165 posts tagged “running”
Bad news #1 is that as of December 2008 my right hamstring was still bothering me. For a quick recap... In December 2007 my doctor diagnosed a "grade 1" hamstring strain. Six weeks of PT I still had pain but was cleared to run. It never quite healed. My goal to run the Wild West 100K in August 2008 was nixed.
It was last October that I injured my right hamstring. I took some time off from running but on Thanksgiving day 2007 I went for a run only to return with my leg more sore than ever, so I went to the doctor.
Both the primary doctor and the physical trainer diagnosed the injury as a "grade 1" hamstring strain: there was no acute injury, no bruising and no palpable tears.
After a month of therapy the PT was satisfied that I was almost fully healed and he cleared me to go running again, albeit it slowly. I still couldn't run a moderate pace without pain but the PT was certain that my hamstring was just sore, not injured. During treatment he was amazed at the strength in my leg, so I figured all was good.
It hasn't turned out that way. Although I've managed to log 255 miles so far this year that's a far cry from the 1018 that I ran in 2007, the latter which includes zero miles in December. In fact I was averaging about 100 miles per month in 2007 before the injury compared to 23/mo this year.
In part that's due to being cautious with the leg - I took up inline skating and added more cycling to reduce the impact stress on the hamstring. But it's also due to the hamstring itself. While I can run without pain for up to 3 miles, my hammy still gets sore during a run if I go faster than a 9:00 pace or if I exceed 3 miles; plus, it gets mildly sore after a run of any distance.
It's certainly better than a year ago, but shouldn't it be healed by now? My doctor seems to agree. When I saw him last week we were talking about his own injury - last year he ruptured his achilles tendon playing basketball almost the same time that my hamstring acted up. He's back to playing basketball although less than 100%, but when we considered that my "grade 1" strain is still limiting me after the same recovery time, it's a bit concerning.
So now I have an appointment with an orthopaedist in a couple weeks to see if there's something else going on, and I've pretty much shut down my running again. Yeah, I'm a bit bummed but the worst part is that with winter here, inline skating and cycling are no longer options. I'm finally starting to notice a significant decrease in endurance when I go hiking with the dogs, and my resting heart rate is now 64 instead of the "in shape" 54 and the 57 that it's been this summer.
All I can think to do is try swimming. Although it's indoors, it sure beats sitting on a stationary bike. Since the local health club offers monthly rates that are reasonable, I'm planning to start swimming in December and if I need any rehab from the ortho, the club will have equipment there I could use, too.
One problem: I'm not a swimmer! Sure I *can* swim but I've never sustained a continuous swim for longer than a couple minutes. Treading water I can do of course, but boy is it hard to breathe doing a front crawl! I can never get the timing right. Another issue is goggles - I have 20/400 vision without contacts and I'd like to wear them in the pool if possible, but past experience with goggles has been that they leak.
Are there any swimmers out there who can give me some advice?
With luck I'll maintain my fitness in the water and by the time spring rolls around, I can get out onto the roads and trails again!
A few days ago Lisa wrote about choosing her "voting outfit", explaining a desire to dress according to the significance of her vote and the election. It was a new and interesting thought and in part, it inspired me to be conscious of my outfit this morning.
Imagine this: it's Michigan, it's November, it's pitch dark outside, and it's 50 degrees!
Taking advantage of the weather I decided to run to Lowell city hall to vote! In my own way, I dressed for the occasion wearing the same outfit that I wore for Bailey's Doggie Dash, minus the hat and gloves (and the dog!)
City hall is only half a mile from home but I took a slight scenic detour to enjoy the weather and the remaining brown shades of fall leaves. After voting I ran home for a total of 2.1 miles. Considering that I arrived at about 06:50 Eastern Time, I may well have been the country's first voter who ran to and from the polling booth!
