Catching Up

I hadn't realized it had been almost a month since I last posted here.  Time flies even when you are not having fun.  I was making some headway on the treadmill in early to mid April.  I was running much faster then I usually run at about 9:15 to 9:30 per mile.  It's been very hard to keep up the form.  You have to really use your mind to envision how your body looks while running.  For me it is trying to get the feeling of my body being in alignment and that all the parts are clicking like gears in a watch.

My biggest problem is my right arm.  The arms are supposed to be bent at 90 degrees and basically swing like a hinge back and forth; although more back than forward is best.  My right arm will fall out of that form and lower to my waist and look like I am punching at something.  I also have the added problem of being super tense in my right shoulder.  I guess that comes from my keyboard sitting on top of my desk and my mouse being 8 or so inches away from it.  I knew my keyboard should be lower but it means getting a drawer and having someone install it and I just was lazy about it.  Now I will have to take action because really it interferes not only with running but is the reason my right shoulder hurts so much of the time.



I was doing ok on the treadmill with Mike there to tell me when I was falling out of form.  When he released me to run on my own, things changed.  It was strange to run on the ground again.  It was hard to keep up the form and I began to feel tightness in the ITB again.  I had a terrible run about 2 weeks ago and came home very disheartened.  I decided to quit running until maybe May or June and give my leg a break.  I also decided to no do anything for awhile so I didn't run, I didn't do the elliptical, or yoga, or strength train.  After about 5 days, I felt better and decided to try and run again.  What the heck, right?  I had trouble on the first attempt but I think I was dehydrated and maybe that ice cream sandwich at work wasn't the best idea an hour before my run.  I went out on Easter Sunday and ran 3.71 miles and did ok.  I only stopped a couple of times to put myself back into my correct form.  I also ran at 9:55 pace which is faster then I have run in along time.

Tonight I have hills to run which may or may not be a good thing with the ITB. We are running at Miner's Ravine trails so I can always run on the trails instead of Picches Hill.  My ITB and calves are tight so I will do some dynamic stretching before I leave to warm up.

I now have a picture of my inspiration, my brother Brett, on this blog. The picture was taken Easter Sunday so it is very current.  I'm going to stay with him in a couple of weeks when I run the 100th Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco.  I'm running that with my friend Rubi.  It will be her very first race.

Relearning to Run

Is it possible to forget how to run properly?  When we were children we could run all day.  We could do that because our body naturally fell into the proper alignment.  It seems that most of my knee/ITB problems are that somehow along the way I stopped running like a child.  Now I am learning how to run properly.  I've been looking into Chi Running since I first heard about proper running technique from a seminar I went to at Fleet Feet Midtown that was put on by Dr. Justin Lau.  He didn't call it that but I had an idea that was what he was talking about. 

It turns out that proper alignment is as easy as falling down.  Imagine standing tall with your shoulders, hips, knees and ankles in a straight line. Now imagine falling forward and letting gravity propel you.  This is just the start of Chi Running.  The more you look into it, the more it feels like learning to swing a golf club which I found incredibly hard to do.  These are the things that are now running around in my head when I attempt to run properly:  straight line from head to ankle, lean forward, shoulders relaxed, elbows at 90 degrees, hands firm but relaxed, landing on the midfoot,  feet taking small quick light steps as they sweep the ground away and behind you.  If you want to go faster, then lean further forward but with the same cadence in your feet.

I didn't want to invest in a book that I might not get anything out of so I checked out the book "Chi Running" by Danny Dreyer from the library.  I haven't read too much, most of what I have learned has been through watching a couple of videos on youtube and listening to a couple of podcasts of people that have tried it and detail what they have learned in their podcast.  By the way, if you haven't checked into podcasts, you really should.  I listen to a lot of them while running and walking and they are a lot more interesting then listening to music all the time.  You can go to ITunes and select podcast and then search for what ever interests you.  I like one called ITunes Celebrity Podcast.  Usually it is musicians that talk about music and other musicians that inspire them both today and in the past.  I've listened to ones from Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, Cindy Lauper, and many others.  I also listen to running podcasts.  One I particularly like is called Running with the Pack.  The two people that do this one are from Penn State so you get to hear about things that go on on the East Coast plus they talk about new products they have tried, races they have done, all sorts of stuff.  I diverge, sorry. Anyway check them out and maybe I will do a post on podcasts soon.

I hope that I can get my running technique corrected in the near future so I can start training for some longer runs.  Right now I have the Bay to Breakers in May to do and am hoping to be ok by then even if I have to run/walk it.  It's only 7 miles and it should be absolutely wild.  I'm doing it with my friend Rubi who has never ran in a race before and trains only on a treadmill.  She is a fun lady so we will have a blast.

Tonight I am practicing my chi running as chi walking because I can't run until I get the technique mastered.  My ITB was really inflamed from the last run I did over a month ago, which was an 11 miler so I am being cautious.

Here is a link to a fun Chi Running Video.  I hope you like it.

Can I have some wine with that whine?

