Running Chick

I had my first hot run of the season today, and it completely kicked my tail.  You think I’d learn how to manage the heat after many summers of running in it, but I guess I’m just a slow learner.

I woke up at 7:30, thought about going running, and promptly rolled over for another hour of sleep. When I did finally climb out of bed, I put my running clothes on and proceeded to get sucked into “Parking Wars” for the next hour. Or two. By the time I ate and got rest of my running stuff together, it was pushing 11:30 and already over 70 degrees and sunny. Uh oh. The first mile wasn’t too bad because it was in the shade, but the next five were full-on sun with no breeze at all. I didn’t make it any easier on myself by only taking one flask of water, because by the second mile I was already in water conservation mode and only taking small sips here & there. That’s not enough to stay hydrated, for certain, and I was thirsty for the majority of the run.  I took quite a few walk breaks and slowed down considerably and alternatively felt like jumping into or drinking the canal when I was done, but the good news is that those six miles were completely pain free.

I’m still doing two days on the treadmill and one day outside. I’ve slowly bumped up to 3.5-4.0 miles on the treadmill (yuck) and one longer run on the weekend. This week’s mileage was 13.50, which is the most I’ve run since mid-March, and thanks to good old 174, probably the only completely pain-free week of that amount of miles in something like two years. Could even be more, I’m not entirely sure. I’m not planning on taking my weekly mileage too much higher because I’m not training for any races (not allowed to race this year) and I have a ton of house selling work to do so I want to keep my free time as free as possible.

Anyhoo, the weekend we were in Madison for my appointment at the UW Health Runner’s Clinic, we hit up the Madison Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning before heading out of town. It was held right downtown on capital square and it was humongous. Unfortunately, there was so many people around that I didn’t have many good opportunities to snap pictures. I did get a few, however.

Sunflowers were big item at the stands.

In addition to radishes, rhubarb and asparagus were on almost every vendor’s table.

Sea of people.

And finally, a glamour shot of the kitty. Notice the disinterested, vacant yet sexy look? We have some serious modeling potential here, people. Supermodel quality for sure. I should get her an agent like Ice-T and Coco did for their dog.

Next up on the home improvement front: Josh and I attempt to hang wallpaper. Together. Will we both survive?

Alternate titles I came up with for this post:

• It’s Not the Shoes
• Metronomes are for Running?
• Hi, I’m Nancy and I’m an Overstrider

In other words, it’s the results of my UW Health Runner’s Clinic evaluation. The nitty gritty details can be found in the detailed (and pretty awesome) notes that Josh took while I was being bent, twisted, flexed and put through my paces on the most bizarre and potentially unsafe treadmill I’ve ever seen.

Long story short, there is nothing wrong with my foot strike. I am not a over-pronator as I’ve been told by the majority of the running store people and the podiatrist. Nor am I a supinator, as the last running store person told me. I’m completely normal. All the different shoes I’ve purchased over the years to correct this or that have actually done absolutely, positively nothing. I don’t even want to think about how much money I’ve spent trying to fix a problem that didn’t exist.

What I do have is a problem with overstriding and heel striking. Badly. I knew I was always a bit of a heel striker, the soles of my shoes easily proved that, but until I saw myself on the video, I never really knew how much. I should have asked for a copy of the video taken from the side because I could have posted that instead of wasting the last 20 minutes of my day scouring the intertubes for an appropriate image to demonstrate. This was the best I could come up with..

…heel strike, knee locked. So, basically, what’s happening is my heel is acting like a brake and all the impact force is traveling up my leg and manifesting itself in the smaller, weaker muscles. My quads, hamstrings and hips passed all the strength tests with flying colors and they’re absorbing some of the impact, but it’s those lower leg muscles that are sucking the majority of the impact. That’s an overly simplified explanation certainly, but the official analysis was pretty scientific.  The PT drew force vector diagrams, talked about Newton’s Third Law and other physics-related stuff which caused Josh’s eyes to turn to hearts and mine to glaze over.

The good news is that if I change to more of a mid-foot strike, I should be able to get rid of my chronic shin pain. The bad news is that changing my stride is going to be hard, it’s going to take months and I have to start out on the treadmill so I can set a constant speed and focus on the strides. Currently, I’m running at a stride rate of 164 (foot to ground contacts per minute) and I have to bring it up to 174. I get to run three times per week – two runs must be on the treadmill at 174 and the last run I can do outside at any pace just to keep me sane. I’ll start out doing intervals for 3 minutes of strides and 2 minutes stride-free for a couple of weeks, then move to 4:1, then 5:1, etc.  Josh used his geek skillz to make me a 45 minute long mp3 that has the proper intervals, so while everybody else is jamming out to Lady Gaga, Pink and whoever else the kids listen to nowadays, I’ll be listening 3 minutes of “tick-tick-tick-tick-tick” at a tempo of 174 and then 2 minute snippets of songs from the latest Lady Gaga album.

