We’re Going! No question.

Should I even try to run the next marathon? What if the sports hernia gets a lot worse - we have seven more marathons this year. Or, what if we didn’t go to this marathon, and the sports hernia showed up at the next one anyway? In the end, the only way to know if I can run a marathon is to start it and try to finish. So we’re going to this one. I love this life!

Right now the injury is still there - a slight tightness on that side of the abdomen and in the related groin area. But the marathon is still a week away.

I’m really looking forward to it too, in a lovely FLAT park on Presque Isle in Lake Erie. The race starts right at sunrise, which is so cool. Sometimes the larger races have fireworks for a sunrise start - we’ll see - in any case, I can’t wait to start the marathon!

Today, September 11, 2011:

We three went to the park for an easy 55-minute walk. No pains, just a little tightness.

Saturday evening, September 10:

Anytime Fitness elliptical machine, 30 minutes at about 500 calories per minute, total 250 calories. Maximum heart rate was 111 bpm, so I need to ramp up the calories per minute, but this was a good enough workout for today.

Saturday morning, September 10:

Several of the St Croix Valley Runners were planning to run the Bear Water 20-mile run in White Bear Lake Sunday, so only three runners and five walkers showed up. We walkers strolled for about 2.5 miles while the three speedsters finished their five miles well ahead of us. No strain, good conversation.

All organic, including the leftover turkey:

Elliptical Machine

No exercise yesterday - I had the 24-hour crud. Slept 10 hours straight last night, woke up feeling pretty good, so I went to Anytime Fitness.

After a few minutes on the recumbent bike, 67 calories, working at a rate of about 500 calories per hour, I felt a brief pain in the right groin, possibly related to the sports hernia on that side. So I stopped the bike and went to an elliptical machine, where I ran up 133 calories to make the total 200. That was plenty after yesterday’s issues. It all took a little under 30 minutes and it’s equivalent to about 2.5 to 3.0 miles.

After stretching, I jogged easily about 20 yards to the car. I could tell that the sports hernia injury was still not quite healed, but it didn’t really hurt. At home, the situp test was negative - no pain. That’s good, and there are still 9 days to go before the marathon.

Breakfast after the workout: Oatmeal with organic strawberries, a nectarine, organic frozen blueberries, organic yogurt, walnuts. This should reboot the digestive system:

YouTube Video from Rhode Island Marathon

Here’s a video that was taken at the Providence, RI Marathon, several months and a few marathons ago:



If you have a Facebook account and haven't yet "liked" my E-Race Cancer fundraising page, I invite you to do so. It costs you nothing, and Team Continuum gets a donation from an anonymous contributor.

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Anytime Fitness has many kinds of exercise equipment, for resistance training and cardio. I have a free 14-day pass to one of the clubs, and used it for the first time today. I ran up 100 calories on the recumbent bicycle and another 100 on the fanciest of the various elliptical trainers, total about 20 minutes. No pain, no strain. The sports hernia and its associated adductor stress were silent. I also stretched gently twice, still no pain. Further, when I got home I did the situp test, again with no pain. The stressed area is barely detectable.

Yesterday there was pain, from Monday’s 3.5-mile run, but today is better despite the brief cardio workout. This is good! Healing is happening, and the two machines don’t seem to cause a problem. Tomorrow I’ll increase the cardio time. The two machines do give quads and hamstrings a nice workout, not the same as running but a lot better than nothing.

Sports Hernia

Dr Yee at SMG is a knowledgeable guy. Today I went to get the scoop on my not-yet-healed abdominal wall strain.

As I recall it, here is what the doctor said:

• What it's NOT is any kind of hip problem or hernia. It really is an abdominal wall strain.
  
• He said it is commonly called a "sports hernia," pointing out that it isn't really a hernia, but a strain at a point where abdominal wall muscles connect. It happens to jocks.
  
• It's likely that the problem was caused when I ran 18 miles one morning and then a 4-mile race that evening without warming up again. Muscles tend to tighten after being stressed, and I probably pulled them later when I raced.
  
• Since it hurts just as my right foot hits the ground, I suggested that the stress comes from my innards pushing out against the abdominal wall. He thought it it's more likely that the foot-strike is the moment of maximum muscle tension between the muscles of the abdomen and those of the leg.
  
