Running Wolves

Still on injured reserve

An update on my status...

I had reached the point where I couldn't put weight on my left foot immediately after getting out of bed.  This made walking a challenge - I would find myself standing for a moment as though I had forgotten how to walk.  I discovered that I don't really feel pain after my Archilles tendon tear.  I can feel shin splints but not the more serious stuff. That sound nice until you realize that it means you don't get feedback when you're injured.  I have to watch for other symptoms, like finding myself unable to put weight on my foot or walk.

So a few weeks of complete rest.

Then an easy 2 mile run on the indoor track.  (Entirely nonstop!  I hadn't lost all of my fitness) and about three hours later I started sensing that I was in pretty bad pain again.  Not good.  I had serious doubts that I would be able to do my fallback fallback position - simply walking the half marathon without any running at all.

Fortunately the physical therapist I had worked with after my Archilles tendon tear was able to see me.  It's an aggravated tendon caused by my inability to bend forward at my ankle because the tendon is so tight.  It's actually fairly fast and easy to fix.  Some exercises, some stretching, and a 'night splint' to keep my tendon from tightening at night.  Two weeks off my feet though -- I'll only have a few weeks remaining before the race and won't be able to jump back into long distances.  I would have probably skipped this race if I hadn't already bought the airfare, made a non-refundable deposit at the kennel, etc.

On the bright side I can already see a lot of improvement after just one week.  I've had a slight limp, or at least irregularity, in my walk for a very long time and it's disappeared.

Alas that's not the only thing going on in my life.  I was laid off a few weeks ago (and knew it was definitely coming four weeks ago) and Kristen spent a week away on a business trip and then visiting family.  In retrospect I was definitely depressed and my diet and non-running exercise went to hell. I'm not afraid to step back on the scale but I'm not looking forward to it.

Bad day

Yesterday was a bad day.  A BAD day.  Rebound stress and depression is not fun.  (This happens, for me at least, after I get past the original cause of my stress.  It's because I'm no longer in 'fight or flight' mode and subconsciously allow myself to feel the full impact of the stress.)  Ditto the nightmares.  They're cryptic when stressed, much more related to the cause of the stress afterwards.  This makes them more stressful, ironically.  Or is that just because I'm allowing myself to feel that stress?  :-)

On top of that I'm preparing for a technical interview.  I normally do well in them but I still need to study any technology I'm not familiar with, at least far enough to know how much I'm already familiar with the material.  A lot of the time one technology inspires another and if you know the first technology you're already familiar with most of the key concepts of the second even if the details have changed.

On top of that Kristen was sick and home until noon.  That's a change in routine.

On top of that I couldn't go for a run.  It was a mess in the morning and my left heel was killing me in the afternoon.  Poof goes one of my main stress releases.

How bad was it?  A 6" tuna sub is bad.  Really bad.  You're better off eating your average double cheeseburger.  Probably not a double bacon cheeseburger but it would be close.  The culprit is the mayo, of course.  A lot of people forget about that and wonder why they're gaining weight even though they're eating tuna instead of a cheeseburger.

I ate a foot-long.  I knew it was stress eating but I also knew it was stress eating.  It's not the best way to self-comfort, but it's also far from the worst.  I have one bad day and move on.  It's harder to do that with heavy drinking, drug use, or smoking a pack of cigarettes.

Still, at the end of the day I put on more weight since you don't eat that many calories without consequences.  I went one more day without a training run.  But that was yesterday.  Today is a new day and I can do it right.

201.5 miles.

Week 20: weigh-in and stress

256.0, up 2.8 pounds.  sigh.  Stress levels through the roof.  I haven't eaten any hamburgers or, worse, Qdoba quesadillas but I have been back on the soda wagon and not been eating evening salads.

Three 'good' points though:

• My body composition isn't getting hit hard.  At least I hope so, maybe the soda affects water retention in a way that fools the sensors.  But on the other hand the %fat is still down from the same weight 3-4 weeks ago while I was still drinking soda.  If it can be trusted I've still lost 6 pounds of fat or so.
• Friday's number is a bit of an outlier.  I'm still up by a substantial amount but it's not quite this bad.
• The project officially ended on Thursday although I'll unofficially volunteer on it through my Columbus Day holiday.  After that it's two weeks where my only job is finding another job, either within the company or outside of it, and there's no need for an hour commute into the office for that.  I'm still looking at a period of unemployment but that won't be a problem for at least a month.

In practice this means that I'll have some time when I can consistently work out, both cardio and strength training.

201.5 miles

Week 19: mileage

Only 8 miles. :-(  Fortunately a work deadline is Tuesday and I hope my schedule will return to normal afterwards.  I feel for people who have to deal with this for months.

On Sunday (week 20) I had a 5 mile race and did fairly well in it - running almost nonstop and having an average pace under 12:00.  On drive home I felt like I could run a few more miles with Blue.  My left heel started hurting again, sigh, so that run and Monday morning's run were out.

186 miles.

Week 19: weigh-in & stress

253.2, up 1.8 pounds.  Body composition improved so I think that last week was a fluke due to dropping soda and this week is more representative.  Still losing weight, just at a slower pace than  hoped.  It's definitely enough that people are starting to comment on it.

In the bigger picture I also have to remember that I've been under a lot of stress recently.  I've managed to largely control stress-eating but it does "break through" at times.  I keep coming back to the advice at Weight Watchers several years ago - during the holidays your goal is just to avoid gaining weight. Even that is an achievement and you'll be in a good place in January.

Ditto here.  I know the stress will end soon (albeit possibly replaced by a different type of stress) and I can spend more time preparing food, getting in extra exercise, etc.  The marathon is rapidly approaching but it's still nearly 2 months out.

