Back at it.

Before all of these leg issues came up, I had agreed to lead out Monday night long easy runs. Knowing that I had agreed to this, I decided to take the weekend really easy on my legs and stretch all I could with the hope that whatever problems I have had will be gone by then. 

One muscle I noticed this week to be very tight through stretching was my left quads (Coincidence that my left knee was hurting?). How did I discover this? In doing quad stretches

(Sweet Photo)

I noticed that my left foot wasn't going any closer than 6 inches from my bottom. Hypothesizing that this may be the route of my leg problem I began furiously warming up and stretching my left leg. 

Sure enough, coming to tonight's easy run, I managed to make it through the full 40 minute 7.3 km run without any pain. I noticed once or twice a slight twinge but never anything more (and I was hyper paranoid so this is good). 

Now I just need to decided how I feel as to whether I decide to run the 5k time trial on Wednesday, I guess time will only tell. 

Note: In that photo, that is poor stretching, ideally you should have a straight line going through your body down to your knee, without arching your back. Here her knee is forward of her hips, this will cause less efficient stretch, you'll feel as though since you've brought your leg all the way in that your getting full stretch potential, but when you push your knee back, you will notice that your hip flexer gets activated in the stretch as well resulting in much better stretch.

And yup, I'm procrastinating writing my grant proposal, you'll probably see a few more updates this week before Thursday is done!

Surprise Surprise

Over the fall and into the winter I've been doing my stretches and rolling on a small ball for my IT bands (Very similar to a foam roller). All along I thought I was doing this pretty well. My physio way back when told me that if I didn't feel pain when rolling on the ball that I was ahead of the game and that I was keeping my IT bands loose.

Well something I never thought about, little exercise ball, loses air over time. Its not that it was flat, however, it was definitely not as firm as a in the summer. Result being it wasn't applying the same pressure as it used to.

All this to say, I pumped up the little devil last night and did a 15 minute warm up on my bike then stretches for 45 minutes. YOWZA! That little ball brought back the pain. I guess this is a good thing because it means I'm stretching properly again and not just wasting my time. But yikes, sometimes I wonder.

So let that be a lesson for any of you out there, a lot of stretches you learn to do properly at physio and then month down the road you notice your not really getting a stretch anymore. Is this because you've stretched it out so well that your not tight? That definitely doesn't describe any triathlete I know, so take a step back and look at your technique, make sure your still doing it properly, you'll be surprised with how quickly the stretch comes back.

Annoying

Training today was fairly simple, hour swim followed by an easy run this evening. Unfortunately I noticed a small pain in my knee on Monday which is what led to the Training In Fear post. Having skipped the run last night because my Aunt and Uncle were in town and we went to dinner, I had hoped that any pain in my knee would be gone with 2 full days recovery.

Unfortunately that wasn't the case. I got about 1km into my run today, and noticed the pain in exactly the same spot. Although I would refer to this pain as "mild" since it was exactly the same as Monday I figured it was better not to try my luck and call it a day. On that note, I will be scaling down my run workouts. I think jumping into this half marathon training may have been a little much. 

What's annoying about this is that I spent all afternoon preparing for this run, eating well, hydrating, even shuffled my work schedule around to be able to make it, and only got 1km out before turning back. BOO!

On another note. My run coach from MTC, Richard MacKenzie sent out a few weeks ago a training log. My roommate upon seeing this really liked the idea and decided to mimic the exact same thing on google documents. That way he can access it from wherever. I've copied suit and now you can all track my progress as it goes, since I'm often late putting up my training mileage.

Two ways of checking, you can either keep referring to this post and clicking HERE. Or at the very top of the main page of the blog, there is my training mileage and underneath says DETAILS. Click that and it will bring you right to my spreadsheet. I will ask you not to input your own data though because I haven't figured out how to make it view only. If for whatever reason you accidentally hit something. Don't worry, I've got it all backed on my computer anyways. So enjoy! And feel free to copy it for yourselves as well. To do so, simply click File, Save as Copy and give it your own title.

Talk to you later, time for some reading and then sleep.

Masterful Meal Creation!

Yum Yum Yum

Two days ago I was making one of my staple meals, pierogies but decided to try and spice them up a little bit. Not knowing exactly how I was going to achieve this I started looking through the fridge. Lo and behold I had leftover taco meat from a fantastic Taco Fiesta I hosted on Sunday night.

