Injuries

I’ve finally had a few weeks of running without pain, so I feel pretty confident that I’ve solved the issue with tenderness in my knees. Cross-training and extensive stretching have really done wonders. With that fixed, I am not able to concentrate on extending my runs.

Even with shorter days I’m able to get in some good mileage on the weekends along with some decent miles on weekdays. I’m going to try to have a couple weekends with 21 mile runs. Then I will feel confident enough to run the 50K at Sunmart.

You know that I’ve been honest and forthcoming with health related articles about running as of late. I don’t hide from some of the risks of running long distances. Just as I don’t hide from the risks, I am not going to ignore potential benefits.

People often tell me that I’m going to ruin my knees with my running. Ashley at A Crooked Trail or Two has alerted me to a study that shows that might not be true:

the Journal of Preventive Medicine, conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine has demonstrated that “Long-distance running among healthy older individuals was not associated with accelerated osteoarthritis,” and in fact, some data in the survey suggests that runners might actually have a lower risk of developing arthritis in their knees and hips, though the specific study sample was too small to prove in a statistically significant way that running had a protective effect.

Now I have had some knee issues that came about as of late. Through extensive research I isolated it to either a IT Band syndrome issue or issues with the shoes that I was wearing. Getting it to those two causes made it easy to correct. I have employed different stretching and no longer wear my New Balance 790s for longer runs. I’m not sure which — possibly both — of the measures corrected it but my knees are great.

I hope this research continues to show the various benefits of running.

It’s about time. I am finally getting to where it’s not painful to run on the trails. Today I ran seven miles without much of any pain around my knees. After five miles without blips in the radar I pushed the last two miles at an 8:15 minute mile pace. I ended up running the seven in just under 1:10.

It felt good being out there without pain. I attribute a lot of that to the advice of my friend and fellow running club member, JC. He showed me some yoga type stretches that dramatically improved the ease of his running.

I’m glad that I haven’t been injured often because this recent injury sucks. I’m still feeling a hint of pain after 20-30 minutes of running, so I am really limiting myself on what I’ll do. Yesterday I ran 3 miles which I’ll do again today. I’m also going to bike about 8 miles on the trails. That’ll be enough for me.

Weekend was good with swimming in the gulf and fresh seafood.

I’ve been ignoring the trails and hitting the roads during some of my recovery from the injuries runs. I have come to terms with the injury not being anything to do with my knees. I had my feet checked out to see if it was something with my shoes not fitting right. I found out for sure that my arches are not high or flat, so I’m not worried about the shoes. It is something like the ITB band that was aggravated from not enough stretching.

This weekend I put in a low 6 miles of running. Great.

Alright a rare victory at work this past week. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks but things should slow down. I rarely talk about my personal life but sometimes it factors into my running, so I guess it doesn’t hurt to mention it.

I’ve been on the road for work the past couple weeks. The timing couldn’t have been better with the unfortunate knee/ligament injuries. I was able to focus on work without worrying about what I needed to do with running.

Today was good because I was able to get a good punishment on a felony trial. My client was found guilty (not surprising) and received an appropriate punishment. I can’t help but think that part of that sentence came from my work with him beforehand and at trial.

After I made it home I decided that I had gone long enough without running. I went out to the trails and ran 5 easy miles. I think my time was a pathetically slow 49 minutes but I finished it up without feeling any pain. I’ve been reading a lot of information about what happened to me and I’m convinced it was mostly from switching shoes to a type that doesn’t help my pronation. I’ll continue with more cross-training, but I’m going to slow down on the shoes that precepitated this injury.

The lack of any running is driving me a little crazy. I’m ready to get back out to the trails but know that I can’t do that. At least not until next week.

This week I managed to do some cross-training to keep up the fitness level. I swam laps at the pool one day and road my bike a couple times this weekend. Both times I was just doing road biking. Once through the neighborhood for about 6 miles. Then today I rode for 1 hour on a hilly area beside the highway.

Looking forward to next week when I test out my leg on the trail again.

Today I went out to the park to run a long run. About four miles into my first seven mile loop I blew out my knee. It was an injury that I feared was coming because of runner’s knee pain. I know that I hadn’t done enough cross training or strength training for the miles I was putting on my body.

I will take a couple weeks off running. Zero miles. I will spend that time partially on work stuff (in trial about 8 of those days) and riding my mountain bike, kayaking, and maybe some hiking.

It’s not the end of the world but it might push off the start of my fall running season. I planned to run a 60K in October but I’m not sure if I’ll be ready by then.

It’s been a couple months and I still haven’t cured my minor case of runner’s knee. I have bought a knee strap that is starting to help along with supplements to help the joints. Regardless, it’s a little annoying when my knee acts up in the middle of a run. I think it’s starting to get better little by little.

Today I went to the park with Phillip to run the five mile loop. He was a little interested in doing the seven, but I was still a little sore from 20 yesterday. Unlike Norman, I actually wouldn’t mind running in the rain more often. The only annoyance (aside from the knee) was how bad the jeep trail was with mud. It was like running through quick sand as our feet would sink a couple inches into the ground. No doubt our footprints will be visible until the next hard rain. We finished the five in a decent time of about 38 minutes.

