10k...Thanksgiving...and all the dressings

i've been in the category of 'endurance' athlete for about 6 years now. 2003 being my first sprint distance triathlon. Since then I have had a lot of firsts at many distances: some 5k's, a few10k's, a handful of half mary's, lots of sprint triathlons, multiple olympic distance triathlons, and my first half ironman. What I have discovered (moreso after moving to San Diego) is that I have developed a case of 'endurance arrogance' and many people around here also seem to have this.

I didn't want to do a 5K because...well...they hurt...a lot. My friend didn't want to do the 5K because: why would you want to get up that early to just run 3.1 miles?

Yep...give me 6 miles of hurting, but a different kind of hurt... i'll take that any day. I find it much easier to race at my LT than the constant edge between my LT/AT range required for a 5K. Maybe i'm just a wuss.

That thought process made me realize...that is kinda nuts compared to the standard population. Yes...i'd much rather race for 6 miles than 3? And back in Aug when I was bemoaning the fact I had signed up for AFC half marathon and a friend of mine said: oh it's just a 2 hour workout. We endurance athletes really need to get our heads checked!

The race went well...i achieved the three goals I had set out for myself: negative the two loop course, focus on footfalls/min >90 (weirdly leg turn over was more sluggish than normal) and swing my arms. I even managed to PR at the race with a time of 52:22! My previous 10K PR was off the end of Malibu Oly tri in Sept around 54:11. Not bad considering while i'm MUCH improved from the flu...i can tell i'm not 100% yet.

This is what got me to thinking more about endurance arrogance....i came home and pondered WHY i was tired. I thought it strange that I NEEDED a nap i mean...it was ONLY 6.2 miles...and then this morning was almost confused as to why my hamstrings were tight. This morning, I pretty much had forgotten that I had raced 6.2 miles yesterday....ahem...endurance arrogance.

So...to pull it back to reality...for thanksgiving I am thankful for being ABLE to wake up and run around like a turkey with her head cut off for 6.2 miles. That's pretty cool in itself and sometimes I need to remind myself of that.

Thanksgiving also reminded me of the fact: i don't like to cook. I had also re-realized this earlier in the week when I attempted some other cooking. I usually 'assemble' my dinner. Minimal 'real' cooking involved and NOTHING that requires a recipe. I may have been in 4-H as a kid and even won a gold ribbon a time or two for my cooking at the State fair (don't laugh too hard)...but as an adult...not a fan.

What a mess...and I was just making ONE side dish for dinner. Oh well. Thanksgiving was a chaotic assembly of a lot of random people but a good time...even punctuated with a big dance party at the end. No better way to burn off that pumpkin pie than with a dance party.

Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful...and i am of many, many things.

Technique

<--ummm...a little holiday cheer to help with the writing...maybe a lot of 'cheer' in there too. ;-)

Things around these parts could be better but alas...that is how life is sometimes. Sometimes it is mountain tops that you feel on top of and other times there are valleys. I'm in a bit of a valley and trying to figure out the next best step...but alas it is what it is and i am trying to make the best of it in the meantime.

For my friend Max!! I know he's got to be on a mountain top He just finished IMAZ, his first IM and did amazing. Watching his training and race unfold makes me all the more excited for mine next year. Awesome job Max!

But...oh...yes...training...training has been interesting. Post swine flu episode I have been just trying to get back into the groove. The cough is almost gone and my energy is falling back into place. I only started back on the 'training' bandwagon a little over a week ago and it was a bit like this: do 20 minutes and if i had more energy do some more...if I didn't have enough energy 20 minutes was good enough. The goal: get back into consistency. Get back in the groove.

I had some good days and would finish the whole workout and other days where i'd rather sleep and call it good after 20mins. But I haven't pushed...and have just waited. All in all its coming along.

The big thing I have been focused on the past month or so is...technique. Swimming technique and running technique. About a month ago my coach had a group swim meeting where he taped our strokes and gave us just a couple of things to work on. I had three things to focus on: head position, arms WIDE (hence my hug a bear motto) and hand entry. I swim 4x a week and 2 of those workouts are what we call: endless 25y's. The other two are lots of 50y's so plenty of time still to focus on technique.

Grab a pull bouy...a set of XXS paddles and swim very focused for 25y. Rest for a very long time (20 seconds) and repeat...over...and over...and over. Throw in an all out sprint every 4th 25y...but you get the picture. Rep-i-tition. My violin teacher in undergrad would be proud of the montra. I have found I actually do very well with such a singular focus. Sure in the middle of a 72x25y...i get a little distracted and i'll admit a little bored, but over all i'm soaking it up.

So I constantly focus on perfect form. Over-and-over-and-over. When we were doing the group swim session a month ago my coach had said: just trust me with the endless 25y's this winter.

so...i am..

