Fitness Friday: Fitness on the Mend

http://www.cupcakedujour.ca/2012_06_01_archive.html
Ok, So I am officially back to training and... BACK WORKING! Yah me! I have been able to pick up some part-time work at Speek & Webb (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Speek-and-Webb-PLLC/263925700298864), a law firm based in Chattanooga, TN. As I continue to focus my attention on getting my ankle back to 100% and my body back ready to run a fast marathon in October, I decided I need to return to my roots and pay attention to cross-training. Yes folks, this means I'm back rollerblading, swimming/aqua-jogging, and hitting up the core, drills, and stretching. As you can imagine, the whirl-wind of a trip my life has been on for the last 12 or so weeks caused me to let things fall to the way-side, causing my body to remind me that it's doing the small things that keep me healthy... lesson learned the hard way. So, in my attempt to keep myself on track, I am going to start posting my cross-training/strength building workouts on here! This week, I did the Core Synergistics workout from P90x. I love doing this workout... though Tony Horton can be a bit much at times. It switches things up enough that I don't lose interest part way through, and it helps me focus on my hip strength and flexibility... my trouble spots. I last did this workout with my lil' big sis when I was in Vancouver, BC. I had to modify it then because of my foot, but was still able to get a lot of benefit from it. I've shared the link to her workout blog... as you can see, it took matching outfits to motivate us to get going ;D.

"Fitness on the Mend"
Sometimes, our bodies don't behave. Despite our best intentions, and most ardent care, we get tired, we break down, we get injured. This post is about working out through injury. Or more specifically what to do, when you can't do what you usually do. My sister was in town this week to race in a half marathon. On her first day here she ran 15 miles. On day 2 she did a 8/6 double. Day 3 brought 400 repeats. And then, something went wrong... She began noticing a tightness in her ankle. Hopeful it would settle down by race day, she tapered her training, did the old RICE standby, and bought some Advil. On race day, we were awaiting her triumphant appearance at the finish line, when my phone rang. She had pulled out at 4 km. The medical team suspected a sprained ankle, or perhaps worse.

How does a runner keep their fitness level up when they can't run? They get creative.

We put matching outfits. We threw on p90x. We improvised.

Low Lateral Skaters:

Bow to Boat:

Squat X-Press:

Reach High and Under Push-ups:

Fitness waits for no man.

Running Through Injury

From the elite Olympians to the weekend warrior, we all have had to do it at some point.  We all have downed some Advil, wrapped our knees and ankles in tape; heck some of us have even used crutches up to the start line of our race, all just to make it to the end of our season.  We all arise each morning, waiting for that day when those first few steps out of bed will be pain free.

There is one injury that cannot be masked by pain killers and ice packs.  There is one injury that we cannot predict how long it will take to heal… A broken heart.  It’s funny how we runners are all totally game to talk about our injured past, but our throats close up and our words run dry when it comes to the topic of love and running. 

There’s a quiet hush that spreads over a dinner table of runners when the end of a relationship is brought up.  It’s like we all know that silent, lonely pain.  That unlike the hobbling we all do after a hard workout, or during those first few steps in the morning, a bruised, battered, and broken heart is sometimes enough to keep us from running that hard workout, or make getting out of bed in the morning nearly impossible.

Falling in love is like running in the snow.  You can get swept up off your feet… which puts you in the perfect position to fall flat on your bum. Only the bruise on your bottom will likely heal quicker than the bruise on your heart.

There are some runners who use their broken heart to fuel their fire.  They commit to putting their head down and running hard mile after hard mile, until life feels normal… livable… again.  There are those of us that run away to training camps… pack up our running lives and bring the shell of ourselves to a new place to train.  Sometimes tricking ourselves into thinking that the open wound in our chest has scabbed over and we are once again whole.

Everyone deals with a broken heart at some point in their life, and it’s not that I’m trying to say that we runners are special or that the “common” person’s pain doesn’t measure up against what we feel when a relationship ends.  It’s just that it is different for a runner.  Everything we do is pre-planned and calculated.  We learn over the years how to read our bodies.  We know what workouts will make us stronger, and what we need to do in order to avoid injury.  And when injury happens, we can snap into healing mode to try and fix it.  We know what doctors to go see, what exercises to do… we know how to come back from an injury smarter… stronger… with the ability to prevent that pain again.  You cannot apply the same prescription to a crushed heart.

Healing a broken heart is foreign to us.  There is no cast or walking boot that we can put our heart in for six weeks and come out healed, ready to slowly start tacking on the miles again.  Instead we are forced to run through this injury.

We runners are different.  We willingly push our bodies to the limit and then line up the next day to do it all over again.  We like structure.  We like being in control of our body, so that we can feel somewhat in control of our destiny.  We are used to the battle with our mind when the miles get tough and our muscles start to fatigue.  No amount of training can prepare us for the battle with our heart. 