Tomorrow, I’m signing up for a gym membership and it’ll also be my first stride session.  My only hope is that for the next month, it either rains or is super hot & humid on my running days so I’m not so miserable slogging away on the treadmill. Think that’ll happen? Doubtful!

How do you like me title? I was lamenting to Josh about my lack of creativeness when it comes to coming up with one and he said that he never has that problem. So I told him to come up with a title and I’d use it. There ya go.

I am slowly working my way back into running, but I’m not happy about how few miles I’m able to manage. I suppose I should feel glad that I’m able to run at all, but still.  Annoying.  The good news is that this Friday, I have an appointment at the UW Health Runner’s Clinic in Madison, WI.  I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much because, frankly, I’ve pretty much heard loads of professional (sports MD, podiatrist, physical therapist) and non-professional (running store schmos) opinions about my stride/gait/body mechanics and they’ve all been wrong. But, all the same, helping runners run is what these folks do, so maybe I’ll allow myself a little eep of hope. If nothing else, it’ll be a fun time in Madison. We used Priceline to score a crazy good deal on a hotel right downtown and within walking distance from Capitol Square and all sorts of restaurants, shops, bars and museums.  How good of a deal did we get, you ask? Well, we’re paying $44/night for a room that normally goes for around $180. I love Priceline.

It actually felt like it might be officially Spring here in da Yoop on Sunday. Sunny and warm, but not hot. Slightly breezy. Perfect. I decided to brush the dust of the old MTB since the road bike has been seeing all the action this year. I was going to head up to the MTU trails, but I had watched a movie about wood ticks & Lyme disease the night before and I was convinced that I’d come home covered in them, so I decided to bike out to Chassell and back on the trail instead. My trip out was uneventful, aside from coming nose to nose with a skunk. I was riding down the trail, he was running up the trail, I stopped and hoped he’d jump into the bushes and he didn’t stop until he was about five feet from me.  My initial thought was that if I stayed completely still, he wouldn’t see me. When he saw me and arched his back and tail, my next thought was that my co-workers were really going to hate me when I came in all skunky on Monday. You know, up close, skunks are kinda cute. They have teeny little black noses, tiny ears and floofy tails. This one must have been relatively young, because he looked to be quite healthy with his shiny black coat and he was seriously moving when he was heading up the trail. Anyway, he decided that I posed no threat to him and he waddled off into the bushes and off to his next adventure.

Remember my rant about shitty little dogs? Well, on my way back, about halfway between Chassell and Houghton, I got chased by one.  I’ve encountered many dogs on my runs/walks/bike rides and most of them are all bark and no bite. Usually I end up saying hello to them and they come over to get petted and head on their way, or just ignore me once I get past their driveway. I’ve never had one actually chase me and attempt to bite me before until Sunday.  I’m talking snarling, snapping, barking and lunging at my legs. The guy owner was screaming at me to stop “HE DOESN’T BITE!!!!!! JUST STOP!!! STOP!!!!!!!” (interspersed with multiple curse words) but when I unclipped and tried to put my right leg down, the dog lunged at it and I actually felt it’s breath on my ankle, so no way in hell was I putting my foot down. That’d be like giving it a unwrapped Christmas present. So, I figured that since it wanted my leg for lunch, I’d put my shoe in it’s face and it’d bite that and then it might realize my shoe wasn’t all that tasty and that would be the end.  I did that and the owner FREAKED OUT and started yelling about how I was going to kick his dog in the face. By this time, I had slowed down enough so that the lady owner was able to grab the little beast. I stopped and exchanged some choice words at the guy owner. Very choice. BUT! I did not swear. Well, I think I might have used “hell” as in “Hell yes, I was going to kick your dog in the face!” but that’s used so frequently nowadays that I don’t really think it’s even considered a swear word anymore. Anyway,  I told story this to a few people at work and they said I should have called the cops because, really, that dog is dangerous.  Also, it was off the leash and I was one of about a million people using the trail at that time. If it wasn’t me the dog was chasing, it could have very easily been a little kid. I’m sure I’ll be on the trail multiple times this summer, and you’d better believe that if I have another run-in with this same dog and it’s irresponsible owners, I’ll be calling the PoPo.

Se ya’ll after the weekend.