Minimal

Went to the gym and did a strength training workout. I was tired so it was a minimal full body 25 minute deal.

Yesterday -- my day of rest -- I worked 16 hours. I may have to revist that day as a rest day. Maybe do an 4:00 AM workout, work the 16, then take the next day as a true rest day.

Tired Bike

Really tired when I came home, but I still managed 20 minutes on the bike. Better than nothing.

I was reading The Lore of Running last night, and it was very interesting in the discussion of the theroy that walking improves your running, even so much that they suggest you may do better in a marathon (provided you are not an advanced runner) by walking periodically. They suggest the walking helps rejevenuate your legs and holds off failure.

Because of the dark months and my 3 consecutive 12-plus hour work days schedule I am not getting as many running days as I have wanted. I decided I would only run on the track. I think maybe I can go back to the treadmill if I do the alternate run/walk at a greater interval than I have been doing on the track, aiming each time to total 3 miles.

I need to be running at least 3 days a week.

Swim

Swam a half mile after work. The pool is open till 8 on Sundays. I thought it was only open till seven so I raced over there. This is good news as a Sunday swim will work nicely for my training.

The pool wasn't crowded. I tried to time myself for a 1/4 mile to see if my new technique was helping, but lost track of laps.

I'm trying to look at the bottom of the pool instead of slightly ahead. At one point the new technique altered my breathing slightly and ny alteration in my breathing makes me panic slightly. It took a little bit till I got my rhythm back.

I think I need to most work on my pulls using my forearms, instead of just my cupped hands.

When I went home, I thought about getting on the bike, but my legs were very tired.

Mile Run in the Cold

Went to the track. It was blistering cold. I brought my girlfriend's eleven year old with me, who plays JV basketball. I think I have convinced her and her cousin to enter the 5K road race in April with me. The plan was to run walk three miles unless it was too cold. We walked two laps, and then started running. She took a quick lead, but was hitting her inhaler at the 200 yard mark, and that was that for her. I ran a mile straight in 10:04. Felt good. My legs are holding up fine. I just wish it was warmer. I'd like to get in a decent run. Still I am glad I at least went out.

Bike

Went to the gym to lift. It was too cold to run -- 8 degrees.

I felt realy weak. I did squats, bench presses, lower back and hip flexor, and then got on the bike and did 40 minutes. Worked up a sweat.

I may try to run tomorrow.

Also, the night before I went back to the pool with the girls and got videotaped in closeup this time, although a little too close. I don't fit in the whole frame, but some of it is okay. I am going to try to show the tape to a friend who is a good swimmewr and see what he think's about the stroke.

Swim Technique

Swam today for twenty minutes working on technique. The book Total Immersion says triathletes should swim easy, and that triathletes who try to win the swim phase are losers because they will wear themselves out and that the races are always won by the best runners and bikers, not the swimmers.

Last night I was at the pool with one of the girls and I had her, a six-year old videotape me doing four laps. Unfortunately they were end to end laps(filmed longways) and the camera wasn't too focused or telescoped. It looked like I had a smooth easy stroke, that maybe my head may be too far out of the water. I don't swim looking at the bottom, but more straightahead, and my lags seemed to wander a bit. I will try to videotape again.

I worked on lots of stuff today, My stroke count when I work at it is about 16. It was twenty when I swam with fists. When I concentrate on it, I get a good glide going. I think I am too weak with my left arm as compared to the right. I definately need to work on stronger longer pulls.

I do feel great after swimming.

Tomorrow is going to be bitterly cold so I guess that limits my outside running. I could probably use a weight traigning and bike session at the gymn. Maybe get in another swim.

Back

Went back to the track. I just did a mile and a half, walk a half, run a half, walk a half. I still have bronchitis, although it is much better. While it was sunny, it was cold and windy, and I didn't want to overdo it.

Felt good to be back out there.

I may do an easy swim or bike later today.

***

Better

Feeling better -- enough to go back to work tomorrow. Hopefully I'll do a light stationary bike ride, and then do a swim on Monday. I'll be on antibiotics for another week so that might slow me a little.

Being sick just makes me want to do this all the more.

The guy who ran the first marathon

I feel like I am the guy who ran the first marathon and then died. I have been sick for days, violent cough, sore throat, headache.

Training on hold.

Cold

Took yesterday as a day of rest and now today I am coming down with a cold. I don't know if I overtaxed myself or not. At least my legs feel fine.

My first Pseudo Sprint Triathlon

First I went to the pool. I swam 36 laps for a half mile swim of either 19:00 or 19:30. I got a little confused.

Then I drove to my gym and rode the bike for 1 hour. I did 10 miles. That seems low, but that's what the bike read for better or worse. I used a varied program with some hills.

