Luckily, the pain I've been experiencing in my leg isn't my femur bone. It was good to know that it isn't THAT serious. But, it's still been causing me problems, and that's extremely irritating. This week felt like a wasted week, training-wise. I tried to play it cautious early on and that didn't even really seem to help much. I increased the amount of time that I was running early on in the week, trying to get back to my normal training load, but then it got worse, and had to take another day off. I tried to do most of my running on the grass, thinking that would help, but I actually think it made things worse with the bumpy, varying terrain aggravating my quad more as the run progressed. The week definitely unfolded differently than I had hoped it would.
Here's this week's (pathetic) training log:
Sunday – 2.2 miles (15:55) very slow to test the leg out on grass at Spring Lake. 1 hour of aqua-jogging afterwards, with some intense portions, and about 600 meters of swimming in between
Monday – 45:00 easy (6.38mi—7:03/mi) at Spring Lake on grass. Quad felt better, but I could definitely feel it. 35 min easy on stationary bike (10mi) Lots of stretching, rolling out on foam roller, and an ice bath.
Tuesday – 1 hour easy (8.24 miles—7:17/mi) on grass at Spring Lake. Got progressively slower, and quad felt worse as I went along. Foam roller, and an ice bath. 2x3min on inversion table for lower back (something I've done for awhile).
Wednesday – 45min easy (6.25mi—7:12/mi) on grass loop at Spring Lake. Did less today, to try and let the leg recover a bit more, but my form still feels off, and I'm compensating for the pain, and now my left quad is starting to hurt some too. 35 minutes of Aqua-Jogging afterwards, with hard portions and 400 meters of swimming. Lots of stretching, rolling out, 3x3min on inversion table, and an ice bath before bed. Light core work in the evening as well.
Thursday – 1 hour easy (8.45 miles—7:06/mi), half on golf course, half on roads. Had some splits sub 7, but my quads got progressively worse, and got tired a lot quicker than normal. It feels like I'm working harder than normal to run a pretty relaxed pace, so I think my form is off from this. Lots of stretching, rolling out, an ice bath, and 3x3min on inversion table. Injury prevention work, and some strength stuff (I can't remember exactly what though)
Friday – Frustrated with leg, so took the day off from running, and tried to do a ton of recovery stuff for it. 80 minutes of Aqua-Jogging with some intense portions, with 400 meters of swimming in between. 2 Ice baths (1 before workout with warm bath after, 1 after workout before bed), lots of rolling out, 3x3min on inversion table.
Saturday – 40 minutes of easy running on treadmill (5.68mi—7:02/mi). Luckily, I really didn’t experience much pain at all, and I made sure to stop early before I felt any.
Weekly Total: 37.2 miles of running, 2:55:00 of Aqua-Jogging/Swimming, 35:00 of cycling
After regularly getting nagging injuries in the winter the last couple of years and generally staying injury free during the summer months, I’ve learned that I’m a lot more injury prone for several different reasons in the winter:
- The cold weather makes my muscles tighter.
- As the temperature goes down, the roads actually get harder.
- There are less available soft surfaces with the snow and ice.
- Slipping on the snow and ice aggravates little muscles
- I’m cramped up in school for 7-8 hours a day, and generally not very active outside of running. In the summer I’m walking around most of the day barefoot, swimming, and engaging more of my stabilizing muscles on a daily basis.
- I’m doing supplemental barefoot running on the grass in the summer, which I feel makes me much more durable
Basically, I need to focus a lot more on the general strength/Injury Prevention stuff in the winter in addition to my running. So that's going to be one of my focuses next week.
I'm hoping today's lack of pain is a good sign of what is to come next week. I'm not going to set any specific goals for this week mileage-wise, as I just want to get back to consistent, pain-free running. I know that ideally I'd like to be doing at least 70 miles a week with a couple of good threshold efforts by this time of year, but I haven't lost much time from this little setback, and it's still very early in my training cycle. I've still got a very high level of base fitness, and luckily the injury isn't anything too serious. Ideally, once my leg gets back to 100%, I'd like to not miss another day for a couple more months, as I generally have my biggest fitness gains from long, uninterrupted periods of training. Hopefully next week I'll check in with some better news!
Have a good week, everyone!
-John
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