In a Slump

(from Google)

slump  

/sləmp/

Verb Sit, lean, or fall heavily and limply.

Noun A sudden severe or prolonged fall in the price, value, or amount of something.

Synonyms verb.   fall - sink noun.   depression

So...here is how my Ice Age 50 training has been coming along.

I have completed 6 runs in the last four weeks. My last "run" was on Saturday. I thought it would be great to spend a couple of hours out on the snow covered trails. Two miles into the run, I stopped an turned around. I had a lot of pain in my foot, my plantar fasciitis suddenly decided to flare up again. I am pretty sure it came from a 7+ mile run on the road in my Altra's. I have not been wearing them much and there is very little cushion in them. I love how light they are, but I need a cushioned shoe.

I hobbled around all day Sunday and Monday with foot and back pain. It seems to be getting better day by day.

When I am not injured, it seems I have been either working, eating, or sleeping. I have totally lost my balance in life. I am fully aware of it but just have not been able to reign things back in and make some time to run. I cannot blame the boss, I set my own hours and schedule.

I guess I am just in a slump.

I have gained weight

I am not eating well or exercising much

I just need to find my mojo and get moving again, especially if I am going to run 50 miles in May.

Maybe I will try running tomorrow...

How do you pull yourself out of a slump? What gets you motivated to move again?

Self Diagnosis

As I stated in previous posts, I have been battling Plantar Fasciitis on my right heel. This was self diagnosed via the internet of course. Who needs a specialist when you can just "Google" your pain?

I have spent the last two months stretching my calves, rolling my foot on a golf ball and a frozen water bottle, wearing a boot type contraption to stretch my calf, and I even took a week off from running on two different occasions.

So the other day I am standing in the kitchen with my sore gimpy heel and I decide that I will massage the spot that hurts. I applied pressure around my heel and discovered that it was just one small spot on the inside/bottom part of me heal that was causing all of this pain. When I put my foot back down I put my weight on the outside of my heel and viola', the pain literally disappeared. I practiced walking around the house putting my weight towards the other side of my heel, and it worked! I tried the same method while running, it was not perfect, but it was definitely better.

In a nutshell, I have learned, as a Google Medical Non-professional, is that I over pronating on that side. WebMD has a great picture and explanation of excessive pronation here. Upon further investigation, something that I had failed to notice previously, according to Foot.com, one cause of plantar fasciitis is "over-pronation (flat feet) which results in the arch collapsing upon weight bearing."

This is a great example of over pronating.
Photo credit: Orthoticshop.com

My advice...

1. Be careful when working on your running form, small adjustments can create problems.
2. It's a good idea to self diagnose yourself on the internet before seeking professional help. It has the potential to save you a lot money, or possibly kill you if your seemingly minor problem is actually something more serious.

• Do you "Google" for answers when you are sick or injured?
• Has it fixed your issue?
• Did it make it worse?
• Did it kill you?

Training Again

Recovery seems to be coming along ok right now. I still have some fairly painful plantar faciitis off and on these days. But if I stay on top of it and keep my calf stretched it minimizes things. My plan is to run no more than every other day. This should allow me to recover well and be able to build back up to some decent mileage quickly (I hope). It went well for the first week so far. I had two 5 mile runs and finished up with 14 today. I will slowly lengthen each of my runs for the next 6 weeks and then do little to no running the week of Ice Age until the actual event. I truly hope this works out. 


I have continued my strength training, it has been a lot of fun and a great challenge being able to workout with others. It is interesting being the "teacher" of this group. I feel that I have to be the strong one and push everyone to improve, but not so much that anyone gets hurt or feels like they can't do it. I try to keep them all encouraged and point out their progress. They are a tough bunch, there are 4 of us men ranging from 42 - 54 and a young lady in what I would guess is her very early 30's who is tough as nails. They are an awesome bunch to meet up with at 5:20am  - 3 days a week!


 If you spend much time in a vehicle and are interested in ultra running, check out the Talkultra podcast. It is on iTunes and they have interviewed some real ultra-legends such as, Gordy Ainsleigh, David Horton, and others. It's definitely worth checking out!


Finally, here are some pictures from today's 14 mile run. Now that spring has arrived, the trail looks much different than it did just a few short weeks ago. I had the pleasure of seeing 3 deer and 3 turkey this morning in close proximity, I love it!

One of the muddy stream crossings.

The sweet smell of spring was in the air today!

Getting Old?

We are half way through March and I am already dealing with injuries. I started the year off with the plantar fasciitis, and I am still dealing with it off and on. I haven't done anything more than some extra stretching up until now. Today I purchased a night wrap that is supposed to help treat mild cases, hopefully this will take care of it.

I believe that the pain in my heel has caused me to change the way I run. This has resulted in some hip problems on the left side. The pain kept me from running this past weekend so I made a visit to the local chiropractor. 

I am not a believer in chiropractic medicine but I am trying it with an open mind. I live in a small town so I know the chiropractor fairly well, he is a nice guy,  hopefully he will heal me. He spent just enough time to give me some electroshock treatment, twist and pull me a little and put me into his torture device.

This looks like something right out of one of the Hostel movies!

Oh yes...lastly, I was working out with our morning core group and must not have been warmed up and stretched out enough. I went down into a lunge and felt and heard my hip flexor pop. So I really couldn't do much for lunges or our plank leg lifts on that side for the rest of the workout.

All of these little nagging injuries seem to be adding up lately. Maybe I should back off a little but running and working out are my stress relievers and really elevate my attitude to a new level.