But...being the curious person i am i decided this week to 'see' if all of this insanity was making any difference. So I timed my warmup. You know...the slow 50y's. The one's where it is supposed to be easy peasy? And then...I timed the cooldown 100s...and focused on making them...easy peasy. And I was SHOCKED with the result.

over and over...my 50y's turned up 55sec.

my 100y's...mind you at an EASY PEASY pace...1:50

again...and again...and again...

no this is not terribly fast...but for me these times meant: i just took 5 seconds off of my 50 and 10 seconds off of my 100y. TEN SECONDS.

How long can i hold that? not sure yet...but i am very encouraged. Very very encouraged. I might just be a fish by the end of this crazy endeavor!

And as for running technique i currently hold a cadence of about 90-92 footfalls/min...goal: 96ff/min. Which i can get to if i'm focused...but the idea being that if i can make 96 'natural'...then in the middle of a long race i'll probably be more like 90. Few other tidbits working on with running technique mainly around the fact i apparently don't swing my arms. Weird. And a few other things...but it is all coming along.

Interesting bits coming together for sure, but technique can make a huge difference. It is amazing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...you have the swine flu!

yes...it is my birthday today. Kinda a cool year too...11/10/09. I like it. But what I DON'T like is that I came down with the ohhhhhhhhh so lovely flu yesterday evening. Fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, skin creepy crawly, lethargic. This morning i thought i was superwoman in that my fever had broken and I thought: yea...take that stupid flu...until an hour later i was over 100 again and got worse as the day wore on. I've had some amazing wacky dreams. (Fevers do that to me) and came up with the BEST idea ever. (keep in mind....i AM little delirious at the moment) but I think that creating 'Fever' Pajamas would be the best thing EVER. Maybe call them HOT pajamas? (where is that little circle for copy right? ;-))

My thought is to take what would be winter running/biking material. It is supposed to wick the sweat away but keep you warm too. When i have a fever at night i get all sweaty but chilled (i have never understood the chilling part to a fever...why am i so dang cold?) but waking up to damp cotton pj's is not nice. So what about something that could wick the sweat away? So that's my invention for the day. Pretty prodcutive day considering i've been sleeping all day.

Yes part of me really wants to throw a little bit of a pity party today, but the reality is that aside from feeling yucky i have no complaints on my birthday. I am very blessed. I got to talk to my sister and her crazy little kids. My parents. I've received texts wishing me well...and emails of happy birthday: get better. Sure i would rather be going out for sushi with some friends as orginally planned but when I know I can (and did) call them and say: can you bring me some nyquil and cough drops that they were over in a flash. Knowing I have true friends is really the best present there is. Maybe it did take me getting the swine flu to truly appreciate that.

testing...tap...tap...tap...is this thing on?

This week has been interesting on the training front. I had a great swim stroke analysis from my coach last saturday which has lead to: endless 25y's and me tucking my head down and saying to myself: hug a bear.

yes...hug a bear

WHY hug a bear? Well...i do what many swimmers do...the dreaded crossing of the arms at the beginning of the stroke. So my coach wanted me to swim as WIDE as i could as he said: you won't ever swim too wide...trust me. So my motto all week has been: hug a bear.

On a fun training front i had a fantastic meet up with a fellow blogger this week...LG...somehow convinced her some hot yoga would be fun. And it was as well as hanging out with her and discovering that while we do very different things in life we have much training outlooks that are similar. That is always a fun find because sometimes that is hard TO find.

But overall...
i know i have been a little awol on the bloggy front. I've been reading many of your blogs out there, but my comments have been few and my writing over here has been...well...sparse. I'll create only about a 1/10 of a post and that will be all i can muster mainly because i am...exhausted...bone tired. And not the good kind either...the good kind is the kind where you are tired because the training is hard and things may take a ton of energy and time but it's positive and feels good to dump all the energy into those tasks. No...it's that draining kind...the kind where you just wonder: am i at the bottom of this yet?

And the answer is always: no

and to make matters worse: i over think.

and THAT...is an understatement

so when we all go through transition or points of change or just junk it gets all that much more emotionally exhausting for me because i MULL...i THINK...i think and i think. But weirdly...i will get in this mental churn and because i'll get tired of my internal churn i will make a decision just to DO something. Just to stop the churn and I sometimes tend to disregard some of the realities.

that is me...churn and then act but weirdly act slightly impulsively just to get the mental churning to stop. because acting gets me 'unstuck'. But patience is sometimes a better plan, unfortunately...i'm not so patient...mainly how can you be patient when you can't get the churn to stop without acting?

