Pain in the Gluteus Medius, I think?

The day after the Carlsbad Half, my right hip was back to feeling cranky. (It didn’t bother me at all during the race.) Otherwise, my soreness was even in both sides of my body. I was pretty sore in the usual spot – the entire front and back of the leg – and also in my forearms and biceps.

Anticipating said hip crankiness, I scheduled a massage for Monday after work. I started out the massage on my stomach. It felt like the therapist was using her feet…and sure enough when I flipped over, I saw that she was. The modality is called Ashiatsu. The therapist uses an overhead support system to control her body weight and massages with the feet.

By U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District from Wiesbaden, Germany (USACE host Health Fair  Uploaded by SchuminWeb) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This was very effective on the quads, which took out a lot of the tension in my right hip. I’ve never felt so much relief from a massage.

Following the massage, I did a long stretching session with yoga, foam rolling, sticking, and restorative yoga poses. I repeated it Tuesday morning and again Tuesday night. And my right hip now feels exactly the same as my left hip. They are sore, but balanced.

The exact muscle that is acting up is the gluteus medius. You can find it by putting your hands on the upper part of your butt, and when you walk, it is the muscle that contracts.

Behold the gluteus medius:

By Anatomography (en:Anatomography (setting page of this image)) [CC-BY-SA-2.1-jp (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.1/jp/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m not sure how to correct it. Brainstorming:

It could be a muscle imbalance? Perhaps my right gluteus medius is weaker than the left, and therefore the hip is collapsing on the right foot strike. But I see no signs of hip tilting in my running pictures. Or, it could be that my right inner quad is weak, relative to the right gluteus medius, which would cause an outward rotation and misalignment the leg.

It could be tight quads? When the quad are tight, they pull on stuff that tugs on the gluteus medius. (We’re very scientific here.) I felt reference pain during the quad massage in my hip, so it’s true. The massage therapist told me that the stick is a great tool for getting at the quad muscle, especially just above the knee. She’s right, it’s better than foam rolling this area.

It could be a tight psoas? The massage therapist checked that out, and it wasn’t painful at all.

It could be skeletal?

It could be the result of too fast of a mileage build up? Suggested by Penny - and a likely scenario…

I guess I lay off the long runs for a few weeks, work on the tight quads, and go about strengthening gluteus medius and inner thighs?

two little runners
Kristen

Ankle sprain - is there a yoga pose for that?

two little runners ~Kristen 

The anklet of pain I felt after last week’s interval work out turned out to be a sprained ankle. Damn. A very minor sprain in the scheme of sprains. And I would very likely not notice it if I weren’t trying to run. The pain is at 0 when I walk. At 1 when I go up and down stairs. At 2 when I stand on one foot. And at 6 when I try to run. Just enough pain and instability to break my form. 

My marathon is in jeopardy. I don’t know how I can possibly run 26.2 miles, when less than 30 days prior to the race, I can only run 2 minutes consecutively.

So no miles this week. I focused again on rest and recovery. The usual yoga, foam rolling, and stretching. And I tried out some new techniques. If only I could rest and recover my way to the start line! 

I’ve been experimenting with restorative yoga poses, which I’ve been reading about in Sage Roundtree’s book The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery: Rest, Relax & Restore for Peak Performance. The basic premise is to hold very easy poses for a very long time. So far I am really digging two poses: legs up the wall and supported back bend. These poses are so relaxing. When I finish, I am in a haze – and I am not a person who easily relaxes! What’s been so interesting about these poses is the tiny muscle releases that I’ve felt 7 to 10 minutes after I start the pose, even though the pose doesn’t feel like much of a stretch at all.

•  Legs up the wall pose is pretty straight forward. I lay down on my back in front of a wall and put my legs straight up the wall (L shape). I give myself a little bit of distance from the wall so that my hamstrings are not strained at all. Palms face up to open the chest. Sometimes I find a pillow under my head and/or hips comfortable, other times not. Bottom line with these poses is that I make myself comfortable because I stay them for 10 to 20 minutes. I try to relax entirely, using only enough energy to keep my legs upright. On this pose, I’ve gotten some low back releases.

