So Far So Good

Well 2012 hasn't gotten off to a rockin start but its hasn't been horrible either.

Got in 60 miles on a stationary bike and 4 miles on a treadmill with about 2,500 feet of elevation. Nothing spectacular but it's a start.

Saw a doctor on Friday. He suggested I start running in a 4mm drop shoes, which I have, and that I use arch support insoles. Honestly I'm not convinced this will do any real good. I've been wearing arch supports for works and haven't had any real improvement in 4 months. Next week I'd like to get in a least 20 miles on trail. Hopefully some of that will be over in Jersey with Wayne or Dave. Their race is coming soon. D day is coming up for me as well. If this next week of training goes well I may still run HAT. I'm optimistic but realistic. The last time I put in more than 10 miles I had bad hip and foot pain. So I honestly don't expect next week to be much different.

Miles for year
Run - 10
Bike - 110

Patience

The last four months for me have been nothing short of a roller coaster. Trying to manage 4 injuries while still running two ultras has taken a serious toll on my body. Since MMTR I haven't gone a single day with pain in my hips. I can't sit for more than 30 minutes, I can't stand for more than an hour (which is tough because I work on my feet), and any running or biking has only made these pains worse. 4 months of icing twice a day, rehab exercises, and time on the couch has taken it's toll on my patience. I am in bad place mentally but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. 

2 years ago my wife and I made the decision for her to start a full-time PHD program overseas. She wanted to continue teaching full-time as well which meant that my work,school, and hobby life needed to be adjusted. So while she became a full-time PHD student and a full-time professor, I became a part-time Starbucks employee, a part-time soccer coach, a part-time Philosophy MA Student, a part-time household manager, and a part-time Ultra-runner. This system has worked out very well for us until that last 2 months. 

Soccer season ended, the school semester ended, and my running basically stopped altogether in the first week of november. This left a significant hole in my weekly schedule that I have yet to fill. I'd love to say that I've dealt with this transition well but honestly I haven't. I've become much more irritable and short with people. I don't like this. Patience is a virtue I am still cultivating. So for those of you've I've been short with I apologize. 

Today, I hope, marks a turning point in my recovery. I'm going to see a physical therapist this afternoon. Praying for some help there. I'm also going to see a doctor tomorrow. I hate the idea of dropping a few hundred bucks on X-Rays or an MRI but at this point I see no other option. I've tried everything I can on my own and I have decided that's not enough. I do recognize however that it may still be a long time before I'm back on the trails. This is sobering information but I can't ignore it. Patience Patience Patience.  

Week 1

Ran a total of 10 miles on the treadmill and 28 miles on a stationary bike. No pain in my feet til Saturday and Sunday and it was pretty bad those days. Took the weekend off. Try again next week.

Looking to add more elevation into the treadmill workouts.

2012 Goals

The New Year is upon us! Which means a new year of running goals.

Having been able to run everyday this week, on a treadmill however, without any increased pain in either my feet or my hips, my mood has significantly increased. That being the case, I began seriously considering what my goals are for this year. This is what I have so far.

1) Run 2000 Miles -166 miles a month, 5.5 miles a day
2) Complete Hat Run with Dave and Wayne without hurting myself.
3) Break 4:30 at Blues Cruise in October
4) Run the PA section of the Appalachian Trail this summer
5) Get one guy from my Mantrip crew to sign up and complete an Ultra this year.

Running 2000 miles will be difficult. Given that I'm injured right now I'll be starting the year in a hole but hopefully I'll be able to shake this and get back to covering some serious ground very soon.

Running with Dave and Wayne at HAT is seriously in jeopardy right now. I'm certain that I could train through the pain but I'm sick of doing that. I need to be very careful over the next 2 months to make sure I can continue training without making my hip and feet any worse. I really really want to run with these guys though. I've coached them for the last four years and being able to run their first race with them would be such a great experience. Worse case scenario I'll just crew for them but I'd sure love to run it instead.

Blue Cruise! Man I want to run well at that race next year. Coming within 9 seconds of breaking 4:30 last year was great and at the same time 4:29 would have been so much cooler. This year I want to crush my PR there. I just like the race a lot. Not crazy about the swag but the race itself is great. It's almost 100% single track. That's hard to find. Maybe this year Justin Braley won't bail and we can go out to the race together.

Ok, Appalachian Trail run. I think that running the trail in it's entirety is one of the great accomplishments any trail runner would love to completed. While I plan on attempting that for myself somewhere around 2016 I figured I could start getting to know the trail this summer. This plan still has a lot of logistical problems but hopefully it'll happen. I'm thinking that maybe myself, Chris Palladino, and a few BCRR guys could run the PA section with one of our friends crewing for us. It shouldn't take more than 5 days and would be a lot of fun I think.

Getting someone from Mantrip to run an Ultra this year might be tough. Justin is probably the most likely  of them all but there's hope for Charlie and Wade as well. Fogarty signed up for one.....but that didn't work out. All of these guys have been very supportive of me and my transition into ultrarunning and I would love to do the same for them. Last year a few of us got to run down a mountain trail together and it was just fantastic. None of them consider themselves runners at this point but the thought of possibly getting them all into the sport so that we could all travel around and race together.......that just sounds so awesome. We'll see!

