Cuboid Stress Fracture

So I have alluded to the fact that I'm injured. Its true. #Noinjury2015 was short-lived. Or half-lived. Mostly lived?

(PB - never.gets.old.)

After I ran Gold Coast Half, I had some foot pain in both feet. It lasted only a couple of days, and I felt nothing after I took a full week off exercise. I then proceeded to run for two weeks at around 24-24 miles each week. All easy miles.

The only thing I did differently was try to break in my new trail runners, which I attempted to do intelligently: short runs, and using my trusty Mizunos for every second run. Admittedly, my new shoes were not very cushiony, and I didnt use my ordinary insoles. But I reasoned that my other measures were sufficiently cautious.  

The Monday before the hike, I ran an an easy 6-miler (after two full days off hanging out in Melbourne!) and pulled up with some pain in my left foot. It felt suspiciously familiar. Like, really familiar. Like, I told my husband that it felt the same as when I had my cuboid SFx in the other foot.

But you know, I had a hike in Italy to do. I rested until the hike, and figured that if it was soft tissue it would be ok in a few days. If it was bone-related, hiking wouldnt be toooo bad because walking is a much lower-impact activity than running.

So. Turns out that neither of those calculations took into account (1) the mostly vertical nature of the hike, nor (2) that I would get reasonably competitive with several of my colleagues and race them up some of the mountains.  Basically, I didnt factor in my own wilful ignorance and incorrigible ego. Mum and Dad, aren't you so proud?

After returning from the hike, my doctor said none of this story "sounded" stress fracturey (totes a medical term). And I was negative on all the bone manipulation tests, (which is a fancy way of saying they poke your foot until finding the bit that hurts, and then poke it as hard as possible). 

But given my history, and my type A-MUST IMMEDIATELY KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME personality, the kind doc gave me a script for an MRI. 

A few days later at 9:30pm (because he is unfortunately all too aware of my need to know thing) the doc emails me my MRI result. 

A cuboid effing stress fracture. Thats right. Another one. In my left foot this time. Almost exactly the same place.

Here they both are in all their weak-ass, stress fractured glory:

Harden the eff up, cuboids.

My doctor couldnt quite believe it. This injury is really uncommon. Last time he was so excited about seeing it (once) he was going to write it up in a medical journal. Heaven knows what he'll want to do with this one ... a travelling circus? In any event, Im trying to convince him that I should get some sort of medal and/or serious discount for being such an exciting sports-med patient.  

Frankly, the most frustrating thing about this injury is how difficult it is to pinpoint the causes of it. If only there were a medical practitioner whose practice was exclusively devoted to the cuboid bones! In my completely non-medical opinion, it seems to be a weird area of the foot to be landing on as an over-pronator. Its possible my shoes/insoles suck (and yet I ran many 50+ mile weeks in my Mizunos with no problems). Or my training sucks (I was running half my usual mileage - all easy -  after a full week off!) Or my bone density sucks (low-normal as a lovely gift from my eating disorder days - but not too bad for the most part). With my other injuries, I can point directly to mileage/speed increases, or nutrition problems that appear obvious with a bit of hindsight. But here, nada.

Because no single factor looks like the primary culprit, my doctor wants to get me a blood test for Celiac disease. Celiac can apparently prevent one's body from absorbing calcium and other nutrients. Sounds a little hippy dippy to me, and heaven knows I reeeeeally dont want to have to have to join the "gluten free" crowd, but Im kind of tempted to try it out, if only to get some answers. 

Whatever the reason, it could be worse. It was diagnosed quickly, and its a very small crack. I narrowly avoided having to wear a boot, and I only have another two weeks off it until I can try running. I am able to lift weights and cross train (though my motivation to do either is at an all-time low - which Im fine with).  

And going forward, maybe Im just gunna have to be a low-mileage (gasp!!) runner..?

Sesto Dolomiti e Venezia

Contemporaneous recaps are clearly not my thing. Lets just be ok with that and move on, shall we?

So this hike. TL;DR version is that it was amazing. Amazing! An experience that I'll remember forever.