• It's encouraging that two weeks off from running has made an improvement - that tells us what to do: Keep right on NOT running.
  
• However, I should expect that muscle tone will fall off somewhat after a few weeks without running.
  
• He recommended "water jogging" as an alternative cardio exercise. However, we don't have access to a pool.
  
• When I asked what would happen if I just went ahead and ran on the pain, he said that the injury would just get worse, and discouraged that pretty strongly.
  
• I mentioned a marathon coming up in less than two weeks, and he made two suggestions:
  
  
  • Do a short run before driving to the marathon, and consider just not going to the marathon if there is still pain.
    
  • If I do go, be mentally prepared to QUIT the marathon if there is significant pain. We're talking my first-ever DNF in 55 marathons.

Hmmm. I'm not too comfortable with the short-test-run notion. If it hurt a lot, then I suppose I would not go. But if it didn't hurt much, which is what happened yesterday, then I would go and try to run the marathon, but that test run might undo a few days of healing time. I'll do the "situp test" (try a situp, see if it hurts) and I'll go if that seems OK.

As to the DNF: I do have eight marathons scheduled for the rest of the year, and right now I couldn't run one. I'm hoping, of course, that another 12 days of healing will fix the "sports hernia" problem. If not, in the worst case, it would become quite painful at some point in the race, and I would stop. More likely, though, based on past experience with this injury, it would start hurting at some point, and keep on hurting but not a lot. Then I suppose I'd keep going, even if that put some later marathons at risk.

Right now, though, I would like to get in some good cardio training. Walking is OK, but it doesn't push me hard enough and I think it is somewhat stressful on the abdominal muscles too, especially fast walking. I'm afraid to try the bike, or do stair climbing, because past experience shows that those can cause other "cross-training" injuries. I'd like to try an elliptical trainer, but we don't have one and don't have any kind of club membership. However, Anytime Fitness has elliptical trainers, and I just got my one-time 14-day free pass. I will try the elliptical tomorrow. There might be other machines of interest there too.


Regular breakfast:

Victory 10k & 5k

I didn’t run either race, but we three went to the races to rub elbows with old friends, and I did my first running in two weeks, on paved trails adjacent to the race course. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get away with it.

The "situp test" (I try to do an ordinary situp) before the run was pain-free. I ran 30 seconds of every 2.5 minutes, walking the rest at a rapid pace. But even that small amount of running did cause some pain at first, in the abdominal wall and also further down, perhaps at the top of the adductors. It didn’t hurt to walk, only to run.

I walk/ran about 3.5 miles in 48:20, and by the end most of the pains had resolved, so I was running rather comfortably. Later at home, though, the “situp test” was a little painful - the injury is definitely not healed. I’m disappointed, because there is a marathon coming up soon.

I do have an appointment with a sports doc tomorrow morning, and we’ll figure out the best approach. One way or another, I will run that marathon.

Breakfast:

Acorns on the Roof

Bonk. Bonk. Another clear harbinger of fall, as if tonight's change in weather wasn't clue enough.

St Croix Valley Runners today, but I didn't run - I walked with my sweeties, strolled actually, for about 45 minutes. More than two miles, less than three. No pain in the abdominal wall, either during or after the walk.

In the afternoon, that was followed by two hours of lawn mowing with a walk-behind mower. Still no pain in the gut. This is good. According to the plan, I'll do more mowing tomorrow and then on Labor Day I'll run a little bit.

I'm starting to think that the injury may have been caused by my attempts to do quads stretches, as directed by a physical therapist. Of course I didn't do it right, if I caused the strain, but this is the second time in my memory that therapy for one problem may have caused another injury.


Tonight's dinner. Oven-roasted vegetables & pineapple surrounding turkey curry with a few organic coconut chips on top. Dessert was organic chunky peanut butter on a banana.

Collaboration With Team Continuum

I'm now running on behalf of Team Continuum, raising money for people living with cancer, while I pursue my goal of running a marathon in each of the 50 states. We three have a full schedule of marathons for the rest of 2011, including the New York City Marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon, and several others.

You can help. If you go to my new E-Race Cancer Facebook Page and "like" it, a donation will be made to Team Continuum by a third party. We invite you to do that - there is no cost to you.

While you are there, you are certainly also welcome to click on the Team Continuum link and make a further contribution to the cause.

Thank you!