Back on (the) Track

So Thursday night, I'm not ashamed to admit it, I woke my spouse up, because I was sleep crying. I was crying in my sleep. I tried to stand up and thought about screaming. Both calves were tight and burning. It felt as though someone had skewered me through my lower legs. Had I smelled onions, I would have known, I am a kebob.

Which brings me to my first bit of running advice. If you've taken a week off for an illness, and you run four miles, then have a chance to drive three hours to visit old dear friends and stay up until five in the morning drinking wine, even though that's just about when you normally get up . . . do it. Every time. Your calves will heal.

That being said, I took Friday and Saturday off for all of those reasons: my calves hurt, and I was recovering from being me but thinking I was me from fifteen years ago.

Sunday:

I ran my Cable Lane 7.75 (1:00.45) -- something about me said I should try to get in under an hour, even though I haven't yet done that. I was close, and that was good, considering my last week and a half.

Monday:

Ran a new loop about four miles (32:15). I think I'm trying to convince myself that my recovery pace is an 8:00-minute mile. And that might be necessary for our Cleveland Marathon goal (3:30.00).

Tuesday (today):

I ran a twenty minute warm up, then ran 10 X 800 meter repeats with a 200 meter jog between each. My last half-mile repeats are here. Here's my splits:

Lap 1:(1:32).     Lap 2:(1:36).     800: (3:09).
Lap 1:(1:32).     Lap 2:(1:39).     800: (3:12).
Lap 1:(1:38).     Lap 2:(1:36).     800: (3:15).
Lap 1:(1:33).     Lap 2:(1:37).     800: (3:11).
Lap 1:(1:37).     Lap 2:(1:38).     800: (3:16).
Lap 1:(1:39).     Lap 2:(1:34).     800: (3:14).
Lap 1:(1:35).     Lap 2:(1:37).     800: (3:13).
Lap 1:(1:36).     Lap 2:(1:37).     800: (3:14).
Lap 1:(1:37).     Lap 2:(1:34).     800: (3:12).
Lap 1:(1:36).     Lap 2:(1:36).     800: (3:13).

If we don't count the anomalies (3:09 and 3:16), I could say that my mean was 3:13 +/-2: I feel very good about that. Looks like my average is 3:13. I admit it, I'm very pleased about those times. I might run this workout once more before my taper towards May 20. Or I might not, but I think when I pick my training back up in June, I'll have to rethink my goal: it had been 3:15 average.

The good news is my recent injury / illness hasn't necessarily hurt my training terribly. It set my confidence back, and I'm worried, still, about the long run, and my recovery time has increased, but my speed has actually continued to improve slightly.

So, again, never pass up a chance to visit dear old friends.

Long Time, No Run

Now, just because I haven't run for a week and a half doesn't mean that I've been completely inert. My back still hurts, but it's getting better daily, and I think I should be out on the road again in a few days. In the meantime, for the injured, there are other things we can do: stretches, yoga, meditation. Most importantly, I think would be continuing to eat well.

Me, I'm not doing any of that stuff. I see the value in it. If I had a pulpit, I would preach it. I find myself, rather, wallowing around feeling stupid, as well as bad for myself. Also, I'm overeating. I had two ice cream sandwiches the other night, and for breakfast this morning, I ate the four Hershey-kisses sugar cookies my daughter was saving from Valentine's Day.

I have been walking to work when possible, so that's good, and I still always take the stairs (luckily the elevator in my building is broken, but I also take the stairs because elevators seem so unnatural). I certainly, meanwhile, could be doing calf raises each day or maybe some light upper-body workouts. But suddenly, when I'm not running, I've been acting as though I hardly have time to blink, let alone add workouts.

Does this make me a bad person? I don't think so. Just a bad runner. I mean, I probably shouldn't have eaten my daughter's cookies because she might want them when she wakes up, but the extra calories and utter lack of protein do not speak to my humanity. I think it's too easy to conflate what we do with what kind of person we are, and I find that about myself. In fact, I've been feeling all kinds of negative feelings about myself lately, thinking I'm hardly worthy of all this really fantastic carbon I've been blessed with, and that's been bringing me down in general. It's a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and I wasn't even thinking about my life as such until this moment in the blog. In fact, I wasn't even thinking about writing a post this morning, but now, I'm glad I did. I'm going to make a salad for lunch. I was saving the cupcake that my daughter thought she was saving for herself, but I'll eat my salad instead.

Truth be told, and this is no big surprise to anybody who had been following my blog from before. It's clearly my own fault that I got injured. I was adding unnecessary challenges to my daily workouts, increasing the intensity and distance of my maintenance runs, while I bulked up on everything else as well. It was stupid. I know that. I thank everybody who didn't point that out to me, that it was my own fault. The stupidity of it is also part of the reason I've been feeling like a dweeb lately. But again (and I know this, we all know this), what the stupidity amounted to was poor training in theory and practice. The stupidity does not speak to my self worth as a human being.

*     *     *

Not posting an 11-Day Tally -- no reason to make myself feel worse.

Still Still Injured

This is not an unfamiliar injury for me, I admit it. I started having back problems when I was thirteen, when I stopped playing Atari and joined cross country, wrestling, and basketball during their respective seasons. I'll have to direct you to my chiropractor for more specific details about what was wrong with my back, but I can say that by the time I got through high school, I was generally used to having some sort of ache going on above my ass and below my crown (the crown of my hair, of course, my real crown has not yet arrived in the mail, even to this day).

I quit those sports and snowboarded for a year. I quit that and worked at the mill. I started writing poetry at a cramped antique desk underneath a heavy duty word processor. I worked for a mason. I worked at another steel mill. I did other things. All the while, some sort of ache -- at times more serious than others.

