New Season

For the first time since the dreaded run on October 9^th, I ran 10 miles. Needless to say, this run went much better. It was great to get outside and enjoy the nice day. My legs seem to be responding to running better every run. It’s really quite amazing how no amount of cross training can really simulate the pounding that our muscles endure while running. While I’m confident that I’ve maintained and maybe even improved my aerobic fitness over the last 3+ months, I am a bit nervous for the up and coming season. It occurred to me on the run today that it has been over 2 years since I’ve had a season where I didn’t PR. As far as running goes, I ran 35 miles this past week and am heading in the right direction, but am obviously not running anywhere near the amount of mileage that I would like to be. As physically debilitating as injuries are, they are equally challenging mentally. With the stresses that are associated with coming off of a major injury, finishing up graduate school, writing my thesis, and finding a job, I am nervous for the up and coming season. I hope things can come together, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough. My first post-injury debut is in 6 weeks at the Irish Jig in Grand Rapids. I think I’m ready for anything, but I am excited to be getting back at it.

Beginning

With as much as I follow distance running, I guess it’s finally time for me to start up a blog. When talking about running, I don’t even know where to start. I didn’t have a lot of success running in college. I was constantly battling injuries and really didn’t understand what I was doing. After a stress fracture disabled me during my last season of track, I vowed to quit running competitively and become a jogger. I think most of us think this at some point in our life. During my second year of graduate school, the competitive juices began to start flowing and with the support of the Playmakers shoe store and Brooks, we rounded up a team and ran at USAtf Cross Country Club Nationals. While we didn’t expect to beat some of the professional teams, we thought we had a chance of doing well, and to say the least, we didn’t live up to our expectations. While I’ve had disappointing results, I was truly embarrassed, but this event was probably the turning point for me as a runner. I really do have the store owners at Playmakers to thank for this.

I’ve altered my training over the last 2 years to allow myself more flexibility with training. I have a crude training plan with workouts, but I really just run how I feel every day. While I’ve lowered my times, I recently have disappeared from the running scene due to a stress fracture in my hip. I was a little overzealous with my racing schedule this fall and went into my marathon having hip issues and the marathon essentially finished me off. I initially thought that my injury would just be a simple 6-8 week recovery process, but it’s been 3 months and I’m finally able to start getting back into running. It turns out that the break was a bit worse than I initially thought and the fracture is in an area that really isn’t easy to immobilize. I have been cross training pretty hard for these past three months. I don’t know whether that slowed the healing process down, but I think the aqua jogging, swimming, and biking will make me stronger for the up and coming spring season. This injury has definitely been my worst injury, but a lot of positive things have come from it. As most runners can relate, I am an absolutely awful swimmer. When I first began swimming in mid October, I could hardly swim 50 yards and really just struggled to breath in the water. It literally took weeks for me to get any better. It was one of the most humiliating and humbling experiences of my life. To sustain any sort of “swimming” workout, I could only swim 50 yard intervals with a 25 yard recovery kickboard in between. While I’m still not a good swimmer today, through a combination of persistence and a little help from a friend, I can now essentially swim for a long as I want. I think the longest that I’ve gone is 3200 yards, but I’m sure I miscounted laps somewhere in there. Swimming has helped my posture and core strength so it should be interesting to see whether this benefits my spring season. I guess only time will tell. As of now, I don’t have my full spring racing schedule composed, but I think it will emphasize getting faster at 5k-half marathon.