Lowell has always conducted smooth elections, one of the benefits of small town living. In past elections I've arrived at 7:15 and was the 15th or so voter in my precinct. Today when Amanda and I got in line (Amanda drove and met me at city hall) I remarked to her that I estimated about 50 people in line in front of us.
Only 20 minutes later I was sliding my ballot into the machine, which reported back to me that I was voter #51... Am I good or what? My estimate was right on! :)
The coolest thing about voting this morning was that despite 50 folks crowded into a small hallway, everyone was friendly, helpful, and cheerful. There we were, roughly half of us about to "officially disagree" with the other half via our ballots, yet we were all neighbors first and Democrats or Republicans somewhere further down the priority list.
My dad has boasted of (and subsequently often playfully ridiculed for) his high school strategy for popularity: tell jokes. He discovered that even if only 1 in 10 jokes are actually funny, people will consider you a fun person to be around. Whenever someone tells a bad joke, we say "that was one of dad's other nine". :)
The relevance of this is that standing in line waiting to enter the doorway into the room full of voting booths, it reminded me of elementary school when some rooms were converted into "haunted houses" for Halloween - we were all standing there eagerly waiting our turn to enter this mysterious and magical area.
It must've been dad's genes - for some reason I expressed my observation aloud. To my surprise, everyone around me in line busted out into laughter! I hadn't thought it was that funny of a comment, but maybe it helped alleviate some of the inherent tension of the voting process by evoking a sub-consciously uncanny parody of our situation.
After all, there's an element of spookiness because the whole process is necessarily secretive. Yet we all are eager to participate, sneaking into our walled-off booth, inscribing our coded opinions, stealing glances at friendly strangers who may or may not agree with each other, and walking out into the real world to start a regular day at the office.
Boo! :)
...is what Vox and I have in common! *
Haven and I ran our fourth Bailey's Doggie Dash 5K a couple weekends ago, finishing with our slowest time ever. Don't worry, we had a lot of fun - the slowness was expected since I've done barely any running lately. The hamstring is feeling much better - and caused no problems at the Doggie Dash - so I've been limiting my running frequency to "just enough to keep me sane" levels.
The race report is over on my other blog. Long ago I wrote about wanting to combine my article-type posts onto one blog rather than a few, which I've done there on Blogger but I've been rather lazy about getting the archives updated. I'm continuing to use Vox as my "personal" blog (not that my other one is "professional" by any means) for fun stories, opinions, family stuff, etc.
The photo above is one of my favorites from this year's Doggie Dash but which I didn't include on the other blog. It seems to have a more calm, reflective tone to it compared to the other shots of Haven and I during the race. Of course if you like great photos of dogs and fall colors, check out Amanda's Flickr album of the Doggie Dash.
* Seriously, is it just me or has Vox been occasionally going retro - as in dial-up speed - in the past few weeks?
Michael Phelps is the new "Mike" and one of my favorite moments was his interview aired this morning on NBC when they asked Phelps about his plans. He said "I miss my dog! I want to go home and see my dog."
While Phelps has a good excuse for not seeing his dog, I don't have a good one for not writing. I've been in a prolonged writer's block in a way - not for a lack of ideas and topics as I have several half-written articles laying around, but in the evening when I have the most time to write, I have the least energy to do so. I can't figure out why, but one possibility is a lack of running has messed with my energy/metabolism/something in my system?
Anyway, for those who are curious, a chronological rundown of some highlights lately:
- 23 July - My last run; since then have only skated twice and cycled twice.
- 26-27 July - Along with Amanda, my parents, my uncle, and my cousins and aunt, we helped said aunt build her new deck. Two long days in clear-sky sun were pretty tiring and somehow my hamstring got sore doing this work, which prompted the break from running.
- 02 August - Amanda and I watched some of the Ada Criterium inbetween reorganizing the Critter Cottage. We moved literally 1-2 tons of food plus shelving, etc. That evening we drove to Kalamazoo to attend a party with one of Amanda's friends.
