So, it’s been about a month since I decided that enough was enough. I suppose some kind of status update is in order.

Things continue to go pretty well. I’m able to run now without any knee pain which I’m really happy about. I started out at the beginning of the month with just a short two miles and basically upped my mileage by one mile at the end of each week. Four weeks later, my long run ended up being six miles. That’s a comfortable place for me - just under an hour which makes it feel like a good, aerobic workout. That and there is enough time during that to start adding some additional speedwork. It’s time to start lowering that pace of mine…

My cycling has been pretty light still. I’m only doing two rides a week at this point and each for only an hour. I just really don’t enjoy riding on the trainer. I only do it to keep some sort of familiarity with the bike, so my butt and my legs will be happier come spring. Still, I can’t say that I look forward to spending time doing my spin workouts. I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather be outside running.

I only had one week of swimming this past month. It started out horribly, but I think that was a fluke. I’ve only had three workouts since then, but each was significantly better than the first day back. I feel that I could swim longer if I really wanted or needed to at this point, but it’s a long season and there isn’t any point burning myself out with it now. Of the three, swimming has the potential to burn me out the fastest. It’s the only activity that requires me to wake up early in the morning. It’s often crowded and the lanes are sometimes a mess (today, we had four folks in my lane - the first set consisted of 8 x 150 and we had a mix of folks doing 150s, 125s and 100s; talk about chaos!).

Still working on stretching and strengthening my lower body so my ITB ailments keep at bay. I need to continue to focus on doing core work and eating well. Ugh. Despite a significant increase in physical activity this past month, I don’t think I’ve made any progress in the body composition department.

Thanks to you all for your supportive comments and encouragement, and to everyone that keeps a blog from which I can feed off your energy and positive vibes about the upcoming season. I’m sure you all know how much a few words of encouragement can completely turn your day around and psych you up. Thanks to Commodore for starting his No Limits challenge. He’s keeping us all honest and challenging us in a positive manner. I can’t wait to hear where everyone ends up at the end of this 39 day journey.

See you all on the other side! :)

Ugh. I sound like such a dope. It’s a good thing I didn’t pick a career where I have to do any public speaking. But it was fun and an honor to be a part of the second podcast of Get Your Geek On!

If you haven’t already tuned in, download it now (also available via podcast subscription in iTunes)! And if you’re finding this podcast through my site, please stop by Iron Wil’s site and leave a comment telling Wil I refered you (before Sunday, please!). I could use that kickass mouse pad for work. :)

I’ve been waiting for Com’s daily post on this so my OCD could rest and I could write this down. You’re slacking, Com! ;) I guess I’ll just post it here instead.

Apparently, Monday was somewhat of a fluke. I got up to swim this morning and while it wasn’t great, it wasn’t nearly as terrible as it was Monday. Maybe it was just an off day? Anyway, in the spirit of keeping things easy and just adapting to getting moving again, I swam for a short 45 minutes today. Lots of drills mixed into the sets today. I think I ended up just shy of 2,000 yards. Hopefully, I’ll be back to at least an hour by next week.

This afternoon I did my longest run of the year. I didn’t bring the Garmin so I don’t know exactly how far it was, but it was somewhere between 5 and 5.5 miles. Nothing huge by any means, but with no knee pain and just getting back into the program, I’ll take it! I took it nice and easy going out and was feeling good at the turn around so picked it up a bit on the way back. I ended up negative splitting the second half by about a minute and a half and was pretty happy about that. My pace is still a long way off from where it was before, but at least my workouts have stopped feeling like possible heart attacks. I’m back in the place where it’s less like work and more like fun again. What a great place to be! :)

Since Bolder and a few others of you have been struggling with Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS), I thought I’d share what I’ve done for the past two years to shake mine when it’s reared its ugly head. This builds off of what I wrote to Trimama not too long ago in hopes to help out Tridaddy. I’m not sure she actually got my e-mail since I apparantly send her to many soliciations for Viagra and home mortgages and my emails to her end up in her junk box. ;) Anyway, here is my regimine and some of rationale behind it:

