58 Minutes of Happiness

Yesterday after work I was treated to 58 minutes of happiness. I ran pain free for 58 minutes yesterday, my longest "pain free" run since early February and it couldn't have come at a better time. With exactly seven days untill my first race of the season, I felt like I was clicking on all cylinders during my run. After my run I decided to clean my bike and get it all "race ready". I cleaned my cassette and chain and put on my Zipp 999 wheel set.

This morning I went out on a 2 hour tempo ride with two of my friends. There's something about strapping on an aero helmet and riding with a disc wheel that will bring out that killer instinct in you. My legs responded really well today and I made my friends suffer a little bit.

I have a long swim this afternoon, 3,000 yards, (reminder - I'm tapering) and besides that I have nothing else going on....and that's a great thing. :)

Time to Taper - Looking ahead to race day

Wow where do I start? The past seven days have been nothing short of a roller coaster ride off the side of Mount Everest. Just three days ago I thought that I had a stress fracture in my foot and my triathlon season was on hold for at least 6 weeks. I thought there was no possible chance that I'd be racing on April 4th, and that at most I'd be doing an aqua-bike race (just the swim and run of the half IM).

Now it's time to get focused again and get back into race mode. I'm a little concerned right now that my running fitness is going to suffer in the race. Since my injury (almost 5 weeks ago) I've ran less than 100 miles. When I ran at the track on Tuesday, I could feel my calf muscles getting sore and I only had ran 5 miles. They're actually still a little right now go to think of it...

I also haven't raced in what will be close to five months. Not even a 5K. So one of two thing will happen April 4th. I'll either shoot out of a cannon or I'll fizzle and fade. Besides the run, I feel like I've put in my time. I've consistently averaged between 15-20 hours per week of training since January and up until this taper I've only taken three days off from training and two of them were because I was traveling and stuck in airports most of the day.

Obviously there is a lot of uncertainty right now. My goal is to qualify for either Clearwater, Kona or both. I'll be happy with Clearwater and obviously estatic if I get a Kona spot.

Looking back at the Oceanside results in years past (since inception), here are the times of the folks that walked away with slots.

Kona - 4:23, 4:15, 4:26, 4:23, 4:36, 4:21, 4:11
Clearwater - 4:48 or faster, 4:46 or faster, 6:14 or faster

I have no doubt that I can race faster than 4:46 / 4:48, but low 4:20's? My strategy is to knock out a swim around 28 minutes, T1 should take 2-3 minutes, I need to bike a sub 2:30, 1-2 minutes for T2 and then pull out a sub 1:30 run. If you do the math using my predictions, that should give me around a 4:30. If I can go harder on the bike and still run good I should be right there in the hunt.

It's hard to imagine that minutes start to count in a 4+ hour race? If you lose focus for just five minutes, consider your chances OVER!

What the F?

I always try to keep things PG on my blog and rarely if ever swear in my personal life, but today all I wanted to do was scream "What the F" at the top of my lungs! I went to see an orthopedic foot surgeon today for a "2nd doctor opinion".

The doctor reviewed the MRI, took more x-rays and examined my foot. He said that I do not have a stress fracture, I do not have any tendon issues but instead I have pain in my posterior lateral aspect of the subtalar joint and posterior talus. Yes that's right folks, joint pain.

He injected my foot with Xylocaine and Cortisone and told me to go back to running and tolerate the pain as necessary, and no matter what I do, running will not prolong the injury.

So when I got home I ripped off my air-cast and headed to the track for intervals. I ran roughly five miles with zero pain.

I guess my Half Ironman in Oceanside is back on...

Any doctors out there want to give me a third opinion?

The MRI Report Findings

There is a short fracture within the posterior third of the calcaneus involving the superior cortex. Edema is present around the fracture extending through the marrow of the bone. Findings are most likely evidence of a stress injury. The fracture is incomplete and only nvolves the upper portion of the pone. The fracture line is slightly greater than 1cm in length.

No other fracture can be identified. Soft tissues appear normal. The Achilles tendon is normal. There is no evidence of Achilles tear.

There is a small area of soft tissue edema and fluid directly overlying the Achilles tendon attachment on the calcaneus. Other soft tissues around the heel appear normal. No other abnormality can be identified.
---------------------

I have an appointment this afternoon with an Orthopedic Surgeon just to get a second opinion. Not that I don't believe I have a stress fracture, but a second opinion may give me a better sense of what I'm dealing with, how far along it is healed and if I should even consider racing Oceanside in 11 days.

The Recovery Plan

First off, I wanted to thank everyone for the overwhelming support and good vibes sent my way. Support from all of you is by far one of the best attributes to this crazy sport we all have grown to love.

I had a call with my foot doctor and also got an email back from Mark Allen. I have mixed feelings right now on how to approach Oceanside and it seems as if everyone has their own opinion on what I should do as well.