2011 Running Recap

Well......2011 was a very up and down year for me.

Goals for 2011
1) Run the Lynchburg Ultra Series
2) Run 1,200 miles
3) Break 4hrs 30min in a 50k, probably Bluescruise

How'd I do? Pretty well I think. My hope to break 1,200 miles for the year was realized in September. With 3 months to go I began to start thinking I could make it to 1,600 or 1,700 miles by the end of the year but that didn't happen. I started the year in pretty good shape but with pain in my right knee. The pain was pretty bad but I had already signed up for 3 spring races and couldn't bail on them just yet. I ran Holiday Lake. I was pretty sick for this race and hadn't run in almost 10 days leading up to the race because I was on the couch. Didn't break 5hrs but was happy because I was able to pass 40 people over the second half of the race to finish strong. Terrapin Mountain was about a month after that. This was my first "real" race given that it covered 30+ miles and over 6,000ft of elevation. I loved this race. The views were amazing and I surprised myself by finishing in the top 25. That was a great feeling but all along my knee just kept getting worse and worse. For my 3rd spring race, Promise Land, I was in trouble. My training leading up to this race was nonexistent. I could only run every 4 or 5 days because of my knee and I was not ready for this one. I finished it though but was significantly behind runners I had beaten at Terrapin Mountain. Oh well.

So the first half of my running schedule was out of the way. Now I had to recover and start planning for the fall races. To do so meant fixing my knee. I started icing every day and doing rehab. This didn't do much at first but slowly my knee recovered. I'd have to seriously admit that the biggest adjustment I made in my training was taking stretching seriously. I started stretching for almost 30 minutes a day and magically about 85% of the knee pain went away in less that 24hrs. Gradually my weekly miles increased.

This led to the best running of the year for me. Over the course of 3 months, July, August, and September, I ran just under 600 miles! I was in great shape. I had never put together that many miles in such a short time. I felt fresh and ready to go for the fall! However this momentum would quickly turn. About 2 weeks before Bluescruise I woke up with pain on the bottom of both my feet. NO!!! This immediately ruined my training. I knew that to heal I would have to take time off. However I couldn't take time off until I ran Bluescruise and Mountain Masochist.

Bluescruise was awesome! Ran a 4:30 50k and finished in 8th. I missed my goal of breaking 4:30 but still this was the best race of my short running career so far. However the pain in my feet did not go away. I ignored it and thought I could train through it until MMTR. Not such a bad plan but then about a week after Bluecruise both of my hips began to scream at me every time I tried to run. So now I had a problem. Both feet and both hips in serious pain, need to rest them, but have a 50 miler in just 3 weeks. I decided to cut down my miles and do what I call binge training. This meant that instead of running often and short distances I would run once or twice a week but significant distances. This was the worst training month of the year. Pain every day at work, at soccer practice, and every run. OH well. "It will all be worth it when I finish MMTR."

MMTR was awesome as well. Painful for sure (pain in hips started around mile 3 and never went away). However I finished and was incredibly happy with that. This meant that I had completed LUS. Finished in the top 10 actually! I had planned on the race being painful and requiring a significant amount of recovery time but wasn't sure how bad it would actually be.

It has now been almost 2 months since MMTR and I do not think I've seen hardly any improvement in either my feet or my hips. I haven't seen a doctor yet but that may be the next step. Since MMTR I have only run about 20 miles. That's 20 miles in almost 60days! It's horrible. I have been patient but that's running out. 3 more days of 2011 and it looks like 2012 will start with recovery again. BLEH! Overall though the year was great for me. I realized how much it really takes to become a good runner and I can't wait to start training hard again so I can continue to improve. It's amazing how much you can improve in just one year when you put your mind to it. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I need to get back on the trails ASAP. I miss them, and the time spent on them with friends.

The Return

Well it's been a long time coming. Since the end of MMTR I've run about 10 miles. That's 10 miles over the course of 24 days. The first week wasn't so bad. I got a significant amount of miles in on the bike at good pace but the pain in my Achilles, the PF and my Hips from ITBS was not going away. That caused me to shut it down for the month. I thought if I gave myself til Dec 1st my body would recover and I'd be able to go back to 150+ months of running. Today marks that new beginning.

With my first real year of Ultrarunning under my belt I cannot wait to see what happens next year. I was able to take 48 minutes off of my 50k PR in just a year and even the thought of taking another 15 to 20 minutes off that this years is incredibly exciting.

The anxiousness however involved with not knowing how my body will respond to running today has me stalling mightily. I keep telling myself I'll go run in 20 minutes or so and it's been almost 4 hours. HA! Well here goes. A 2 mile jaunt today and hopefully a 10 miler tomorrow. I'm not sure how its going to go but I pray for my sanity and my wife's sanity that I can finish the 10 tomorrow with no hip pain. Fingers crossed!

