Project Exercise

I haven’t posted for a couple days.  I have been forced into recovery due to an accident.  I don’t want to bore you folks with a lot of details so I will keep it short.  I had a major fall where I went airborne and my truck broke my fall.  I landed on my back in such a way that it bend me over backwards and snapped my head back.  So, needless to say, my back was killing me and my trapezius is a bit sore.  My back is feeling better so I hope to get back to my routine soon.

Anyway, I am not looking for sympathy so no need to feel sorry for me.  The accident was due to my own stupidity.  I simply slipped on something that triggered a chain of unfortunate events.

Ok, so I just wanted to make a post to “touch base” with everyone.  Thanks for stopping by.

I went to see a sports medicine doctor today.  The first thing she did was take an x-ray of my knee.  Makes sense to me.  The doctor took a look at the x-ray and told me the bones looked great and the gaps between my knee, tibia and fibula don't look worn at all.  They were basically looking for arthritis.  If the gaps were thin, then that could be an indication of arthritis.  She, in fact, said that I had the knees of an eighteen year old.  Well, why do I feel pain?  I was hoping it was just an overuse injury, however, after asking me where the main points of my pain were located and after she manipulated my leg, she said that it could possibly be a meniscus tear.  Unfortunately, this type of injury cannot be seen with an x-ray, so I would have to get an MRI.  The receptionist called InVision, an MRI facility, for an appt.  Luckily there was one available this evening at 8:30pm.  I took the appt.

I told her that the marathon was on December 13th and I that I have trained a long time to run it.  She said, if it is a minor tear, I can probably go ahead and do it as long as I can manage the pain.  She also told me that man was designed to run down dinosaurs for food or run away from dinosaurs for survival.  We weren't designed to go 26.2 miles.  Of course, she laughed because she sees runners all the time and knows that those who do marathons are mentally challenged.  The good news is she did not say the words, "stop running".

Anyway, I got the MRI done this evening.  They will send the MRI pictures to my doctor tomorrow.  I have an appt on Thursday morning to go over them with her.  Again, I am hoping I just have an overuse injury.  However, if I have a meniscus tear, I will have to talk about the next steps with my doctor.  She said that minor tears don't necessarily need surgery.  She also said people continue their normal activities as long as they can manage the pain.  The fact that I have managed to deal with the pain on my long runs may mean that I can go ahead and do the marathon.  I admit though, that I may have to run-walk the later portion of the marathon to finish.  If the I have a major tear then she said we need to look at our options.  Again, I am hoping for an intact meniscus and maybe just deal with an overuse injury – inflammation.

They gave me my MRI pictures.  I was going to send them to Jeff of Dangle the Carrot.  He is involved in medical sales and can read the pictures.  However, the pictures are huge and I have about ten pages of them.  That makes them a bit unwieldy to copy and email.  Btw, thanks for the offer Jeff. 

My curiosity, however, compelled me to research the internet for torn meniscus MRI pictures.  Using my amateur clinical eye on the pictures that InVision gave me, I may have minor tears.  I am hoping that I am misinterpreting the pictures.  I will have to wait until Thursday to get the word from my doctor.

I did not feel well this weekend.  It was like I had food poisoning or the stomach flu.  I had food poisoning before and it felt very much like that.  I was throwing up like you read about.  While I have trained while sick, I just didn't feel that jarring my body on a long run was going to be a good decision.  I especially needed to stay close to home.  I am extremely disappointed.  I would like to run the Honolulu Marathon, but I can't prepare correctly when I miss long runs.  If you folks have been reading my posts you know that I am very dedicated to my workouts.  So missing an important run really depresses me.  This morning, I felt a bit better.  My stomach still felt a little wierd.  Not as bad as Friday and Saturday, but I still had that unsettled feeling.  I considered doing a run, even if it was a medium length run, however, I had a commitment to my youth football team.  I am the head coach for the Vikings, a bunch of 7 and 8 year olds and we had a playoff game today.  I didn't want to make myself sick and miss the game.  Oh, btw we won 32 to 6. 