After we took off from Sydney we had a shocking layover in Abu Dhabi with a further delayed flight (six hours). It was time to check into an airport lounge for some food, showers...

...and silly shorts.

We arrived in Venice after 30 hours of travel. All looking and feeling a lot like this:

We were staying the first night in a beautiful mountain village called Cortina. 

After checking in (the Aussies were the last to arrive) we were pounced on by a bunch of our American and Euro colleagues, and *forced* to go out for beers and dinner. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we didnt last long, and made our escape for bed at a civilised, if not somewhat geriatric, time of 9 pm. 

We did not escape flack for this. 

My redaction skills are off the chain. 

The next morning we arose veeerrry early and got on buses to head to the starting point of the hike.

I was completely disoriented throughout the entire journey. I think I showed you the map and elevation chart on my last post and thats about all you're gunna get in the way of navigational specifics. Stop complaining. 

Lets just say the hike started up. And kept going upwards for quite an extended period.

The first part of up.

 It wasnt long before the superfit 10ish people of the group had taken off, a "reasonably fit" 20 of us set off at a good pace, and the remaining 130 usually desk-bound lawyers spread out to bring up the rear. We were quite a sight to behold. 

Still liking up, but below the cloud line, so a lot more upping to go yet.

Beautiful, but upping is becoming marginally less appealing at this juncture.

A few hours of hiking and about 1 gazillion switchbacks brought us to our first "summit". It was quite a good place to put our bags down, eat and take some photos... and pretend we werent totally gagging for a break already. 

The next part of the hike involved a lot of loose rock, scree and some near vertical scrambling up hills, that had us sending rock avalanches into each others' faces. 

It was also here that we started mixing up the group a bit and adding people who would hike with us the rest of the way. Its possible we also lost a few people in some of those rock avalanche situations. Thank goodness our firm made us sign some concrete-ass waivers. 

Death-defying over for a brief moment, we were a motley but jovial crew!

This is one of the "happier" scree climbs.

Throughout the hike, we would come upon various huts that served as rest stops. Some were even mini cafes. Nothing like being offered an enormous beer and bowl of spaghetti at 8000 feet.

The rest of the hike was honestly a bit of a blur. It was just stunning sight after stunning sight, that will be wholly inadequately captured by photo.  

For those crazies out there, who might want to do this one day, we followed the 107 trail most of the way... making all the hardest (and stupidly most dangerous) detours possible, and taking the "easier" 104 trail only when it was the sole way forward. Its hard to figure out whether our firm wanted to make us stronger, or genuinely kill us in a really bizarrely drawn out and expensive manner.

I did the remaining quarter of the hike with a new friend from our Paris office, and a colleague I have been working with for 15 months from our DC office... and hadnt yet met! I had heard his voice around the corner of a bunch of rocks, and recognised it immediately from all the late night and early morning conference calls we've had. He, of course, had the pleasure of meeting my sweaty self in person, half limping from a foot injury (more on that later) but somewhat high on endorphins and annoyingly coaxing everyone to keep moving and clambering up them hills. As you might imagine, he was super happy to be subjected to my bossing. 

(While he had a map, preventing us from getting completely lost out there, I maintain that my "encouragement" got us to the finish line and on the first bus back to Venice.)

In any event we were a triumphant trio finishing together. 

So thats it. 150 lawyers, 25km, about 7ish hours of hiking, 8000 feet. And then two gorgeous days in Venice (for another post. A girl can only be on top of her recaps one month at a time).

Gold Coast HM Training Weeks 1-2 {AKA the time I figured out how to insert GIFs on blogger}

Sooooo where were we? Oh, riiiight I was going to do weekly training posts.  Haha, lol. Did anyone really think that was going to happen?

Lolz even more. Gifs are my life sometimes.

Anyway, as for actual training, the last few weeks I have stayed in the high 40s in mileage. Nearly all my easy runs are in the 8:45-9:15 range, (though getting a tad faster as it gets a little cooler).

I've stuck with one long run per week, and added a tempo at HM pace. I decided (on the expert advice of Kristen) to start small on the tempo, and to only do one workout (tempo or speed) per week. With my injury history, I just really don't think it is wise to try much more.

