Tuesday, March 5, 2013

And she comes crawling back...

So I came back to this blog yesterday because I somehow managed to catch a cold around the same time I had bronchitis last year, and I wanted to see how slow my progress was back then. Believe it or not, how I was feeling March 5, 2012 was almost exactly how I felt March 4, 2013. After a bit of convincing from my husband, I decided to come back and blog again. He's promised me the readership of at least one (him), so I guess that's good enough -- though I have so many injury that I'm sure I'll be a great hit for all those Google searches. So to recap my race season so far:

I PR'ed in the Dallas Form Follows Fitness 5K on February 22! Yay! Race blog will be posted tonight/tomorrow.

Everything else has been shit, shit, shit. Well, that's not true... I managed to do a few nice sub-8:00 miles and I'm pretty sure I held a 7:45 pace in the 5K for a bit (before they made us run up an on-ramp in the final quarter mile stretch... WHO DOES THAT?!), but these injuries have got me going ballistic.

I noticed after a nice long illness/bronchitis spell at Christmas/New Years that my foot got numb when I ran. I noticed this even more with a pair of new shoes (I am attempting to "recreate the magic" I felt with my original Saucony Rides... so far the men's Ride 5 is a lesser equal). I was running in the women's version - which has a small toe box - and my foot just went straight-up numb. Couple this with the fact I was running on a 300m indoor track at my university and I felt like crap... the constant turning aggravated my knee injuries. I went sulking home with a numb foot and a busted knee.

I got back into things a little more and kept running with my too-worn Rides. I'm having a different type of buyer's remorse.... not buying enough! Should've bought the store out of those shoes when I had the chance. Anyway... the numbness issue continued, but to a lesser degree, so I kept the runs going. I know that I have the "sweet spot" of 6 miles before my left knee starts to give me shit, so I decided to finally do something about it. My wonky race pics didn't help. I might be flying like the wind, but I look like I'm taking fartleking to a whole new level:


WTF is wrong with my leg??!?

See how my knee caves inwards?


And there goes the ankle kicking out...

Yes, that picture was on uglyracepics.com ... My husband always says he never worries about me picking up guys at the gym because I'm just really not that hot when I workout. I think I have to agree.

Basically, my biomechanics are f***ed. You can even notice on the above photo that the left foot that is on the ground has a weird angle to it... instead of my toes pointing straight forward, they're almost turned to a 350-degree heading.

I finally picked up the orthotics that are at least supposed to help with part of this last week. I did my first "run" with them tonight but my feet were soooo sore. I kept getting pain on the outside of my foot. I'm not sure if it's because they're not broken in, my foot is just used to no support, or what... but I really hope it goes away.

On top of that, the numbness is coming back and I got diagnosed with Morton's Neuroma in that foot, so now I'm on the hunt for a shoe with a bigger toe box to stop the pinching.
On top of that, I'm hesitant to go for a neutral shoe (was going to try the Saucony Kinvara). I am somewhat considering a stability shoe and ditching the orthotics.
On top of that, my gait is so screwy that I'm doing two physio sessions a week to try to correct all this wonkiness.
And on top of aaaallll that, I need to lose 15 lbs in the next 2 months to be at my goal race weight for the summer (150 lbs).

Phew. There's a lot of nonsense going on and a lot of decisions to make. I don't even want to begin thinking about the amount of money I spend on running. Between races, shoes that may or may not fit, orthotics, physio, Lululemon.... Oh dear.

So here's my plan:

1. Keep going to physio.
2. Research physio places in Ottawa that might specialize in runners. I want to walk into an office and go "Fix me!" and they hook me up to a ton of machines, make me run, make me fast, etc.
3. Research shoes and get some opinions on stability vs. neutral. Neutral accommodates orthotics... stability might be nice to run in without orthotics, but in years past they gave me nasty-ass blisters.
4. Get my food shiz together and get a proper workout plan in place by next week (this cold is still lingering). Thankfully I have some great workouts provided to me on a weekly basis so I have the framework, I just need to not get sick or injured for once!
5. Get a new iPod.

Umm, I think that's it?

Oh and I should start getting more sleep. So that's what I will do! I will do my best to blog the Dallas race tomorrow!

Good to be back! Lots of thoughts from tonight's run and I'm glad I can get them down somewhere again. Sorry if this one sounded so frazzled... to document every injury/thought/plan from the past year-ish into one blog was hard.

Anne

2 comments:

  1. My form is very similar to yours, probably even worse. I cringe watching videos of myself run, it looks so awkward.

    Anyway, I was a devotee to Saucony Rides for years, then switched to the Guide on the advice of my physical therapist. It's basically the Ride with a stiffer medial post. Switching shoes and strengthing my glutes really helped tame my heel whip.

    Welcome back and hope you feel better soon :)

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  2. I never considered the Guides. I'll check them out. I'm glad there's people out there who can run fast with such a wonky stride. I feel like Phoebe in that Friends episode when she runs with her limbs flailing.

    And I'm so happy I have a reader! How exciting!

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