- 03 August - Amanda's parents drove out to help us finish up at the Critter Cottage, which looks amazing now that we've taken lots of products off of the floor and put them up onto the walls.
- 04 August - We took Haven and Beacon to the beach on Lake Michigan and had a blast. The dogs tried out our new Ruff Wear float coat and the liked how it keeps their head a bit higher above the water, especially with all the big waves. Haven joined me on the ankle-deep sandbar about 70 yards out and I learned that I'm no Michael Phelps - I raced Haven back to shore and she kept up with my freestyle!
- 12-13 August - Two all-day off-site meetings for my new project at work, which looks like it will be a lot of fun.
- 13 August - Attended a city council public work session with 50 other residents for a highly contentious issue about money, of course. When it was clear that nobody was moving towards a resolution I spontaneously stepped to the podium... Apparently I rambled a bit in my speech but it seemed to help everyone refocus and someone even suggested I run for city coucil!
- 15 August - Went inline skating with Haven! Using a new Ruff Wear roamer leash helped and Haven loved the fast running, but boy did she ever get tired! We managed 4 miles at about 8 mph average so she's been resting this weekend.
I suppose some folks can do that all at once, but for me that happens to be the average between the total "on foot" and total "on wheels" miles this year. Normally I'd never bother to look for such an average but right now, it happened to be obvious.
You see, my total running miles are 227.4 on the year. The total "wheeling" (biking and skating combined) miles are at 227.6 total. Yes it's a bit nerdy to be fascinated by this, but still, what are the odds?
Sadly, at this point last year I had run 715 miles... Injuries suck. On the bright side, though, I cycled only 229 miles for all of 2007 and from 1976-2007 I had inline skated zero miles. :)
Speaking of numbers and geekiness, about a month ago I was driving home from work and noticed that my car's odometer was at 73073 miles, and the temperature (displayed right below the odo) was 73 degrees! Earlier this week it was 74 degrees and guess what, the car's odometer read 74444.
Yep, I'm one of those people that can't help but to notice idiosyncrasies like that.
4th of July weekend I set out for the fourth time in my new inline skates; my previous three sorties carried me 7.5, 7.5, and 5 miles. I figured it was time to stretch into the double digits so I drove over to the White Pine Trail and laced up the boots.
Almost three hours later I arrived back at the car after covering 33.4 miles! I felt great - yes, I was definitely tired, and my heart rate had been 150-170 (that's above "easy run" range for me) the whole way - but I was nowhere near toasted. My quads felt a bit crampy over the last half hour but not painful. Before setting out I was confident that I could finish 30+ miles, but I never thought I'd cover it in 2:58 and still have some pep left over.
Last Sunday I talked Amanda into joining me on the White Pine Trail again, but instead of skates she was riding her bike. The night before she kept telling me "I think I only want to go to Rockford" (that's an 8 mile round trip) and I assured her that we'd just go until she got tired then turn around since it's uphill going north and downhill back south.
After riding and skating for an hour I asked her to check her bike computer and it read 10 miles, but we hadn't turned around yet! I knew that Amanda had been selling herself short the night before. We continued on since Amanda felt OK still, but within a couple miles she wanted to turn around. I pressed her on for another mile since then we could say we did a marathon.
And we did, going 26.8 miles in 2:31 although strangely I felt more tired than after my 33-miler. Amanda totally bonked at the two-hour mark and we inched along for about 10 minutes until her system finally rebooted and we cruised back to the car.
As impressive as it felt to be skating along at 11 mph for 2-3 hours, it blows me away that elite runners would've dusted me! I skated a 2:30 marathon and folks out there can run that same distance in less time. Wow.
...has come to an end! Leaned up against my shelf of running shoes are these "shoes":
With cross training as a perfect excuse, I figured now is the time to try off-ice skating. After lots of research I finally settled on the K2 Moto 90, which has large 90mm wheels. Most "fitness skates" have 70-80mm wheels but I wanted something that could handle rougher terrain, "rough" as in road shoulders compared to "smooth" pedestrian paths. I choose K2 over Rollerblade since only K2 sells a size 14 to fit my boats.