• I’ve been doing supported backbend in bed at night and have been falling asleep in the pose. I start by lying down on my back, and then I elevate my head slightly above the level of my hips. I have pillows supporting me all the way from my head to lower back. Then I put my legs in a very loose bounded ankle pose – soles of feet together but very far out so that I feel just the tiniest stretch in my inner thighs. Palms face up to open the chest. I’ve been feeling some inner thigh releases in this pose.

The other restoration technique I tried is called MELT – which is sort of like foam rolling for your connective tissues. I took a MELT class, and although I think it is partially witchcraft and junk science (either that or there is no effort to explain the science very well), I picked up a few new techniques that I am going to put into my repertoire.

5 weeks out (0 miles)

Sat. 4/20 – Yoga.

Sun. 4/21 – MELT.

Mon. 4/22 – Legs. More of a PT leg session. Just getting a little bit of blood back to the sprained ankle’s ligaments.

Tue. 4/23 – Yoga.

Wed. 4/24 – Yoga.

Thu. 4/25 – Yoga.

Fri. 4/26 – Legs and core. Legs were again more of a PT session. Ankle improved a little bit since Monday.

two little runners ~Kristen 

From Bad to Worse

two little runners ~Kristen

Last week, I complained about my bad mood and my bad feet. This week, things got worse . . .

Sunday was my long run. I did the shoe switcheroo. But realized that I don’t care for the New Balance 890s anymore. I could not run with quiet feet in these shoes. Normally, I am nearly silent when I run. I often startle people when I pass from behind. But in the 890s, I was clomping. Comparing the shoes, I noticed that the 890s have a flat toe. The Mirages have an elf toe. My sense is that the elf toe makes the heal-to-toe transition smoother.  

The scheduled run was 16 miles @ 8:00. On paper, this should be a medium effort run for me. But it turned out to be the hardest run of my training cycle so far. It was cold. It was windy. It was raining. But mostly, I was wiped out. At mile 11 I questioned whether I could complete it. But I pushed through and finished, if for nothing else to make it back to my car. This was a terrible idea.

Monday I woke up in just a vile mood – tired from the hellish Sunday long run and anxious because I had a ton of work to get done that day. So I went to the gym early to bang out a leg work out before heading into the office. This was a terrible idea.

Let’s just say there were tongue lashings given to people who did not deserve them. Very, very bad behavior.

Wow, so I had been tinkering with the idea that I might be heading into the land of the overtrained . . . and the gym incident made me realize that I really needed a break from training. I very rarely get mad, let alone yell at people!

I self-imposed rest on Tuesday, and Wednesday. I needed to yank myself back from potentially falling into O territory. I also needed punishment for the very, very bad behavior. And I thought this would give my feet some time to recover. So I stuck to rest days on Tuesday and Wednesday. I spent some time doing low intensity foam rolling, yoga, and stretching. And feeling very, very bad about my very, very bad behavior.

Thursday it was time to run. I picked back up with an interval workout. About half way through the intervals, something was off in my left foot. It felt like I had made too many left turns while I was running about the inlets along the Embarcadero. So I decided to run straight-aways for the rest of the run – 5 more miles. This was a terrible idea.

I was limping the next morning. Pain wrapped around the back of my foot under the ankle and over the top between them during the toe off motion of walking. An anklet of pain. I could barely put any pressure on my left foot. So yet another rest day to complete the week . . . Hey, marathon training is not all smiles and butterflies!

6 weeks out (34.5 miles)

Sat. 4/13 - easy run in San Dieguito Lagoon. 8.5 miles @ 8:45. 

Sun. 4/14 - long run to Cabrillo National Monument. 16 miles @ 8:00.

Even on a cold, windy, and rainy day, the views on this route are breathtaking. 

