Murphy's Law part Deux

First it was the shin splints, now I'm getting a cold.

It started yesterday with some mild coughing and congestion/soreness in my throat. So, I tried to zap it overnight with some Zicam but woke up feeling pretty much the same.

There's a slim chance it might some kind of allergy thing (pollen is really bad right now) but I don't want to take any Claritin for fear it'll mess with me performance-wise tomorrow.

I had a cold once this year during training (around Mid-February) and I just pushed through it, so hopefully it won't progress much and I can do the same in the morning.

It just figures though, right?

4.86 miles in CH - EZ

4.86 miles at 8.82 pace w/ avg HR of 162

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GPS batteries died on me mid-run (I had to measure the distance via Gmaps Pedometer) so I don't have individual mile breakouts.

Basically I did a long warmup of about 2 miles, then did a 1mile+ at my planned 10k Pace (what felt like it anyway), then a 1mile+ cooldown.

The neighborhood is hilly and my HR was getting up there a few times, and I broke into a very good sweat, so I'm a little surprised (pleasantly) that that avg HR is so low.

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This was the last training run for my BridgeRun "season." I can't say it was exactly confidence-inspiring but it was supposed to be slow and easy and I just tacked on that tempo session in the middle on a whim.

The shin splints I recently wrote about didn't flare up again thankfully. I'd say the cure was a combination of 48hrs rest, the Naproxen Sodium (i.e. generic "Aleve") I've been taking, and the fact that my Brooks Adrenaline ASR's don't give me as much trouble in that area as my other rotation shoes, the Mizuno Inspire 4. I plan to run the race in the Brooks, partly for that very reason.

Oh, I also listened to a motiontraxx (http://www.motiontraxx.com/) podcast (the 180bpm one) for the first time and, while I liked it, I don't think I'm going to use that Playlist for my race this saturday. I think I'll stick to my tried-and-true songs instead. The motiontraxx seemed to mess with my pacing and actually slow me down. Makes sense, since the host said that the beat was set for "about a 9 to 10 min mile 10k" which is considerably slower than I plan to run the race. It'll be great for long training runs (maybe marathon training?) in the future though.

Oh yeah, about that Chest Pain...

I forgot to mention earlier, but that chest pain I posted about on 3/25 just went away on its own. It was gone by Monday of this week entirely. I guess it was just some sort of pulled muscle.

Dreaded Shin Splints

As sure as Murphy's Law allows, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

What's wrong in this case is an injury less than a week from my 10k. Shin splints.

I've never really had much trouble with these in the past, I might get a little soreness during a run, but it would "go away" after I'd warm up. I think I even commented on that very thing in my 2/21/09 entry. They were just one of those things that I never really experienced long term.

Well, either the intensity or the mileage in this training program has caught up with me as I've progressed from having them "go away" to having them late in a long run, to having them the entire run, to having them around the clock. Reading up on some websites explained that this is the exact textbook progression for this "overuse" injury. Right now, as I'm writing this, they are sore, but only if I probe the area (on the inside of shin, right in front of the calf) with my hand/finger.

Doing some more reading (notably at the site below) shows that the best cure is rest, but I don't have that as an option this week. I'm going to go with the 2nd best cure, tapering and anti-inflammatories, and hope for the best.

http://www.watfxc.com/TF/TF%20Education/shin_splints.htm

7.55m on Lost Creek (LSD)

7.55 miles at 8.77 min pace w/ avg HR of 153

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I'm not going to break the mileage out on this one, but suffice to say it was nice and slow and steady for both pace and HR. I had to walk sections in order to keep my pace down as it was wanting to be in the 8.50 range as opposed to 8.92 or so.

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I had some shin splint issues (more on this in a later post) during this run that never went away even after I had warmed up.

Still, this was a good LSD run given that time and those HR numbers. I suppose I could have improved upon it by dropping the HR even further, but I was already walking long sections of it as it was. It also seemed like it hurt my shins more running that deliberate super-slow pace too.

Anyway, last LSD before the 10K.

Weird Chest Pain

I woke up this morning with this weird chest pain. It's on my right side, on the inside of the pectoral muscle, and it only happens when I take in a deep breath. Did some googling and didn't really find anything that fits my symptoms so I'm hoping that it's just a deep muscle pull.

Working out at the gym today didn't seem to help, so who knows.

High Ankle Sprain

On 11/1/08, I rolled my left ankle coming down the stairs at Williams Brice. There was a double step following a series of single steps and I misjudged the distance and landing on the left foot and rolled the ankle outward. I felt a "pop" at the time and remember thinking "oh no, this could be bad. I've been keeping up with my running so well for awhile now and this is going to really set me back."

I was a little surpised as I walked on it right away that there wasn't that much tenderness, even though I still had that sick feeling that I had done something really wrong. I sort of limped around the rest of the game and came home afterwards and went to bed.

The next morning, the ankle had swollen up to the point there was no "definition" to the outer ankle at all and it was pretty stiff and sore. I could still walk fine though.

Using the "ICE" method, I elevated it a lot that day and applied ice (actually a frozen bag of lima beans) whenever possible.

Strangely, my walking was fine with only a small amount of tenderness. Only when I tried to roll the ankle out (as it was injured) did I encounter a LOT of pain.

I ran for the first time 8 days later on 1/9/08, 5 miles really easy-going in about 44 minutes (8.79 pace). Didn't really feel much pain at all while running, just a little stiffness in the shin and front of the ankle because I was probably favoring it. Still, I was encouraged that I could still run.

I ran fairly regularly from that point on...going 2-3 times a week at 4-7 miles each time. Pace seemed to be largely unaffected (8-8.75 min miles)/

I was discouraged that the ankle was still giving me soreness and pain when I attempted to roll it out though, and this endured until right around 2 months post injury. At that point, I saw great improvement for some reason that I can only attribute to my physical therapy that I performed whenever possible. Below is what I did:

Physical Therapy:
Heel lifts - I was doing these already for an injury to this same ankle (on the inside though). These strengthen the tendons but only really work the back (achilles and calf). I d0 20-25 of these at a time. Serves as a good warm up prior to running too.
Stretching - Ankle rolls, achilles stretch, pushing the ankle out/down to the point of mild pain. I started seeing big improvement in my flexibility at the 2 month part.
Ankle "pulls" - Using an elasto-band, position it such that you pull the front part of the ankle towards you and/or to the left/right. These are hard to pull off because it's difficult to anchor the esto-band away from your body, so I didn't do as many of these as I'd like.
Plain old running/walking - I'm pretty convinced that my regular running schedule helped with the healing too, by strengthening the overall ankle area.

It's still not 100%, but I'm okay with where I am now as it's not impeding me from doing anything active-related.