Tradition Season

Ah, holiday tradition time.
Food, family, viciously competitive board games, crisp air, relearning the art of layering clothing, holiday cards & family updates that put my slim toilings to shame... maybe some more food.

Not all traditions are good. Enter my annual Thanksgiving injury. Yeah, steering this blog back to tri.

[No Christmas post. Yet. Can't blog without pics. That's a rule. In short, it was good. Not white. Everyone is here and healthy. Gas around town is at $1.77 to $1.95 for the cheap stuff.]

Last year: a nasty chest and back strain suffered raking leaves on T-day. This year's fun is more mysterious and less serious. Not quite as debilitating and quicker to heal. Strained lower back and ab/oblique thing over the pre T-day weekend. Quadratus Lumborum ("QL"), a back muscle connecting my right pelvis to the bottom right rib.
Not sure how it happened. Almost 1 yr to the day from the '07 event. (*note to self - next year crawl into a bunker in an undisclosed location and take the last week of November '09 off. Can I rent a rascal for a week so I don't even have to walk?)

Crap timing, of course. Was swimming faster than ever and in a groove hitting my Tue. & Thur. 6-7a swim sessions. Had my weekend daylight fun run up to 1hr50ish, feeling good during and recovering well after.

After about 10 days of olympic level eating and almost no exercise, I dusted off the scale. Up 7-8lbs. Late night Clif bar and cereal binges in front of the TV, on top of usual massive quantities of food are excellent plumper-uppers. I've got nothing on this bloke.

Feel just a little better about yourself now?
Go ahead, have another cookie. If you don't nab it he will.

Chiro/ART and hard core myofascial release style massage on the back and upper glutes has really helped, supplemented with similar self massage via the roller at home. Gradually returned to running after 2+ weeks. Same for swimming. Over 4 weeks in now, run and swim are feeling 95% normal re the injury spot.

Fortunately, I could limit my fitness losses by ride the trainer (aka "fencepost"), which I could do with zero QL discomfort, resulting in an unplanned week of 200miles cycling, my biggest bike week in a loooong time. How could I not have had many, many 200mi+ bike weeks in '08? 200 ain't nothing. It's tougher to get in miles this time of year (go hamster boy, go!), but only a couple 200+ weeks all year?

Back to roughly 100% now, time to steer back on track for winter work. Standard stuff, off season = putting time into strength and flexibility work, aka injury prevention or "prehab," stuff that falls by the wayside the rest of the year. Round the body out a bit.

Every coach and therapist I've seen over the years has zeroed in on my core/pelvis/glutes as the epicenter of my issues. The planned routine involves 20-30mins of pre-run dynamic stretching and muscle activation style work. If I stick with it, this should make me a stronger, more efficient person and injury free runner.

This video is spot on for my purposes, and for any runner really. It hits strength and flexibility and balance for run specific muscles, and brain tranis for run specific postures and movements. I'm doing it before every run.

One visible consequence of my weak medial glutes (among other things) is a rocking pelvis. This teeter-totter effect is a bad bad thing, with ramifications for IT Band and knee trouble, not to mention performance. See below my pelvis/hips tilting like there is a drunken puppeteer up above, or I'm working some invisible hulahoop. Pics are from the Nation's Triathlon, 9/13/08. Coming at the end of a hard race effort, there is some significant muscular fatigue going on, nicely bringing out the hip dip effect.

Rocking the pelvis - and one fishbelly white middle aged midriff.

I hear pale is the new tan for '09.

Thanks for reading.
Merry Christmas!

Blankety-Blank 1/6 - 1/10/08

The last couple months I've been more consistently injured than training. If not for injury venting this training journal would be blank. Makes for generally boring, depressing, repetitive tri blogging. Anyway for the record, the latest injury. At least, it happened while actually training, not raking leaves or taking out the garbage.

Sun. 1-6-08
Run
Beach Dr. path run 50mins easy, ~6.5mi. Right knee, lateral side of knee and just under lower front right corner developed growing ache, spread some both up ITB and down leg, stopped and walked last couple miles, walking was quite uncomfy too, uphill better than downhill. 75+min all togther.
Iced it at home. Refused to think negatively. (denial?) Still riding the joygasm that was the problem-free 3hr Sat. ride outdoors.

Mon. 1-7-08
20mins core.
It's official. Right knee all fouled up, can’t bend it. Iced a few times during day.

Tue. 1-8-08
Skipped swimming. Right knee no good.
ART massage, hard on both legs, found a little line of some scar tissue in right knee area, not sure if existed before this problem.

Pattern becoming evident. Over night the area tightens like an Enron exec stuck in an elevator with Michael Moore and his camera. I have to walk funny and deal with limited ROM in the a.m. During the course of the day it loosens a la Ed McMahon at an all day wine tasting - slowly but surely.

Eve - Attended coach Dan Brafman's base training talk at Bike Rack 1412 Q St NW, learned a little. Ironically, I can't train but it distracted me from whining to myself about not training, losing fitness, etc. Before the month is out I may see Dan for a "movement screen," find the strength and flexibility imbalances, it's been a couple years since last assessed.

Wed. 1-9-08
Eve - 25mins core
(3 x circuit: pushups, crunches, 6”, Jane Fonda-esque side leg raises, plank, curls). Long deep session on the roller and quadballer working on any knots ("trigger points") I could find from ankle to hip, both legs.

Again, knee tightened over night, have to keep it straight when walking in the a.m., can go up stairs okay but not down, loosens some over day, but same deal p.m. with stairs but up is even easier and and down not quite so nasty but def undoable. Decided not to try swimming tonight, will miss the Thur. a.m session tomorrow.

Thur. 1-10-08
Fairly close to walking normally by end of day. Descending stairs still no fun.
More core and stretching and roller, etc. in the eve. Probably could have done some swimming. A little gun shy. Can't afford to lose much more time, really need to establish a deep well of fitness for DATT weekend in May. Picked up some fresh run shoes, latest iteration (13th) of the Asics DS Trainer. My fave for a few years now. Current pair has ~400miles on them, not excessive but enough.

Bye to Bill Richardson. Fred Thompson next?