Ashland & Running Ratio

I arrived in Ashland late August and promptly put in a 10 mile running week! Buuut if you count my new elliptical routine and some biking I had logged almost 6 hours of quality cardio work. Having access to a gym has been great. As I've mentioned, I had a bike accident this summer and the danger factor of biking combined with the difficulty of getting in what feels like really good quality workouts is tough. So I was excited to be able to use an elliptical. Hard to believe? Well I'm serious, and its been fun. In the last few weeks I have logged 2-3 hours of great elliptical time per week in addition to running 30-ish miles. My foot hasn't hurt on the elliptical but I finally feel like I can get completely safe and great work in without any issues i.e: Bad weather, impact on foot, potential of crashing a bike, stopping at traffic lights etc. I have been alternating different "workouts" on the elliptical and its been enjoyable and reassuring for my catching up on fitness to get ready to race.

Fairly unrelated but this is a photo Carly took of some rock climb cross training  I got in with Mr. Wet Willy Hoffman at Emigrant Lake in Ashland recently. He taught me how to lead climb, it was great practice and a lot of fun.

I met with my athletic trainer upon getting to Ashland and after talking about my injury issues I got 3 options:

1. Stop running altogether
2. Just start running more on it
3. See a specialist

I wish I had seen a specialist over a month earlier but I think the way I was handling training was probably pretty close to what would have been prescribed to me. Ok lets be honest, I would have been given a much much more conservative approach and could just about guarantee a loss of this season of XC completely. My main worry was if running on it would elongate my recovery time or not. I had no way of knowing this. I was worried it was a stress fracture and I was balancing on a not broken foot / playing with the possibility of breaking it. But enough time had gone by with no or very little running that even if that was the case it could have healed enough to bring running in appropriately anyway. SO with all these thoughts and finally talking with my coach and following his advice, we went with running 5 days in the next week. About 30-40 minutes easy for each run, that was it. This was the decisive change that finally tipped my running ratio in the favor of actual running instead of mostly cross training.

The 5 days went well, still with some irritation but nothing worse or very bad. So the next week was 6 days and a longer run up to 50 minutes. That week went fine too, and I started feeling better about it all and running was feeling good, and fun. It was relieving to be able to really get runs in at all.

That brings us to this week. I'll be running 6 days again and ran a long run on Sunday of 65 minutes. I did one workout which was a sort of 15 minute tempo and I was (barely) approved to run our race today, Friday 9/18/14 in Portland. Obviously I am not going to blow the doors off in the race this evening but I feel good about it considering all things. Its a unique opportunity. There is no pressure other than what I place on myself (which I'm trying to manage as I type this). We still have 2 hours before lunch and we don't race until 5pm. I am wearing some fairly cushy trainers in the race to ensure I don't hurt my foot, and I am unsure about how turning sharply at high speeds will feel but I will figure all that out later today. I'm excited to be racing I just wish I was in better physical condition. But that is what I am working on daily.

I have space to add 1 more, hmmmmm...

A recent addition in my section of Carly and my "Goals" whiteboard is "do something extra everyday". What I mean by this is to do something daily that is beyond the normal stuff to help me reach my running goals. Some examples so far are, adding an ice bath when I normally wouldn't have. Icing my foot while watching a movie, and going through a thorough and long stretch routine. I went on a bike ride and explored parts of Ashland that I wasn't familiar with and I even went on a walk, just to loosen up from a long and tough day of Netflix-ing.

School still hasn't started yet and the job I've secured starts when school starts so I have had a lot of free time. I managed to get a part-time gig a few days a week though...... holding a sign on the corner for a mattress & appliance store. It hasn't been too bad, except the day I was out there 6 hours in the middle of the day. At least I had Carly's ipod, the only issue was it only had 40 minutes of music on it. It mostly consisted of her weird mix of really slow acoustic music and a few top 40 radio type songs. I just stood silently for an hour or more at one point.

See the post set on my foot? Apparently I could get a hefty fine for setting that on the ground, so foot it is!