But stuff is in motion therefor so am i

And then there is some job stuff...my job...that job...that other job...that potential job...that dream job...no you can't do THAT in your job...but you MUST do THIS in your job...you want the ability to DO your job?...here?...really?...no...i just want you to deliver anyway on the impossible project...take all the time out of your actual job and do it now....really...sooooo not kidding

this makes me...frustrated

and slightly impulsive

there is a laundry list i could go on and on about to...but i don't want to encourage the churn. So i will leave it here. i'm alive...i wish things would settle down a little bit...i wish i knew the best answer for the question(s) in front of me...oh and...sleeping would also be nice.

So *that's* what it is like to be near the front of a race!

This weekend was SOMA half ironman. I had signed up to do the race with some people through TNS training. When we signed up...they didn't know me...i didn't know them, but since the sign up and Malibu and this weekend i've gotten to know my happy little team and I was pretty excited to be doing the relay with them.

And then i was off the bike for literally 3 weeks...

And then i was poked and prodded with needles and beaten up with a foam roller...

i didn't know what to expect from my ability to spin the cranks and move those wheels. The original plan for this race was to see HOW much faster on a flat course and no swim or run I could go than Vineman. I wanted to break 3 hours since I was close to the 3 hour mark at vineman.

There was much about the weekend that was fun insanity and much about the weekend that was just unfun...predominately around the fact I almost got myself stranded in Tempe by no fault of my own as well as the fact my happy little relay had to break up due to our swimmer crashing her beautiful new bike on Saturday and making friends with the ground at 30mph. Bike crashes make me inhearantly sick to my stomach and my heart went out to her. But then to find out that due to how her handle bars crunched into her top tube on top ...she totaled her bike: double sick to my stomach.

So this was Saturday: me potentially stuck in Tempe longer than I anticipated, my relay's swimmer sporting some nice road rash, a (right) decision not to race, a totaled less than 100 mile bike and a friend wondering if a whopper of a migraine was about to strike before his race on Sunday. It wasn't boding well for well...any of us.

Saturday afternoon was packet pickup and our swimmer inquired if there was a way to do the relay without the swim...to then have the directors say: hey...ask this INSANELY fast guy to swim for you. oooookkkkkkkkkkaaaaaaaay

Race morning:
Still no ride home
Meet Mr. wicked fast swimmer...he's 10 shades of excited just to swim.

The relay's are in the second wave and he ends up swimming somewhere around 27/28 minutes and is within the top 10 out of the water.

My thought: well this is kinda cool that i'm now near the FRONT of the race...but also weird and a little concerned that i'm going to get passed like i'm standing still for the rest of the day. But really nice to be near the front because there was no one out there to jocky around and worry about staying back or passing or whathaveyou. Lap 1...not as many guys passed me as I thought...Lap 2 a few more zipping past and Lap 3...now we are in the thick of everyone on the course.

I didn't like the course really because there were a lot of random U-turns on the course. I ended up hammering it a little too hard in the beginning and suffered a bit the last 5 miles. But i was pleased with my effort.

And then i saw my time...

and had to laugh...

original goal: go sub 3hours (which i totally let go of with the lack of training the past month)

Time: 3:00:29

Not quite sub 3 but sooo close!Not bad for a girl who hadn't been riding her bike!

Funnily afterwards a random girl at the relay rack decided to ask me how I did. I'll admit my little brain wasn't working 100%, but something that definately bothers me about some triathletes (and i've seen it much more so here in s.cali) is that someone's reason for asking your time is to see if they bested you. I remember blankly staring at this girl thinking: WHO ARE YOU? AND WHY DO YOU CARE???? Fortunately Brian came to my rescue and said: don't mind her...she can barely talk after races. And gave my general update. But really...why was this person asking? So weird to me.

in the end...I fortunately found a ride home on Sunday...but the process of finding one was a clusterf...and i was not a happy camper.

Sometimes I think that if i have a patch of crappiness that patch will be it for awhile and i will soon spring out of it. The weekend was fun to see friends but definitely shadowed a bit by some of the not so fun things. unfortunately...i came home to difficult and distressing topics to which I am reminded: i really am bone tired and I wish i could figure out a respite.

life does not stop

to be clear...

There have been a lot of learnings going on in this corner of the woods recently. Mainly revolving around...WHAT is going on in my hip. It spasms...it does crazy stuff...it's weird...net result...i get frusterated.

So...am in injured? Not really but i'm not 100% healthy either...ok...i'm not 100% of where I WANT to be to start something like IM training. If I were training for a half? Oh...i'd say I was totally FINE. But IM training...that's a different monster that i am sure would prey upon any imbalance that is latent in my body.

When I fell in June my acupuncturist discovered that i'm internally rotatated on my right side. In Aug I saw another guy about this and i'm rotated about 4 mm past where I should be. The best way to describe it...I have lower crossed syndrome. And in reality...i probably also have upper crossed syndrome too. For the life of me, i can't figure out how a person could have one and NOT have the other. But that's not the point.

