Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Adventureartist

Happy New Year from Adventure Headquarters. I have my new Christmas present ready to go, I just need some snow. Wishing you a Happy, Healthy, Adventurous 2015! Now get outside and have some fun!

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Boston Week 2

In addition to having one of my best Christmas’s ever I had a perfect week of Boston marathon training. A Christmas brunch with 12 great friends, delicious food and an exchange of hand made gifts was followed by a delightful sunset run. In fact I had 6 delightful runs all between 3 and 8 miles each, plus two nights of rowing and 5 days of strength and/or flexibility training. It is minimal mileage and it is the plan I used in 2007 for my first marathon after not running for 20 years and that plan qualified me for Boston.

While I am qualified for Boston again, my right quad is only letting me run 2:00 walk 1:00 but this week I added a twist. I began walking the 1:00 backward and by the end of the week I was jogging the 1:00 backward, not only am I getting my front in shape I am getting my back in shape. I am also getting a lot of strange looks from the neighbors.

I think I know what is wrong with my leg, nothing. It is not my IT that has been bothering me these last three years, it is the femoral nerves  impingement. This would explain my right quad shutting down. To test this out I am doing a series of femoral nerve flossing like in this video:

Next week I will let you know how it goes. If all goes well I will reduce my 1:00 backward jogging to 30 seconds. Until then, happy running!

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Boston Training Time

I have barely run in six months. I spent the last three shuttling between my exhibitions in Kansas, New Jersey, and New York. The three before that working in the studio day and night. Additionally, this month I emptied out my Manhattan apartment to facilitate its imminent sale. Here I am, in the first week of Boston Marathon Training having run less than 20 miles in the past month. Two problem, 1. Not running  2. The ongoing, three-year injury, if you can still call it that, where the middle of my IT Band freezes up every time I try to run  up  even the slightest hill. It has become  depression to the point of wanting to quit all together. I have had so much physical therapy that I could pay for my PT’s kid’s Ivy league education. So today I made a decision, and a very good one, beginning with no more PT.

I have always scoffed at walk./running. (never scoff at anything because that guarantees one day it will be you!) But I thought, I have an 8 mile run, longer than I have run since August. It could be really slow and painful, or I could run 2:00 and walk 1:00 for the whole 8 miles. Why would I do this? Well, instead of slogging about for 8 miles and possibly walking home in the cold with little HR or muscle training, if I alternate I just may actually have a faster pace in the running section, then in the walking section give my leg a rest, and maybe reprogram my body from feeling this pain. (I never feel the leg pain when walking, snowshoeing, rowing, hiking or any other activity. When I do feel it during a run, it stops immediately when I stop).

For a little background, while I did not have on my heart rate monitor today, it would have worked in what Coach Roy Benson call’s heart rate fartlek. To build base and improve endurance, after one calculated their 60% and 75% maximum heart rate, you start running until your HR reached 75%, then back off until it goes down to 60% then go back up and so forth. You can pick up speed faster after your slow period, yet it is relatively short so there is no lactic acid build up and you build a nice base and less prone to injury. After years of running I know what both those heart rated feel like and while I was using time rather than HR, it was pretty close to the same result.

Guess what didn’t happen and guess what did happened? What did not happen was my leg never froze up. It was the first time in almost three years my right side did not cease in the first mile or on the uphill. And second, you guessed it, my run selections became faster as I went along, in the last four miles, about 25 seconds faster than marathon pace. I was delighted.

By walking one minute I loosened up my hips, but being only one minute, I kept my HR at a decent level and it allowed me to run faster but with an overall longer workout time. On a really good day, I would run 8 miles in 64 minutes, (not racing just running)  I have not had one of those days for a very long time. On a bad day, I may not even finish. But today, walking for one minute after every two minutes, I exercised for 84 minutes. In fact, I like stretching out my mileage over a longer period of time, while running faster. This is going to be a very interesting training season and I am going to feel good about it! I already can’t wait until tomorrow.

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