A Lot to Cover both Good and Possibly Very Bad

Lets get the potential bad news out of the way first. I strongly suspect I have a Tarsal Navicular stress fracture (stress fracture of the lower ankle) on the inside of the right foot.

I started to feel it at mile 15 last week and didn’t think much of it since the pain was gone the next day, but this past week it started hurting at mile 11 and I turned and headed home and stopped my run at mile 15 and it hurt for a couple of days.

After much discussion with friends, people in the medical field and my Coach, I strongly suspect it is the beginning of a stress fracture. Unfortunately, these are hard to diagnose or see on X-rays until after they have healed, but you have to assume the worse for treatment.

I feel like this is somewhat due to my style of running. In short course I have taught myself to run on the balls or fore foot portion of my feet which has given me much more speed in 5k and 10 races. However, it does put more stress on this portion of the foot where my injury is.

So right now working with Coach Sonni, I have ceased all running for two weeks and I will give it a 2-mile test run prior to the half-ironman race in Williamsburg, which is the race to validate my Kona slot at the World Championships in Hawaii. As you can imagine this is a bit concerning but I feel like as long as I can make it through the qualifying race in Williamsburg, I will have 5 weeks for it to heal.

…and what about running. There may be a chance I do not run anymore until the race and concentrate on the bike and swim since my bike shoes are hard soled and it doesn’t affect this injury. It’s really starting to get interesting now.

Now on a lighter note:

I was laughing as I wrote the following “coach feedback” e-mail to Sonni earlier this week (as I do every couple of weeks) because the distances I am doing in all three disciplines are crazy right now. So here’s what I wrote…It’s a good thing he understands my humor.

Swimming: I need entertainment because 1 hour and 15 minutes in the pool is pure isolationism and torture and the silence other than the splashing of water could possibly lead me to the insane asylum.

Run: I feel like Forrest Gump, just running to be running and running some more with nowhere in particular to go.

Bike: I am getting the “Hamster Syndrome” After about 80 miles I just feel like I’m on the Hamster wheel and I’m too stupid to quit and I am seeing the exact same scenery as I did the last 4 times I passed this part of the loop. I can’t even get the dogs to chase me anymore to add excitement because they’re so use to seeing me now.

I have to have humor through all of this training or I would go completely crazy. Let is be known, I would not be a good professional cyclist because these 100 miles days, like today, are a bit too much to do for an extended period of time.

One of the bright spots I am having though is swimming. I have really gotten to the point where I can really put a hard effort into the swim for distances less than 2500 yards (about 1.5 miles) and maintain a good pace. I have not been able to do this in the past. So the training is really paying off here.

One last funny thing that happened this week on my long run was I almost lost my spare water and fuel. I stash my water and nutrition mix on my course so at the halfway point of the run I can stop refill on water and Infinit nutrition mix.

So as I approached my refill point there was a truck load of Mexican Landscapers who were part of the landscaping crew here in the neighborhood. As I got closer I saw them get out of the truck, grab my bottles and Infinit mix and start holding it up trying to figure it out. As I got close enough I started to yell for them to stop and put it down before they dumped it into their truck. None of them spoke English but I think they all figured out what was going on and the guy who was grabbing it was embarrassed and all of his buddies were laughing at him for getting caught. There was certainly no hard feelings as a matter of fact I saw them later and they all were waving and at me and they started laughing at their buddy again.

Nothing much else to cover this week. It was just another build week and I am sure by now you have all heard me talk enough about the distances and how I do not look forward to these high intensity weeks, so I will stop it right here.

I will touch base next week as usual!

Rest Week is Over and Heading Into Another High Intensity Week!

The past week was a rest week. Not exactly like the picture shows to the right (this is me in Hawaii after the race) but but it was nice to back off training somewhat. It's something that I always look forward to. If you recall typically I have two very intense weeks and one rest week to recover, so I did a lot of recovering last week.

Something really cool that happened last week was the Charlotte Observer ran a story on me in regards to the race in Hawaii. You can see it at the following link:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/464/story/115571.html

Kristine Crane from the Charlotte Observer is the journalist who worked on this for about 2 months and did a great job. I think after the last two months she has heard all she wants to hear about triathlon, but I will admit she was very detailed and thorough in her story and I thought it came off very well.

Speaking of this story, thanks to the mass of e-mails I received from everyone. If I did not personally send you a thank you, I am very sorry. I tried to keep up with them all but I keep finding a few that have fallen through the cracks. They all mean a lot to me though, and have certainly let me know I have people supporting me through this undertaking.