First off, coach told me that if he were in my situation and if the doctor says don't run, he would probably do the swim and bike with all the training done. This could at least give me some satisfaction.

So what did the doctor say? He said, that the fracture is actually an "incomplete" fracture and should heal up pretty well. He suggested that I DO NOT run on it up until the race and we'll see how it feels in 10 days and make a game time decision. He also is going to try and get me a bone stimulator, but from what I heard from others, that does not really work.

Here's is what some others are telling me.

"For your mental psyche, knocking out a swim and punching through a killer bike just to get to the run and stop, I’m not sure what that would do. You can stay here and do that through Irwin."

"With your race schedule and the effort you are wanting to put out, Oceanside is the last place where you would want to put more pressure and risk onto your season."

"The good news is, since it's bone, it should be all healed up in 6 weeks and it's still super early in the season. Better now than in June! Heal fast and swim lots : )."

"Staying optimistic is best, no matter how this turns out. That is what I've been doing since January and will probably keep doing until I hit mile 20 in Boston."

"With two weeks off, maybe it will be pain free enough to try the half and at least finish. Thirteen miles on your toes???"

"I know you are disappointed. What I have read about them in the past, once they are healed, they are healed. Usually 6 weeks. And he gave you good news about being able to see it, so you are on your way to healing. It stinks though. I agree with you, the first 2 legs of the race, and then enjoy a wonderful time on your vacation."

"If you have a stress fracture, the best way to accelerate the healing process is rest and maybe supplementing your diet with calcium. There is no magic formula to accelerate bone healing. You have to give it time."

So that brings me to my next topic. Do I risk my season to run a race and finish just to finish? I think the obvious answer is NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! Do I race the first two legs, start the run and go from there? I think this might be a better approach. It's just so frustrating because things have been going so good for me. I mean last November I had my fastest half IM ever, and since training with Mark, my fitness has only gone up. Every year I keep tell myself, "I'm in the best shape of my life" and I see no plateau in sight.

I really have taken a lot of time off the past 3-4 weeks.

Here is all I've ran on the road since I began to notice the pain.

2/24 - 5.5 miles
2/26 - 7.5 miles
2/28 - 4 miles
3/01 - 16 miles
3/03 - .7 miles
3/05 - 5 miles
3/10 - 2.2 miles
3/14 - 3.4 miles
3/15 - 11 miles
3/17 - 5 miles
3/19 - 2 miles

If you take out the 11 and 16 mile run, I really haven't ran over five miles on the foot. I guess right now the only thing I can do is rest and hope for the best whatever that may be.

And the Verdict Is....

This morning I received a call from the Podiatrist's office with the MRI preliminary results. It appears at first glance that I have a stress fracture on my Calcaneus (heel bone).
I'm not really sure what this means to my race in 2 weeks, but I have a feeling it doesn't look good. The doctor plans to call me this afternoon and I'd expect I'd get the "What not to do" talk from him at that time.

One good thing that the nurse said when she called this morning is that I can still bike and swim.

When I look back on the past couple of weeks I began to realize that my pain threshold may be slightly higher than the normal athlete or person. Basically I've don’t a 12 mile run and even a 16 mile run recently all while having a stress fracture in my foot.

I guess if there were any good news to come out of this it's that it's still early in the season and I can hopefully rebound in time for Eagleman and Placid….and I can still keep my fitness with biking and swimming. I have to wait and see what Mark says and see what he thinks my season strategy should be given this will take 4-6 weeks to heal…

I'm in an AirCast

My foot doesn't agree with the track

Last night was the first true test of my foot. I've done a couple of long slow runs over the past week, but I haven't tested it until last night. My workout called for 3 one mile intervals, but I knew that I would only do this if my foot felt good on all three. After a nice long warm up I began the first mile with no pain. Lap 1... 1:20. Okay maybe back off just a tad. Lap 2... 1:25. Now that's more like it. I finished off the first interval in 5:38. It was a little faster than I would have preferred, but I felt good. However, on the second mile interval the pain returned slightly and I figured it was wise to slow down just a bit. I still ran around a 6 minute mile, but the pain was back. I decided to bag the last interval and instead run a couple easy laps. So the tendon where my foot is actually sore is called the Peroneus Tendon. I highlighted it in yellow above. I'm guessing that it's used for "power" considering it gets irritated whenever I push off. I go back to the foot doctor next Monday and I have a feeling it may be time for an MRI just to make sure it's nothing more than a severe case of tendinitis.

In other news, our team got sponsored by Newton running...which is huge because that's what I wear! You can check out my testimonial on their website. http://www.newtonrunning.com/community/testimonials/customers . Like I said on the Newton Website, I had no problem adjusting to the Newton shoes. When I started I considered myself a midfoot runner. The shoes are amazingly light and comfortable, especially the racer shoes. Since transitioning to Newton shoes, I've notice improved results in all of my race distances from 5K to marathon to Ironman's.

