It's pretty clear that when I'm not running, I'm not blogging!

The last time I did any running was back on April 9th. I did 4.5-ish miles on the Tech Trails and could barely walk the next day due to knee\inner thigh pain. So, I just decided to stop.

At first I thought I might have pes anserine bursitis, but my symptoms didn't quite fit the profile. Finally, after much scouring of the internets, I landed on a sartorious muscle strain. I found this great link which listed all the typical symptoms of a sartorius strain, but I forgot to bookmark the link (dummy) and now I can't find the darn thing. In any event, after reading the article, I was pretty convinced that's what I had.

I finally got my insoles back with an additional adjustment to my arch.  It’s 1/4”, but it looks a lot bigger.  I’ve been wearing them regularly in my old running shoes but I haven’t done any running in them yet. My plan is to take the rest of April off and then pick up my half marathon training plan again in May in the hopes of doing the Appleton HM in September.

In the meantime, I've been having fun crashing my new bike! Fortunately, since all my crashes seem to happen when I get tangled up in loose sand, my landings have been on soft ground. Unfortunately, my legs look like somebody took a baseball bat to them. Hawt!

Josh and I broke out the cruisers a few weeks ago and we've been bopping all over Calumet with them. It’s funny, we get lots of compliments on them but most people refer to them as "old timey bikes" or "antique bikes" rather than cruisers.

I was naughty this week and blew off my stretching and strength sessions.  I don’t really have any good excuses other than I just didn’t feel like doing them.  I did keep up with my slant board exercises twice/day and I attribute that to the game of Solitaire that I’ve been playing on my iPhone.  Whatever works, right?

I also ended up replacing my mid-week run with a snow removal session (bad!)  But!  I did redeem myself with a fairly decent 4 mile run today.  Josh dumped me off on a back road in Stanton and I ran to my parent’s house.  I was dressed for the 16 degree weather, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for the wind.  Holy cow, it was cold!  My lungs were stinging and my nostrils kept sticking together.  Every time I exhaled, the wind would push it back in my face and my sunglasses would fog up.     The only thing that kept me going was that at the 2-mile mark, I was going to change direction and the wind would be at my back instead of hitting me in the face.  Once I hit the turn, everything was all good and I sailed through the rest of my run.

My legs have been doing okay with the 3-day a week plan.  I’ve had a flare up here & there, but nothing that ice, Ibuprofen and arnica gel can’t keep under control.  We’ll see what happens when my mileage starts to pick up.

Oh, I turned 40 on Thursday.  Geez, I’m old.  Spencer turned 16.  Geez, he’s old.  Fun fact:  Spencer and I both take Glucosamine for our joints.  I think that makes me a crazy cat lady?

I started running again last week, after a 2.5 month layoff thanks to posterior tibial tendonitis. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to approach my return in an attempt to stay healthy, and I've come up with a plan which I feel pretty good about.

1. 10% rule. The golden rule of running for beginners or those recovering from an injury is to never increase your mileage by more than 10% per week. Does it make sense? Yes. Is it a smart approach? Yes. Have I ever followed it? Hell no. 10% per week, are you kidding me? Have I been injured more times that I like to admit? HELL YES. I've tried almost everything but applying the 10% rule, so this time around, I'm going to follow that rule like my life depends on it. No more than 10% per week, people.

2. 3 running days. All my other plans had me running four times per week, then when I bumped up my mileage too much and started flirting with injuries, I'd end up dropping back to three times per week in an effort to maintain my health. I'm a bit concerned about not being able to get enough out of training on three days per week, so that's where step 3 comes into play.

3. Cross-train. Once per week, do some sort of hard cross training that gets my heart level up. I'm currently shopping around for a bike trainer and I've got my eye on the Spinnervals DVD set. In the meantime, I borrowed Josh's bike rollers (*scary*) and I'm going to attempt to not kill myself on them starting this week.  If the rollers don’t work out, I’ll bust out the skis.

4. Stretch, stretch, stretch. This is a big one for me, and one that I've been fairly lax about in the past but I need to get back into the habit of stretching. Not only does it improve flexibility and reduce the risk of injury but it also feels so good after a hard run. I used to stretch all the time, but got out of the habit for some reason. I also incorporate the use of a slant board (similar to this, but I have a hillbilly version using my foam roller and a piece of wood) in my stretches. When I was in PT several years ago, the therapist told me I had chronically tight calves which was probably the reason for several lower-leg injuries I was suffering from. He had me doing the slant board thing twice daily for five minutes and I think it really helped.

