Byebye Running

Monday, February 20th

I got my knee checked out today again. Apparently, the pain I’m feeling is not from the bursitis or any of my previous problem. It’s patellar tendonitis.

For those of you who don’t know anything about tendonitis, let me just say this: it sucks. Tendonitis is one of those things that you can actually train through, but if you do train through it and don’t let it heal it becomes chronic, aka it never goes away. Ever.

I don’t know how long this tendonitis has been there, but I’d guess it was triggered by last Tuesday’s speed workout. This means it’s still recent enough to treat, so since my season’s already guaranteed to suck we decided I should take 10 days off from running. I’ll still show up for ice, ultrasound, stretching, exercises, rolling out, and more ice. It’s sad, I spent around two hours at track every day and can’t even run. Ohh well, you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.

Finally Racing!

Saturday, February 18th

I hate getting up early (yes, 8:30am definitely counts). It has got to be the hardest thing for me to do now, second to maybe leaving the beer room. At least for track/xc meets I have motivation to get up - my 9am Ma5 attendance is embarrassing low. Now if you haven’t read much about my running during the last few weeks it would be hard to put this into perspective. I would urge you to click here and read it first, but if reading about running bores you to death, feel free to go on to the next section. Don’t worry, I won’t feel offended. ;P JK you're on my running blog you love reading about running.

I ran a 5:10 mile. (It was an actual mile, so that would convert to ~5:08 1600m). It was literally my slowest mile/1600m race (even slower than time trials) since HS junior year track season. My knee was definitely hurting a lot more than it should, so I’m going to get it checked out again on Monday. Every time I stopped running, I would have to stretch out my knee by sitting and pulling it towards my chest ~10-15 times before I could run comfortably again.

Since I haven’t had much speed work recently, I guess I was kind of bad at feeling pace. I got a solid start and went out a little fast, in 72. I was feeling ok but definitely more tired than I should have for the first lap of a mile. I decided to try to stick at around 75s for the rest of the race, despite feeling like absolute crap the whole time (darn my stubbornness). By the time I got to the last lap, my legs were absolutely dead and I could barely even pick them up for the last 100m. My friend who I planned on breaking 5 with passed me right out of that last turn and ended up running 5:05. (Yes, a 5 second gain in the last 100m; I was really dead.) The coach wrote down our splits, but I purposely didn’t want to look at them since I know they’re absolutely pathetic. In general, the race was a pretty bad experience, and immediately after crossing the line, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop wheezing and coughing, which meant I could only walk a cool down.

Hopefully my body isn't totally screwed over. We'll see what happens next week.

Being Injured Sucks.

February 17th, 2012

I love running. It’s my favorite thing to do in the world, second to maybe… nothing. (You can take that either way.) I’ve been racing since 7th grade, and it’s consumed >=2 hours a day of my life ever since. I’ve never been very fast, either, but I still try to set high goals for myself which I rarely achieve, yet I’m still somehow always optimistic. This winter break, I went to Kauai. Yes, I know, be jealous. Anyway, we went hiking by the Na Pali coast (in mid-December). 2 miles in, we had to cross a river, and I slipped and my knee landed on a rock. Needless to say, the 2 miles back were extremely painful, and I couldn’t really bend my knee for the rest of winter break.

Track season started when I got back to Tech, so the trainer and I made it a priority to get back to running so I could compete on the team. My schedule looked something like this:

1/3-14: Ice, ultrasound, and quad exercises

1/16-21: Elliptical, starting at 20 minutes and adding ~5/day, plus ice/ultrasound/exercises

1/23-31: Running a few laps around the track, plus 45 minutes elliptical/ice/ultrasound/exercises

On February 1st, I was finally cleared to run with the team! The first thing I noticed was that my quads were very weak. I’d go for a run, and then any running for the next few days would be extremely painful for my quads so I would just elliptical for the next few days. This happened a few times, with me doing hard track workouts with the team and ellipticalling the easy days.

Each time I ran a workout, though, my knee and hamstring tendons (behind the knee) would also hurt pretty badly for the next day or so. I had developed hamstring tendonitis near the end of the last cross country season, so we figured my messed up knee caused my body to compromise and re-aggravate my hamstrings. Also, my knee was hurting especially badly after this Tuesday’s workout. Hopefully everything feels better soon.

Now on the bright side and the point of this post: I’M RACING TOMORROW!

I’m just running the mile, and my goal is to break 5, which I think is doable considering my workout intensity/times. Now all of you are probably thinking: why are you racing if your body is so broken? Well the truth is that I’ve actually recovered a lot in the last few weeks, and if we understand everything that’s going on in my body correctly, it seems we’ve reached some sort of equilibrium which allows me to run with frequent ice and ultrasound.

Now time to get some sleep… need to leave for the meet at 8:30am. o_O