When life comes at you fast

Ok, so sometimes life just starts coming at you and it's all horns and lights and for the love of god, watch out for that truck!

I can't really write everything, even everything running, because you would never want to read it. Thus I will summarize.

Massage: Good. Helpful. Tight feet, painful stretching, tight calves. Numerous suggestions. Runs improved for the next few days.

Last week: Easy. 51 miles in 7 runs. Steady improvement in the shin.

Sunday: Nice 13+ at the Wissahickon Saw Seebo out for a walk with his son. Almost didn't recognize him without his running hat.

PT: An old neighbor that I had recently run into (and who has recently gotten into running from biking - Hi Rob!) found this blog and saw some of my injury notes and suggested I visit someone he had been to. i don't know if he is technically a PT or not, but he does do a lot of work with athletes. He is a big proponent of active isolated stretching.

He sized me up within minutes. The dignosis? The shin, just a symptom. The calves are tight. The calf that was strained in the fal? Just a symptom. My hamstrings are weak, My glutes are weak. Most significantly, my quads are as tight as a drum.

He showed me that when running, and even when stretching, I couldn't even get my quad to go past my midline when it should be extending far behind me.

The things he was saying and the questions he was asking all of a sudden began to tie together lose ends for me. The tight shins, the sore calves, the feeling in my speed workouts tht I was just throwing my feet forward hoping they would stick to something, the running dreams where I would head toward the finish chute neck and neck with someone and the faster my legs turned over, the slower I moved.

He said that in some ways, it was like people get at the end of a marathon, when their quads beginning to fatigue and lose strength, and their body just starts throwing bits forward left and right jut to keep moving and hit the end. Except I was just doing that every day. Rather than using my glutes and hamstrings to pull myself forward, I was using my calves and my shins to throw my feet in front of me. Hence the ouchies.

There's an old story I've read with my daughter about the Blind Men and the Elephant. It's a parable about the limits of our perception. Each blind man touches the elephant and describes it. One grabs the tuck and says it has a spear. One grabs the trunk and says it is a snake, etc. I feel this way about many problems in my life, but running in particular. I am always struggling to put together the little threads of evidence, determine what is relevant and what is not, assemble the right advice, evaluate the results.

Then sometimes, a light flashes and I think oh crap! It's an elephant.

Much, much more I could say about this. The PT believes that cutting back on the speed in the fall and just doing higher miles exacerbated the problem and further shortened my stride. I have some key stretches and exercises to do.

He was very optimistic that some good stretching is what I need most and I should see results very quickly.

He is a former Oregon runner and from a big running family. He also called me out on my 5k time and threw out a number that he thought I could run if I trained right. Yoiks. You know., aim high and all that.

Last night: After some more new stretching it was off for 6+ just under 8 minute pace and the best run I have had in months. I felt a little rubber-bandy from all the stretching, but I could feel my legs moving in ways that just hadn't for quite a while. I felt very fluid. Plus 6 accelerations on the track, because I had to.

Also: It was my birthday over the weekend and we all took the train down and took the kids to the Franklin Institute (science museum) for the first time. It was a blast! My daughter helped my wife plan a brthday party and we had a dinosaur themed party for me, complete with musical chairs and pin the horn on the stegosaurus.

So here's a picture for you from the train:



And that's all I've got time for. Phew.