5. Ice, ice, ice. When it hurts, or even when I feel like something might be happening that could turn into something bigger, it's time for an ice treatment. One bonus of running in the winter is that you can ice on the fly. Tonight I was feeling a little something in my ankle so I pulled over, smashed some snow in my sock and tights and continued on. I did get a really strange look from the people in the minivan that drove by.

6. No race commitments. I don’t know what’s going to happen with my injury, and I don’t want to put any pressure on myself by having a deadline looming over my head that will encourage me to make bad decisions on when to run or rest.  My goal is to make it to April feeling strong and do Journeys HM in May, but if it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen. I’ll find something else to do later in the year. Or maybe I won’t.

Well, I think that’s about it.  Last week went pretty well.  My mileage was low and my speeds were shamefully slow, but it sure does feel good to be back.

I was initially sort of blah about the past year.  But then I decided that there must be 10 interesting things that I did or that happened to me in 2009, so I sat down and contemplated.  And contemplated.  And he’s what I came up with.

In 2009 I….

- paid off my truck and my trailer.  Payment-free, baby!  Man, did that feel good. 

- saw my mile splits start dipping into the 9’s (inconceivable!)

- ran 10 miles in 1:39 (9:55 ppm PR!)

- PR’d Journey’s HM with 2:19:12

- PR’d 5-miles with 49:04

- got custom orthotics to take care of the medial tibial stress syndrome I developed due to my high arches. Then spent most of the summer sidelined with posterior tibial tendonitis, which developed because I waited too long to take care of ignored my MTSS.  The running gods giveth, [then I break the cardinal rule of running by not listening to my body] and they taketh away.

- had a great 50-mile ride around Lake Gogebic.  I’m already looking forward to next year’s ride, although I’m contemplating heading to Louisville, KY that weekend to cheer on my friend Tina as she competes in Ironman Louisville in August.

- ran the Kimberly-Clark HM in September on a wing and a prayer and was only 30 seconds slower then the previous year.  That still cracks me up.  I suck so bad. 

- completed the 100 Pushup Challenge

I only have one goal for 2010, and that is to stay injury-free. Fingers crossed!

Hello!  It’s been a couple o’ weeks since I last blagged.  How was your Christmas?  Mine was good.  I got the camera I’ve been lusting after for a while now, the Canon Rebel XS. Very cool!

I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to learn all the photography terminology (ISO, aperture, shutter speed) and taking tons of pictures.  Some are pretty good, some not so much. Here are a few of the okay shots.

I am happy to announce that come January, Running Chick will refocus to running!  Yep, training will start up again after a three month hiatus.  So, be prepared for major bitching about how out of shape I’ve become, slow mile splits and various aches and pains.  Honestly, though, I can’t wait to get back to a fitness routine.  My shoes are lonely and in the fall I bought a swanky Brooks running jacket that is just begging for me to take it out for a spin.  That baby’s supposed to be hurricane/tsunami/avalanche-proof and I’m anxious to test it out.  I can report that it stands up to beer spills just fine. 

Happy twenty-ten all!

We almost made it to Christmas without having any snow. Almost.

Then, last weekend, it started to snow. And snow. AND SNOW. And it didn't stop for seven days straight. Each day we got 4-8" of light, fluffy lake effect snow, and each day cleaning up my yard took at least 90 minutes. 

Damn you, Lake Superior! *shakes fist*

In total, I figure I tallied about 12-13 hours of snow removal last week.  That’s a part-time job!  Too bad I don’t get paid for it.

Anyway, the snow’s tapered off enough for me to start thinking about taking some snowshoe hikes or renting classic skis.  My skate skis can stay in their ski bag, I’m still pissed at them from our little disagreement two years ago.

Hopefully this week (and the next two since I’m on vacation for that long after this Friday w00t! ) I’ll be able to actually enjoy some fun snow-related activities.  I’m also hoping **fingers crossed** to stay healthy over vacation.  Last year, I was super sick the entire time and finally felt better the day before heading back to work.  Suck.

