Patience

[Day 27A]

Took that test run this morning. Knee felt okay. It was a little bit sore honestly but it wasn't hurting in the IT band spot, was more diffuse anterior pain, which might just be residual stuff from Monday's ride and not too run specific? It wasn't bad enough that I felt like I had to stop, so I did the 20 minutes and just left it at that. I had been thinking about maybe taking a 20-30 minute row afterwards if my knee felt good, but it was super great so I thought I would just rest it seeing as it'll be getting some more action this afternoon when I take my trainer ride anyways. We'll see how it holds up as the day goes on, I'm making a trip to the grocery store today and that walk will probably tell me a lot about how things are going. Here's the summary:

Today's AM Workout: 20 minute easy treadmill run, testing the knee
Summary:

• 2% incline, 6.2 speed throughout
• Treadmill numbers: 2.10 mi, 20:36
• Garmin numbers: 2.19 mi, 20:09, 9:12 pace

Hit Rate: 27/28 (96.4%)

I honestly feel like I shouldn't even call that a workout, it was so so chill. But I know that if I don't count these workouts as legitimate workouts, I would get tempted to do too much too fast because I like to feel like I'm training, I don't like to feel like I'm rehabbing a poorly looked after joint. So I'm going to count them and legitimize them because it'll help me be patient with the process which will be good for me in the long run. The sad part of this I think is that this week is actually going to be strangely low volume since I'm planning on running again on Friday and both of these workouts are slash will be super short compared to my typical workouts and it was already a short week to begin with. The upside though is I got up at my usual time, finished super early, and go to shower and eat and head out to school and get some work done before my morning classes, which was really nice.

I pretty much spent my 20 treadmill minutes this morning thinking about the process going forward. I was really looking forward to doing more speed focused run training this year, since I got some of that in last October before my half and it made such a huge difference to my running. With the setback though, it looks like we'll be back to just focusing on getting the right kind of volume and building back up in a pretty purely aerobic sense to try and make sure I'm not taking on too much too fast. I'd rather play this a little safer and be a little slower than go all in and get hurt again. I tell myself that it'll be okay and I'll run slow this first half of the year and spend my month in Boston (when I'm away from my bike and the gym and will probably be swimming with CMSC there) trying to get back on the speed/strength/interval work bandwagon. If I can stay healthy that long, that'll be the plan. I just have to be patient. There's no cheating the process when it comes to building up the right kind of base.

Time for class now! I'll be back with the afternoon trainer update later in the day. (:

Much love,
Jess

Treadmill is a no go

[Day 21]

So I decided that swapping back and forth between the urg and the treadmill would be a pain, and I figured instead I would just do 5k of each thing and be done with it. I was little more aggressive on the urg today and was surprised that it was much harder than it felt yesterday. I don't really think I got my heart rate or breathing up very high yesterday, just kept it nice and smooth and comfortable, and today I was pulling a bit harder and it was actually a really great workout. The treadmill was a definite no though, I was really barely on it for like a minute before I could start to feel my leg getting unhappy so I just shut it down. I was on the wards shadowing in the morning and knew I was going to be on my feet a lot so I figured I couldn't afford to have my knee be irritated today. I think I'm going to just lay off the running this week and maybe see how things are doing next week. Ideally I think I want to not feel any pain when I push on that part of my knee before I test it out again, because I figure if I try to get back at it too early, I'll just end up aggravating it. Next spot on my calendar is Wednesday, but we'll see how the weekend plays out and take it from there.

I thought about doing something else for the remainder of the planned duration of my workout but I figured it would be nice just to come home and take care of some errands and work and whatever, so that's what I ended up doing. Here's the summary of my very short day!

Today's Workout: AM rowing (5k steady state, resistance of 7)
Summary:

• So I had to reset the machine halfway because the display paused for some reason, I have the numbers split because of that.
• 5075 m (3354/1721), 24:36 (16:21/8:15), 2:26.2-2:23.5 avg/500 m, 22-24 s/m

Hit Rate: 20/21 (95.2%)

Okay I need to like pay attention in class now.

Much love,

Jess

Finding detours

[Day 20A]

The thing about life is that it doesn't always go your way, but I have an honest belief that everything happens for a reason. I have to take it down a notch with the running to give my IT band some time to decompress and recover, so in the meantime I'm going to do all the other things that I can do and just be grateful that I have more time to dedicate to the rest of the things I don't typically have as much time to do. Today, I pulled out a variation of an old dryland workout (one of my first) from my age group days. The first time I had done it I was maybe 10 or 11 and we did four exercises (push ups, sit ups, dips, lunges). I typically sub in squats for lunges but since I was going to the gym today and had my pull cords handy, I decided to add in a fifth exercise. This was how it played out!

