Dear Diary, What the hell?
I don’t know why. Catch up. Over-exposure. Running again. Ego. For posterity. My own remembrance. Two months. Here it is.
Thu Oct 16:
so of course on Tuesday night i sign up for the IBM 10K in 3 days … and now I can barely walk. jinx. i don’t know what happened. i ran mile repeats on tuesday morning and felt fine. easy jog tuesday evening and felt fine. was going to take it easy wednesday so i skipped a morning run. felt fine at work all day, walked to lunch etc, then about 3pm my right knee just started inexplicably hurting. tried to run last night and this morning, no dice, lots of pain. i can barely walk, much less run. do what i can the next couple days, mainly rest, and see how it is on monday. bummed about the 10k, “PRd” gazelle tempo last thursday and 5x1mi Tuesday morning at 5:40ish.
Sun Oct 19:
uh….. here’s what happened….
my neighbor is a personal trainer and i was telling him about my knee and he had me walk for him and do some exercises and he said, “your hip is out of alignment. it’s _ _ _ _ _ _ .” (i can’t remember exactly what he said.) anyway he did some adjustments and i felt a lot better. so saturday i went to the gym, did the hot tub, bike, foam roller and was able to run for 20 minutes on the treadmill. it wasn’t exactly pain-free but it was encouraging enough to think i could do the same thing today before the race.
so i went to the gym this morning, did the hot tub and stationary bike and foam roller felt pretty good when i got to the race. gilbert helped m stretch a little bit but then i had to stand on the starting line for 15 minutes. anyway, my plan was to start out around 6min maybe just under, and if it just wasn’t happening i would pull out.
but after a half mile or so i was right behind Peter Rauch. i knew he is a great even pacer, like a metronome, so i asked him what his plan was and he said 5:40-5:45. i felt real good so i said, “can you pull me along?” and he said, “i’ll take you through 4 miles then you’re on your own”. actually there were about 5 or 6 of us with the same plan. the female winner was there for awhile and a few others. anyway, Pete was awesome and i told him we should have paid him for pacing us so well.
so we came through 5k in 17:38 and it actually didn’t feel that hard, but right after that it got tougher. pete started pulling away on mile 5, which was basically all up hill, and the mile 5 was short and the mile 6 marker was obviously long. if you look at the splits, everyone’s 2nd 5k is about 20 seconds slower than the first. plus i was 16th after the first 5k and 15th at the finish, so at first i thought i really slowed down a lot but i was right with everyone else. i guess something was up with the course or the splits or it was just a lot tougher second half.
it was a nice straight finish, no body passed me and i didn’t pass anyone, but of course afterwards you always feel like you could have gone harder. i wished i would have stayed with pete a little better on mile 5 but if i could have i would have. i think that was a mental thing — i was calculating my finish time instead of racing. oh well, 15th overall, sub-36 and i can still walk.
i had my splits at 5:47, 5:39, 11:23 (they were missing a mile 3 marker), 5:32, 6:07 (???), 1:05.
i did a 3-bag ice bath afterwards and feel ok, but we’ll see tomorrow. i still have an appointment with Pieter on wednesday.
Tue Oct 28:
it’s back and forth, slowly getting better i think. i ran 30 min tues (on the trail, 10 min pace, felt ok), 35 min thurs (on the track, 8 min pace, a little painful on the curves), 40 min fri (on the trail, felt ok), 40 min sun (on the road, fairly painful afterwards).
after my run on sunday my PT neighbor gave me an “adjustment” and i felt good enough to run monday morning with the firecracker crew, but only 6 miles, never faster than 7 minutes. it was the best i’ve felt in a couple weeks and i’ve felt pretty good since then. my neighbor can’t believe i was running 70 mpw without massages or therapy or something. maybe i’ll start since i’ve felt much better each time he’s done some work.
i was supposed to see Pieter last week but my insurance doesn’t pay and i’m too cheap to pay for Lisa Kronin and Pieter ($300-400). i did see my new dr. last week. not much news there, typical “we don’t know, rest, ice and try again.”
Wed Nov 5
i think any pre-10K momentum is gone. knee is still sore. i run maybe every other day and its usually not that comfortable. Monday run was horrible, terrible, painful, embarrassing. Taking whole week off.
guess i have a couple options.
1. keep running at this 50% level and hope it gets better
2. keep running, go hard even if it hurts, and hope it doesn’t get worse.
3. take a break and concentrate on getting better at expense of fitness
training for boston is going to be no fun if i can’t get 100% but i hate losing the gains i made.
Thu Dec 4
just this week is the first bit in some time i’ve felt good. about 5 weeks ago i went for a run and it was a train wreck. i took 7 days off after that, then a week of 30 minute runs, then 40 min, then 50 min last week. 5 days a week. for the most part the knee would be ok for the run, then sore later and the next day. the hamstrings too, and the calves. like my whole lower body was rebelling. maybe i was just hyper-sensitive.
anyway, on saturday i ran 10 miles by accident and felt no ill-effects, so i took sunday off and decided to ramp up this week and see how it went. so far so good. firecracker monday, 3×1 mile repeats on tuesday, off yesterday, fartlek this morning. surprised some speed is still there, but lacking strength. no pain or soreness other than the usual of getting used to the pounding again.
so, i’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
Fri Dec 13:
Almost feel back to normal. Plan is to run lots of pace runs. Tuesday did 7 miles, 1mi wu, 2x2mi at pace with 1 mile rest, 1 mile cool down. 2 miles? oh well, 12:20 and 11:53 for the twos and it was swell to let it rip a little bit. Thursday more mgp planned but didn’t know what. After each quarter i kept thinking, i’ll stop at the next mile. ended up 2 mi wu, 5 mile at 31:27, 1 mi cd. a little too fast for mgp, but i’m always afraid of going too slow. need to learn to trust the pace. oh, and i just need to extend the distance by a mile per week for the next 20 weeks. har.
Fri Dec 19:
23:11 for me, gazelle tempo PR by 20 seconds, but eswann for the win in 23:10.
Kyle L. went out fast first mile, with me right behind, then eric. kyle said later it was 5:42. i didn’t feel great but didn’t feel bad. at the 1.5 mile dip and incline kyle started to fade and i took over. i got my rhythm on the 3rd mile and felt strong, and the fourth mile i really started to push it. neither eric nor me had a watch but i think were under 5:30 on the 4th mile.
i heard footsteps and breathing behind me the whole way until about 300 meters to go. wasn’t sure who it was but figured it was eric. i knew in mile 3 and 4 if i didn’t open a gap he would outkick me, and that’s what happened. a couple times i put about 5 or 10 meters on him but he always caught me. when he finally passed me i gave one last effort about 100 meters out, gilbert was screaming at me, but eric picked it up and i just didn’t have the speed. he pulled my old trick of drafting the whole way then passing at the end.
i was really surprised at my time and effort. i ran 23:32 the week before IBM and figured i would be lucky to break 24:00 this time with all the downtime i’ve had since then.
i like tempo. during the actual run, i just want to make it stop, but sometimes you get in that rhythm and it’s invigorating. both e and i screamed as we crossed the finish.
Sun Dec 21
Sorry Fletcher, I lied. Now we understand why knob is unvarnished…
