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

Sleeping in

I've now slept in two days in a row. Amazingly enough, I don't actually regret doing it on either day. I had been up late Sunday night with some wedding planning and family related drama and I don't regret the conversation that kept me up at all. It was the kind of late night talk that I think really brings me and Henry closer together, so if I lose a workout for it, I lose a workout for it. I don't even remember what my plans strictly were at this point, but I did end up getting a workout in anyways by just sort of shoving it in my evening. I didn't have any time to do work yesterday though, which was the real bummer. In any case, here was yesterday's sort of haphazardly thrown in workout.

Yesterday's Workout: PM trainer ride, strength intervals
Summary:

• WU: 10 mins easy spin
• Spin ups: 5 x 30 up/30 recovery
• Main Set: all big gear (60-65 rpm, +10 or more on pick up minutes), easy spin recoveries
• 16 mins as 7/1/7/1
• 3 mins easy spin
• 12 mins as 5/1/5/1
• 3 mins easy spin
• 8 mins as 3/1/3/1, popped into standing quite a few times to try and keep rpms up.
• WD: 10 mins easy
• Total: 16.27 mi, 1:07:28, 14.5 mph

Hit Rate: 12/13 (92.3%)

The set was harder than I thought it was going to be by far. Things got real rough in that last 8 minute set but I got through it. Eventually I want to work my way up to starting with a 20 minute interval. Can't work on my climbing strength outside because there's not much terrain here, so I gotta work on it inside. We'll get there. 

As for today, I had planned on going to lift in the morning but seeing as I slept in and I have an 8:30 am - 9:00 pm day scheduled, it looks like today's going to be a day off. Oh well, life happens, the rest was much needed and today will be easier on a well-rested body and brain. We'll try and get right back at it tomorrow with a morning treadmill run. Planning on re-attempting those treadmill intervals I couldn't get through last time. Hopefully the extra recovery and maybe a little extra fitness (please?) will help get me through. 

Hit Rate: 12/14 (85.7%)

Much love,

Jess

RNR

It's weird to have to admit that despite having a lower load training week than usual (easy swim/run on Mon/Tues, Wed off, real workouts on Thu/Fri) I'm still not really fully recovered from my half. There are plenty of people who can run a half marathon and have a super quick turn around time, people who don't get sore or stiff or achy and have bodies that bounce right back. I'm not one of those people. I noticed it after my last half too: Even though I wasn't really sore, it took quite a few days of real rest before I was back to being ready to run again. And it was summer, so I was at home relaxing, which really helped push that process along. This week has been crazy for me because the training that I have done has been interwoven with a lot of school/life busy-ness and the recovery has been slow but I haven't wanted to slow down. It's meant that I've not really recovered as well as I wanted/expected and that's made for a couple of tough nights this week. Last night Henry really convinced me that I need to take it easier on myself, so I decided to sleep in today and thought about canceling my other plans too if I didn't feel well.

I'm feeling really good actually. After a super restful night's worth of sleep, I'm definitely feeling better both physically and mentally. I'm going to try and keep it low stress and low pressure today. It feels weird not to be working out when I had planned on working out, but I know that in the grand scheme of things it's not all that important. Once again, I find myself making adjustments to my training plans, but we'll make them work. The week ahead will be tough but I really have to work on finding the right balance so that I can keep mental stress a little lower. Sometimes I forget that the summative tole on my body can be really high and I need to respect that and give myself some quality RNR time. It's okay to not be constantly pushing forwards, you have to pace yourself in life just like you have to pace yourself in racing. It's a marathon, not a sprint. We're gonna make it. (:

Hit Rate: 4/5 (80%)

Much love,
Jess

Taper taper taper taper taper

I love taper! So I took a swim last night (and then picked up the bike I'll be commuting with! It's a used bike I bought off of a tri team teammate) and a short easy run this morning. I am the luckiest girl in the world to have the most supportive fiance in the universe when it comes to supporting my training. He's currently in Florida on business right now but we Skyped a bit before I left for my evening swim and he gave me a great pep talk and made me promise to think back to that conversation when things got tough in the swim and it really helped me pull through during the set.