1. At the onset of ITB pain, STOP ALL ACTIVITY that causes that pain. Don’t struggle through it as it’ll only make it worse and stick around for longer.
2. Do standing ITB stretches multiple times a day. Cross your injured leg behind your other leg, and lean away from your injured leg side jutting out your hip on your injured side. The is probably the classic ITB stretch that most folks know. If done correctly, you should feel the stretch in your upper leg and in your hip. Maybe even a little in your glute. I usually stretch each side two to three times, two to three times daily.
3. Do sitting ITB stretches. Sit with your feet on the floor with your knees at a 90 degree angle. Take your affected leg and place your foot/ankle on top of your other leg just above the knee. Then with your crossed over leg at parallel to the floor as possible, lean forward bringing your chest as close to your crossed leg as possible. You should feel a stretch again in your upper leg/glute area. Do this two to three times each side a few times daily.
4. From physsportsmed.com:
   

   Severe lateral knee pain associated with ITBS may be intensified by myofascial restrictions that are not directly associated with the friction of the ITB sliding over the lateral femoral epicondyle. Myofascial restrictions include central and attachment trigger points (17), muscle contractures, and fascial adhesions. These restrictions may also contribute to excessive tension on the ITB, which underlies the friction syndrome, and may precede and accompany the condition or linger after the primary friction syndrome has subsided. We have found that myofascial restrictions vary from a minor complication to the primary cause of the lateral knee pain.

   To help breakup these myofascial restrictions, I usually do deep self-massage along the entire ITB area. I’d pay for an actual massage therapist to do this, but that gets expensive and this has seemed to work well enough. :P I usually take something hard and with a rounded end (a remote control, a screw driver, etc.) and start slowly digging that into my leg at the knee region and moving up along the ITB. When you find a place that causes you particular pain, try and spend more time there and work out the adhesions. This hurts quite a bit and will likely have you sore for days afterward. But doing this every other day will help break up these adhesions and should hopefully keep the band loose.

5. Also from physsportsmed.com:
   

   Researchers at our institution (14) recently compared 24 distance runners (14 women, 10 men) who had ITBS with noninjured controls and found that runners with ITBS had significant weakness in the hip abductors of their affected limb. After 6 weeks of rehabilitation directed at strengthening the gluteus medius, 92% of the runners were pain free.

   Electromyographic studies of joggers (15) have shown that to control coronal plane motion during the stance phase, the gluteus medius—and to a lesser extent the tensor fascia lata—must exert a continuous hip abductor moment. The pattern of muscle action stays constant as gait speed increases. At foot contact, the femur adducts relative to the pelvis. The involved muscles contract eccentrically, then concentrically through the support phase and into the propulsive phase as the hip abducts. Though the gluteus medius and tensor fascia lata are both hip abductors, the gluteus medius (especially the posterior aspect) externally rotates the hip, whereas the tensor fascia lata internally rotates the hip (16). Consequently, fatigued runners or those who have a weak gluteus medius are prone to increased thigh adduction and internal rotation at midstance, leading to an increased valgus vector at the knee. We postulate (14) that this increases tension on the ITB, making it more prone to impingement on the lateral epicondyle of the femur, especially during the early stance phase of gait (foot contact), when maximal deceleration absorbs ground reaction forces.

   Strengthen those hip abductors. To do this, I usually lay on my side and do slow leg raises. Keep your toe pointed forward and slightly down. The lift your leg up until you feel the contraction mostly in your glute. When I first started out, it was pretty hard to just do 3 sets of 15. Build up to doing 3 sets of 15 and then add resistance with ankle weights or stretch cords.

That’s the regimine that I use and that’s worked for me the past couple of years. The site that I linked to above and http://www.itbs.info both have some good information. Read up on ITBS and don’t push through the pain. Instead, take that training time and do any number of things to rehab yourself. Best of luck!

So today was my first day back in the pool. I haven’t swam since September 11th, 2005 - not a single yard. Still, I guess I didn’t expect to fall off the wagon quite as bad as I have. Swimming has normally been my forte and the thing that I worry least about. I’m not a blazing fast swimmer, but of the three sports of triathlon, I do proportionally the best at it.