My First 50 Miler

"Well, I'm in a lot of pain so everything is going according to plan so far"

That was my response to my good friend Chris Palladino when he asked me how I was doing at about mile 9 of the 2011 Mountain Masochist Trail Run 50miler. I had been suffering from Plantar Fasciitis pain in both feet for about 6 weeks and IT Band pain in both hips for almost a month. Both of which had kept me from training as much as I would have liked and I had no idea how much they would be hurting me after 30 miles or so. I wasn't too concerned about the PF. I knew it would just be a dull annoying ache at worst. Of course that would be irritating but I wouldn't anywhere near as painful as the pain my IT Band would unleash on my hips at some point during the race.

After a good night's sleep, who am I kidding we're talking maybe 3 hours here, my wife drove myself and Chris to the Start. We got there in good time and were ready to go well before the start time. Ran into an old friend from college, Tom Cook, aka Tommy Tuff Knuckles, at the start and was excited to see him ready to hit the course. This would be the first 50 miler for both of us so we weren't exactly feeling comfortable at the start line, but excited none the less.

And so it began. 6 miles of road-running before we got to the trail. I made it to about mile 4 before the hip pain started. As usual, a dull ache at first before it became the full blown shooting pain. I was able to stretch it a bit at the aid station and we continued on. Entering the woods was a good feeling. It almost felt like the race started there and the road section was just a warmup.

I had planned on taking the whole race really slow. Running slowly had helped with the hip pain before so I figured it would be a good strategy. Chris kept running just ahead up me up and down the hills. Lots of hiking from the beginning was the plan. This kept my legs fresh which was nice. It was frustrating though to know that I could be running faster...oh well. After 10 miles or so I did get to finally meet Chris Mortenson and Harris Brenner.  These guys are fellow Bucks County PA people that I've heard of numerous times but never met. We ran with them for awhile and eventually ended up losing them on a long downhill. Good guys.

The hills kept coming and coming. The nice part about that meant a lot of speed hiking and frequent aid stations. My wife was at the stations and she was very helpful. She was always taking pictures and encouraging me. The race went on and on. This being my first 50 miler I was not used to being out on the trail for that long. I finished my last 50k in 4:30 and this time I got to 4:30 and still had about 28 miles to go.  One foot in front of the other though. Until the loop.

The loop is where I hit my first really low point. My legs were tired, but they had been tired for a long time. The Terrain was technical, which I would have enjoyed 20 miles ago, but that wasn't was killed me. I didn't think about it at the time but I forgot to really eat anything in the last hour or so. I had a chunk of banana but that's about it. When we reached the top of the loop I was ready to take a nap. Seriously I could have laid down right there and gone to sleep. Thank God I still had a Gel in my handheld and sucking that down helped me make it to the next aid. I ate 3 delicious brownies at the there, put an iceyhot pad on hip hip, kissed me wife, and was ready to go.

At this point I knew that the worst was behind me and it was just going to be a painful run to the finish. I could no longer run on the balls of my feet. My toes and achilles couldn't handle it. I couldn't lift my legs more than 6 inches off the ground or my hips would scream at me. So back to heel striking and very short steps. Always forward. Up more hills, down other and then the final descent. One after the other for a few more hours.

It was during this descent that I got very excited. I had been thinking about completing this race for 14 months and it was about to happen. Not only that but it was going to happen faster than I expected even with all the complications. Suddenly all the tiredness went away and I started joking with Chris. "Where is that 1 mile marker?! I just want to sit down. I've been on my feet for almost 10 hours, it it to much to ask for a chair!?" Around a final corner and there's the finish. Beautiful beautiful finish. Or it was until I could see the clock and noticed we could break 9:40 if we pushed it. So yea the last 40 yards or so were a sprint but it was worth it to see 9:39 on the clock.

What a feeling. A feeling that you cannot understand until you've finished a task like this. The feeling of applying yourself to a goal that at the time of application seems impossible. 14 months ago I could not have done with I did a few days ago. Hours and hours and miles and miles of hard work, ice baths, stretching, rehab, and a better diet all came together in one day for me to complete a task that many think insane. What they don't know is that if they wanted to they could do it too, and the feeling of accomplishment you get when you finish is worth all the time spent slogging up and down hills near your house. The feeling of pushing your body to it's limit and reaping the benefit of it's product. God has given us amazing bodies. There's something about squeezing more and more out of our bodies through our own will and determination that is incredibly satisfying. Now onto my next task. Getting my friends Dave, Wayne, and Scott ready for their first Ultra in March. HAT Run here we come!

All in all Clark Zealand, The Aide Station, and Eco-X sports put on a great race. Good food, good swag, great volunteers. The work they put in to get these races going is hard to imagine and we as runners are incredibly grateful. Running with Chris was a great help, and seeing my wife at all the aide stations was so great and encouraging. I am lucky to have her support and lucky to have such a good friend in Chris that he would spend all the time with me when he could have finished much faster. I am a lucky/happy guy these days.