Mon. 4/15 - leg workout. 

Tues 4/16, Wed. 4/17 - rest. 

Thu. 4/18 - 10 miles with 4 x 1.5 miles @ 6:50.

Fri. 4/19 - rest.

two little runners ~Kristen

I’m Tired and My Feet Hurt, WAAAAAAH!

two little runners ~Kristen

Unscheduled rest days. Two phantom foot niggles. Stiff joints. Swollen ankles. A coworker commenting that I seem grumpy. Feeling annoyed, easily irritated. Fighting back a couple desk naps.

Yet a cutback in mileage this week.

Now I understand the difficulty of marathon training versus half marathon training. My marathon workouts aren’t as hard for me as when we were training for the Vegas RnR Half last year. So far, I’m easily completing the workouts in my training plan. My difficulty with marathon training has been the wear and tear. And managing the fatigue. It’s more miles; it’s more time running.

I am succeeding in the training but beginning to fail in the recovery department. 

My biggest problem is my feet. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like am at the end of a 15 miler. And it doesn't get much better throughout the day. Whenever possible, I've been running on trails and grass. 

It occurs to me that I've run about 350 miles since mid-February when I started training for this marathon, and 100% of those miles have been in Saucony Mirages. I loved the Mirages from the start, and now I'm on my second pair, behold:

Since I started tucking my ties into my laces,
my shoes have never come untied on a run. 

The Mirage is a minimalist shoe. It's not my first minimalist shoe; I trained for much of Vegas in Brooks Pure Flows. So I felt comfortable and strong enough to use the Mirage day in and day out. I think the Mirage falls on the more conventional end of the minimalist spectrum because it has a drop of 4 mm. The shoe is light and has good ground feel. I like that the sole is stiff. You can't bend it in any direction.

But the Mirage is pretty stripped down in the cushioning department I am coming to realize. Perhaps I need a little more cushioning now that I am doing 3 runs a week that are longer than 10 miles...

So an experiment next week. I am going back to New Balance 890s. A shoe I've purchased 6 times over. My old reliables, which always take me back even after I've dumped them for newer, more attractive models.

Best wishes to all the Boston runners!!

7 weeks out (42 miles)

4/6 (Sa) – Easy 6 in Carlsbad @ 8:30.

            Picked up bib for 5K at race expo and ran along the coast. Legs felt springy and fresh, which was a good sign for the race.

4/7(Su) – Carlsbad 5000. 10 miles, including 3.1 race miles.

            Got a nice 5K PR of 19:36 (6:19 pace). Included some warm up miles and an easy run afterward.

 4/8 – Rest + big time yoga, foam roll, stretch.

4/9 (Tu) – Tempo. 11 miles with 9 @ 7:17 (M pace).

            The very tip of my big toe flared up after this tempo run. Weird spot for a niggle. It randomly throbbed for a few seconds throughout the day. First run in my second pair of Saucony Mirages.

4/10 (W) – Rest.

            Took a rest day because the big toe tip still randomly throbbing. There are so many factors that I could blame it on. The 5K. Kinks working their way out of the body from Monday’s massive yoga/stretch sesh. New running shoes. Wearing flat shoes with no support every day at work.

4/11 (Th) – Intervals. 10 miles with 6 x 1 mile @ 6:50 (1/2 M pace).

            Taking Wednesday as a rest day paid off. Toe tip pain all gone. But new niggle emerged. This time – what feels like muscle tightness on the back of my left foot wrapping around under both ankles. Are there even muscles back there?

4/12 (F) – Legs plus 5 easy miles @ 8:30 in grass/trails.

two little runners ~Kristen

I leave you with some more photos of the elite race at Carlsbad 5000.

All Easy is All Good

two little runners ~ Kristen 

Ahhh! I have been blissfully running sweet, easy miles. Spending some time in the gym to get leg and core strength back to where it was. And stretching out with daily yoga. 