So without further ado:

Week 1 (10 weeks out from GCHM) 26 April - 2 May:
Sunday: 14 miles easy
Monday: off
Tuesday: 8 miles easy
Wednesday: 8 miles with 2 x 1 miles at HM pace
Thursday: off
Friday: 9 miles easy
Saturday: 7 miles easy.
Total: 46 miles

As for the tempo miles, wowza.  The aim of that run wasn't really to do a workout, per se. It was (1) to test out how HM pace felt, to get an idea of how much fitness I needed to build before Gold Coast HM, and (2) to ease my body into hard running.  I noted in my fastrunningblog that it was this time last year that I jumped from 41 to 50 miles in one week, and added 6 x 1 mile repeats at HM/10K pace. I got a SFx three days later. Eeek! SO, I wanted to be cautious and ease into the harder work.

The 2 x 1 miles were 6:49 and 6:41 with 0.5 mile jog recovery.  Honestly, I had a hard time dialing into that HM pace that used to feel so intuitive. Those miles were faster than what that pace should feel like; they felt much closer to 10K pace! It meant that I needed to aim a bit slower for next time... aaaaand that this slow-poke has lost a little fitness over the year!

Week 2  (3 May - 9 May) saw about the same stuff.
Sunday: 14 miles easy
Monday: off
Tuesday: 8 miles easy
Wednesday 9 miles easy
Thursday: 7.5 miles with 2 x 1.5 miles at HM pace.
Friday: off
Saturday: 6.5 miles easy.
Total: 45 miles

(The 6.5 because I cannot cope with a 0.5 mile hanging over me for the week. Yaaaay OCD.)

The 2 x 1.5 were 6:51 and 6:55 respectively, which is around where I need to be on pace. And I definitely felt the difference in effort!

And I'll go into details next post (AREN'T YOU ALL SUPREMELY LUCKY) but this week I moved up to 48 miles and had an encouraging tempo run. I'll gradually add intervals/distance to these - and with any luck will be able to string a few miles together at that pace come race day!

Overall though, even if I don't, it is just amazing to be back running again healthily. Last year was so mired in injury. Even when I was back running, it was that cautious "bugger-Im-about-to-injury-something" running. It hit me on the treadmill today, that I finally wasn't running in fear. Ugh, that's a terrible feeling.

The one positive aspect of it is that I'm much more diligent about running slowly, stretching, rolling and eating properly than I have been in the past. Especially the latter. I have generally monitored my weight, but for the first time, I've been just focusing on eating enough and whether it makes me feel good running. And I gotta say, running is worlds easier when you have enough calories in your system.

And on that note, I'll leave you with a couple of photos I took from Rozelle/Blackwattle Bay that I frequently run around.

Anyone else find themselves running in fear after a sustained period of injury? Do you feel like you're more conscious of doing all the right recovery things because of it? Does it make you feel more inclined to use GIFs at any and every opportunity?

Don't Be an Idiot: Ten Weeks to Gold Coast HM

I've whinged about it pretty frequently to family and friends, and to some degree on the blog, but I spent a large part of 2014 injured and miserable. Recovery from a stress fracture, then another stress fracture then a labral tear in my hip, all left me wondering if I'd ever run sans-injury again.

I'm not at all a drama queen. 

Well, the answer was not of any great philosphical moment. It was simply that when I got healthy, Id lace up again but this time be smart doing it.

So far, I think I have been. I've almost been reluctant to blog about running again for fear of having to follow up with another whining post about how I'm injured, then the inevitable blogging hiatus, followed by a sarcastic "Hi, I'm Penny" post, having to reintroduce myself all over again.

Well no more! I have designated 2015 as the year of no injury. It even has its own hashtag #noinjury2015.  Unfortunately the meme hasn't really taken off. That is, only I use it. And mainly just in my head and in messages to Kristen. #howdothesocialmediasworkagain?