On the subject of this undertaking let’s talk briefly about it and what’s happening. Last weeks swim really was just as long and intense as they usually are mainly because it doesn’t put the strain on your body like a 100 mile bike ride or an 18 mile run. So I was hitting my regular long distance swims last week as well and the higher intensity swim on Tuesday. I did however get an “OFF” day on Friday which was GREAT!! It felt like a vacation actually

As I said the run and the bike last week was much shorter, but Sunday’s ride was fairly hard (3 hour bike & 1 hour run) because I was up all night for the most part on Saturday night with 14 10& 11 year old boys spending the night for my oldest sons birthday. Just to show the important of nutrition and sleep; after eating, Pizza, Ice Cream Cake (b-day cake) and having a couple glasses of wine with the adults earlier in the evening, along with 14 rowdy boys on a sugar high from the S’mores and ice cream cake (who I don’t think ever went to sleep “like me”), you have a recipe for a tough training day.

Yes, I really sat there at 10am thinking to myself, since it was a rest week I should really rest and not even hit the training circuit at all and get ready for another tough week of training. Then, like always when these thoughts creep into my mind, I knew I would be absolutely in a bad mood for the rest of the day if I cheated on myself and my training. It’s hard to change the way you’re wired.

So off on the bike ride and run I went. Luckily, I had Michael Heredia ride for an hour and twenty minutes with me to help me along. Michael has been a great help and great support on my longer rides. Having him link up with me for 90 minutes in the middle of a long ride is very nice and breaks up the monotonous rides. So after I survived the bike, which wasn’t too bad, I hit the run and felt like I was going to hit the wall. I felt completely OUT of energy due to a lack of sleep and poor nutrition. That’s one thing, when training at these distances there is no fooling your body when it comes to sleep and nutrition!!!!!

Health issues. Everything is ok, not great, but ok. Three things I am watching and working on. First, I had a plantar wart on my foot which finally got to the point where it was bothering me on the run so I froze it on Friday and it’s been very painful for the last few days especially on the run, OUCH!!!. I have an 18 mile run coming up so I am sure it will feel delightful but I had to get it taken care of before I got any closer to my race.

The other problem I am experiencing is my right foot on longer runs. Just below the ankle on the inside, I have had some pain. It really didn’t feel good after my last 18 mile run. It doesn’t appear to be a stress fracture because it came on quickly and after a day of rest it went away for the most part and it seems to be more in the joint rather than the arch or a mid point of a bone. I think it may be caused somewhat by running on the side of the crown of the road where that ankle would be turned inward. So my next long run I am going to stick to the top of the crown in the road or the sidewalk to insure a flat surface.

The last thing I am watching is the flare up of the quad tendonitis that I had last year. It feels ok right now but again after some of the long runs or very hilly bike rides where I am climbing and standing up, it gets a bit sore so I am begin very careful on this.

We’ll see how this week goes!!!!

The Dark Period

This was something that was told to me by my coach as we talked about the very long distance part of the training schedule. Dark as in , “IS IT GOING TO EVER END!!!” I like training, I like swimming, running and especially biking but as I am in the middle of the most intense part of training, the shear boredom really causes me to start looking at this as work instead of fun to a certain extent.

It has been a while since my last entry and that is really because of work, training, coaching football, kicking off my foundation at Appalachian State and trying to balance all of that with family time. It really leaves little time for anything else. I can’t wait until I can recapture my time on the weekends once again which I am now using for training. That’s 9 hours of daylight!!!! I will get back.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not complaining, these are just some of the things I think about while I am on the bike for 6 hours at a time covering 100 miles or out for a 3 hour (18 mile) run.

Health wise I think I am holding up pretty well. The quad tendonitis I had last year which caused me to cancel the last half of my season, gives me a tweak every once in a while especially after a bike ride with steep hills. It seems to quickly subside by the next day, but I am very careful to stretch it well and I see Mike Dannenberg who is a certified ART (Active Release Technique) specialist who I work with every couple of weeks right now just to help prevent injuries. After my run on Wednesday, my outside quads (IT Band possibly) were sore for a couple of days which is unusual since I have been running 15/16 miles for a while and nothing has bothered me. I had pain in my right foot as well not quite down to the arch but below the ankle. My first thought was stress fracture, but I will see how it comes around this week during my “rest week.” I think it came on too fast to be a stress fracture after the run, but I am being very careful.

The last two weeks have not been interesting enough to really talk about. Nothing of an educational nature has happened, no excitement, just long hard miles.

On the swim: I am up to 3600 yards on Mondays (about 2 ¼ miles). Again, there is no physical limitations just a very, very, very long time in the pool. I have stopped swimming the lake for now. The water is just too hot to swim in, probably around 90 degrees at the surface and you can really get dehydrated quickly in that type of heat without water to drink during the 1 hour + sessions.

The run has me amused. 18 miles sounds a lie a long ways and it is, but physically it’s not a challenge at the pace I am running which is about a 10 minute pace. This pace includes walking a minute every 10 minutes and taking time to refill water bottles. While I am running I often think about just how far I can run before I really get tired and just can’t run any further. I guess this is a testament to my coach who has eased me along over the past months. Let’s just hope I have the same feeling about the run in my upcoming races.

That’s all for this time around I will try to get back on schedule with a once a week update next week!