Oh My Aching Hips

I’m surprised. After Wednesday’s 16-mile walk/run both hip joints felt like they had been well-used, but nothing more. On Thursday, however, they got progressively more sore. Not the kind of sore that indicates injury, fortunately, only the kind that says the hips were TOO well used. But they sure were SORE! They were at their worst in the middle of last night when I had to get up to pee - I could only totter to the toilet like a little old arthritic man. The hips improved a little by this morning, but were still sore during the day today.

Nevertheless my sweeties and I went to the club to run on the indoor track. I was prepared to stop after one lap, or two paces for that matter, but in fact after the first lap the hips didn’t hurt at all. I suppose the hip pain was caused by the WALKING part of Wednesday’s 16-miler, not the running part. Huh. Today, after the six-mile run, the hip pain (while walking) was about the same as it had been before the run. We’ll see how it is tomorrow. I’m looking forward to an achy night I guess, but maybe not made much worse by today’s run. Bed sounds pretty good right now anyway.

Meantime the run went fine. I started easy and finished with a little flourish. Toward the end I was pretty tired, the toe blister was bothering a little, and the girls seemed done, so I stopped at six instead of the intended eight. But I’ll keep it; it’s a masterpiece!

Splits: 9:02, 8:52, 8:47, 8:49, 8:43, 8:21, total 52:35, overall pace 8:46. Breathing was four footfalls per full breath throughout.



Dinner: Organic chicken with organic salted cashews, organic chard, cucumbers, organic red wine vinegar.

Sixteen Miles the Easy Way

Half run, half walk. In a few short weeks I’ll be running a marathon without really being trained for one. I figure I’m trained OK for a half marathon right now, but for various reasons I haven’t done a run longer than 10 miles since November. I could just go TRY to run a 20-miler, but that would invite injury. So today the girls and I ran for about three hours on the indoor track, and for most of that I ran a half mile and then walked the second half. It really worked pretty well. The pace was slow, but on target for about a 5-hour marathon. Considering that my most recent three marathons averaged about 4:30 when I was supposedly trained for them, 5 hours is OK.

Does a runner have a most-efficient running pace? A pace that uses the least energy and causes the least wear and tear PER MILE? I think so. Go faster than that pace and burn up too much of the body’s resources too quickly. We know this is true because, when we run a mile as fast as we can, there just isn’t much left for any more miles. Or, go slower than the most-efficient running pace and we expend almost as much energy and resources just to keep going, but we don’t get done soon enough. There’s a "sweet spot," or so I believe, though it may be fairly broad. For me that seems to be a pace of roughly 8:45 to 9:15 right now.

But I certainly can’t run 9:15 for a whole 26 miles, not yet anyway. So some of the distance has to be walked. My current theory is that we may be better off running at our most-efficient pace and walking some, rather than trying to run the whole way, but more slowly at a less-efficient pace. Galloway thinks so too. The question is "how much walking?" For today, half and half (by distance) was decided in advance. I found myself going about 8:45 to 8:50 when running, and about 13:44 when walking. That’s a brisk walk, by the way. Entirely coincidental that 13:44 is exactly the required pace for a 6-hour marathon.

Results:

• Plenty of energy left at the end of 16 miles;
• In fact I felt fine and ran the last two without walking;
• Mild backache (left side, belly-button high, muscle, not bones or joints) from the walking, not the running;
• I tried to bind up last Thursday’s blister beforehand, but it bled a little anyway;
• Knee and hip joints feel like they’ve gone all 16 miles; but
• Muscles don’t. That’s cool.

One nice feature of this technique: During the run half of a mile I looked forward to the walk, and during the walk half I actually looked forward to the run. It was quite enjoyable; the three hours passed quickly.

I guess this was my long run for the marathon, unless we do it again next week. That’s OK.. I took water every two miles and Clif Shot twice.

Splits: 11:21, 11:11, 11:05, 11:13, 11:12, 11:13, 11:07, 11:13, 11:18, 11:27, 11:12, 11:26, 11:15, 11:26, 8:52, 8:35, total 2:55:04. Overall pace 10:57. Time for the first 14 miles 2:37:38, pace for that distance 11:16. Required pace for a 5-hour marathon 11:26.



Dinner: Wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon with organic yogurt and herbs, organic blueberries, organic beet greens with orange slices.


Lunch: Sloppy joes with ground no-hormone no-antibiotics grain-fed beef and organic catsup, organic broccoli, organic refried beans with organic mustard, ruby red grapefruit.

Blister

On the training plan for today was a 13-mile run, the St Paul Winter Carnival Half Marathon. But at minus ten degrees, I chickened out, even though they had cut it to 6.5 miles, and ran on the indoor track at the club instead. I wanted to run seven miles, and was doing fine, when Thursday’s blister started to bother again, even though covered by a band-aid. No runner stops for a mere blister on a toe, but:

• We have a marathon coming up soon,
• It is possible for a blister to become infected,
• Theoretically, my immune system is compromised because of the myeloma and the chemo,
• So an infection could possibly take me out of the marathon,
• I’d rather finish the marathon at ANY speed than sit home with a swollen toe or foot, and
• Two more miles of training really wouldn’t make much difference.

So I stopped at five miles, did my stretches, and went home to treat the blister and run again another day.

Good news though - for those five miles I had a really good run - no other pains. Excellent run in fact. Overall pace 8:41, and the breathing was easy. I think of myself as a morning runner, but I’m having good runs in the afternoon lately. It’s a masterpiece.

Splits: 8:48, 8:35, 8:47, 8:32, 8:42, total 43:24, pace 8:41.



Lunch: Organic chicken with spices, organic baked beans with a squirt of organic mustard, organic mixed vegetables.