Anyway. Ok. To get us all back on track, here is the mileage I have done since recovering from my hip labral tear: 

January: 16, 21, 23, 26, 22

February: 23, 25, 25, 30

March: 10, 26, 32, 35

April: 38, 42, 26, 45

As you can see, in both March and April I took cutback weeks, that I think have enabled me to get up to my goal mileage feeling strong. I have also been running all that SLOW. As in, between 8:45-10 min miles, when my easy pace used to be 7:45- 8:30.  Slowness = lower impact = few injuries + better aerobic workout. Learn it, people. At least, learn it faster than I did. 

Anyway, I'd like to keep my mileage between 45-50mpw, in the lead up to *brump-bum-ba-buuuuum* my goal race of Gold Coast half marathon, July 5. That's ten weeks away. And I'll be shooting for sub-1:30.

Posting that publicly is soooo bloody scary these days. Not because I might not be in sub-90 shape come July - that may well be the case. Rather, its because every effing time I've set a goal race in the last 18 months, I've been stymied by injury.

But screw it. I don't believe in juju, or jinxing or touching wood or whatever. Nothing I say on the interwebs and to our 4.8 average weekly readers, is going to change whether or not I get another serious injury.

What will give me another injury is not eating enough, not sleeping enough, jumping up in mileage and/or speed before I'm ready, running in old shoes, and generally being an idiot. 

So in short, my motto in the lead-up to GC half is: don't be an idiot. 

Part of my attempt to lessen my own idiocy has been to do some of my long runs on trails, and undulating terrain (Sydney is quite flat). To wit, below are some pics of a trail run I did in Canberra, through Red Hill Nature Park, with some beautiful rugged bush, and gorgeous views of our nation's capital.

Oh, and one of Lake Burley Griffin and the High Court of Australia, cos lawyer and lawyering lawyeryness.

I was in Canberra for a beautiful wedding - and was able to spend some grand times with my siblings and neices/nephews. Including this stunning little lady.

And my big bro, who professes to not have seen me sober since about the middle of 2004.

Whatevaaaaa. Champagne-induced wedding selfies rock.

Then last weekend I headed down to Victoria for a hensy weekend with my two best friends and their babies. 

Before we go into the running bits, we must first observe: bebe cheeks: 

Mischiefy bebe cheeks!

All the bebe cheeks in bath. HULLO omg.

And my women. Fuck I love these two. 20 years we've been friends and still going strong.

And all this is to say that I did last week's long run (13 miles) along the Great Ocean Road between Anglesea (where we were staying) and Airey's Inlet. 

You are just so spoiled for views along this stunning coast line, it is hard to resist the temptation to stop running and take photos every 5 minutes.

Blessed be my places. So good.

And that's all folks. Until next week's first actual OMG training post in basically forever, woop!

Running (and eating) in Paris

We recently went on a 10-day trip to Paris. Because why the hell not.

It was late February (it wouldnt be me if I wasnt exceedingly late in posting about my holidays), so running was rather chilly; but it was fun to finally pull out my cold weather gear from NYC!

We were staying in the Theatre District, which meant I could run south, past Palais Garnier, through the Louvre and along La Seine every day. 

There is a great path along the south-side of the river that runs almost entirely unbroken, up to (and beyond) the Eiffel Tower.

Needless to say Paris was amazing to run around. But there were so many other amazing things to do and see... and most of all EAT.

Eating in Paris is kind of a runners dream.

"I'll have the entree bread with a side of bread, and bread topping, s'il vous plait."

I also ate laduree macaroons every.single.day. 

Because Im 32 and I make great life choices.

We had some amazing seafood:

Though believe I ate steak at least 5 nights. I couldn't understand what they did to it to make it taste so good.

Then I remembered all the butter. Yes.

Also all the cheese and wine too please.

A croissant a day keeps the doctor away.

SHUT UP ITS A SAYING.

And while eating all the desserts was incredible, even better was learning to make them (then eat them) myself!

Beyond food and running it would be impossible to share all the amazing things I did and saw. But below are a few highlights:

The mini markets

Notre Dame

Sacre Coeur 

Curling up with a book at Shakespear & Co.

Going to the ballet at Palais Garnier:

(And finally being in the presence of the real-life "Masquerade" staircase from Phantom!) 

Seeing my favourite Van Gogh in person:

And of course my lady, La tour Eiffel, at night.