Thursday, October 5, 2017

Runner Problems, 2017

     So, this lament will likely sound selfish in light of the recent hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean Islands.  People have lots worse problems than I do.  However, I will continue with my ramble here to help me think things thru a bit. This was originally written before the Las Vegas shooting...such a sad thing that has affected so many...just senseless.  My heart goes out to those people and their families.

     I am currently recovering from a left hip and hamstring injury I got back in late June from tripping on a trail run. I haven't been able to run this past summer without considerable discomfort, and my stride is altered some. But at the same time, I have a decent fitness base I don't want to lose.  I bought a mountain bike, but have not used it much. I have a road bike but don't use it at all. I have a Y membership but have not been swimming much. I have tried to maintain my fitness by sticking with hiking and running. When I try longer runs of 7 miles or more my pace has been very slow. I can do short runs on the track at a somewhat decent speed for a 61 year old, but not quite as fast or as many intervals as I think I should be able to do. I can't keep up with friends on social runs, so I have gotten to where I don't really want to go on those runs now either.

     Running hurts now.  It didn't used to. It used to be fun.  It is not fun anymore. I am wondering if it is time to hang up the running shoes and call it off for good.  I really don't want to do that.  Running road races and trail races had become a big part of my life since 2005, not just with enjoying fitness, but socially as well.  Now it seems to just not be there for me.  I can't race. I can't train.  My hip bothers me all the time.  I have a marathon in Ohio I signed up for on October 8, and I won't be ready. I have a 50 mile trail ultra I signed up for that is the first Saturday in November that I doubt I will be ready for.  This is getting pretty discouraging.  In the past I have had injuries but recovered pretty well in 2 or 3 months. This string of injuries I have been fighting actually goes back into January when I pulled some muscles in my low back and left hip...never fully recovered.  Feeling pretty unmotivated.

     The hardest part of this is, I have wanted to qualify to enter the Boston Marathon for several years. At age 52, in 2007,  I ran the Richmond VA marathon in 3:45. My qualification time then was 3:40.  The time for the 55 to 59 age group was 3:45.  I figured I would train hard and come back at age 55 or 56 and get my qualifying time. Well, that didn't happen due to a torn medial meniscus in my right knee in August of 2010.  I never had any surgery for that because Dave Horton had the same problem, had surgery, and now could not run at all.  I took 3 months to rehab my knee and got back to running.  My right knee hurts all the time now though. The very next year, the Boston Athletic Association raised the qualification standards for those age groups by 5 minutes faster, so even after turning 55 I would have to run a 3:40.  I ran Myrtle Beach SC in 3:47 that included a 5 or 6 minute pit stop in a port a john, close, but not quite there. I ran Rehoboth Beach in 3:46, close again, but not quite a qualifier.

     In 2014 I got the idea to do the whole Beast series.  Several of my good trail running friends were doing the Beast, and several more were entered in the 100 mile event in the Beast series...the Grindstone 100 miler. The Beast is 6 ultras in one year.  ( 3) 50 k races in the spring, a 100 miler, a 50 miler, and a 100 k race in the fall, plus I had to do a 50 mile qualifier to get into the 100 miler in the series.  I actually did another 50 miler that year for a total of (3) 50 K races, (3) 50 mile races, (1) 100 miler and (1) 100k. I think that took alot out of me at age 58, and Im not sure I have recovered yet!

     At the end of 2014 I took the last three weeks of the year pretty much off from running. I had  done pretty good at the Hellgate 100k (more like 108k...67 miles) in 16:29...something like 11,000 ft elevation gain and loss, that was the second weekend of December.  I extended my laziness into the first couple weeks of the new year without running. I decided I was not going to run the first two 50 k races, and volunteered instead.


     The volunteer work would intentionally prevent me from entering the Beast series again after just finishing it. Later in March, I went to Wisconsin for some training having to do with our ladder trucks at the Fire Dept where I am a mechanic. I ran a combined road and trail marathon there that had a wooden lookout tower about 50 or 60 feet tall that you had to climb (stairs) and descend...pretty slow time. I ran another road marathon later in April in Maryland and ran a slow time again. By June I was starting to get back to serious training because I had entered the Grindstone 100 miler again, hoping to better my time.

     Well, that got side tracked by two injuries within a couple weeks of each other in late June. I pulled my left Piriformis while using a pole saw at home, then I dropped an ambulance truck tire on my left foot and totally bruised the whole foot. The x-ray did not show a break, but I think there was something broke. Could not run the entire month of July, just when I should have been getting 60 to 80 mile weeks and double long runs in the mountains on trails on weekends. Come August I was trying to get my running back to where I could still squeeze into my 100 miler in October, even tho I knew with the injury and lack of training I would not be as fast as last year, if I even could finish.  But finish I did, two hours slower than the previous year. I still had Hellgate in December. I was an hour slower than the previous year at Hellgate, but I was healed up from the injuries  and just wanted a rest again from training. I was thinking I would leave the trails and try some flat, fast marathons. Different training,  different methods, and different results.  So ended 2015. 

     While starting to think about what marathons to do, Dave Horton announced a new Virginia Triple Crown race series in spring of 2016, made up of Holliday Lake 50k, the Smith Mountain Dam 50k (new race, celebrating 50th anniversary of the dam), and the Promise Land 50k. This I had to do, ready or not. I finished all of them, not in very good time though. All this racing at less than racing condition made me pretty slow.