So far I have about 20 miles of skating underfoot and I'm definitely still learning - I have to remind myself to stay within my limits! Inline skating is quite different than ice skating:
-- The wheels build up angular momentum, requiring more energy for starting and stopping
-- One can't do a 'hockey stop" and that little pad on the heel barely slows things down
-- The "blade" is heavier, longer and taller than a metal ice blade
-- Ice doesn't have hills!
Overall inline skates are easy to use, but by far the most difficult thing is controlling speed, especially coming to a stop, which can be quite critical obviously. :) No falls yet, but I'm sure it'll happen. Yes, I do wear my bike helmet!
Skating requires a similar aerobic effort to running, whereas cycling doesn't require quite as much heart rate. Due to the speed of skating, though, it's tougher to maintain a *tempo* paced effort since at those higher speeds I too often have to slow down to make a turn or avoid an obstacle, allowing me to coast and recover some HR. Otherwise, though, it's a superb workout and best of all, my legs feel great afterward! No pounding, so after 45 minutes of skating I feel like I could easily go for another hour. However, the next day I sure do feel sore all over!
What can I say... It's been eons since I last posted here and this will only be a "here's what I've been doing" update, but I figured it's better than remaining off the radar.
I'm still setting up my "new" blog. With Amanda and I moving our old Why Dogs? blog to 2 Feet 4 Paws, I was left with just Why Run? and Vox. One problem with Vox is that it's more of a "social" service than a "publishing" one, and Facebook works better as the former. Vox is still cool as a personal blog for stuff like I'm doing right here, so I'm going to re-start my original havybeaks blog on Blogger as a platform for my "articles" on various topics like running, flying, etc. Problem is, I'm having trouble finding time to write good articles...
Last week I went on a business trip to Cincinnati on short notice and I still don't have a company laptop yet so during my three days in Cincy I had no email access. Ten years ago that would be no big deal but next time I'm sent somewhere, I better be connected with more than a pad of paper! Not only did it limit my contributions during the meetings, it also prevented me from keeping pace with my outside-of-work life...
Mach League, the fantasy baseball league that I run, is way behind schedule. Three weeks ago was our monthly stat update that happens every four weeks, so I'm close to getting lapped by my own procrastination. Unfortunately, my title of "League President" is by definition a *fantasy* job, which means that my real jobs of "engineer" and "pet store owner" take precedence...
2 Feet 4 Paws is still chugging along thanks to Amanda and we're *still* trying to re-arrange the store layout to fit more products. Finding a means to display items that a) is attractive, b) is cheap, and c) can use the odd-shaped and small space that we have has been a challenge. I think we know what to do now, though...
However, I don't know what to do about running, specifically my long-time goal of running the 100K in early August. Believe it or not my right hamstring is STILL not 100% and I'm having doubts that a) I can put in enough training to do more than hike 100K, or b) my hamstring can last for 100K. It's not that I can't run on it, in fact I can maintain a 9:00 pace without problems, but going under 8:00 per mile is too fast for the hammy. Running on back-to-back days is not feasible yet so my training consists of a weekend long run plus one mid-week short run; that's it. Plus, the long runs tend to wear out the hamstring so I've replaced a couple long runs with long bike rides...
Cycling is a lot more fun with a bike computer - simply having a way to track distance and time is such a luxury! It's better than using mapmyrun every time, especially when my two long rides were 37 and 40 miles each. Ever since middle school I've wanted a pair of inline skates and I may have convinced Amanda to finally let me buy some. Now I'm going to hear more of her begging for a new digital SLR but I've still got that kayak up my sleeve that I've been pining for so I can match her beg-for-beg. :) Right now I'm leaning towards the K2 Moto 90...