So I boiled the pierogies, and when it came to the frying point I threw them into a wok with the taco meat and onions. Yum Yum Yum!

As you can see by my thumbs up, I approve. 1000 Calories of deliciousness.

I often try and do this, mix and match my meals, one time I had just made bacon and was making pierogies for lunch the next day. Deciding since they were Bacon flavored pierogies, I would fry them up in a thin layer of bacon grease. Although delicious for the first one, as they cooled the bacon grease started to congeal making them slimy and gross. I don't recommend. The thought of what was happening inside my body was frightening.

At least taco pierogies is one for the success books.

WOW!

A friend just sent me this photo of Vancouver taken sometime over the last week with the fog from I'm guessing Grouse mountain. Unfortunately I don't know who took it to give credit where its due.

SUPAMOTION!

I had somewhat of a first today, or at least a first in a very long time. A friend of mine, Choppy Somjee (Chops) is a physical trainer, and is focusing his expertise in the field of triathlon. I met Choppy this summer as I was traveling the West Coast with his girlfriend Jody. Once we met the three of us became the triathlon trio who travelled to races together ripping up the Subaru series. This afternoon he agreed to give me a training program of gym exercises geared towards my weaknesses. 

Weaknesses? What? I have none! 

Well Chops would disagree with me, we discovered that I am heavily quad loaded, meaning what? That my quads do all the load bearing without any help from my glutes and hamstrings. We must have done 4-5 exercises before finally finding one that activated my hamstrings. Result of which, Chops has given me some drills that will be bringing the pain. 

On top of this, he has also given me a few to strengthen my back in order to hopefully fix my posture a little bit. I didn't mention this much but one of my new years resolutions was to straighten out my back and to have general better posture.  Hopefully some of these targeted workouts will help out with this.

I unfortunately don't know his professional contact information yet, however, if you hadn't guessed SupaMotion Fitness is Choppy's company that is ever expanding across the Greater Vancouver Area. You'll be hearing about him and the company a lot more through me and I'm sure the active (Triathlon) community. He is in the progress of changing his website so some of the links aren't up. I'm really excited about the prospect of incorporating this type of training into my workouts. We both agreed that this is the area of my training which is seriously lacking and holds the most potential for progress! I'll be sure to keep you all updated on how it goes.

I know I talked it over with my roommate Rob Eso and he agreed, gym workouts could really benefit us both.

First gym workout is on Thursday, LEGS! 

Bringing on the pain.

Training in Fear

I've come to realize these past few month that I've been training in fear. I don't really know how to explain this, but ever since the marathon I've been shaken up.

Every workout I do I hold back, worrying that giving it that extra little oomph my be the move that takes me out. I had somewhat diminished this thought from my mind over the fall and into the holidays because I wasn't training all that much, however, now that I've amped up my training, specifically with running I'm feeling little aches and pains which make my mind scream out catastrophe. Is this normal? Is it just that I'm getting older and my body doesn't rebound like it once did? 

Yikes!!! At 23 am I already starting to head over the hill? I sure hope not. Over the past couple years after a hard back to back workouts I would hear people joke about being young. I think these days are starting to catch up to me.

Or maybe I'm simply demanding more out of my training than I ever have before. Where as I would do two back to back practices, they were filled with junk effort where as now I would like to think every workout is more focused on improvement. Is it simply maturity setting in that I am thinking more into the future rather than simply about my aches and pains in the now?

I think its necessary to have some reservations when training, that being said I'm planning on cutting out some of my run practices to air on the safe side rather than be aggressive. A quote one of my coaches from McGill Triathlon Club gave me and I'll always remember (Unfortunately I can't remember which coach told me!) was

"You will never win a race by doing one practice, however, you can lose one."

This is kinda my modo, if I'm going to mess up my training I rather it be on the low side and have to dig deep in a race rather than be burnt out before it even starts. 

Reading in the Bowerman biography in the chapters about Steve Prefontaine, Kenny Moore (author) describes two aspects of Pre which allowed him to succeed, first was pure natural ability, but the second he was able to push and hurt more than anyone else on the track. Now throwing modesty to the wayside, I consider this to be one of my strength, during races I hit pace times that I can't will myself near during practice, but only if I haven't burnt out before the race. If I'm feeling a tinge of injury I wimp out.

What are the thoughts of some of my more veteran athletes? Is this a normal progression training in fear? Does this hold you back?