Training Log Archive: Lori

Red Middle at West Point. I knew even going to the start that I would not be able to move quickly today if I was serious about not having pain. I decided to just go out and take it easy because, hey, I was at an orienteering meet! I started out jogging really easily, which was more or less ok as long as I was going uphill. Downhill was really not ok at all and even flat wasn't great. I probably shouldn't have run at all, but it was really hard not to when navigation was going well. Anyway, I bobbled the first control a bit, but then things were navigationally quite good until control 6, where I sort of stumbled painfully down a huge hill and then proceeded to get extremely confused in an area of copious, unmapped cliffs (they did warn us about this, but it did not help me to relocate...). Anyway, at this point I decided that I really was going to walk instead of half-jogging, so things really slowed down. I finally found 6 and then for some reason thought I was at 7 and on the map went from 7-8 and in reality went from 6 to no-mans land. Oops!

Luckily I figured out what I had done, returned to 6, and continued on. Seven was fine. I got confused at 8 with all the unmapped man-made objects and also slipped on a rock, giving myself a poster child landing-on-a-rock bruise. The rest of the course was fine, if at an uninspired walking pace. Time to take some serious time off and get this shin healed!

Instead of sprinting, I headed out to bike around the middle area! This was a lot of fun and potentially what I should have spent the entire day doing instead of going out on the middle, but oh well. It turns out West Point is incredibly steep! At a couple of points, I could not simultaneously keep my back wheel from spinning out and my front wheel on the ground :-). I saw lots of disturbingly huge either centipedes or millipedes while slowly cranking my way up hills. When going by a swamp at one point I even saw a GINORMOUS snapping turtle that was probably about a foot long! So cool! After about 45 minutes, I was a bit lost and sort of vaguely navigating my way back to the parking/sprint area by feel, climbing more hills and generally having a good time, when I got close enough to hear what I'm reasonably sure was Ian cheering, and was able to get back using that :-). Awesome ride!

Stretching while grilling at Ali's!

Red Middle - Splits

I headed over to the gym during an incubation to do some ellipticalling! My shin feels pretty good today, and ellipticalling felt excellent. I was pain-free during and after. Woohoo!

Normal abs plus toe raises, heel raises, twisting in, and pulling back. The shin definitely feels a lot better than yesterday!

Normal stretching plus tons of calf stretching throughout the day. If nothing else, I'm going to have super loose calves by the end of this :-).

Bleh...my shin is hurting again. Looking back through the past couple of weeks, it seems like forest running is more less fine, but then when I run on pavement things start to hurt again. This isn't especially surprising for shin splints.

Based on the location of the pain and what I know about my running gate, I'm thinking this is probably medial tibial stress syndrome, so I'm going to start doing strengthening and stretching exercises that are good for that.

I have occasional pain on take-off, but none on landing and occasionally it hurts if I press on the inside edge of my right shin about a third of the way up. It usually hurts most the day after running on pavement.

I have no desire for this to continue or get worse, so I am definitely going to stop running on roads for at least two weeks. (Elliptical, here I come. Sorry Presto!) The question is whether I should do any forest running or not. If I have no pain during or after running on a soft surface, does anyone know if by running on soft surfaces I am prolonging the recovery process and/or potentially setting myself up for things to get worse? Or is it possible that by running on uneven, soft surfaces in a non-pain-inducing way, I am actually strengthening my lower legs in a useful way?

C • Bummer! 2

Toe raises, heel raises, twisting in with resistance, pulling back with resistance.

Easy run with Presto before lab! We got out before the rain for a nice run around the river. Things felt nice and easy while I was out there, which I'm guessing was from all the stretching last night. Presto was sleepy at first, but after a block or so he decided that he could keep up with me after all :-).

Abs and calf raises.

My shin started hurting a bit when I got back so I did a major stretching session after which it felt a lot better. It isn't sore to the touch, so I'm still somewhat optimistic that things are improving. I think my ankle was just tired from Sunday. I need to work on strengthening it up again!

Instead of stretching, Presto buried himself in the beanbag chair and refused to get up even for his dinner!

Cruciatus stretches, foam rolling, and normal stretching.

Green course at Mt Misery with Presto! I've never been to Mt Misery before, but it's actually a really nice little park! In honor of the name of the park, I started miserably, probably loosing about 15 minutes or so in the first 4 controls. Control 1 was fine, but I completely blew number 2. I think the scale was throwing me off a bit, but I was really just being stupid. I told myself to pull it together and then proceeded to go straight to number 3 but not see the control and circle around in confusion for like 5 or 6 minutes before attacking from a different location, coming in to exactly the same spot and finally seeing the flag through the little pine trees. More or less the identical thing happened at 4, at which point Meg, Tim, and another guy came in and I decided to stop being an idiot and actually orienteer. I was near Meg and the other guy for the rest of the course. We were taking different routes and switching off the lead here and there, but we were more or less together.

Running was tons of fun and Presto was having a blast! I didn't have any shin issues and finished feeling happy about my run from control 5 on!

SGB was kind enough to set some ARDF transmitters for me while I was orienteering, so after a water break, Presto and I headed out to find them. They were transmitting at a much lower frequency than I was expecting, and I wasn't sure at what point I would be able to hear them, so I sort of arbitrarily starting running towards the center of the map in hopes that I would start hearing the transmitters eventually. When I still hadn't heard anything after about 15 minutes of jogging around, I got the brilliant idea of standing still and really trying the entire range of the dial. Aha! Transmitters!

After that, I happily found the two transmitters in about 10 minutes :-).

Running back to the registration area with Presto to switch to the 2m receiver.

I was starting to get a bit worried about getting the zipcar back in time, but SGB wasn't back from his course yet, so I headed out to try to find the 2m transmitters. I found the frequency these were transmitting almost immediately to my relief, but I was getting masses of reflections, so I was extremely confused. I discovered why I was getting such horrendous reflections when I found the first transmitter in a reentrant between two massive hills :-).

I set off to find the next transmitter, but at this point the fact that I'd been running without ingesting any calories for the past 2 hours was making itself known, and I was not doing a great job at convincing myself to climb to the top of Mt Misery to get an accurate bearing. I was also rapidly running out of zipcar time, so I ended up having to leave it out there and run as fast as my rapidly-depleting-energy legs would let me back to the car.

SGB arrived at the same time as I did and we booked it back to Cambridge and got the car back just in time!

After lunch we procured another zipcar and headed back out to Mt. Misery to pick up the 2m transmitters. I found the second 2m transmitter quite quickly once I had some food in me. SGB had kindly set it on the side of a hill near the bottom of a reentrant :-).

Presto was amusingly exhausted at this point and kept flopping down on the ground :-). Awesome day!!!

Lots and lots of stretching including foam rolling and cruciatus stretches!