Then I drove to the track and ran walked 3 miles in 39:00. I walked 1, ran 1, walked 1, ran 1, walked 1, ran 2, walked 1, rane 2, walked 1, ran 1.

Total run of 1.75 miles. Both my walk and run lap times were slower than normal.

Anyway, so I did a psuedo sprint triathlon.

Not bad.

Legs feel good.

I took 1 ibuprofen before I started. I got that advice from an article in today's New York Times.

***

January 11, 2007
Fitness
When It’s O.K. to Run Hurt
By GINA KOLATA
JUST before the end of last year, a prominent orthopedic surgeon was stretching to lift a heavy box and twisted his back. The pain was agonizing. He could not sit, and when he lay down he could barely get up.

So the surgeon, Dr. James Weinstein of Dartmouth College, decided to go out for a run.

“I took an anti-inflammatory, iced up, and off I went,” Dr. Weinstein recalled. When he returned, he said, he felt “pretty good.”

It sounds almost like heresy. The usual advice in treating injuries is to rest until the pain goes away. But Dr. Weinstein and a number of leading sports medicine specialists say that is outdated and counterproductive. In fact, Dr. Weinstein says, when active people consult him, he usually tells them to keep exercising.

The idea, these orthopedists and exercise specialists say, is to use common sense. If you’ve got tendinitis or sprained a muscle or tendon by doing too much, don’t go right back to exercising at the same level.

The specific advice can differ from specialist to specialist. Some, like Dr. Weinstein, say most people can continue with the sport they love although they may need to cut back a bit, running shorter distances or going more slowly. Others say to cross-train at least some of the time and others say the safest thing to do is to cross-train all the time until the pain is gone. You might end up cycling instead of running, or swimming instead of playing tennis. But unless it’s something as serious as a broken bone or a ripped ligament or muscle, stopping altogether may be the worst thing to do.

“We want to keep you moving,” said Dr. William Roberts, a sports medicine specialist at the University of Minnesota and a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine. “Injured tissue heals better if it’s under some sort of stress.”

He and others acknowledge that the advice to keep moving may come as a surprise and that some doctors feel uncomfortable giving it, worried that their patients will do too much, make things worse and then blame their doctor.

“I’m not convinced this is part of every doctor’s training or that everyone is ready to make it part of mainstream medicine,” Dr. Roberts said. “You have to work with athletes a while to figure out how to do it and how to do it well.”

“The easy way out is to say, ‘Don’t exercise,’ ” said Dr. Richard Steadman, an orthopedic surgeon in Vail, Colo., and founder of the Steadman Hawkins Research Foundation, which studies the origins and treatment of sports injuries. That advice, he added, “is safe and you probably will have healing over time.” But, he said, “if the injury is not severe, resting it will probably prolong recovery.”

Medical researchers say that they only gradually realized the importance of exercising when injured. A few decades ago, Dr. Mininder Kocher, a sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital Boston, said doctors were so intent on forcing hurt athletes to rest that they would put injured knees or elbows or limbs in a cast for two to three months.

When the cast finally came off, the patient’s limb would be stiff, the muscles atrophied. “It would take six months of therapy to get strength and motion back,” Dr. Kocher said.

At the same time, in a parallel path, researchers were learning that painful conditions that are essentially inflammation — arthritis and chronic lower back pain — actually improve when patients keep moving.

Now some researchers, like Dr. Freddie Fu, a sports medicine expert and chairman of the orthopedic surgery department at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a colleague, James H-C. Wang, are studying minor injuries at the molecular level.

Their focus is on tendinitis — the inflamed tendons that are the bane of many exercisers and that affect 15 to 20 percent of all Americans at any given time. The symptoms are all too familiar — pain, swelling and soreness. To study the injury process, Dr. Wang grows human tendons in the laboratory, stretching them repeatedly. In separate experiments, he has mice run on treadmills until their tendons begin to show the tiny microscopic tears that occur in the early stages of tendinitis.

So far, Dr. Wang reports, he and Dr. Fu learned some important lessons: First, forceful stretching of tendons elicits the production of molecules that are involved in inflammation. But small repeated stretching of tendons that are already inflamed leads to the production of molecules that heal inflammation. That suggests moderate exercise can actually speed healing.

And now, their preliminary results suggest that the usual treatment for tendinitis — taking drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen — can help reduce inflammation when the injury begins. But after inflammation is under way, they can make matters worse.

But medical experts caution that people have to be careful if they try to exercise when they are injured.

Some, like Dr. Fu, who is himself a cyclist, Dr. Roberts, and Dr. Steadman say the first priority is to see a doctor and get an accurate diagnosis in order to rule out a serious injury.

Others, like Dr. Weinstein, say that such an injury, a broken bone or a torn Achilles tendon, for example, has symptoms so severe that it is obvious something is really wrong.