Rewind to Wisconsin… I swam 1:00:22 for the 2.4 miles. That about 1:35 pace per 100 meters (probably 1:28 pace in yards).

Today… after 500 or so warm up (while the rest of the pool did around 1,000). The first set was 12×100 - first 6 on 1:30 and the last 6 on 1:25. I do my first 2 on 1:30. Shoulders and back were on fire. So I decide to drop down to doing 75s instead. I cranked out 4 of those… and was done. My arms were so tired, I could barely get them out of the water anymore. Ugh. 1,000 yards in 30 minutes. That’s pretty sad. :( And something tells me that even that sad effort is going to have me sore tomorrow. Bleh.

But in more cheery news, congrats to Wil for being the first to identify the votive candle holder in the “What Is This?” post. I, along with many of you, thought that was the coolest shot glass holder ever! I was all ready to register for one until I found out what it’s really supposed to be used for. It totally lost all its luster after that. :)

Ok, I went to register today for my upcoming wedding when I came across this item:

I’m looking for guesses as to what it is. Make a comment and post your guess. Bragging rights for the winner. :)

(Disclaimer: My abs look absolutely nothing like that guy’s on the right.)

On the advice of Mike and Wil (and Sara, albiet after the fact :) ), I decided to add some core work to my routine. It didn’t feel like much at the time, but I have some soreness in both my abs and lower back so I guess it did something? It’s been a long time since I ever did any real core work, but now is as good a time to start as any.

Tonight was another successful ride on the trainer. I think bike fitness must come back the quickest. My heart rate is still elevated on the bike, but my butt is used to the saddle for the most part and the power in my legs feels like it’s returning rather quickly. Or at least for the short duration trainer rides that I’ve been doing lately. I still don’t like riding the trainer, but what can you do.

Tomorrow is supposed to be my “long” run of 4+ miles, but I actually cheated and did that yesterday. Probably wasn’t the best idea, but I was feeling good and had a moment of weakness, I guess. Towards the end, my ankles were getting a little achy. I’m guessing my calves and Achilles aren’t ready for upping the volume quite yet. I’ll need to pay some extra attention to stretching my calves and soleus muscles and probably start doing some calf raises as well.

I’m in that mode where I’m starting to make some fitness gains. Workouts are starting to be more fun and don’t have that gasping for air feel like they did a few weeks ago. I’m slowly starting to remember what it was like to be in shape which is dangerous for me because this is the time I usually get hurt. I push too hard, too soon. I’ve got to remind myself that it’s still only January and that I still have yet to complete one full prep phase. “Patience is a virtue” and “slow and steady wins the race” and all that stuff.

I really need to start working on my fourth discipline too. :(

Ooooh. The spammers were out in full force last night. I usually only get a small handful of comment spam a day, but yesterday I had over 50! Thank God for the Spam Karma plugin for Wordpress. It successfully trapped everything so I didn’t have to manually clean any of it out. (That totally sounds like some kind of infomercial :P)

I’m using SK2 with the Akismet plugin. While Wordpress 2 comes with its own standalone version of a plugin that uses Akismet to check for spam, I like the control that SK2 gives you; it’s nice to know that some checks are handled locally as opposed to my comments going off someplace I don’t control to have its fate determined. To be fair, I had no problems or false positives or anything when trying the standalone Akismet for several days. It seemed to work just fine.

In other geeky news, I’ve been looking for an different web based RSS aggregator than my trusty feed on feeds one that I’ve been using for the past year or so. I really have no problems with it, but it’s pretty ugly. :P I’ve tried a bunch and Gregarius seems to be the front runner. I’ve had some issues with it, but hopefully those were isolated to the fact that I was running a beta version and not the current release. At least it’s still being developed whereas feed on feeds hasn’t been updated in ages now.

And that’s my tech dump of the morning. Hey… my technology category needs love every once in a while. :)

Some options for 2006. I’m putting them all out there mostly for my own reference because I really have no idea what my year is going to look like.