My hope is that they'll be an effective cross-training tool. Cycling is great but it's hard to get my HR above 150 without burning out the quads in short order. One odd thing about the hamstring is that heavy impact makes it sore, e.g. stomping on a shovel to dig dirt. Running downhill also stresses the hammy, perhaps due to impact, perhaps due to higher turnover? I don't get it, but hopefully skating falls aerobically between cycling and running...
Viruses can affect aerobic performance; after my bad case of the flu in February I somehow caught a fever in April - rarely have I ever been sick twice a year. Both times my resting HR went up to around 64 from it's usual 54; in fact it had only gone back to 58 by the time I got sick a second time. Right now I'm at 59...
Viruses also afflict computers and I spent countless hours the past two nights fixing Amanda's computer. Some kind of spyware got on board and fooled SBC/Yahoo/AT&T/insert-dot-com-merger-name-here (they provide our DSL service which includes anti-spy and anti-virus). The anti-spy found most of the evil files but not all (yes, the definitions were up to date) and one would remain hidden and re-install the malware just minutes after deleting it. I finally killed it by downloading Microsoft's "malicious software tool" which found just one file, but it was that pesky installer that the others couldn't nab. So far so good...
I didn't want to end on a sickly note so I saved the best for last. While in Cincinnati I got to visit our friends Kim and Tony who live just minutes from the hotel where I stayed. They treated me to a home-grilled dinner and even some fancy ice cream (it's a famous Cincinnati brand but I forgot the name). I got to meet their new daughter Kate for the first time, who only likes wearing winter boots inside the house during summer. :) After Kate went to bed we shared some great conversation about baseball, airplanes, and of course dogs...
I also met for the first time their two golden retrievers, Zeke and Nellie, who are apparently cut from the same nutty cloth as Haven and Beacon. Nellie is the boss and likes to play-fight with Zeke by literally sitting on his head! I brought a couple toys for them from our store and Nellie promptly stole Zeke's toy but once he got it back he didn't set it down again, not for one second! By the time I left a few hours later he was falling asleep with the plush salamander still safely in his mouth.
I don't know what the deal is but it seems whenever I go running around town these days, I stumble upon a major crime scene in action!
Last month I ran past the scene of a bank robbery were the perpetrator had left a (later to be determined phony) bomb before making his getaway on a bicycle, of all things.
This morning I was out running at 4:30am - for some reason I woke up early. It was a great run - super peaceful with no cars on the road and nobody awake. I did see a giant flat-screen TV turned on in one house but as I ran by I saw that the "viewer" was sound asleep under a blanket on the couch. I wonder how much electricity they burned by leaving that thing on all night? It lit up the whole living room.
Speaking of lights, as I turned on to Main Street I saw some flashing red lights in the distance. I was wearing my glasses instead of my usual contacts, and my glasses being several years old my vision isn't as good with them. At first I thought there was a new four-way flashing stop light but that seemed odd. I decided to run towards the lights and see how close I could get - I couldn't even tell how far away they were.
Turns out they were just half a mile away - it was a large fire truck blocking the road with flares! Actually the flares were little flashing lights sitting on the pavement, flares for the digital age... just like the blinking LED I was wearing on my head! As I approached the intersection a fireman got out of the truck - figuring that he got out of his warm cab just on my account, I simply said "Good morning!" and he responded the same, and I decided to not bother him by asking what was going on. It must've been a big deal, though, because M-21 is a state highway and they wouldn't close it without a compelling reason.
Last time Amanda figured out the cause of my crime scene encounter, and this occasion was no exception. When Amanda finally woke up at 7:00am she told me that there was a standoff just down the road! Some guy apparently chased some women out of their house with a gun but a baby got left behind. The police even used some kind of robot to approach the house for reconnaissance. It was all going on as I ran by (but I never saw or heard a thing) so no wonder the fireman made sure I wasn't about to cross his barricade!
What is going on with Lowell these days? I wonder what crime will be transpiring a month from now when I'm out running through town? I better get a police scanner...