• The nature center to amys crossing (inner loop) trail has been rerouted to add about 200 meters. I like it. 7 miles with phillip. #
• I am going to run five and attempt to beat the rainfall. Iron and wine sings "between the trees and cicadas singing around the pond I sp … #
• you" fantastic. #

Lots of news out of NYC this week for long distance runners. It was a weekend full of a lot of fun for many people. We got to enjoy the well earned victory of Paula Radcliffe who came back from giving birth to a child and from a disappointing Olympic performance. We have sorrow for Ryan Shay and his family. A young elite runner who collapsed about five miles into the Olympic qualifying marathon race. He was later pronounced dead. He was a nine-time all American runner from Notre Dame. He was just married in July of this year. However, we can look forward to runnings future with such young elite as Ryan Hall, Brian Sell, and Dathan Reitzenheim are going to represent the United States in Bejing, China. Hall finished in 2:09.02 which is an Olympic Trial record by over one minute.

I had to take the day off running on Monday. I woke up Sunday night and had a bit of a bug upsetting my stomach. My hope is that this illness, which has passed, won’t affect my race this weekend. I’m running a 50K this weekend. It’s my next to last race in 07. My final one will be in the middle of November and it’s a 24 hour run.

Here’s for a healthy run to the finish.

I’m not much of a short distance runner, but I can usually finish a 5K with 8 minute miles. That didn’t happen at the race today. I think I was closer to 26 minutes than to 24 for my entire time.

What happened to my run? In this race I noticed that my right arm was going numb so I slowed down a bit. That’s probably from a recovering pinched nerve, but I’ll have it looked at if it keep us. The other thing was that I had never run this course and couldn’t find the mile markers to keep my pace. I was a little demoralized by the arm and slowed down way to much.

It’s my fault for having such a bad run. Now I’m going to go out and run another 3 and a half to give me decent mileage for the day.

Today is a great day for me because I lost my first toenail running. I wasn’t able to do it at the ultracentric or White Rock Half Marathon or any of my long training runs but the treadmill got me.

I couldn’t be happier and I have the picture to prove the loss. I didn’t want to post it right here because most people don’t like gross feet (actually, the picture and injury aren’t too bad). If you’re curious then you know what to click.

I hate injuries, especially when they affect my running. Awhile back, I injured my foot on a mountain biking ride, and it hasn’t ever healed 100%. Now that I’ve started to run in my new trail shoes, I have had some problems around my arch. I know it’s just because I’m breaking in a new pair or shoes, but it makes me mad. Pain in the foot be damned — I ran today anyhow.

I’m still such a newbie at mountain biking that it’s usually a trainwreck when I ride. Today I went to a fairly technical trail in Dallas — Boulder Park — and hit the turf a few times.

My first fall was early on in the ride. When I arrived at the park, I noticed that the trail head had a sign saying that it was closed and their was no trespassing allowed. This didn’t surprise me because the DORBA website stated there were some issues but you could still ride it. I went off to another entrance and started my ride but I didn’t see anyone else there. Out on the trail, I heard a noise and decided to look, yes, while riding, for the other person. When I looked back in front of me, I was driving into tree. This threw me from my bike onto the trail.

The second fall happened while I was going downhill. I think that I hit my brakes which planted my front wheel. Of course, I ended up going over the top of the handlebars as my bike flipped over! Ouch!

The worst fall was the third one and it happened going up hill. There is a more difficult section of the trail where you go down a short embankment and then ascent through rocks. As soon as I ascended, I ended up planting my front wheel and flying off the bike into rocks. I bruised my hip, hurt my hand (a little), and cut up my leg. Oh, and I also dislodged my handlebars from their alignment with the wheel.

All in all an awesome ride!

I would go out to run this morning if my back didn’t feel like someone took a sludgehammer to it.

I apologize on the fact that it’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog. However, I’ve had a pretty strange week which sort of made it impossible to use the computer. Let’s go back to last weekend for a second and then we’ll end up with yesterday when I figured out that I’m a licensed attorney in Texas.

Last Saturday I went to a stupid wedding with a friend. It’s stupid only because it was her ex-boyfriend and they had a strange relationship. The wedding was on the biggest day for dressing up and going out you can find. You get to fall back with the time change and you can go out in your halloween outfit, but I was stuck at a wedding. I convinced my friend to at least go out to gamble in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma gambling really isn’t all that much fun with the whole no alcohol thing. This was alright because I have committed myself to preparing for the upcoming marathon. I ended up back at home around 1am and fell asleep. I woke up the next morning around 8am and went on an 11 mile run. My time for it was about 90 minutes which is good.

That evening I went to get take out at a really good Mexican food restaurant. You know they are really good because the take out bags are these huge bags that resemble bags from Banana Republic or something. As I was getting out of my car, I scratched the bag against my eye. It hurt for a second and then went away. The next morning it was terrible.

I found out that I scratched my cornea pretty bad. I’ve had to go to the eye doctor three times, I had to take one day off work, I’m putting eye drops in my eye all the time. It’s the worst thing ever. My eye is definitely getting better but the healing process is taking a little while. Because of this, I haven’t been able to run or use the computer or do many other things. I’ve forced myself to work even though it’s uncomfortable.

Yesterday I found out that I passed the Texas Bar exam!