So my conclusions to my anterior-ly rotated hip....

this didn't start in June (it was just discovered)...

and it didn't start in Nov 2007 when I fell....

nor back when I had runner's knee

Or piriformis pain

or IT band issues

But aside from the injuries caused by falling...this rotation probably CAUSED the other ones and aggressively aggravated the ones that were induced by falling and hence were so hard to overcome.

And the reality...this probably only was actually OBSERVED because i am an endurance athlete. Maybe there is something to be said for being a couch potato?

Here is my slightly wackadoodle theory (although I think i'm right)...the fact that my hip has too much of a tilt to the forward is most likely related to the fact I have played the violin since I was five....

and have TMJ...

and have back issues...

but first to understand how my wacky jaw is related to my HIP... you have to believe in fascia

and then you have to believe that the fascia are all connected together in interesting patterns and an dysfunction in a shoulder can influence the opposite hip

And once that understanding is embraced then it starts to make sense that all of the gnarly issues in my fascia from TMJ and years of playing the violin might actually be the root cause of inducing the anterior tilt in my hip. How you say? By tightening some of the back muscles, my QL got too short, which probably weakened my glutes, my hip flexors got tight (aided by cycling and running i'm sure) and it leaves me with an imbalanced weird situation.

So how does one FIX this?

Me and my foam roller are friends...ok...we are much MORE than friends.

My acupuncturist continues to work on releasing many muscles and balance them out

i stretch

i strengthen the glutes

i strengthen the core....the guy working to balance me out has me pretty convinced i'm going to have abs of steel at the end of this. I'm starting to see the separation between my obliques and rectus abdominis muscles (ie those six pack muscles) on the sides of my stomach and oh yea and the separation between the ab muscles is starting at the top. Hopefully i'm not just imagining this. ;-)

But much of this (the foam roller and acupuncture)...leaves me a little worse for wear as well as doing the things that continue to shorten the wrong muscles, like cycling and running, makes it tough to strengthen and release the right ones.

So...i took some time off over the past 2 weeks. I have barely been on my bike in the past 3 weeks...running has been minimal. But hey i think i grew gills and i'm a fish now. Never mind the fact that i'm getting defined deltoids because me and the pull bouy and paddles are becoming fast friends. Hmmm...good thing i always thought deltoids were the coolest muscle group anyway. (and probably one of the most attractive on a guy...yes I do have a thing for guys with defined delts. ) But i think this means that i need to say 'bye-bye' to cap sleeved shirts that button on the arm. I have one shirt that is like that and now it is tight in the arms and too lose in the waist. I think pretty soon i won't be able to button the sleeves. Sigh...

Its a good kind of pain, i think?

Nagging injuries, well...suck. I'm soooooooooooooooooooooooo tired of my hip injury that I have just up and decided, i'm over it. It doesn't matter that I can feel the spasm. Nope...i'm just over it. Ok...maybe i'm not over it physically...but i'm sooooooooooo over it mentally that mentally chose to deal with it as little as i can get away with.

That being said i have been 'prehabing' my hips for ironman next year. I had a lot of acupuncture after falling in May prior to Vineman which got me through vineman with the promise that post vineman i would focus on 'fixing it'. I"m in 'fixing it' mode, but the problem: it would get worse, it would get better nothing really was happening. i was secretly frustrated.

If I did X it was irritated...but only sometimes. I'd do Y on one day and nothing would be bad and then i would do Y again and i would have a massive trigger point. I wasn't getting any worse but i know i'm only at 90% and heavy loads of training would surly expose this and quickly.

For a few weeks i have been doing the strength hip thing with a person who is working to balance all of my muscles in my body prior to ironman training. I didn't have a full opinion of what he has been doing with me I was basically pondering the questions: was it working? Was this worth it?

While i didn't feel like i was making much progress, I had decided to just give it a shot and see what would happen and then last week I sent him an email: oh by the way whatever you did to me...i have a big 'ol unhappy trigger point in the psoas. not in pain...but definitely irritated.

So this week his response: that shouldn't have happen if it is psaos originated.

Me in my head:ok buddy then what do you suggest. most people won't suggest anything so here i am with the bitter knowledge that we might be treating something that isn't the right thing.

Him: Let's try something else...let's see if something ELSE is what the problem is. Maybe it is a quad strain?

And miracle of miracle...we found it. I get a referred trigger point that is typical of psoas pain and what i had when i fell the first time, but this time...i have a different irritated/strained muscle. Lots of poking and prodding of the muscle and it now...HURTS.

But i'm encouraged. Finding the root cause means we can fix it. Before it just seemed like guess work and i wondered if i was every going to get 100% better.

i'm in for some acupuncture tomorrow and i'm sure she will electrocute me in the process...literally. Not a fun thing when someone hooks electrodes up to needles that are IN your body...but it stopped the other spasm before.

in the meantime...ice and heat and oh what was that? Oh yea rest a little bit? that's a hard one.