Rambling While We Have Great Weather

I'm reading two books at the moment. Savage Harvest is about the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961. Since the first few pages reveal what happened, it is not a spoiler to mention that this son of privilege met his demise by being eaten by cannibals. And, as horrible as that sounds, the story behind what led up to his death is one of the better anthropological reads you may find. The second book is AWOL on the Appalachian Trail. The book is a log of what the narrator (who goes by the trail name, AWOL) encountered on a thru hike of the 2,000 + mile trail. That I happen to be reading two books about exploration/adventure at the same time is mere coincidence. The dissimilarities of the two books - both loosely in the same category - somehow please me. One needn't travel far and wide to have an adventure. Adventures requiring self-reliance can be had simply by stepping outside and hitting a trail - though some adventures may be a bit less challenging than others.

I've had a decent week of running. I knocked out the river trail loop with my running buddy, Adrian in 79 min on Saturday. Sunday I popped out for a short run. Monday featured my usual road/trail 6 mile run. Then Tuesday I headed out for the river loop again. Just as I hit 4 miles, I started to feel a bit ill. The tendons in my right leg also stiffened about the same time. And my hamstring began to throb. I knew I was effed. I popped off the trail and onto the nearby levee. I spent the next hour alternately walking and jogging slowly back to my car. By evening the general malaise had evaporated. I smacked some tennis balls with a friend on Lawrence's newly lit courts.

Today will feature an a.m. hour run, a round of disc golf in the late afternoon, and then some tennis this evening. Tomorrow cold weather is again supposed to descend upon the region. So I feel the need to get in as much enjoyment of the 70F day we are experiencing.

RWI - Running While Injured

Running while injured (RWI, for short). It sounds like a stupid thing to do, no? I have thought about the phrase quite a bit over the past year. I have run many miles. And a good portion of those miles have been run while I was injured. My hamstrings have never fully recovered (even with a long stint of PT) from the marathon and ultra that I ran back to back (a couple of weeks apart) two years ago. I have done plenty of long runs and pacing sessions in the intervening time between then and now, but none have been pain-free. And an ankle injury is the latest malady which I continue to 'run through'.

What is funny about RWI, is that I have realized I'm not alone. In fact, I can think of almost no runner that I know who has not (or does not) regularly run while experiencing knee, hip, ankle, back, tendon, muscle, or fascia pain. RWI is less of an aberration, and more of the norm for runners - especially as we either age or add more miles (or both).

In my mind I mull whether the injuries I have are chronic or  if they will someday subside. If I take a month or two or three or six off, will the pains go away? And if they do, will it be a permanent cure, or will they return as my running life resumes? I can affirm that I will never know the answer to those questions. As long as I can tie my shoes and hit the roads or trails for decent distances, I don't want to take more time than I have to away from something I love to do.

So much of running is overcoming obstacles - distance and time being two of them. But pain is also part of the process. Managing it (and in some instance, overcoming it) is what make us better runners. If we stopped every time something hurt, we'd never progress. I won't go so far as to say we need to embrace the pain. But I do think we need to understand it. Runners end up being very in-tune with their bodies (aka obsessive). Self-evaluations for injuries and pain are the norm. RWI necessitates a balancing act whereby we daily determine the risk of escalating injury versus the benefits of the run. When we are correct, we are rewarded with pain, but also with the peace, sense of satisfaction, and endorphins that running provides. When we are wrong in our evaluation, we are forced to take a break, become irritable, and watch a lot of videos and read a lot of books and articles about running.

So, for the coming months, may your roads be long, hills surmountable, vistas sublime, and injuries manageable.

Tentative Steps

I've finally had a couple of longer runs involving trails. These have been the first two runs on surfaces that vary since the heel/tendon injury three weeks ago. After the (very odd) snapping sound and pain in my heel on the Clinton North Shore trails, I took six days off from running. I visited my doctor. I biked on my trainer (no pain). I walked slowly and carefully. I then started back on treadmills using only road shoes. A few days later, I added a few road miles to the workout.

Then, last weekend, I put on my road shoes and popped out to the levee near the Kaw river. I did about 5 miles on the levee and a couple on the trails (gentler than Clinton, but still trails). I experienced no issues. I biked and did another, shorter run yesterday as well. Still not issues.

I will confess to being a bit scared to put on my trail shoes again. The shoes I was wearing when the pop happened are the ones I did the 36 mi pacing run in last year. So they should be safe. But something about the injury has me a bit gun shy about lacing them up for a longer run.

The weather is supposed to be fantastic later this week. The plan is to get out on the trails and see how it goes. That's pretty much standard for all runs anyway, I guess.

I think I'll pass - Running Technology Overload

Running, among other things, is an escape from my hectic day of dealing with people, working through problems, and interacting with technology. Even when I have run as part of a training regimen, not simply for pleasure, the act has still offered an escape from routine. I have some gadgets that help me track my runs - distance, time, heart rate, and total mileage - but I rarely use them. Frankly, I don't usually care much or want to know. And after many years of running, I can usually tell how quickly I'm covering a mile within about 15 seconds of actual time. I know my routes and distances, and I find that whenever I use technology it has a tendency to make even training runs tense, as I try to keep a target pace or heart rate over a certain distance - not to mention that battery life on most satellite GPS watches I've used doesn't last through long training runs or ultra marathons.

Here is a piece of (let's just say) 'gear' that I think I would rather quit running than buy http://running.competitor.com/2015/01/news/altra-introduces-halo-shoe-built-midsole-sensor_120794. I realize that Altra, like every other shoe brand, has to keep up with (or get ahead of ) the competition. But a shoe that does gait analysis for every single foot strike is, for 99.999% of the running world, overkill. I may certainly be in the minority of runners in absolutely hating this concept. If I were an elite runner working on the minutia of every aspect of my form, then I might use these. But we already have perfectly good natural sensors built into our feet, ankles, knees, and hips. Gait analysis is also available free at many running stores. Why anyone would want to add this technology to the overload of information that we already have (and likely don't really need in most instances), escapes me. Sole tracking seems so soul-sucking. And, while I'm no fan of minimalist running, the release of this product makes me want to throw my shoes in the trash and run barefoot.