Hello Readers,
It’s been awhile since my last post, but I feel that a bit of a break from the blog was a good thing. Since the last post, I've graduated and the IHSA track season has officially come to a close. Things seem to be going better now though. The quality and volume of my cross training has been improving over the last few weeks, although I am getting sick and tired of aquajogging. It’s not the least bit enjoyable now. Fortunately, as the recovery of the foot has gotten farther along, I’ve been able to add in some cycling. At the moment that’s probably the training that I enjoy most. At first, the change of scenery that came with biking was a big bonus. Aquajogging is just about as boring as the treadmill, or worse. It has been harder to drag myself into the pool each consecutive day. It’s a motivation problem that I don’t seem to have with running.
Progress has been the theme of the last couple of weeks. First it was getting off of my crutches, which I couldn’t stand. It’s amazing just about how much you appreciate walking when you can’t do it. I got off of them gradually by introducing small spurts of walking in the boot. My crutches have been laying in the back seat of my car for about 6 days now, and I don’t miss them one bit. Now I’m getting around exclusively on foot, which is nice and I’m even taking the boot off for a small amount of time each day. Soon I’ll be getting around in normal shoes and (hopefully) introducing small amounts of running into my schedule.
Here’s what week number four of cross training looked like (5/22-5/28):
Sunday - AM: 35minutes of aquajogging; PM: 45 minutes of aquajogging/swimming - This turned out to be scheduled nicely around my graduation and graduation party
Monday - 75min of aquajogging, with some hard portions
Tuesday - AM: ?; PM: 30min of Stationary Bike
Wednesday - 3pm: 13mi bike ride in 52min (Avg. HR 150bpm); 9pm: 30min of aquajogging
Thursday - AM: 10mi of cycling outside SLOW with first half into wind, with first half into the wind 47:48 (Avg. HR 146bpm); PM: 45min of aquajogging
Friday - 18mi of cycling outside in 1:16:35 (Avg. HR 152bpm)
Saturday - AM: Hard aquajogging workout- 10min warmup, 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 hard w/ half recovery, 5min easy, 100m swim, 5min easy, 3x(60sec-45sec-30sec) No hand w/ 30 sec rec. in between, 5min easy, 100m swim, the rest cooldown easy (Tot. 65min); PM: 60min of stationary bike covering 20mi (Avg. HR 136bpm)
Weekly Total: 561 minutes of aerobic activity (9 hours, 21 minutes); 295min (4:55) of that aquajogging, and 266min (4:26) of that cycling
I was pretty happy with the week as a whole. The hard thing about cross training, especially aquajogging, is that you don’t get the feedback that you do from running. I don’t get any splits, there is no way to monitor my pace or speed, it’s just me judging effort, which can sometimes be nice, but ultimately leaves me questioning how good my workout was, or makes it hard to compare workouts to one another.
I had a check up x-ray and things seem to be healing like they should. I’ll be getting another one in a few weeks to make certain that everything is fine. I was worried for a while that it had led to something worse than a regular stress fracture as I wasn’t able to walk at all. A friend of mine who recently had a stress fracture was walking fine in his boot right away, whereas I was still having considerable pain, although along with my stress fracture I found out that I had multiple stress reactions in various spots around my left foot as well. The recent clean x-ray image that was taken 3.5 weeks after the injury cleared up some of that fear I was having.
Now, enough of that..
The IHSA State Track Meet was this last weekend. I tried to ignore the fact that if I were running, I would have been able to place considerably well, and dare I say be in contention for the title with the winning time being 9:27. Regardless, I didn’t run, and hypothetical situations don’t mean anything in the real world. With that said, I tried to focus mainly on the Men’s 800m where a teammate of mine, Lance Curtis would be running (the only other serious distance runner in Bushnell).
Lance didn’t disappoint. He went to Charleston with three goals in mind: 1)Get to finals, 2)Medal, 3)Break our school’s 50+ year old 800m record. He accomplished all three, as a Junior! He battled all year with that two minute barrier, running equal to it several times throughout the season, but it continued to elude him. At the sectional meet he ran yet another 2:00 and was probably his closest to being under so far (as I had hand timed him at 1:59.8). Going into prelims at the state meet he knew that he would have to be sub 2:00 to have any chance of making the final. With the right competition, he was well under it with 1:59.39. Now, I’m pretty sure he was somewhat relieved to finally be sub-two, but he would still have to put together a heck of a race if he wanted either a medal or the record on Saturday. Lance has always been able to perform well and exceed his/others expectations on the right day. So I’m sure Saturday before the 800m final he was quite nervous. It seems that nerves only helped as he ended up placing ninth (the last medal spot) and cementing his name in B-PC history by dipping under the school record with a time of 1:58.01.
That gradual progress has come quite well for Lance as each successive year since he started running in sixth grade has consisted of him chipping away at the clock bit by bit, second by second. Now I know that once you get to a certain point in the 800 (or time for this matter), improvement is harder to come by and the gains are smaller and smaller as one continues to get faster. So most are probably thinking that for next year at least, Lance shouldn’t be looking to improve as much as he has been, or make monstrous leps. I look at this a bit differently. I feel that Lance still has considerably more room to improve and that he still hasn’t come that close to developing his full potential. Most of his previous success and gains have come from his great foot speed and a gift of natural endurance. This fall was his first time ever running Cross Country. He went from a relatively mediocre 18:45 3mi XC time in early September to a 16:37 over tough terrain by the end of the Cross Country season. Aerobically, he has a great amount to improve. With him establishing his first solid base this summer and having all fall to develop his aerobic strength and build the mileage, he’s going to be a runner to lookout for. He’ll be flying under the radar in the fall, but I feel he can do some damage at the State XC Meet and most likely be turning some heads with the proper training. If all goes as planned he’ll go into next track season more experienced and better equipped to tear it up over 800m and keep the big gains going. So keep an eye out!
I have the intentions to be posting the weekly cross training from here on out, and hopefully within a matter of weeks you will be seeing some running included in the log!
Have a good week, everyone!
-John
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