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?

My Hip Labrum Tear

K so lo and behold, with all the amazing race times and beautiful travel posts and enviable selfies on this blog (ahem, pause for you to realise am being sarcastic and am not compleeeeetely up myself) the most popular posts by far have been our injury posts. Especially the ones containing excruciating, PTSD-inducing detail about how we got them, what they felt like, how we recovered and how effing long the whole godforsaken process took.

Accordingly, I wouldnt want to deprive our fair readers of learning about my latest amazing feat, of tearing my labrum. Ive decided to intersperse it with some pictures from a recent skydiving trip (my first ever). Because SKYDIVING. So much more fun than hips. To wit: 

(Gah! Wtf am I about to do!)

So having just recovered from a stress fracture in my cuboid bone (foot) I began ramping up with the Pfitzinger return to running program. Despite my experience here, I would highly highly recommend you follow this plan after recovering from a serious injury. Its a frustratingly slow build up, but believe me - you need slow! After injury, you are at the highest risk of reinjuring yourself in the same place, because its not fully healed yet, or suffering another injury because your body has become deconditioned in your time off. And of course, any increase in mileage at all carries with it the risk of injury.

Dangling your legs outside a plane at 10 000 feet also carries with it a grave risk of injury.

I was fine once i finished the plan, but then added a few too many miles (albeit all very slow easy ones) too soon, and began to feel a niggling pain in the front of my hip and groin area. Given the risk of pain in that area being a stress fracture (which = 3-5 months off) I STOPPED RUNNING IMMEDIATELY, went to the doctor after two weeks, went to the physio after 3, and when it hadnt gone away at 4 weeks, I had an MRI. Thankfully, I have an amazing sports doctor here in Sydney, who believes me when I can feel that something is wrong. He immediately ordered me an mri, because of my history with sfxs, and I waited a couple of weeks before getting it.

Self-explanatory. OhEmGeeeeeee!!!!

Turns out I have a very small tear in the cartelege in my hip, called the labrum. It is about 5mm long, and the resulting pain was only ever pretty minor. Just that it was in the front of my hip, which is nooooot a good place to feel pain.

Timeline of Rehab and Recovery:
I got injured in late October. After getting back from Vanuatu, I started physio and recieved a bunch of exercises that I continued doing daily until early December, when I started doing them every second or third day. The exercises were all focused on 1) strengthening the external rotator muscles; the ones controlling the inward/outward rotation of my thigh; 2) strengthening my stablizer muscles - all of them, including strenghtening my core; and 3) getting my gluts to fire. If anyone wants the list of exercises let me know!

All in all I think I was completely off running for about 4-5 weeks.

This is the (relatively) restful bit of skydiving. Especially once you've realized you successfully avoided inadvertantly chucking all over yourself and the tandem guy.

Timeline of Returning to Run
In November I started running again, though feeling some discomfort still, I took a week completely off exercise in Cabo.
December I started back, building up from 3 to 12 miles (all very easy)
January saw an increase to 22 miles.
February hovered around 25-28 miles, and I increased to 30 last week.

Now this is returning to land and "hovering" hehe, lolz for days.

Aaaaand, tada, I feel no pain in that hip at all! If every I feel even a slight twinge, I do a round of my PT exercises, and its fine again.

That being said, my doctor and Physio have advised that the key to ensuring my hip stays healthy is keeping all those supporting muscles strong and flexible. People certainly do run marathons with this condition in no pain, but it could be risky for me to do so. This is because by the time you get to the end of a marathon, eeeeeverything is fatigued. So its likely that my hip could hurt again when those muscles just plain tire out. And hurting again could mean degradation of the cartelege which could ultimately = surgery.

Honestly, that didnt really bother me (for long). I just love running, I love half marathons, and they are probably enough for me at this juncture. I think Id like to try for a marathon again one day, but want to ensure that Im being absolutely fastidious with rehab and recovery throughout training, which I just dont have the time for right now, on top of the lengthy training hours.

Right now, am just stoked to run sans pain at all!

Copycat 1Q 2014 Update: Running, Running.... Injury Again

Its been a long time between posts; longer than usual! My life in Sydney has finally settled into a bit of a routine. All our stuff arrived from America only a few weeks ago, and up until then we had been using a cardboard box as a couch, and eating with plastic cutlery. Not exactly a third world situation, given this occurred in an inner city high rise apartment, but not the funnest.

When I began this post, my first sentence was "The last two months have been a good mileage build up for me." And they have been.... until three weeks ago.