...om...

Base building has been treating me right! I love running without worrying about pace or distance. I've been heading out the door with just a time frame in mind. 

I'm finding that base building is also a healing time. All those little eeks and creaks from my intense fall half marathon training have cleared up. I haven't worn my compression socks since December! Habitual stiffness and knots in the calves - gone! What tiny strain in the piriformis from speed work on treadmill?

And I'm using this time to focus on some little niggles in my feet that I have been managing for awhile. I occasionally experience a sharp pain in my left foot where my arch meets the ball of my foot. Toward the end of long runs on pavement, it would manifest as feeling like there was a pebble in the arch of my shoe.  And I have some joint stiffness, from an old tennis injury, near my right arch as well. It is clearing up with what I can only describe as "plantar fascia scraping." Other people call it massage. 

The base building will continue for one more week while I am vacationing in Maui!! And then it will be time to pick a race, a pace, and get serious once again!

For now, I'm running to be happy, have fun, and explore new places and routes.

...and take pictures...

In New York:

Obsessed with the Brooklyn Bridge. I ran over it once and
under it as many times as I could!

 In Santa Barbara:

Quick weekend vacation. One of the most beautiful stretches
of California coast.

And at home in San Diego:

A friendly humming bird let me shoot a closeup!

Even through trial, looking over my training log, I was fairly consistent with volume during my 6 week base building period.

Setting aside the two weeks of January. 

A dark period, never to be spoken of again.  

January week 3 – 30 miles

January week 4 – 30 miles

February week 1 – 40 miles

February week 2 – 30 miles

February week 3 – 40 miles

February week 4 – will end up being about 50 miles

Aloha!

two little runners ~ Kristen

The familiar feeling of sore legs and other mid-week craziness

After nearly three weeks of no exercise, my leg muscles were supple and knot-free. I was long and lean in my first yoga class back and no hot spots. I know the yoga girls' elusive secret of staying so flexible . . . they don’t use their legs to run 40 miles/week.

Now, one week back to running and 38 miles later, and I am experiencing the familiar feeling of sore legs every day. The rocks in my calves are back, nearly every leg muscle is sore. My legs are tender, especially below the knee.

I had a little more spring in my step those first runs back last week, even though I was not at full capacity lung-wise. This must be what post-tapering feels like.

During my cold-induced sojourn from running, I lost strength and fitness. And I am worried that I won’t be able to gain it back in time for Vegas Rock ‘N Roll because my time is short and I am congested and not yet breathing at full capacity. During runs, I still cough and my nose runs. But last week was still a solid week of training. The x-factor is how much fitness I lost versus how much I can get back in one more week of training before tapering.

I also lost confidence. Prior to the cold, I had just begun to feel confident in my ability to run my goal pace at the Silver Strand Half. My legs were strong, and I felt like I was a horse when I was running. No joke. This is what I looked like in my mind (source: GeeAlice via Wikimedia Commons):



I was mentally prepared for the pain and suffering of Silver Strand. I had visualized the race and determined that I would be mentally tough at each and every terrible moment. It was disheartening not to be able to run it.

Now I freak out after every run because it felt harder than I expected or harder than the same sort of run used to feel when I was healthy. I am constantly doing little experiments during my runs to probe how much fitness I lost/regained.

I did a speed workout today for the first time this month. It was the hardest speed workout I have ever done, even though it was one of my shorter sessions, clocking in at just over an hour and 7.2 miles total. The objective was 2 miles warm up, 5 x 1 km at 9.4 (6:22), with 0.5 km active recoveries at 6.0 (10:00), 1 mile cool down. This workout gave Penny a lot of confidence, so I thought I would try it.

Observations: My legs were lead due to (1) 38 miles last week, after three weeks of either zero miles or single digits; and (2) a leg workout yesterday, even then my legs felt dead from the weekend's tempo and long runs. I was still suffering from coughs/runny nose. Running during the rest intervals made the workout much harder than prior speed sessions I have done where I had walked to recover. Even running the recovery at 6.0 (10:00 pace) made a huge difference in difficulty. I completed all 5 fast intervals.