I haven't ran since Sunday February 20th and I've been whining about it and I've been drinking wine.  I'm trying to drink away my sorrows and take the edge off my incessant thigh pain. The details are that I ran 11 miles that day with an already achy IT Band.  I thought I had stretched and foam rolled enough the day before and I would be fine. NOT!!  I was supposed to run around Lake Natoma that day and got half way around when I realized that I had some tightening in my quads specifically my old nemesis the IT Band.  I decided I could make it back but took it easy and ran/walked the rest of the way back to my meeting place with my club.  I foam rolled it when I got home but it wasn't enough.  The next day I was miserable.  I could barely walk faster then my 93 year old Grandma.

My thigh was so tight any kneeling or squatting was out of the question.  The crackling noises as I went up and down the stairs in my house were almost loud enough to wake the undead.  What really hurt was the rubbing of my pants against my thigh.  If I closed my eyes it felt like my pants were made of sandpaper and not a fine grit either.  As  you can see, I whine with the best of them.

So I did what any self respecting college graduate would do...I drank some more whine.  LOL.  I know now I am being (and I am using my husband's favorite word) ridiculous.  What I did do was really think of what my options were with my IT Band.  What was the root cause of all of this pain?  As luck would have it, Fleet Feet Mid Town was having a 1 hour seminar about running injury free (serendipity coming into play) so I went.  I then made an appointment with a Podiatrist who is a runner.  I don't have foot pain but thought maybe he could check me out and rule out whether I had one leg longer then the other which is one symptom of IT Band syndrome and any other physical problems.  I then made an appointment with an Exercise Physiologist who is also a certified massage therapist who is also a local ace bicycle racer who also trains tri-athletes.  I then went to a 1 hour demo on Trigger Point Therapy products.  I got a lot accomplished in a week.

Today I went to the Exercise Physiologist, who I am just going to call Mike from now on.  We had a long talk about my troubles and he basically told me a bunch of things I already knew.  My VMO muscle is weak and underdeveloped.  I thought I was doing exercises to strengthen them but he seemed unimpressed by them.  He did ultrasound along the whole length of my IT Band and then followed that up with massage.  Very painful massage.  Turns out besides the very tight ITB, there is something way up high on my thigh that is equally tight.  I forget the terminology because he threw some very long scientific type names at me over the hour I was with him.  Depending on how sore I am tomorrow, as he wants me to be pain free, he is going to do a gait analysis to see if I am running properly which we may do Friday.  I am guessing that I am not running properly and that is why I am having so much trouble. 

Who knew running could be so hard?  Obviously it can be hard on your body, but hard in that there is a lot to remember.  The running seminar I went to demonstrated that to me.  Feet under knees, knees under hips, hips under shoulders, head/neck in line with those points all the way down. Like a marionette. Arms at 90 degrees. Tuck your pelvis up and back without tightening your glutes. Always run with a cadence of 170-180. Lean 1/4" from hips not waist when you take off, from there if you increase your speed it's in the degree of lean and how your legs flow behind you. Let gravity propel you forward. He said your arms and legs work in unison so if you want to run faster pump your arms faster your legs will follow. He said to only work on one thing at a time for 30 seconds or so. I don't know how I could possibly remember to do all of this stuff. Handouts would have been great.

My final thoughts are that I have hope.  I really have to get this corrected or my running days are over.  It might not be today but someday the tracking problems I am having with the patella will wear down and give out.  If I can rule out all the what ifs and work on what can be corrected then I should be able to continue on this journey to run a marathon.  I didn't even tell Mike about that.  He doesn't know me yet so he doesn't know how fixated I can be with things.  When I get fixated I rarely let up until I have followed something to an extraordinary end or the bitter end.  Which one will this be? BTW, I'm drinking Petite Sirah from Six Hands Winery in Walnut Grove as I write this.  They are a small family run winery out in the Delta.

First Run of 2011

So today  my running group met at 8am for a trail run at Folsom Lake, yes as in Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues fame.  It was raining and about 45 degrees.  Runners are not wimpy people.  There were probably 15-20 of us out there running in the rain.  We ran on a single track most of the way through puddles and mud and over rocks and stuff like that.  Really it's like being a kid again.  I've gotten just as wet if not more wet playing soccer in the rain. 

I found this website, DailyMile, and am using them to track my mileage.  It was great to see that it works. Yeah, one less thing to worry about with this blogging thing.  I was getting all worried on how to track my mileage and really didn't want to keep up an Excel spreadsheet as I already do that with my running group and I make lovely spreadsheets at work. 

About half way into my run today, the ol IT Band started aching.  It had stopped hurting prior to the CIM (California International Marathon) where I was part of a relay team.  I took off the month of October and half of November to rehab my knee. I think I ran too many miles too soon and that activated the IT Band.  I took a month off again and worked hard on rehabbing with weights and the elliptical and only walks with the hubby and Joie my dog.  So now I have an achy IT Band, which is becoming a dirty word to me.  I religiously use the foam roller on it to the point I want to cry like a big baby.  I can never get the tension to release.  I follow up the foam roller with about 7 minutes of stretching the hamstrings, the quads, the inner thighs, the glutes, and the calves.  Sometimes it feels like I spend more time on the rolling, stretching routine then I actually spend running.

I hope to find an answer for the IT Band.  I may go to my Podiatrist and see if I have any problems with one leg shorter then another.  My brother has a significant difference in his leg length so it is worth checking it out.  I've read that differences in leg lengths can exacerbate the IT Band.  We'll see.