So lets go back a step. As I canvassed in my last post about recovering from injury, my mileage in January was: 28, 26, 32, 35 miles for each week. Mostly all easy. I had two notable attempts at tempo runs (2 x 2 miles at HM pace), which came in around 6:50-6:55avg paces. Not great, but not terrible given the amount of time I had off running. I also tried another treadmill speed workout: 6 x 800m at 5K pace with 400m jog recoveries (1.5% incline). Wow. Yeah... so these still hurt as much as I remembered them. But I was very pleased with the result. I ran 4 of the 5 at 6:27, then the last at 6:20. It was hard, but not vomit-inducing hard, so that was encouraging.

And February saw some good running, especially after we moved into our new place. I even took a few pictures of my new routes. We live in the center of the Sydney CBD, so my running takes me all around Sydney harbor, over all the bridges, around the Opera House and through the Botanical Gardens. Having run all over my two fabulous countries, I have to say this city is the most beautiful running city I have lived in so far. It truly does have everything; the sights of New York, the weather of San Diego... doesnt quite rival the hipness of Melbourne, but getting there ;)

You can run right around the Opera House, to my delight!

Several of my routes take me directly beneath or over the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Part of the 'Domain' run, which takes you through the Botanical Gardens and down towards the Opera House

Harbor bridge from the Opera House

One of my many bridges; this is Victoria Road bridge, part of the Iron Cove run

Iron cove run. My photography sucks. But this was stunning.

February mileage: 42, 44, 44, 38 (a down week)

March mileage: I made the jump to the 50s: 51, 50... aaaaaand 10. Before I tell you what happened, I did have one great workout in there... 6 x 1 mile repeats at an average of about 6:40 pace, which was great. About the same pace before my injury last year, so I was at least back to my old fitness levels, pre-hip injury.

Now. Cue the judgey "look at that mileage bump you idiot" faces.

Ok, so let me explain. I had read some really good research demonstrating that the 10% rule is just as likely as anything else to generate injuries. A better injury prevention technique is actually to use down-weeks. You can increase your mileage by, say, 5-6 miles (my jump from 44-50) by inserting down weeks. Seemed like a good plan, and I actually still believe in it.

The real reason I got injured was that I was failing to do all the other stuff you need to do while increasing mileage to avoid injury. I basically completely wagged stretching and foam rolling, because I didn't want to waste valuable running time. I was fueling right, and still strength training pretty well, but the other recovery stuff was not happening. Let me tell you, as soon as I got on a foam roller after my injury... OW. Yeah. Silly girl.

So, the injury itself happened in a fairly miserable way. I stopped running at 10 miles into a very hot 14-miler, with foot pain. Up til that time, I had been reeeally dehydrated, and was not feeling good at all. I tried to call a cab, but couldn't get one, so called my husband to come and get me. Then it started pouring rain.Oh, and the city was celebrating St Patricks day, so it took us about 45 minutes to drive 4 miles home. Kill me.

Anyway, the self-diagnosis is plantar fascitis. I knew it as soon as I felt it.

As anyone who has had this injury knows, its on its own healing schedule. I feel glad that I stopped running when I did; its been three weeks since I last ran, and my foot is finally feeling a lot better. I am going to take another week of non-impact exercise before I try running again. I'm super paranoid about it because my husband has had this injury for years from his time in the Marine Corps, so I am not going to tempt fate with it!

So....enter the pool running! We have a really lovely pool in our apartment building, and my morning workouts there last about 45-60 mins, and I always always do intervals! Favorites so far are:
Sprints: 20 x 1 min hard, 1 min easy;
Ladders: 1-2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2-1 mins hard, with 1 min easy in between
Blocks: 8 x (2 mins hard, 1 min hard with 1 min recoveries)
(always with 5-10 mins warmup, then 5 mins cool down).
I like adding 10 x 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds easy onto the workouts if I'm feeling good. With these, I go as hard as possible, with a real focus on using my core. Its a great core workout!

I have been doing those about 5 times a week (as often as I run) with one strength day, and one rest day. Its not running, but it keeps me sane... and its actually a really pleasant way to start the day! I attach my ipod mini to my head band, put my flotation belt on, and try to ignore the extremely odd and bewildered looks I get from the poor fellow who has to clean the pool in the mornings. As much as pool running is the best workout for injured runners... its not a sight we need to share with the world.

So there you have it. The beginning of 2014: was injury recovery, running, running, injury again. Such is the life of a distance runner, right?