But: Before the 4th, I walked for about half of the recovery, and before the 5th, I walked the entire 0.5 km recovery interval slow, 3.3. I hit pause after the 3rd and 4th intervals because I felt like I could not run one. more. step. Then I hunched over, caught my breath, and carried on. My weak link here was my cardio fitness, not my leg strength. The legs are back, and I was mentally tough, overcoming the temptation to stop after 4 fast intervals. Now I need to rid myself of the last remnants of the cold.

And I need a rest day tomorrow.

Concluding these rambling thoughts, I need to shut up about the cold and stop focusing on it. That’s a promise!

two little runners (Kristen)

The Art and Science of Tapering

This is the first time I have made it to the end of a training cycle having fully completed my training plan (other cycles have been undisciplined toward the end) and having stayed injury (and accident) free! Horary! So now I am 10 days away from race day (Silver Strand Half Marathon) and feeling strong, fit, and healthy. Navigating uncharted waters, I think it is time to taper?!

There is surprisingly little information about tapering in most of my running reference books. On the blogosphere, I am seeing runners reporting “taper tantrums” from lack of running. But I’m not finding much information about how to taper, for how long, and why.

So I turned to the running Bible: Tim Noakes’ Lore of Running (4th ed. 2001) for . . .

The Science of Tapering

Tapering is the process of resting up before a major race. Runners discovered tapering by accident. History is replete with examples of runners being forced to rest due to sickness or injury in the weeks prior to their events and then having breakthrough performances.  The most famous, perhaps, was Carlos Lopes who won Olympic gold at the 1984 games in the marathon after an accident prevented him from training for 10 days prior to the race.  Another Olympic example is Joan Benoit.  She won the 1984 United States Olympic marathon trials only days after undergoing knee surgery. Benoit later said that she thinks her knee injury was the single most important factor that led to her victory:  it forced her to train less throughout the training cycle.  Noakes at 321-22.

So for the niggled/injured runners late in their fall training cycles, maybe your injury is a gift, and you'll have a breakthrough performance in your race. Stay positive!

There are also scientific studies to support the practice of tapering as having positive effects on race performance. But there have been no studies specific to half marathons or marathons. Noakes concludes that according to the few studies on tapering, a taper is most effective when “there is a rapid reduction in training volume . . . in the first few days of the taper and training during the taper is at high intensity, approximating 5-km race pace.” Id. at 321.

Noakes also believes from personal experience that the harder and/or longer your training cycle, the longer you’ll need to taper.  Id. at 621.  And further, the longer the race distance, the longer the taper.  Id. at 653.

Noakes’ book excerpts half marathon and marathon training plans written by many different experts.  Most half marathon plans include a 1 week taper. Most marathon plans include a 2 week taper. Ultras and ironman races, by comparison, may have up to a 4 week taper.

So that leaves us to figure out our tapers by feel . . .

The Art of Tapering

Peasant Woman Holding a Taper
by Jules Breton [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The goal is to find the sweet spot between giving your body enough rest to allow a full recovery of the muscles and avoiding a loss of fitness.

Right now I am feeling fit but tired. So I am less worried about losing fitness and more worried about getting enough rest. I think a slightly longer than the standard 1 week half marathon taper is in order.  

I am thinking of tapering along these lines: 

• Run no more than 15 miles during the taper period. But no running the last 3 days before the race. This means for my last week of training, I’ll cut my average weekly mileage over the last 7 weeks by 50% (I had been running roughly 30 miles per week).
• I am going to cut out leg weight workouts and plyo completely.
• I’ll keep up with core because those muscles are secondary in running and, for me, seem to recovery quickly after workouts.
• I’ll add another light yoga class next week to stay stretched out (and to give me something to do in place of running). 