I only mean to say, by all this, that my back is not so terribly bad this week, but it's showing potential to be much worse. I have the luxury of taking a few days off or a week off without destroying my training entirely, and I am taking advantage of that, but pain is embarrassing. Especially pain that has no outward and physical proof.

My back feels better every day, even though I continue to do stupid things like pick up my daughter when she falls asleep on the couch, and (though I could easily set her on the hardwood floor and push her to her room and roll her into her bed) I carry her around and tuck her in (though, again, I could easily just drop a whole bunch of towels and stuffed animals on her -- I mean the house is already pretty warm).

I suppose this is one of the most frustrating feelings for anybody who's injured -- the ways in which the injury affects not only our athletic pursuits, but also our day-to-day activities. It's lame, and I hate not being able to do the things I'm supposed to do like beat the kids at ping pong. They deserve that from me, don't they? At least if I had crutches, they might feel a little more like I'm injured and not just worried that one day soon they will be better than I at ping pong.


Still, a friend did rescue me from my continuing self pity by insisting that I go for a walk with him yesterday. I realized that the brisk walk did not aggravate my back the way a run would, so I'm going to have to start figuring out some reasons why I can't go for walks until my back is better or else I'm going to look foolish in retrospect.

Eleven Day Tally 

Thursday: -----
Friday: 4.0
Saturday: 4.0
Sunday: 9.9
Monday: 4.0
Tuesday: 4.0
Wednesday: -----
Thursday: -----
Friday: -----
Saturday: -----
Sunday: -----
Monday: -----

Previous:172.5 miles
Year To Date: 172.5miles.

Running Days: 31
Days off: 13


Ugh, and that eleven-day tally was so beautiful just a week ago.

Still Injured

I'm guessing I'll be out of commission for another few days. My back feels somewhat better, but still quite sore. While I stand beside my initial comment that being injured is dumb, I'm trying to maintain a positive attitude, trying not to punish myself for taking time off. Traditionally, that is, when I've been hurt in the past, I go to the other extreme of health -- I seek out fast food and buy gallons of ice cream; I stay up too late and slouch through the hallways; I grow despondent and blame the world for my own shortcomings.

Today, though, I'm willing myself to have a better attitude about the whole mess. Always a fan of the fake-it-till-you-make it approach to most things in life, I'm going to think of this nonrunning time as a stretch where my body can recuperate in full -- not just my back injury but all the little creaks and groans that have been coursing around for the past month and a half. When I start back up, I plan to be stronger and more focused than I was three days ago.

Meantime, I really wanted to run last night -- it had been a long day at the end of a long week, and I wanted to sweat some of it out. Avoiding an extra thousand calories of cookies yesterday was a major success. I expect you all are applauding this moment, so I'll give pause until that passes . . .


 . . .


. . . and you all are doing great as well. In fact, this weblog has helped me notice other runners in the world, helped me to see so many folks on the roads and biketrail and sidewalks around town. It has also helped me see so many facebook friends who are updating running logs and including workouts in their statuses (or is that stati?). So good on you all. Another round of applause.

Eleven Day Tally 

Monday: 3.4
Tuesday: 4.0
Wednesday: 16.0
Thursday: -----
Friday: 4.0
Saturday: 4.0
Sunday: 9.9
Monday: 4.0
Tuesday: 4.0
Wednesday: -----
Thursday: -----
Friday: -----

Previous:172.5 miles
Year To Date: 172.5miles.

Running Days: 31
Days off: 10

Running tip for the injured: red tea, keep drinking it. Apparently the stuff's good for you whether you're training for a marathon or sitting on an icepack.

On Being Injured

Okay, I admit it, maybe playing basketball last night after my run was not the best decision of the new year. And, while I am loathe to give up one of my high intensity runs, my back hurts too much to get out there. I'm taking an unscheduled day off. It sucks. I was looking forward to hill repeats today.

I'm trying to be Zen about this. I blame myself. Which is the most reasonable thing, I think, since it's my fault. I simply haven't cared this much about a sustained, consistent training for fifteen years, so the idea of taking a day off makes me sad.

Meanwhile, one might think that taking a day off from running would suddenly open up glorious gluts of free time to do all kinds of things that I wouldn't otherwise do. One would think I'd find myself getting bored. Instead, my life fills right up with other things.

So I'll rest tonight and take an Advil. As soon as I feel able, I'll try a maintenance run. Being injured is dumb.

To Run or Not to Run . . .

At some point during the day, my ankle started aching. It felt as though I had sprained it recently, but I can't think of a moment when I might have turned it or twisted it or even bumped it up against something.

So the question I faced when I got home a bit gimpy was: am I hurt or am I injured?

If I'm injured, obviously, I shouldn't run. If I'm hurt, traditionally, I push through it.

But the question branches into a number of other questions, starting with: if I am hurt, might I become injured if I run on it, or might running on it strengthen it, loosen it up? If there is any chance of injury, should I risk it to maintain, or should I wait until tomorrow to run my more intense hill workout? Am I simply looking for an excuse to take an unplanned day off? If I take an unplanned day off, what's to stop me from taking my more intense run off tomorrow? Am I an awful runner and a regrettable human being? Should I just stop running altogether and focus on my television watching?

Ultimately, I'm choosing to err (I think) on the side of caution. I'm giving myself the day off today, even though that means I've run fewer days than I've taken off so far this year, which shames me at least a little.

Additional variables that I took into consideration were these: it's dark; it's cold; there are small patches of nearly invisible ice in the world tonight; the sidewalks are uneven; drivers are awful; one dog barking on such an evening might cause me to stumble.

I guess the ultimate test of my dedication would be if we owned a treadmill -- then what would I do? But we don't, and I simply did not have time to make it to the gym tonight. So your guess is as good as mine . . .

Year to Date Tally: see yesterday's post.