Running Chick

OK, I lied. It’s week 9, but I didn’t know that when I wrote the title. Then I decided that I should stop being lazy and figure it out, so there you go, week 9.

The schedule for week 9 called for five miles on Tuesday, four on Thursday and eleven on Saturday. I was able to do the five (9:57 pace) on Tuesday and that’s it.  My right lower leg is giving me some serious trouble. I’ve got pain in the back, from the heel to the calf and then on the inside, right in the soleus region.  I’ve been stretching, icing, ibuprofening, rolling, massaging, strengthening, trigger pointing, taping, compression sleeving and just about anything else that I read about on the Source of All Self-Diagnosis (aka the internet), but I’m not having much luck. I went back to my PT guy on Thursday for some myofascial release and he found that my right hip was a bit tipped forward (toward the ground) resulting in my right leg being a tad longer than my left. He surmised that because of this, my right leg was taking a considerable beating when I was running and that was probably causing the majority of my troubles.  He worked for quite a while on my hip, quads and calves and everything felt pretty loose and happy when I left. He did warn me that I might feel sore the next day, and I didn’t really believe him (myofascial release therapy isn’t exactly like deep tissue massage or any massage, for that matter), but the next day I certainly was sore. Doh.  I have a bunch of stretches to add to my exiting 40 minute stretch routine and a re-evaluation next Wednesday. Hopefully my hip will stay where it’s supposed to be and everything else will settle back down.

Anyway, it was kind of a bad training week for me. I ran on Tuesday, skipped my XT on Wednesday, then skipped my run/XT on Thursday for PT and dinner with friends. I was really itching to go running on Saturday, but common sense prevailed and I decided to ride the trainer instead. An ninety minutes and four episodes of “Roseanne” later (episodes are around 23 minutes, no commercials on Netflix!), I’d ridden 35 miles.  Here’s me pretending to look all serious trainer ridery while watching Nancy (Sandra Bernhardt) tell Arnie (Tom Arnold) that she likes the ladies. Please excuse my messy house and no, I don’t have aerobars, think I should get some? I think I’d probably kill myself if I tried to use them on the road, but I think I decided they’re a must for long trainer rides.

We spent the rest of the weekend finally getting paint on the walls of the spare bedroom that was gutted & dry walled this fall.  I’m turning it into a workout room so I chose a cheery yellow color because I thought it would put me in a good mood when I was sweating away.  Trouble is, it was like three months ago when I selected the color and I must have been in a really good mood because it’s not just yellow, it’s YELLOW. I sincerely hope it grows on me.  Finally, we watched “The King’s Speech” on Amazon on Demand last night. After all the hype and critical acclaim this movie got, I was expecting it to be really good.  I thought the story was interesting, especially so because it was true, and the acting was really good, but it just didn’t hold my interest and I found it to be quite the snooze. Sorry movie fans, this one gets a thumbs down from me.

Next week, I’m supposed to do 3, 4, and 12 mile runs. I’ll attempt the 3 miler and see how it goes from there.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had enough of this schizophrenic weather we’ve been having. Tuesday, I was out running in a t-shirt and shorts. Yesterday it started to rain, then snow, and today it looks like this:

Since my cupboards are bare, I get to clean this mess off my car and go to the grocery store so we don’t die of starvation.

Scout had been enjoying daily romps on the deck. Now all she can do is stand in the doorway and sniff.

She is not pleased.

Anyway, after ten days off from running and a lot of cross training on the bike trainer, I hit the road again on Tuesday with high hopes. Unfortunately, as is typical with me, I overdid it with the weights the night before and my hamstrings and calves were in high revolt.  I got a very, very slow two miles done and walked the last mile back to my house. That was the day it was almost 70 degrees out, so I had a very pleasant walk home and became one with my ice packs.

I felt much better on Thursday and had an pain-free 3 mile run after work.

I was supposed to run 10 miles on Saturday, but I’m trying to cut back on my mileage while I’m working my way through the shin pain, so I decided five miles would be sufficient. Then I looked outside and saw what is typically knows as a “wintery mix” – an evil combination of freezing rain, ice pellets and snow. A sane person probably would have stayed inside, but I figured I should probably just get out there because you never know what sort of conditions you’re going to have on race day, especially in this neck of the woods, so off I went. I ended up being completely soaked from head to toe, but I did have pretty good run, and had the opportunity of break in these babies:

They’re called Brooks Ravenna and Brooks claims they’re mid way between a neutral shoe (for people who don’t have any pronation issues) and a stability shoe (for people who over-pronate – ankles roll inward).  I’ve been custom fitted by five different running stores and each time, I’ve been deemed either neutral or an over-pronator and I’ve never had the same analysis two times in a row.  So, I can only assume that I’m probably square in the middle of those two classes.  Neutral shoes don’t provide me with enough support and stability shoes give me too much support, so after much reading, I decided on the Ravennas. Plus, they were only like $4, can’t beat that! Before you start emailing me for the coupon code, I got a gift card from Josh for Christmas and then found a 10% off coupon online.  Since they were last year’s model, they were on also super sale. I do loves a bargain.

Well, alrighty, that’s the report for this week. Looking at the week ahead, the plan is to keep on icing, stretching, drugging and massaging and build my mileage back up to normal. Go me.

Spring has finally arrived here in Yooperland. It’s been teasing us for the last month or so with sun and warmish temps, but then Winter decided to give it one last go and we got dumped with heavy, wet snow last Monday. I had about 6” on my deck and a driveway berm that was just about up to the bumper on my truck (thanks, plow guy). We were back to our regularly scheduled Spring temps by mid-week and by Friday, all the snow was gone.

My trainer rides have been going pretty well, but I was not looking forward to doing 90+ minutes on Saturday to replace my 9-mile long run and was very happy to see high 50s in the forecast for Saturday. Road ride, wahoo! I decided to do my usual M-203 to Calumet/Josh’s house route because there’s not a lot of traffic on that road and it’s pretty scenic.

I think I mentioned in previous posts that I was pretty certain that my trainer rides were the reason for dropping one minute/mile on my runs so I was very interested to see if it also rubbed off on my road riding, too. My first clue was when I averaged 17.7 mph to McLain Park when I usually hover right around 13-15 mph. After the park, there’s a little climb.

Well, maybe not so little:

That dang hill goes on for around five miles of forever. There’s a slight dip around mile 15 which always fools me into thinking that the punishment is over and then – ha,ha just kidding! - back to more climbing. My speed and my legs usually take a pretty good beating on this hill, but I was able to keep things moving enough so my average speed only dropped to 14 mph when I finally reached the top. I rolled into Josh’s driveway in 1:25 and in previous rides, it’s been closer to 1:50. I think I can now officially give all the credit to my increased speed to riding my trainer 2 times/week since February. Extra bonus, my legs aren’t sore and neither are other unmentionable parts. Yays all around.  Josh and I puttered around his neighborhood so he could test out some new tires on his bike so my entire ride ended up being around 27 miles. I was going to go for 30, but the bagel I had for breakfast had long worn off and I was seriously hungry, so we ditched the rest of the ride and went to the Michigan House for lunch.

Two more days and then on Tuesday, I get to see how my legs feel about running.