“If you had inflammation and swelling that was very tender to the touch, you would know,” Dr. Weinstein said. And if you tried to exercise, it would hurt so much that you just could not do it.

Dr. Weinstein’s advice for injured patients is among the boldest — he said it’s based on his basic research and his own experience with sports injuries, like knee pain and tendinitis of the Achilles and hamstring. Before exercise, he said, take one anti-inflammatory pill, like an aspirin. Ice the area for 20 minutes. Then start your usual exercise, the one that resulted in your injury, possibly reducing the intensity or time you would have spent. When you finish, ice the injured area again.

The advice involving an anti-inflammatory pill, Dr. Weinstein said, is based on something surgeons know — in most cases, a single anti-inflammatory pill before surgery results in less pain and swelling afterward. It also is consistent with Dr. Wang’s research because, at least in theory, it should forestall new inflammation from the exercise that is about to occur.

The icing is to constrict blood vessels before and after exercise, thereby preventing some of the inflammatory white blood cells from reaching the injured tissue.

Dr. Steadman, who works with injured athletes in his clinic, does not advise trying to go back to your old exercise on your own until the pain is completely gone. Play it safe, he said, and cross-train.

But others, like Dr. Fu and Dr. Kocher, are more inclined to suggest trying your old sport. Both also tell injured patients to ice before and after exercising. Dr. Kocher said he sometimes advises taking an anti-inflammatory pill, but worries about masking pain so much that patients injure themselves even more by overdoing the exercise.

His rule of thumb, Dr. Kocher said, is that if the pain is no worse after exercising than it is when the person simply walks, then the exercise “makes a lot of sense.”

It also helps patients psychologically, he added. “If you take athletes or active people out, they get depressed, they get wacky,” Dr. Kocher explained.

Noah Hano knows all about that.

Mr. Hano, 34, a commercial real estate broker in Boston, was competing in marathons and triathlons. Then he developed severe sciatica, whose pain is a direct result of inflammation. He tried physical therapy, he tried acupuncture, he tried massage therapy, but nothing quelled the “nagging, terrible pain” down his leg, he said.

He stopped exercising, but the pain persisted.

“I started getting desperate,” Mr. Hano said. His father, who lives in the same town as Dr. Weinstein, suggested that Mr. Hano call the Dartmouth orthopedist. Dr. Weinstein told him to continue to exercise. Mr. Hano could not wait to get started. “I drove to the gym and ran on the treadmill,” he said. “When I woke up the next morning, I went for a swim and rode my bike. It hurt, but when the doctor told me I wasn’t going to be paralyzed, it made it a lot easier.”

Dr. Weinstein said that Mr. Hano’s problem was a huge, bulging disk, a herniation so severe that most doctors would say he should stop running immediately. Dr. Weinstein, though, thought exercise would help Mr. Hano heal. His treatment was a single injection of cortisone into the inflamed area around his disk. The sciatica gradually went away. And Mr. Hano continues to run.

“I had faith that I was going to be able to work through it,” Mr. Hano said. “I don’t want to not do what I like just because I’m in pain.”

One of These Days

Went to the gym, did some strength training and then twenty minutes on the bike. I really ought to get on a real bike one of these days.

38:05

Did another 3 mile walk run today at the high school track.

I walked 2 laps, ran 1, walked 1, ran 2, walked 1, ran 2, walked 1, ran 1, walked 1, and then walked another 2 to cool down. The first 12 laps took 38:05.

Knees feel good.

It was blustry and cold today. Maybe around 29 degrees.

I was running my ealy laps in 2:10, the last one in 2:30.

I was at the pool today with my girlfriend's girls, and at the end of our play swim, I did a few laps, trying out the techniques I have been reading about in Total Immersion.

The best I did on the stroke counting exercise was 15 strokes for 25 yards.

I hope to do a serious swim on Wednesday.

Bike

Rode the bike for 25 minutes after my working day. I was tired.

Home workout

Rode the bike for thirty minutes, and then did upper body dumbells at home.

The good news was it was relatively painless working out at home, and so I hope to do more home workouts when I can't get to the gym.

3 mile walk/run

Did 3 miles walk run in 40:15.

I ran a total of one mile.

Here's how the laps broke down. 2 walk/1 run/2 walk/1 run/2 walk/1 run/1 walk/1 run/1 walk. and then I added another walk to cool down.

My first run was in 2:10. The last in 2:30.

Legs feel okay for now.

Bike

Went to the gym, did 40 minutes on the bike, worked up quite a sweat.

I'm thinking tomorrow of trying to swim a mile, and then after a quick change trying to ride the bike.

If its a nice day I may even start off with some walk run at the track.

I need to kick my training up into gear.