It’s time to start thinking about what I want to accomplish with running in 2010.  Goals, and such, ya know.  I would really like to move up to a marathon, but I’m not sure how my legs are going to handle the mileage.  Heck, I can barely make it through training for a HM before something breaks.  Right now, I don’t think I’m going to sign up for anything.  I’ll start running in January and see how things turn out with my (hopefully healed) tendinitis. 

Know what I really wish?  That by some miracle from the running gods, I will have finally achieved the right combination of shoes and orthotics that I run injury-free.  I didn’t get that over the summer, because I couldn’t rest enough for the tendinitis to make a recovery.  All I was doing was running one week and cross training the next.  That was no fun.  Actually, it was depressing, frustrating, and defeating all rolled into one.  No fun, indeed.  I have no idea how long tendinitis takes to go away.  I haven’t run a step since mid-September and I hope that’s enough.

Guess I’ll find out soon enough.  Ciao.

Several weeks ago, an article appeared in the NY Times that alternately made me think and made me irritated.  I thought that I should write a blag post about it, but then I decided that I was too irritated and I put it on the back burner.  I’ve thought about this article a lot since then and it still irritates me.  But, I can’t figure out if it irritates me because I fit the profile, or because it’s truly outrageous.  I think it’s probably a little bit of one and a lot of the other.

The article is called Plodders Have a Place, but Is It in a Marathon?  and it’s all about how slow runners are bringing down the marathon and turning it into something it wasn’t meant to be – for the average schmo.

I’m an average schmo and I’m slow.  I take my training seriously.  I do the hills, the intervals, the LSDs.  I do weights, I do yoga and stretch religiously.  I do everything I’m supposed to do to get faster, but I never really do.  Oh, I’ve had my accidental bouts with speed.  Once last winter, as I was cruising down a long hill, I glanced at my Garmin and saw eight-something blip by.  I was all pumped thinking that I was fast, even for a split second.  And, I guess last winter I did see more miles in the nines than previous years’ tens or elevens.  Or my typical 13 or 14 minute miles (haha) from four years ago.  Okay, so maybe I did get faster in the four or five years since I decided to let my addition run rampant (pun intended).  But, really, I highly doubt I will never get fast enough to run a marathon in under five hours.  And it certainly seems as though in the eyes of the author of the article, I have no business participating.

But, I just don’t get it.  What’s really the problem some speedsters have with us slow pokes, anyway?  They start way ahead of us, they don’t have to contend with weaving around us on the course and they finish way before us.  They never have to wonder if there’ll be enough food left at the end.  When they say their finishing time was three hours and bla or four hours and bla, we are in absolute awe.  Holy shit, that’s fast.  Our finishing time, possibly hours after theirs, takes absolutely nothing away from them.  I don’t really see what the problem is.

The U.S. has one of the highest, if not the highest, obesity rate in the world.  I feel slightly embarrassed by that figure.  But, maybe the increasing marathon participation from the slow pokes, means that one or more of those obese folks is taking control of their lives and getting healthy using running as their catalyst.  I can’t even think of a reason why that wouldn’t be a good thing.

Wow, it’s been that long since I’ve blagged.  I didn’t think it was that long so I guess I’ve been busy.  What have I been doing?  Well, we took a trip to Iowa for a few days and did the touristy thing.  That was a lot of fun.  I have a bunch of pictures, but I’ve been too lazy to get them uploaded to my gallery.  One of these days…

Before we left for the Land of Corn and Tractors, Josh and I ran timing for the Miner’s Revenge MTB race.  It’s called the Miner’s Revenge because the race actually goes right through the old Adventure Copper Mine in Greenland, MI.  Our friend James over at Bad Decision Bicyclist was competing and it’s always fun to go to his local races and make fools of ourselves hooting and hollering when he rides by.  This was our first time working rather than spectating and it was a lot of fun.  I was a little bit nervous that a ton of people would cross the finish line all at once and I’d screw up everybody’s time, but the riders were spread out enough that the most we head to deal with was five riders finishing in a clump.

Finally, I’m happy to report that the other thing I’ve been doing is running.  I ended up taking a six-day break because my tendonitis was being pissy, and that turned out to be the smart thing to do because I’m running without much pain now.  It’s not gone completely, but it is about 80% better than it was a week and a half ago. 