Taper Plan 

1. Friday – normally scheduled rest day
2. Saturday – tempo run at race pace, no more than 5 miles
3. Sunday – 3 miles easy
4. Monday – yoga
5. Tuesday – mile repeats, no more than 4 miles
6. Wednesday – 3 miles easy, core
7. Thursday – yoga
8. Friday – rest
9. Saturday – rest
10. Sunday – race

Let the taper begin!

Any advice for a successful taper? What kind of taper has worked for you?

Kristen

The Sweaty Elbow--thoughts on surviving the dreaded elliptical "runner"

It is a sorry state of affairs when your last 4 activities on RunKeeper are elliptical runs.

And RunKeeper taunts you with its sarcastic emails about your new elliptical running “achievements.” Congratulations, my (_|_). (The icon is more vulgar than the word, no?)

If you haven’t been here, someday you will. Here is how to survive it.

1. Pat yourself on the back. Give yourself some props for choosing elliptical. Look, you could have taken a lazy day or you could have injured yourself further by running on something you shouldn’t have.

2. Intervals. Fact: the elliptical is boring. Worse than the treadmill. Especially if you mindlessly pump away on level 1. Challenge yourself with intervals. I like two minutes at level 8 or 9 followed by a one minute resting interval on level 1. By the end of 30 minutes of this, I can get my heart rate up to 180, not bad!

3. Relatedly, embrace it. This idea comes from Lauren Fleshman’s blog.

I like to get on one of the ellipticals next to someone reading a magazine who is so relaxed she isn’t even mouth-breathing, and proceed to work myself into a sweaty mess, drops flicking off my elbows onto the floor forming a puddle while I huff and puff, inevitably scaring her to death.  Its a little hobby of mine.  Kind of like one of those jokes where you walk into a crowded elevator and proceed to the very back corner where you face the wall for the remainder of the ride up.  Freaks people out every time.

In other words, go all bad-(_|_).  

4. Most importantly, tunes. Obviously, something with a decent beat. But that is not sufficient to sustain me on the dreaded machine for an hour. I like to listen to something nostalgic that will take my mind off ellipticalling and back to good times. Lately, I’ve been listening to Erykah Badu albums—an artist I listened to nonstop in college. Not an obvious choice for a cardio workout. But Erykah Badu has a cardio connection for me. Spinning was my first foray into endurance training since cross country in school—which I don’t remember much about other than one time I drank a glass of milk and ate a cheese sandwich just prior to a run and then wondered why I threw up. (Hold on, this is about to get relevant . . .) The most important part of a spinning class is good tunes. One spinning instructor I had would throw into the mix a few Erykah Badu songs each session. I remember pushing up those hills in step with some Baduizm. 

Speaking of nostalgia, here is a picture of me from college, sporting a "yorkie" hairdo. Haha, good times!

LR#2

Kristen

LR#2 Weekly Wrap Up: Rest, Recovery, and 1000 Miles

I was feeling the half marathon in my legs this week. I was very tight--quads, calves, hams--even on Thursday. So I was good to my legs by cutting way back on miles and by doing some fairly intensive yoga/stretching sessions. Meanwhile, I set new running goals and researched training plans . . . to be revealed this week on Two Little Runners . . . on the edge of your seat yet?

Thursday, I unceremoniously crossed the RunKeeper 1000 mile mark during a crap 2 mile run on the treadmill. Hey, every mile counts I suppose!

Monday (6/4): 1 mile on treadmill very slow as a warm up to yoga.

Tuesday (6/5): Recovery run, slow 3.5 miles in Balboa Park; upper body strength training.

Wednesday (6/6): Complete rest.

Thursday (6/7): 2 mile run on treadmill, at 8:30 average pace; yoga.

Friday (6/8): Complete rest.

Saturday (6/9): Complete rest.