Today's AM Workout: Dryland circuit and rowing
Summary:

• Dryland circuit: 
• 10 rounds, :30 max reps of each exercise, :15 rest between exercises, 1:00 rest between rounds, 5:00 rest after round 5
• Exercises: push ups, sit ups, fly pull (cords), bodyweight squats, bench dips
• Round 1: 14/14/20/21/18
• Round 2: 15/13/19/21/20
• Round 3: 13/13/20/21/19
• Round 4: 14/14/20/20/19
• Round 5: 11/13/19/21/18
• 5 min rest
• Round 6: 14/13/21/21/19
• Round 7: 13/13/19/20/19
• Round 8: 12/14/19/20/17
• Round 9: 10/14/19/20/17
• Round 10: 11/14/20/21/19
• Totals: 127 push ups, 135 sit ups, 196 fly pulls, 206 squats, 185 dips 
• (This takes 48 minutes to do.)
• My biceps felt a little neglected in all of that, so I did a few rounds of single arm DB curls because some people tell me that muscular balance is important or something.
• 12/side @ 15 lbs/side, 8 @ 20 lbs, 7-5 @ 15 lbs, 12 @ 15 lbs
• My left wrist was giving me some amount of trouble, more joints I have to give time to get stronger.
• Rowing: 20 minutes steady state (Concept2, resistance set at 7)
• 4098 m, 20:43 total time, 2:31.5 average/500 m, 23 average s/m
• Do any of my rower friends know what stroke rate is supposed to be when you're rowing? I have no idea if I'm doing this right. 
• Total time: ~75 mins

Hit Rate: 18/19 (94.7%) - Note that I didn't dock myself a day for skipping the trainer ride last night. I did that mostly because I just ended up rearranging the rest of my week. It's going to be an 8-session week still if things go according to plan so I don't think it'll be a big deal. 

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how that went. The push up numbers aren't great and I definitely died a bit there towards the end, but it's something to work on. (Remember the 100 push ups for time thing a little while back that I added an entire minute on compared to like last year? Yeah, strength needs work.) It was nice to be back on an urg, I hadn't rowed in a while so it was nice to do switch it up and do something different today.

The plan is to hit the trainer in the afternoon today and see how my knee handles that. I did wear my knee sleeve all morning and the squats didn't bother it at all. It's been a tad bit achy while walking but nothing major that affects my biomechanics so I really don't mind. I've also taken a look at my schedule for the next few weeks and made some tweaks to try and ease up on the run mileage and intensity so I can try to keep these IT band flair ups at bay. Just have to be more patient and work back into it slowly. 

I also made a few adjustments to the rest of the week because an opportunity came up to shadow on the floors at Children's tomorrow, which means I have to be back from my morning workout in time for pre-rounds which means I can't swim in the morning tomorrow. (I don't have a ton of confidence in my ability to bike out to the pool at this point anyways, so it wasn't a huge loss to change that part of the schedule.) As of now, I think the plan for tomorrow will be to just get a one hour session in alternating 20 mins rowing, 20 mins easy treadmill running (only if the leg continues to feel good today), and another 20 mins rowing. Just some nice easy non-specific cardio while my body sorts itself out. 

Alright, time to get down to business with catching up on schoolwork!

Much love,

Jess

Knee update

[Day 19B]

So my right knee had a pretty major flare up on my walk to school today and has been hurting real bad since. I self-diagnosed on Uptodate and determined that I probably had ITBS (which, let's face it, every runner has, has had before, or will get, just like shoulder injuries in swimmers) which was later confirmed by a real life physician (hooray for going to school in a building of doctors) at a student health services appointment. So...that's a bummer. (Also, I've been to student health three times and they've all been for MSK issues this year. Can you tell that I don't do my maintenance work? Yeah, I can too...)

One of our lovely IM chief residents told me that I should probably take a week or two off and it'll probably resolve on its own, otherwise I should go see PT. Honestly though I don't know what PT can tell me that I don't already know. You can never be too strong in the lower abs and glutes, my feet pronate slightly still (even though they're way better now than they were say four years ago), I'm female, all of these things don't help my case with something like ITB. So I guess my plan is to take it day by day (because if I commit myself to taking a week off I'll probably die, I told Henry this earlier in the day, I have the patience of a squirrel on speed, and it's entirely true).

That starts with likely cutting out the ride today. Technically I think the cycling is not supposed to aggravate it too much (???) but given that I can't really walk without making my gait super weird I figure less is probably more today. Instead I'll take some time to roll out my legs and stretch tonight because the roller typically makes a big difference. The trend with this knee has been that I've woken up with it better in the morning, so another Naprosyn before bed tonight and hopefully things will just clear themselves up.

In other body-related news, my wrists are so loose. (Lol all my joints are just wrecked. They are like this all the time. Wish I had mom's magic joint stuff.) I'm a tad bit sore today but nothing bad, a little extra time to stretch will be nice though.

As for the plan moving forward: the original plan was to do a circuit dryland workout from my age group swimming days tomorrow in the morning and spend some time rowing because I haven't done that in a while and it's fun cross training. I might actually keep to that because I can bodyweight squat right now without my knee hurting at all and between that and rowing, it's no impact and doesn't simulate the kinds of movements that cause me pain, so it'll probably be fine. If it turns out that it's not fine and I have to pull the plug on it, I will. I'll assess how everything is doing during the day and decide if I want to take a trainer ride in the afternoon or something.

I think the big take home message from all of this is honestly that I have to be doing more maintenance work. Stretching and foam rolling and plyometrics and core work and stability work need to happen or I'm not going to be able to keep this little body of mine happy. But I hate that stuff. Halp. I think at this very moment, I'm willing to commit to the foam rolling thing and will let the rest of it play out from there. Let's see how the rest of this week goes.

Much love,
Jess