I also wrote that the shoes have kept me "injury free". YES I wrote this before I got injured. None the less, I don't think the injury is in any way caused from the Newtons!


Also, our MAO team just got sponsored by TYR. Again, I've been wearing TYR gear now for some time and even without the sponsorship I'd continue to buy this stuff. They really make quality suits!

Okay - now that my blog just turned into one big plug / advertisement, I'll adjust my focus back to training. I hit the pool this morning (I won over the alarm clock) but didn't win against the water. My times were very slow for some reason. I have a 2 hour ride tonight and will try running again tomorrow. Next week I begin my taper for Oceanside. I can't wait for a day off! I've only taken three days off this year and am in dire need of one.

Is Sleep Overrated?

The past couple of months I've fallen into the same trap over and over again. I go to bed all packed for a morning swim, but by the time the alarm goes off at 4:50 AM, I do everything in my power to refrain from hitting the snooze button but the snooze button always wins.

I mean all I need to do is roll out of bed, throw on some sweatpants and drive to the pool. Why do I have such a hard time following through with this? Instead I opt to sleep in for that extra hour (which usually consists of restless sleep because I'm pissed at myself for not getting up for the morning swim). Does my body and mind need that extra hour of sleep to function properly?

Over the years and especially during high volume training weeks, I've found that if I don't give myself at least 8 hours in the sack, my performance suffers. Heck, I'd actually prefer 9 hours every night, but who wouldn't?

So is my answer to simply go to bed an hour earlier on nights where I swim in the morning? I'm already in bed by 9:30. Does that mean I need to go to bed at 8:30? By the time I get home from work, train for a couple of hours and eat dinner it is usually already past 8:30...so how do I make that work? I guess there's no easy solution.

Either I need to suck it up and get my butt out of bed or keep doing what I'm doing....double workouts after work. If anyone out there has some suggestions I'm all ears!!! Maybe I need to sign up for and cash in on one of those "Get Rich Quick" schemes and then all my problems would be solved. Then I could sleep for 12 hours if I wanted to! :)

Update on my foot

Well seeing that it's been yet another full week since my last post I guess I have some writing to do. Actually I haven't blogged lately for the fact that life has been...well the same. Since the beginning of the year I've been very consistant in my training which might not have been that as solid in the past couple of years. So with that being said, the only thing on my agenda right now besides work and training is trying to get my foot back into a normal state. I still can't believe we're in mid-March and I only have 19 days till my first Half Ironman of the season.

As for more on the foot...well it's getting better. After a weekend of no running two weeks ago I tried out my foot this past Tuesday night but with no success. It was still sore and I still couldn't run. I managed to pool run the rest of the week and gave it another go on Saturday. I had to run 30 minutes off the bike and I just knew things were going to get better even before I started. The first ten minutes I had zero pain! But the next 20 minutes the pain started to come back. The pain was manageable so I decided to keep going. Sunday morning I ran an easy 11 miles, had a little discomfort, but was able to make it through the run successful. This was just the kind of results I needed to feel comfortable going into Oceanside. I still have no idea what to expect in a couple of weeks. I've had no way to gauge where my fitness is besides training.

I know that I missed a couple of key runs, but that's okay because my swimming is really coming along and I really feel good on the bike. It's just a matter of getting through those last 13.1 miles. Who knows, I may surprise myself after all.

The Weekend

Oh how I love the weekends, but unfortunately this weekend is cut short with work and an injury not to mention the hour we lose from daylight savings time. Looking back at my training this week, if you take out the running, the week was very solid. Last Sunday I ran 16 miles and woke up Monday morning in pain. It was so bad that I couldn't walk without a limp. None the less instead of doing the obvious thing, I headed to the track Tuesday night for speed work. I made it three laps into the warm-up and said to myself, what am I doing? I pulled the plug on the workout and decided to give my foot another couple days off. The past two weeks I've been going to Physical Therapy and can't understand why my Achilles is not getting better. Thursday I decided to give my foot another go. I figured that if you don't count the little track run Tuesday night I actually took almost 4 days off. I ran about 45 minutes, but still the same. My foot didn't feel any worse, but it also didn't feel any better. It was time for me to ask my coach for help.

So here is my next plan to get this thing feeling better. Mark said, "Don't run for the next three days, get your therapy done on it, then do a short 20-30 minute run to test it out. If it feels good, then run about 1:20 on the 11th (if it is still feeling fine) but run it very slowly. Then if you still feel good the next day do your speed session that was on Tuesday, but only if it feels okay.
If you take three days off of running and it still doesn't come around, then start with some pool running for as long as it takes to be able to transition out onto the roads. This will take you far. Remember that Dina Caster won a medal in the marathon off of basically pool running."