186 miles.

Week 18: mileage

10 miles, down from 17 miles last week.  The main problem seems to be motivation - it's now completely dark when I get up and getting cold enough to require more than just shorts and a long-sleeved technical shirt.  Toss in decaffeination and it was harder to wake up and I didn't run in the morning at all.

On the plus side I've jogged on the treadmill at the gym twice now.  Neither time was particularly long (2 miles at varying pace and one mile non-stop at a steady pace) but it should be good enough for me to take my runs indoors as necessary.

Yesterday I finally made it into the gym for some strength training.  I took it easy since this was the first time in a while but I definitely feel it at the top of my glutes (from leg presses?).

178 miles

Week 18: weigh-in; Week 17 mileage

251.4 pounds, down 5.2 pounds from last week! It's amazing what a little motivation (less than 10 weeks to the marathon!) and dropping soda can do.  I need to be careful that I'm getting enough calories.  I'm eating a lot by volume but raw spinach and salad vegs aren't calorie dense.  No dressing but I am getting good fats from the avocados.  It would be insane to assume I could maintain the same pace until the marathon but a much more realistic 15-20 pounds which would still make a huge difference in the risk of injury.

I don't remember if I forgot to put up the milage for last week or if the post was dropped.  (I remember having to rewrite one entry.)  It was 17 miles total, long run of 7.5 miles.  My mileage this week will be much lower as I adjust to waking up caffeine-free.

173.5 miles

Week 17: weigh-in results

256.6 pounds, down 3.0 pounds from last week.  This looks real.  My diet wasn't much better last weekend but I was much more consistent at eating healthy salads for lunch, and often dinner, all week.  That's still a massive calorie loss despite continuing to drink soda.

What's a healthy salad?  I'm using about 3+ cups of a mixture between baby spinach and spring mix.  (No iceberg lettuce!).  Toss on some baby carrots, yellow or red pepper, snow peas or snap peas, raw red onion.  Add 2 oz or so chicken breast, sprinkle with a truly modest amount of shredded cheese and/or real bacon bits. Less than an ounce of cheese or a half tablespoon of bacon bits.  Maybe a few tablespoons of light honey mustard dressing, ideally using the "dip your fork into the dressing before stabbing the salad" method, or just be careful about how much dressing you put on since it's extremely high fat.

What you do NOT want are croutons (fried bread), large chunks of cheese, heavy dressings, esp. creamy dressings, more than a few ounces of meat or a half-tablespoon of bacon.  Basically all of the good stuff. :-)

160.5 miles

Later...

Weight on Sunday morning was 253.6 (!).  That's partly due to dehydration due to drinking alcohol the night before but still, hot dayum.  That's the lowest morning weight in at least 16 months.

172.5 miles

Race recap: 10km at 10k

I see I forgot to post this earlier....

On Sunday morning I awoke to grey skies and wet concrete outside of the hotel window.  This was ominous since I didn't bring cold/wet weather gear beyond a tee-shirt over a long-sleeved technical shirt.  For a while I thought I would be in my cargo pants and hiking boots.  But the weather cleared by the time we got to the trailhead 30 minutes outside of Steamboat Springs.

I somehow managed to convince Kristen to run the 5k!

The 10k started at 10:00.  (Hmm, lot's of '10's here!).  The first 3.5 miles were on a dirt road.  I was able to jog for the first few hundred meters but then the road started climbing just enough to force me (and others) to a walk.  Think climbing an overpass... a three+ mile overpass.  There were a few exceptions but for most of this distance I was only able to walk briskly at about a 17:00-18:00 pace even at a 1:1 breathing tempo.  There was a group of four people walking ahead of me, and two women in pink in front of them.  I could catch up but then be too out-of-breath to keep up with them.

At about 3.5 miles we hit the support truck with gatorade or water.  The course also jumped to a single-track trail.  This trail quickly dropped into the trees and I lost all sight of any other runners.  I was able to run much more of this trail but was definitely feeling the effects of the altitude and struggle uphill.

After a mile+ in the trees we dropped into a mountain meadow and skirted a large lake visible at the cutoff.  We stayed at the meadow or skirted campsites for the final 1.5 miles or so.  Unfortunately there were no countdown markers so I didn't know how close I was to the end of the run until I turned a corner and it was less than 100m ahead of me.  The total distance was around 6.7 miles per my SDM.

I finished strong.  I couldn't run on an incline for any distance but could run fairly steadily on level terrain (albeit slowly).  There was no question that I had pushed myself more than a routine run but I wasn't trashed.

ON THE OTHER HAND I was tired enough that I didn't notice that my wallet had fallen out of my duffel bag when returning to the hotel room.  I had tossed it there earlier when filling the car with gas before heading to the trailhead.  Kristen wanted to go swimming for a few minutes so I didn't notice that my wallet was missing for 30 minutes or so and we spent more than an hour retracing our steps all the way back to the trailhead.  Fortunately somebody had found the wallet and turned it in at the front desk.  They tried calling us but didn't leave a message.

147 miles (post race)

Week 16: weigh-in and mileage.

259.6, down 2.0 pounds from last.  Still hovering around 260.  I'm doing better at taking a salad to lunch.

10 miles with only one run post-race.  I feel like I could have run on Wednesday and Saturday but something felt a little off.  Too many aches, difficulty in straightening my right leg when I first stand up.  On both days I felt it was the right decision later, and on Monday (today) I realized that some of the problems with my right knee are probably due to twisting when turning around when Blue stops during runs (and resuming).

I ran today without incident but did have a return of chest pain when breathing once I got back to work.  I also had problems straightening leg when first standing.  I should probably call my doctor and get a referral to a physical therapist.

151 miles (by Saturday evening)