I did manage to go on my first bike ride of the year today. We rode 17 miles and it felt great to get out there. We didn't ride very fast but it's early in the year, the speed will come with time.

I Found a New Trail

I have to admit, I had a pretty awesome run on Wednesday afternoon. My goal was to go out for some ultra run/walk practice. My plan was to run for 9 minutes and then walk for 1 minute. This started out ok but once I got going I switched it up to walking up the hills and running the remainder. I happened to take a new route for this run, I wanted to check out a different entrance to a wildlife area that I had run previously.

This is a view of the road that leads 

to the entrance of the preserve. 

It's about a mile to the entrance.

This is the beginning of the trail.

Not far into the trail I had the pleasure of this view. 

Beautiful and humbling!

This section was very secluded

and it still looks like fall. It 

was almost like running through

a tunnel.

This is a small stream that I crossed.

Once I got close to the stream I

saw 7-8 deer running away.

They were all in the open area

in front of the trees ahead.

Once I crossed the stream and

made it up into the clearing, this

is the path I climbed.

Here is a look back to the clearing from the hill.

I followed the trail for about 2.5 miles

before I turned around and headed back.

Coming down the last road to our home

this was the view that I was rewarded with.

The sky was beautiful!

Since this blog is about running....

I ended finished the run with 13.1 miles at just over a 10 minute pace. Not bad in my opinion for walking up the hills and slugging through a couple muddy streams. 

A couple of training notes:

• Nutrition - I had a 20oz bottle of Gatorade and two gels with me. I drank most of the Gatorade and had one gel at about 1 hour into the run. At 1:43 I remember getting a little light headed (low blood sugar), so I took the second gel and felt better soon after.
• Run / Walk combo - Once I got over the mental hurdle of what it was doing to my pace, I began to enjoy this. It was really easy on my body, I was not sore or wiped out after this run or even the next day. I felt like I could have gone another 13 if I had the time and the food to do so.
• Trail Running - I love the variety and softness of the trail! It is much easier on my body than running on the road. Even after 13+ miles my plantar faciitis was very minimal.

I hope you learned something and enjoyed the pictures!

Looking Back to 2011

It's been a great year and I feel like I took advantage of a good portion of the opportunities that I was offered. I didn't meet all of my goals, the big one was to qualify for Boston. But I still had a lot of fun, I trained hard, and had a few accomplishments and experiences that will change my life forever. I call that a win!

It's been an extremely mild winter to end the year, but looking back, we certainly didn't start off that way.

Snowed in! Feb. 2, 2011

Luckily, just a couple of weeks later the temperatures warmed up enough that I was able to run in shorts for the awesome Psycho Wyco Trail Run. The hills and trails for this run are pretty insane, you can read my race report here but this picture below pretty much sums up how I felt.

One of the most challenging yet fun races that I have done!

Looking back now, I had forgotten how strong I was running. In March I was able to sharpen my skills a bit at the Frisco High Line Half Marathon. It was a huge PR for me finishing in 1 hour and 34 minutes. The interesting thing about this race is that we ran it in the middle of a thunderstorm and I couldn't believe that they didn't postpone it or call it off. I also had the pleasure of meeting awesome Dailymilers David and Jon. 

Next up was the the Fargo Marathon in May. I had really trained hard for this and should have crushed it. Going back through my training log it looks like I just didn't fuel properly. I really should have finished this one much faster than I did. I was really disappointed in my performance at the time but I really think I can make some improvements this year just by remembering to fuel properly through the race an not falling behind on hydration either.

My letdown in Fargo had me lost for a little while, not knowing what I wanted to do next. In June I decided that I would dip my toe into the triathlon end of the pool. I had considered the triathlon many times but swimming is what always held me back. Teaching myself to swim through YouTube videos and an online coach was not the greatest thing in the world. But it got me started. My first triathlon was the Crossroads Triathlon in Cameron, MO. I am not sure that you can really classify it as a Sprint Tri, maybe a mini sprint. It was a 200 meter swim, 8 mile bike, and 2.1 mile run. The swim was a joke, not at the time, but I can really laugh at it now. As embarrassing as the swim was, I still managed to finish first in my age group and 16th overall. 

My next tri was the Panther Pride Tri in Iowa Falls, IA. I was a little smarter when I registered for this one and was right where I needed to be for the swim. It still wasn't easy, but I didn't get run over like I did in my first one. This time I finished 2nd in my age group and 8th overall.

Then came the big day, the Hy-Vee Tri. This is an olympic distance which means a 1500 meter open water swim, a 40K bike, and a 10K run. The swim was a long slow nightmare in which I was super thankful that God must have been watching over me because the water temperature had dropped enough overnight that I was able to wear a wet suit. The right and the run were pretty solid. No fancy pants age group awards on this one though.

Since the Hy-Vee Tri I really haven't done much. I ran a little local 2.1 mile race and then the Vets Day 4 mile trail run in Kansas City.

I finished 2011 off with an 11 mile run and I am hoping to start 2012 off with a 12 mile run. I am fighting some plantar fasciitis which left me hobbling after yesterday's run. I had 1,807 miles of training for the year with 1,337 of those being running. This was down 116 running miles from 2010. 

My goals this year are to break into the ultra world and run the Ice Age 50K in May and if all goes well look at a 50 miler in the fall (I am open to suggestions on this one). I may even sprinkle a marathon or two somewhere in between just for fun.

With the new year upon us and all of those non-running types giving you grief over your love, just keep this in mind.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. 

Most people exist, that is all." 

- Oscar Wilde