March 18th - 70.3 California [1/2 IM - Oceanside, CA]
April 15th - Earth Day Half Marathon [1/2 Marathon - St. Cloud, MN]
April 29th - Get in Gear 10k [10k - Minneapolis, MN]
May 21st - 70.3 Florida [1/2 IM - Orlando, FL]
June 10th - Liberty Triathlon [1/2 IM - Independance, MN]
June 11th - Manitou Sprint Triathlon [Sprint Tri - White Bear Lake, MN]
June 17th - Grandma’s Marathon [Marathon - Duluth, MN]
June 25th - Lake Waconia Triathlon [Sprint - Waconia, MN]
July 1st - Minneman Triathlon [Sprint - Lake George, MN]
July 16th - Heart of the Lakes Triathlon [Sprint/Oly - Annandale, MN]
July 30th - Lake Chisago Triathlon [1/2 IM - Lake Chisago, MN]
August 12th - Turtleman Triathlon [Olympic - Shoreview, MN]
August 20th - Pigman 1/2 [1/2 IM - Someplace in IA]
September 10th - Ironman Wisconsin [IM - Madison, WI]
October 1st - Twin Cities Marathon [Marathon - Twin Cities, MN]
October 22nd - Chicago Marathon [Marathon - Chicago, IL]
November 4th - Ironman Florida [IM - Panama City Beach, FL]

I was toying around with Spirit of Racine and Steelhead, but those are probably too far to travel to for a 1/2. I’d rather save the money I would have spent at those races and put it towards something else. Florida is only up there because they potentially have IMNA spots and the Chicago Marathon is only up there because Carol has family in Chicago. I was thinking it’d be fun if she and her friends and spouses would all sign up and we could all run together. You know, nothing strenuous and always moving at the slowest persons pace kind of thing - a sort of family/friend bonding if you will. Apparently, my idea of fun and their idea of fun aren’t really the same though, so most likely that’s out.

I ended up on the trainer yesterday for an hour. Yes, a full hour on the trainer. I was proud of myself. That’s usually all I can stand mentally even when I’m in shape. :P I’m still keeping my running rather light to ease my legs back into the routine. I don’t want my ITB to start acting up again, and I’m going to try and avoid shin splints and any Achilles soreness this year too. That said, I hope to be back up to four miles by the end of the week and back to my staple hour long runs a week or two after that. If I can get back up to the point where an hour is the minimum amount of time I spend on a workout, that would be awesome.

My heart rate is still through the roof, despite them being lower than when I started just a few weeks ago. Looking back again last night at my training log on my early season training last year, I think it was a good month or even two before my HR really dropped significantly. And now I’m starting to wonder how much of that is a function of being in shape and how much is a function of weight (I’ve always heard that your heart rate drops about one beat per pound during exercise). I still have yet to make any progress in the weight department. In fact, I’m heavier now than I was a couple weeks ago. I haven’t really focused in on eating well yet. I’m eating better, but I’m not eating well. I’ll probably get more serious about that in a few more months. Food has always been a much bigger sacrifice for me than training ever is.

Speaking of which, it’s about time for lunch! :)

Since I love fellow geeked out posts with graphs and all, I thought I’d share some graphs of my own (click on the images below for a bigger version).

This is a run from the Urban Wildlife Half Marathon that I ran last August. You’ll notice heart rates mostly in the 140s with the only significant jump being made in that last mile where I pushed a little harder. My splits from that race right around mid 8’s with my last mile being in the low 7s.

Fast forward to my first run of the season just last week. This illustrates what happens when you take four months off and do nothing. The whole workout was just 20 minutes in length and the run is at a pace of probably just under 10 minute miles. After just 2 minutes, I’m already above 150 beats at this pace and am above the 170 mark towards then end of that short run.

Lastly, this was my run that I almost skipped on Friday. This was done at about the same pace as my run last week, but for an additional 10 minutes in duration. My body is already changing - It’s not huge, but it’s progress. In less than two weeks, it’s already changed on the order of about 5-10 beat per minute.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, folks. There are no any easy fixes. There are no shortcuts. How we are right now are based on decisions that we’ve made in the past. How we will be in the future are based on decision that we make today. Will you keep sliding or will you forge onward and do something better for yourself?

Sieze the day.