Sunday, March 11, 2012

Week of March 5th–Corvallis High School Boys Basketball 5A Champs!!


I decided to start posting weekly instead of daily as I was finding it difficult to keep up.  This week was full of exciting basketball games, tough workouts, personal breakthroughs, and lots of work.  Let’s kick things of with the Corvallis HS boys basketball team.  The championship series was held at Matthew Knight Area in Eugene.  We travelled down as a family to each of the games to support the Spartans.  The games were exciting, especially the semifinal game against Benson and the Championship game against Milwaukie.  You can see the brackets here. The Spartans cohesive teamwork is the main ingredient behind there success, and it showed this week.  Congrats Spartans!  We are looking forward to seeing the basketball players at the “Shoot’n for Christina” 3-Point Contest held next Saturday, March 17th 2012 at the Corvallis High School Gym!  Christina and Jenny Smith have been working extremely hard in planning this event, so please if you are local, come check it out! Proceeds from Shoot'n for Christina will benefit the Corvallis High School Basketball Program and Christina's Real Talk breast cancer fund.
Throughout this journey it has been difficult for me to turn down the HP burner to strike a healthy balance between my professional and personal life.  I use running as one tool to reduce stress, but really that is more reactive than proactive.  It is a temporary solution that doesn’t necessarily address the underlying issues.  This week I took a couple of steps to address the underlying issues.  The first is that I decided to see a therapist to just talk about things.  Although Christina and I talk all the time, and I do have friends I use as sounding boards, I wanted to sit down with a professional to give me some more tools to work out some of my internal struggles. Secondly, I visited a webcast on how to get control of your inbox derived from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and Michael Linenberger’s Total workday Control / Manage Your Now.  I plan to incorporate these tools into both my personal an professional life enabling me to be more effective and efficient at work, dedicate more time to the family, and make running more recreational than therapeutic.
This week’s running workouts were tough!  My Achilles injury has healed nicely putting me at about 90 – 95%.  I am still icing after my runs as a preventative measure.  I was able to give nearly 100% on each workout.  The Hills and 18M workouts were the toughest be mile! I had to really dig deep on both of these workouts.  The hill work was suppose to be 2 minutes running up hill followed by 3 minutes down repeated twenty times.  I decided to use a hill on the Corvallis Half Marathon course near Martin Luther King Jr. park to build up my muscle memory as hill is 1.5M long with slight but increasing grade.  Around the fourth or fifth interval I knew I wasn’t going to be able to gut it out to twenty, but I thought I could do ten.  After the seventh I decided it was enough as my back was a little sore, and my right hamstring was tightening a bit. 
The 18M run was another beast altogether!  The first five or six miles were on pace.  As the grade increased around Bald Hill I struggled to keep up the pace.  Around mile 9 ran up the same part of the route that I did hills on earlier in the week.  My pace dropped off by about 10 seconds, but made it up on the downhill.  Back on the flats around mile 12 I had to fight to keep pace at the high end of my pace.  I took a few rest stops between mile 12 and the end of the Corvallis Half Marathon Finish (Mile 15).  I stretched my back and hamstrings for a few minutes, and then decided if I wanted to complete my planned router or take the shorter route home.  I thought about Shauna and Christina once again, and decided to push forward and complete the route.  I did have to stop a few more times, but completed the run.  It was a tough run, and I am schedule to get a massage to workout some kinks in my lower back and tightness in my hamstrings.
See you next week.
Monday Tuesday
Wednesday Thursday
Friday Saturday
Sunday

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Back from an injury

 

Several weeks ago I injured my left Achilles tendon and calve from over-training.  My goal is to bet my half marathon PR and get below 1:30.  In October of last year I dropped about two and a half minutes of my PR (1:38:12) at the Run Away Pumpkin Half Marathon.  This was my first race since Christina was diagnosed, and we had just returned from Oregon.  I only trained for about two weeks, and it was a tough race.  I planned to training fully for the next half marathon.

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Enter the Cascade Half Marathon.  This race was scheduled far enough in advance to allow for a ten week training schedule.  I set my training schedule using the Runner's World UK Schedule For Your Garmin site with a target of 1:30.  The paces in the workouts felt about right.  The distance workout were fine, but the speed workout were tough!  The race was one of the toughest half marathons I competed in as I really had to push myself to keep my pace within range, but I did nearly hit my target.  I knew in the next race I would be able to break the 1:30 mark!

After the race, I searched for my next race.  I found the Corvallis Half Marathon scheduled for April 15, 2012.  I went to the RW site to setup my new training schedule.  I decided that since I was able to cut nearly eight minutes from my previous PR it would be reasonable to set a target of 1:25.  After a couple of rest days, I started my new training program.  The new workout were felt a little fast, and the speed workouts really pushed me to my limits.  After a few weeks my Achilles and calve said enough is enough! Time for RICE - (Rest, Ice, Compression, & Elevation)

The last few weeks have been tough not being able to run.  The stress of work and life keep coming, but I can’t run? Not fair, but I did have it coming.  The over-training certainly contributed to the injury, however my injury prevention program… what a second… what is an injury prevention program?  Is that what all the warm up jogs, stretching, and calisthenics were all about in high school?  I never liked doing them, and as an adult I didn’t have to follow the rules.  Oops! Needless to say, I have started to follow an injury prevention program. 

Over the last week or so, I started to run again.  I backed my training schedule back down to a sub 1:30 half, and started a preventive injury program.  I warm up, stretch, run, cool down, and stretch again in every workout.  I may incorporate some Yoga at some point, but for now that is the extent of my stretching.

Yesterday I ran a 10k practice run at race pace.  I ran the last part of the Corvallis Half Marathon course starting at the finish, up to the course 3.1 miles, and then back to the finish.  This was my first speed workout since my injury, and I took a few extra seconds at the traffic lights to catch my breath.  The last couple of miles were tough, but the slight downhill grade helped.

I need to register for the Shufflin’ For Shawna: 10k fundraiser which is scheduled for Saturday, March 24th at MLK Jr. Park in Corvallis.  It will fit nicely with a scheduled workout around that time. Christina and Shawna have connected through mutual friends, and we want to support Shawna and her family.  If you are local you can sign up for the 10k run/walk and there is a free 1k for kids. 

See you next time!