There is no training program for us to follow that will help us get to the finish line in love, no plan to help us recover from love gone wrong.

Unlike non-runners, when a relationship ends we are immediately stuck straddling two worlds.  We’d like to stay in bed for days or drink beer after beer after beer or heck, even go out dancing just to prove we are still hot to trot.  But we can’t.  No matter how much our heart hurts or how heavy our chest feels, those miles aren’t going to run themselves… we don’t get to crawl into a dark hole, our running logs must be complete.  Sure, if we could time our break-ups we’d all pick them to happen at the end of our season, after that big race when you are on a runner’s high and when you’ve probably pre-planned a little beer drinking.  Unfortunately, like any injury you can’t predict when this one will strike.

Relationships for runners are an investment.  Our personalities are such that we don’t enter into anything lightly, so when it ends it stings that much more.  We are left with hundreds and thousands of miles where our brains have nothing to do but dwell and remember. 

We are runners.  We are strong and often admired for our perseverance.  Unfortunately this means that our competitive drive, our desire to conquer, our refusal to admit defeat will get the better of us, and we will pick at the scab of our wounded heart longer than others.  We will spend a few extra miles trying to understand how we could possibly be seen as cold or lacking compassion?

After enough running with a heavy heart we all slowly learn how to deal with this injury.  Our mileage runs return to their usual mindless wander, and we start to feel that lift again under our soles when we line up to race.  We come back stronger;  maybe not all that smarter (some of us still have a few frogs left to date), but back to our true form… of course always remembering that our truest significant other was there the entire time … running with us through our injury.

New Beginnings

So, after creating this thing months ago, I have finally decided to start posting on it (well I actually have some time and think I have figured out how to work this thing!).

After a very successful fall (finally), I am now in the starting phases of my next training cycle. For those who don't know me (which I imagine will be most who happen upon my blog), I am very injury prone, and my fall racing season marked the start of what I hope will be a continual improvement.
I broke my pelvis the first week of April 2009 - no I did not fall or get hit by a car - I did it to myself, in the last half mile of a 14 miler along the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. At first I thought I pulled my groin, but soon learned that I had snapped my pubis. In August of 2009 I moved to East Lansing Michigan to finish the American portion of my law degree, and though training started out well, I was soon sidelined again by injury and was pretty much kept out of commission until I finally took time completely off and starting back running 10 minutes a day in May 2010.

I spent my summer in Chattanooga interning at a law firm, and slowly increasing my mileage. By slowly I mean going 10 min a day the first week, then 12 min a day the next week, slowly building up until I could run 35 minutes pain free and without any aches in the night. I supplemented my training by swimming in the Tennessee River on Wednesday evenings with the C.O.W.S (Chattanooga Open Water Swimmers), and rollerblading on the riverwalk. I also started doing some killer strength sessions with Damien - who I plan to have kick my bum again when I move back down to Chattanooga permanently. My summer as a whole was great - probably because I ditched a 150 lb weight I was carrying on my back (blerg), and stopped fretting so much about running and training in general.

So, with that background outta the way, I started doing workouts in July - just light easy ones, and my coach - Dave Mills - gave me a 10 weeks to 10k plan to start working on. Of course, I decided to do a triathlon in the middle of the 10 weeks, fell off the bike, dislocated my shoulder and cracked a rib, so yah, the 10 weeks were a little altered after that.
Finally, when classes began again in August, I started the 10 weeks over again, with the goal race being the 10k Championships in Toronto. To be brief, the workouts were great - some I liked more than others - I HATE supersets!! (sorry Dave) - I PR'd in every race I entered (easy considering most of my PRs were from 2007/2008) and I made my half marathon debut (1:16), followed by my second half (1:15) at the Detroit Free Press Half (which for some reason I thought would be fun to run the day after the 10k championships). 
Anyways, the 10 weeks to 10k worked great - I was third at the Championships and was named to the Chiba Ekiden Team. I ran the anchor leg for team Canada, and was very pleased with my run. I followed the Ekiden up by returning from Japan and racing at National X-C in Guelph 3 days later. Thankfully, that was not only my last race of the season, but it was my LAST X-C race (at least that what Dave has agreed to for now).

So new years is 1 day away, and I am in the middle of my 3rd week of my new training plan. Of course by new I mean the 10 weeks to 10k with a few extra weeks or a few repeats of some of the weeks to make it last a little longer. 

I am excited for the new year to start. It marks the start of my last semester of law school (say that 10x fast), and hopefully a new tradition of injury free training! I have not totally laid out my race plan, though I have an idea of some key races I will try to focus on!

Happy New Year!