at this point, but it is much more reasonable than some of the prior weeks had been. Starting the year, I had a goal of 3000 miles.  If I'm going to get there, I'm going to have to start hitting some solid miles pretty soon since I have a lot of ground to make up.

This week's goal-
Keep my streak of consecutive days run alive,
2 hard workouts
2 weights days/rehab days
55+miles

Injuries can get us all. It's how we pick ourselves back up that matter most!

These last few weeks with the snow on the ground were frustrating. Just prior to that, Kimi and I had a stellar week.  I wrote my last blog about the time the snow nailed us good. I had plans to be hitting a lot of miles over the past couple weeks and I was determined to make it happen. The first Monday after the first dump truck of snow, Kimi and I ventured out to go for a run.  We cut it short after we decided that the snow was simply too deep to fight through and get any real benefit.  We jumped in the car and I took Kimi to the gym where she finished up her remaining mileage for the day.While she was doing that, I ventured back outside on the treacherous roads.  That's when everything started to fall apart a bit. With my lack of treadmill access, I will typically make it outdoors or not run at all. Since the snow lingered pretty much all week, I was unable to get outside and do much running whatsoever.  By the weekend, Kimi and I decided (against better judgement) to go to Wilson's Creek Battlefield to run Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because this seemed to be the only place we could find where the roads were completely clear. We ran an easy run Friday of 5 miles.  Then we backed it up Saturday with a smoking fast 6 mile tempo run. And then came Sunday; we were planning to do our long run there and after 1 loop around, I started to feel a tweak in my knee. I'm usually pretty cautious in these scenarios so I immediately called it quit with 5 miles.  Most of the time, these types of things are held at bay by simply not pushing through discomfort and making things worse but not always. I went back out for a run the next day and the knee was good until about 6-7 miles into the run. That's when I finally had to pull the plug and start analyzing exactly what was going on with me physically. I haven't been able to do a lot of running over the last 2 weeks due to the knee and my fear of making it worse by running on the snow and icy conditions.  In the mean time, I did a lot of indoor rehabilitation exercises to start stabilizing my hips and knees since the lack of working out definitely seemed to aggravate my condition. I went 4 straight days with no running (complete torture) and then started back into things last weekend.

Easy 4 mile run on Friday went fine. And much to my surprise, I hadn't lost too much of my fitness on Saturday when I decided to go for a tempo run with Kimi. The plan was to simply keep going as long as I felt good and could keep up. I made it the entire 8 miles at sub 6 pace. We were moving!

I think I'm definitely turning the corner and getting back on track. I don't know that I will be ready for Rock the Parkway in April (at least not how I'd hoped) but so long as I'm ready to roll in May and June, I'll be a happy man.

I wrote this blog to let you know that even when you do your best to take care of yourself, injuries can still occur.  As much as we'd love to completely eliminate them, even when you do preventative injury routines and exercises, injuries can still occur.  The entire philosophy behind injury prevention is to reduce the likelihood though it doesn't always work, it does reduce the frequency of injury. (This is my first limiting injury since 2008).