I did add a new weapon to my arsenal to get me healthy.  I started taking glucosamine & methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) supplements daily after reading about a fellow blogger’s success with it.  Glucosamine & MSM are commonly used in tandem to treat or prevent osteoarthritis.  Among the many marketing claims of MSM, the most appealing to me were the anti-inflammatory aspects.  Glucosamine can help repair cartilage and joints - not that I’m having those types of issues – but I figured I couldn’t hurt.  So, I started taking the pills containing 1500 mg of glucosamine, 750 mg of MSM eight days ago and either they’re magic or I’m falling for some snake oil trick because I think they’re helping.  Actually, it’s probably the MSM that’s working because that takes about 3 days to kick in.  Glucosamine takes something like 6 weeks.  Anyhoo, after about three days of gulping down these horse-sized pills, I noticed that my left leg didn’t seem as annoyed and some of my swelling also looks to have gone down, too.  The pain on my first run (5 days after starting the pills) was 50% less than compared to my previous runs and each subsequent run has been more and more pain-free.

So, I don’t know if it’s actually the pills or it’s all in my head, but all I know is that I’m running regularly and every run is better than the last.  It’s giving me hope (cut to me looking for some wood to knock on) that I’ll actually be able to do the Appleton HM in September.  For a while there, I was pretty well convinced that I was going to have to pull my entry, which would have really sucked.

Well, until next time…

...but I can still run!

After a three week layoff from running while I was nursing posterior tibial tendonitis and adjusting to my custom orthotics, I started running again on Monday.

The first run went great. There was no pain, not even a twinge. Granted I took it very s-l-o-w and cautious, but it felt great to run without pain. The orthotics felt great - meaning I couldn't even tell I was using them.

The second run felt good as well, but I made a key mistake in the beginning of the run, which I'm pretty sure stuck me back in Podiatrist's office. I ran three blocks downhill. Like straight downhill. As I was about mid-way through the last block it occurred to me that it probably wasn't a smart choice because I could feel the stress on my lower legs more so than before. Wouldn't you know it, toward the end I could feel a little something happening on my inside shin area.

Crap.

Ice, Advil, ice, Advil.

At start of my third run, I felt a twinge. Or maybe something stronger than a twinge. A pinch? Whatever. Anyway, that twinge subsided after about a quarter-mile and I didn't really feel anything until I stopped and then started up again. Then, the twinge hit again. Cue a burning feeling, which is a tell-tale sign that my tendon was on the verge of being pissed off. Fortunately, I was at the end of my run, so I walked home and immediately started my ice, Advil, ice routine.

This morning I woke up and assessed the situation. The burning feeling is still there and is now accompanied by a really tender spot on my shin. So, I called Podiatrist who told me to get my butt into the office ASAP and don't run.

Craaaaaap.

Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment for this afternoon. Podiatrist and I discussed the situation and he agrees with me that it was probably the downhill running that aggrevated my tendon. He made a slight adjustment in my orthotics to give me some more lift in my heel (yay, I'm taller!) and gave me some stuff called CryoDerm, a pain relieving spray that I supposed spray on my leg before I run. I'm also back on the Meloxicam (so long, beer!) to keep the inflammation from getting out of control. Finally, he instructed me that I should do wall-push calf stretches three times/day to keep my calves loose.

Oh, and I'm also supposed to keep up with the icing and try to stay off the pavement.

After discussing all that, Podiatrist and I then had an interesting conversation about the drug Propofol. That's the potent anesthetic Michael Jackson was taking to supposedly help him sleep; the stuff everybody's saying is really hard to get. Apparently the drug companies Podiatrist buys from have started to push Propofol big-time. Cheaply, too, Podiatrist said around $3.50/vial. He can't figure out why they suddenly started to push this drug when he's never used it in his practice before and it's not something he would ever use. The only thing he figured was that this was all fall-out from MJ. I find that to be very bizarre. But, we are talking about Michael Jackson, here, who can probably be summed up by the same word.

He made dang good music, though. Dang good. If I hadn't sold my Thriller and Bad cassettes (yes, I'm that old) at a garage sale last year, I'd totally be jamming out to them right now. Shamon!