I'm not very happy with where my swimming has been recently. I think the combination of long course practice and injuries has left me very willing to be not aggressive about the training and I can feel the changes and slips in my technique that are making me very slow even when I try to go fast. I went on pretty conservative easy pace times for this workout and I was still feeling like the interval was pretty hard, so I really need to change that. I need to make more of an effort to inject serious speed into my workouts (read: more lactate threshold work, more short short sprints) and commit to some of the pain that comes with fast 200 sets as well. The balance and thoughtfulness has been sort of missing from my training, so I know that's something I'll need to work on in the winter to get back to where I want to be. But I sort of let it go because it's taper. The practice was a bit shorter distance wise, a bit boring set wise, but I went in there and did what I had to do so I'm good with it.

Yesterday's PM Workout: Rec swim @ the Danforth AC.
Summary:

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set:
• 3 x 200 free @ 3:00
• 4 x 100 IM @ 1:45
• 3 x 200 free @ 3:00
• 4 x 100 IM @ 1:45
• WD: 200 choice easy
• Total Distance: 3200 SCY

Hit Rate: 60/66 (90.9%)

This morning I took an easy recovery run. It was outrageously slow, but I guess that's what easy recovery runs are supposed to look like. It was raining and dark out because the sun keeps rising later and later, but I'm glad I got out there and did what I had to do.

Today's AM Workout: Easy run
Summary: 3.28 mi, 33:21, 10:10 pace.
Hit Rate: 61/67 (91%)

Tomorrow is going to be a nice full day off, I'm trying to really focus as much as I can on getting schoolwork dealt with while I sort of have time for it. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks with racing taking up most of my weekends, so I need to be as efficient as I possibly can. Random updates:

• Brian is lending me a team tri suit to race in if I want to use it. I haven't decided if I'm going to yet because I'm afraid of swim related drag, but the thought of having a chamois is also nice, so...tbd.
• I need to go to Big Shark tonight to pick up gels and some random things for this commuting bike.
• I just spent like 2 hours chilling with my old lab mates and it was totally unplanned and definitely cut a solid chunk out of my day (time I really should have spent working...) but it was also really relaxing and definitely something I needed to help get me through. Remembering that you can't just hammer all the time, both when it comes to training and life in general. The recovery is just as important.

Yay that's all I have for today. Looking forward to the rest tomorrow and a final tune up ride or run on Friday morning before we roll out for Innsbrook! So pumped (:

Much love,

Jess

Recovery Updates

I didn't train Monday or Tuesday due to a combination of needing post-race rest and some mild period-related anemia that mom totally predicted and I totally scoffed at even though she was in fact right. I took a run this morning that was very short and very slow because apparently there's still a ton of residual fatigue in my legs. I figured the best thing was just to be active for about 30 minutes and not push anything too hard and come back tomorrow and see how things go from there.

Today's Workout: Easy recovery run
Summary: 3.18 mi, 33:33, 10:33 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 10:34, 10:39, 10:30, 10:14.
Hit rate: 19/21 (90.5%)

Hopefully I will be able to get some kind of trainer ride in tomorrow or maybe a run or some form of physical activity in and out of the madness that is a travel day, but we'll see.

In other news, I officially registered for both USAT Club Nationals (sprint distance) and the Cyman Triathlon (Olympic distance) yesterday so now I'm really in triathlon prep mode and am excited to getting back to working on my swimming and cycling! (Not to mention starting school!) It'll be an adventure. Stay tuned! (:

Much love,
Jess

Building, building...

Building is really not the word you think of in terms of your training a few days out from a race but somehow that's what today's run was. It felt like a continuation of yesterday's run, I started out already feeling warmed up and just sort of built from there. It was a solid, consistent, and easy-moderate effort and I was very very satisfied with it.

Today's Workout: Base 6 mi. run.
Summary: 6.58 mi, 1:02:03, 9:25 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 9:42, 9:23, 9:39, 9:14, 9:25, 9:24, 9:02.
Hit rate: 17/19 (89.4%)

Also it's around 6 PM now as I'm writing this and the taper is really kicking in. I feel super super good (especially in contrast to how blown out I felt last week) and I have so much excess energy I just feel like I have to actually work out. Like do something to destroy myself physically. But I can't because I'm resting. It's so strange. And to think there's another two days of this. Not really sure how that's going to go. Must stretch tonight!

Much love,
Jess