This really gave me a peace of mind coming from Mark. I'm always worried that I'm going to lose fitness by skipping one or two workouts...but I really have to stop thinking that way. So the plan is to try a 20-30 minute run Monday or Tuesday and go from there!

I also start new therapy this Tuesday. We're going to try iontophoresis with dexamethasone sodium phosphate in my Achilles area and will see if that helps speed things up. We're still going keep doing the ultrasound to that area too. As you can see, there's a lot going on!

In other news, my swimming is starting to come around again. The past couple of weeks I've been doing some heavy lifting in the gym and I've been lucky to crack 1:30 / 100 yard splits lately. But Friday was a different story. For part of my main set I had to do 8x100's. I went pretty hard, but my splits were surprising. 1:20, 1:17, 1:15, 1:15, 1:16, 1:17, 1:16, 1:13. Yes that's right, a 1:13!!! I'd have to look, but that might be a PR for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.....I know that that's still really slow in "swimming" standards, but when I was working hard to swim 1:25's a couple of months ago, knocking off another 12 seconds is a big deal don't you think?

The other bit of exciting news, is it's actually warm here in Pittsburgh! Now when I say warm, I mean above freezing! We have different definitions of "warm" here in the North East. :) Yesterday it was in the 40's and may have even reached the 50's. So Saturday morning began super early and I met two of my friends in North Park for a long morning ride. It was raining when I started, but after 20 minutes the rain broke, and the sky was dry the rest of the day. I only had a 4 hour ride, but by the time the ride was over, I had in over 4 1/2 hours! Best part was I felt good the entire morning. I was worried that by all of this trainer riding, that it would not translate into good riding outside, but boy was I wrong. Matt and I actually time-trialed the last 10 miles....or what felt like 10 miles.

So in summary, it's Sunday morning, and I can't run. I have to stick to Mark's plan and take another couple days off. Having injuries in the past, I have learned that "rest" is the ultimate healer. Let's cross our fingers and hope that another couple of days off will do just what the doctor ordered!

So this afternoon, I have to drive to Washington DC for a dinner meeting tonight and a work meeting tomorrow. I'm actually a little nervous about it. I have to give a presentation, granted it's only like 5 minutes...but it's in-front of 40 or so industry executives and at least 15 NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) executives and branch chiefs. Mark Twain said it best, "There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars". I'm sure it won't be too bad. Wish me luck!

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb

Although March just started, the last week and a half for me began like a lion and ended as a lamb. After my last post I started to get some pain in my left foot and it progressively got worse over the next couple of days. It actually got so bad last weekend that I had to throw in the towel on my long run and schedule an appointment with my podiatrist. Now don't get the wrong impression. I didn't sit around the house pampering my poor foot. Instead I spent hours on end on the trainer, swam thousands of yards, and even went out on a mountain bike ride with some friends at Boyce Park last Sunday. Yes, as you can see, there was still snow here as of last weekend.


So back to my foot. Monday morning I went to the doctor, and the outcome was so-so. The good news was, the x-ray's didn't show anything broken, but the bad news was I had a bad case of tendinitis in my Achilles tendon. First thing Tuesday morning I scheduled Physical Therapy and ended up going Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I continued to run on my bad foot and was happy to see it wasn't getting worse. This meant that as long as I could tolerate the pain, I could still do all of my training. Tuesday continued my lion type week as I got up early for a 4000 yard swim and had to quit after 2000 yards. I was swimming times 10-15 seconds slower than normal and my arms were dead. This was the first time in some time that I had to pull out of the workout. I knew I had to listen to my body though and do the right thing. I emailed my coaches and they said to cut back a little, so I did. By cutting back slightly, my body recovered well and I stormed into the weekend with a full tank. Friday night I ran with little pain and nailed my swim. Saturday I went outside on the bike (in the low 20's) and got in a solid 3 1/2 hours in the saddle followed by a 4 mile run. And today was the true test for my foot. I ran 16 miles...yes there was a little discomfort, but I managed to survive feeling good. After the run we headed to the pool for 5000 yards. I then went to the gym and lifted for an hour, ate dinner and did an hour of speed work on the trainer. After it was all said and done I knocked out another solid 18 hour week of training even with my little swimming hurdle on Thursday. Life is good!

In other news, the Mark Allen Online Team site has been updated. Check it out if you get a chance! http://www.markallenonline.com/Team2009.asp If you're new to Triathlon and looking for a training plan that works and gets you to the finish line of your first triathlon, check out Mark Allen's Sprint Tri offer. http://www.markallenonline.com/sprintoffer.asp

I was actually in DC when I sent in my MAO application and the best "head shot" picture I had at the time was me standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The white background is actually the base to the chair Mr. Lincoln is sitting in.