Ok, so I will just slide back into my schedule.  The good thing is that I was about 3 weeks ahead of schedule as far as mileage and long runs.  Tomorrow, I will begin week 7 of my 18 week marathon training program.  I need to run 4/6/4/12.  Although I am scheduled for a 12 mile long run, I may go for 13 or more.  I will make that decision later this week.  Another problem I have this week is that I normally go to bed very early on Friday evening and wake up at 4am on Saturday to begin my run.  It has been hot and humid lately so I need to be on the run while it is dark and cool.  Well, this Friday I will be going to a high school football game on Friday evening (my wife is a high school teacher and we like to support the school).  As a consequence, I won't be able to go to sleep early on Firday evening.  Therefore, I will need to get up extra early on Friday and do my long run before leaving for work.  Man, this marathon training is nuts.

Since I couldn't do my long run I decided to read up on the benefits of doing long runs.  First of all, Hal Higdon states, "do not cheat the long runs".  Oh great!  I cheated myself out of my long run.  Anyway, my research revealed that these are some of the benefits.

Benefits of the Long Run

• Provides the necessary endurance to complete the marathon.
• Strengthens
  the heart (increases stoke volume) and opens the capillaries, both
  sending energy to working muscles and flushing waste products from
  fatigued muscles.
• Other
  physiological benefits include the increased number and size of
  mitochondria and increased myoglobin concentration in muscle fibers.
• Strengthens the leg muscles and ligaments, thus improving your endurance.
• Recruits fast-twitch muscle fibers to help with slow-twitch tasks (like running a marathon).
• Teaches the body to burn fat as fuel.
• Develops
  your mental toughness and coping skills, thus increasing/enhancing your
  confidence level that you can go the full marathon distance on race
  day.
• Increases your overall speed, even for shorter races.
  

This is where I sub out a P90X workout with my triathlon training workout.  Today I cycled 45 minutes (today's bike log) and I also swam 1 mile (today's swim log).

I think I am slowly acclimating to the triathlon training and the modified P90X workouts.  I was a bit worred at the beginning of the week because I was feeling a bit wasted.  Today I felt pretty good.  The hardest day was chest/back/abs and running 10k on Monday.  I may have to modify that day.  Perhaps I will do abs on Tuesdays instead. 

I won't be doing legs tomorrow.  Trust me, my legs are taking a beating with cycling 2x per week and running 3x per week.

Ok, now I am just ranting. 

I got up this morning and did dumbell bench presses, incline dumbell bench presses and dumbell flyes for the chest.  For shoulders I did overhead dumbell presses, side laterals and front lateral.  On biceps I did barbell curls, supinated dumbell curls and strip set curls.  I also did skull crushers, overhead dumbell triceps presses and kick backs for my triceps.  I went heavy and got a pretty good pump.

I can't wait to start P90X / P90X+ round 2.  This is supposed to be a rest week, however, I just needed to push some iron today. 

Waiting to start P90X round 2 next week is driving me crazy.  So this morning I popped in the Abs Core Plus DVD from P90X+ and knock out the workout.  I also did some extra crunches and other ab exercises outside of the abs core plus dvd.

Working out the core should enhance my triathlon training.

Since I just got off a recovery week and I have a week before starting my next round of P90X I was dying to jack up some weights.  So I decided to work some upper body.  Today I did chest, shoulders and biceps/triceps.  I just did very basic lifts.  I will count this as part of my triathlon training which requires some strength training.   

Technically I am supposed to be on another recovery week, but have two recovery weeks in a row is driving me nuts! 

I am taking a day of rest from P90X and any triathlon training tody.  Even though I will be taking a week off before starting my next round of P90X, I will resume my triathlon training tomorrow and also do some strength training.