Sunday (6/10): 6 miles, average 8:00 miles through the cornfields of Illinois; sprints through Detroit airport at maximum speed (wish I had turned on RunKeeper!) but missed the connecting flight --> 1 mile treadmill and core workout at the Detroit Airport Marriott.

LR#2
Kristen

Rest Days

They're hard to take; especially when you've recovered from injury and you're ramping back up. Even harder are unscheduled rest days. Diverging from a training plan can be daunting and irritating.

But they're important, MOST especially when increasing mileage or embarking on a new training plan.

Yesterday I ran an easy 3 miles at well over 9 min pace, and then did a core cardio and balance workout (from the recovery week of insanity). While neither workout was intense, my body felt heavy and achey, likely pains from increasing mileage. Looking back on last week, I probably did not take enough rest. Even my "rest day" contained a fairly hefty strength workout.

Because my main focus is staying injury free while increasing mileage, I need to be utterly vigilant when my muscles and bones begin giving me those "pre-injury" signals. 

But rest days are also emotionally and mentally important. A day of rest, in my faith, is a day to take stock, give thanks for the blessings in your life, and spend time with the people you love.  Acknowledging internally that it's ok to take a rest day from running is a struggle; but one worth fighting. I know I'll be thanking myself later this week when my body feels strong and rested. But its also good knowing that today, I'll have a little bit of extra time to catch up on some work, to spend time with my gorgeous husband, and to give thanks for having two legs and being able to run in the first place.

#LR1 Penny

Deep Sand Running

Coming off an injury this week--a bone bruise on my right foot, outer edge. I unexpectedly stepped into a hole running FAST at night on a dirt road during Ragnar. My last real run was April 21! I took nine days completely off--no cardio, no strength training. Only stretching. Doctor's advice.

Slowly ramped back up last week with a few stationary bike rides and the elliptical. It turns out that you CAN get a great workout from cardio activities other than running. TRUTH. I got my heart rate up over 160, believe it! Now it is not as satisfying as a good run. But it is an adequate substitute while on injury.

Finally, I was ready for the treadmill . . . I have never been so happy to treadmill as I was on Friday when I joyously ran 30 minutes and then had to peel myself off of the thing.

The foot felt good on the soft, safe treadmill. Still feeling a bit wary, I took to another soft surface for my weekend runs. Deep sand. Not the wet stuff. This is the deep, dry sand at the edge, edge, edge away from the water.

Deep sand running is a great transition from injury back to pavement. It is easier on the joints in some ways--soft surface, so less pounding. It is also IMPOSSIBLE to run fast or far. I usually lack the discipline to make myself run slow, and I can always talk myself into a 10 mile run when I set out for 5. Deep sand running is so hard . . . you won't be able to run even close to your warm-up pace. And I certainly wasn't even thinking about running extra miles! Still a short deep sand run takes a lot of effort and is therefore highly satisfying!

Saturday's scene was Coronado beach. I ran a 3.65 miler, which is the entire length of the beach (out and back) that is open to the public. Coronado is a great place for a beach run. The beach is wide and flat. Not to mention beautiful!

Coronado Beach, view of Point Loma

And historic!

Hotel Del Coronado

Sunday I went to Mission Beach for my second deep sand run. Another wide, flat beach. Ideal. Plus, the boardwalk is an option if the run gets too intense!

Mission Beach, view of Crystal Pier

I ran 4 miles on Mission Beach, but the beach goes on and on. Probably up to 8 miles as an out and back if you have it in you!

Coincidentally, I ran both of my deep sand runs at an average pace of 9:34, a pace far slower than even my warm-up or cool-down pace. And 4 miles is normally a very easy run for me. But in the deep sand, it takes a lot of effort to power those legs! My perceived effort level was comparable to that of a 7:00 pace, which is my 10K race pace.

And I am definitely feeling my deep sand runs in the little tiny balancing muscles in the feet and lower legs. And the quads got a nice burn from powering through all that sand!

Routes available on my Runkeeper page: Coronado, Mission Beach.

LR#2
Kristen