     I decided I would look for a downhill marathon. There are several. I settled on Revel Rockies near Denver CO that Grattan Garbee told me about. We both did some downhill training on Thunder Ridge here,  then went out to Denver and did it, but the altitude killed us. It started at 10,000 ft above sea level and finished at 5,000.  No BQ time. I figured I had another shot before mid September when  qualification attempts for 2017 Boston would end and attempts for 2018 would begin. I signed up for the Erie Marathon to be held the second weekend of September. Flat, shady course, with nice views of Lake Erie.  I still was not able to hold my qualification speed past the halfway point. Just not enough intensity to my training. I figured I would rest a little, start a new training cycle over the winter, and look for some more flat road courses that I could  BQ on, and try for more states, working to get a marathon run in all 50.

     2017 brought new chances, a new President, and some problems with it. I had signed up for a couple marathons. One in Georgia, and one in Ohio. Both states I had not done a marathon in. By mid January I was gearing my training  for some speedier work than I had done in the past 2 or 3 years, and more intensity.

     February was unusually warm and I was looking forward to early Tuesday morning track workouts and doing some Thursday tempo runs. Then the beginning of a downward spiral struck. 
 I got real sick with the flu, then a bad cold which became a sinus infection. So no serious training till about the last week of February.

     In March, I had another incident with a tire, this time lifting it and putting it back on a truck got out of hand. The weight and momentum of the tire was taking it in a direction I did not want it to go. I stepped into it to get better control and wrestled it into position which strained my left Piriformis muscle again in my hip, and threw out my lower back ( I have a chronic condition in my lower back that causes misalignment of the 4th and 5th lumbar vertebrae and inflames the sciatic nerves). Chiropractic treatment usually works great.

     My former chiropractor had retired so I was looking for a new one about the same time my daughter, Rachel, finished her classes in massage therapy and got a job doing exactly that at Chiro Med with Dr. Jennifer Tinoosh on Rt. 221, a little less than a mile from my job. Between them both working on me the pain reduced greatly and I was able to get back to normal activity pretty quick.  So by mid March I was back to serious training.

     High hopes crumbled however, as I re-injured my left piriformis, which in turn inflamed my sciatic nerve the first weekend of April.  I just tripped on a trail run, then later on, not being careful, I had placed my self in a position where I had almost all my weight on my left leg in trying to stand up from being crouched down on the ground picking up a small box of race medals at the Point of Honor 5k. As I stood up with most of my weight on the wrong (left) leg, I felt my left piriformis tear again, and twinge on that sciatic nerve again, except this time I could tell the damage was worse. No running in April.

     By May I was back to serious training and not doing too bad. I was not in great condition, but was able to do increasingly more and harder workouts. By June I was looking to register for a couple fall marathons. By late June I was moving ok and was on a Wednesday evening trail run when I caught my left foot on a root. I started to just go down and deal with whatever came of that. Looking at where I was about to land, there was a sharp stick poking up out of the ground right where I was about to land. I made some quick movements with my left leg and planted my foot up under me so I didn't fall, but I tore every muscle in my left hip, including the left hamstrings.  No running for a couple weeks. More massage therapy, more chiro treatment. By the end of July I was back to some training but my hip was still not cooperative. My right knee has been giving trouble since tearing the medial meniscus in 2010. I can deal with that mostly, but the increased discomfort and the altered gait from my left hip not working right has really given me problems.

     Now it seemed as though my whole body was full of inflammation from this latest injury.  Still I didn't want to lose too much fitness, so I forced shorter runs when I could and tried to do some track work at a Middle School track that doesn't see a large amount of the running community so I wouldn't be embarrassed by my slower speeds. It was easier to run on flat smooth surfaces, but that also begs for faster leg turnover, faster running, and movements that now I'm not sure were beneficial to my injury.  I tried to go with the Wednesday trail running group, but I am too slow to keep up so I just would start off with them and make my way back on my own after a slower and shorter run. Several times I would have minor tripping episodes that would put a little "stinger" in my hip and left hamstring on those Wednesday trail runs.  Then I would be so sore the next few days, I didn't want to, or couldn't run. But I did not want to stop  going. I love being on trails. I didn't want to totally lose "trail legs".  It seemed that the tripping would set my muscle recovery in my injured hip backward though, so I just didn't know what to do for awhile.

     Finally time came for the VA 10 & 4 miler races. I had registered Aaron and myself to run as an assisted athlete team.   He loves to race in his big push chair, and I didn't want to disappoint him any more. We have not been doing very many races lately, and he misses it.  Anyway, we ran the Four Miler race on the Ten Miler course and did ok. My hip actually felt better at the end than at the start.  This past week I got in a little over 37 miles in training, including a 17 mile run in the mountains. I feel pretty good, and hope that continues. I am registered for the Mountain Masochist 50 mile Trail Race the first Saturday in November,  we will see how that goes.  I have a month to continue training and get in a taper week.  The tight cutoffs on the second half of this course might get me.  This will be the first trail ultra for me since Promise Land in April of 2016, and longest race since the Erie Marathon in September 2016.  This weekend (October 6,7,8, 2017)  I was supposed to run a flat marathon.  I know I won't be close to a Boston Qualifier time, so I am not doing that.  Instead, I will be helping the Dowell's Draft aid station on the Grindstone 100 mile course, and hoping I can get a little mountain trail running in myself.  Since this station is at mile 20 outbound and mile 80 inbound on this out and back course, I should have a nice gap between the last runner outbound, and the first runner inbound to get a run in.

     Keeping my fingers crossed for no injuries, continued improvement in the way my hip is doing, and longer runs in preparation for Mountain Masochist 50 mile Trail Race November 4, 2017.

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