Having the Strength and Knowledge on When to Stop

Injuries... They are tough for everyone. Things that all athletes hope to never get but eventually always will.  Injuries are an inevitable fact in the life of endurance athletes.  We push the limits of our bodies day in and day out.  Sometimes we go a bit too far and the body breaks down.

The auto accident I got in last year caused a massive amount of scar tissue in my calf and ankle.  This tightened ligaments in the foot which caused an eventual tear.  I did not take care of my body as much as I should have with the amount of training.  It eventually decided to give out and I tore a ligament in my foot.  It is not a major ligament and with rest I hope to be back racing and training in the fall.

The constant foot pain started in May after the Cary Du.  I was in a pretty serious training block that tore my body apart.  I fought through the pain for a couple weeks until I finally crumbled and saw a local podiatrist.  He recommended taking a full two weeks off to recover.  He thought that there was a torn ligament at this point.  So, I begrudgingly listened to the doctor and took two full weeks off from training.  The pain subsided but did not fully go away.  The two weeks ended so I picked training back up... even with the pain.

The training started to pick back up in preparation for the National Championship.  I battled through tough workouts leaving me hunched over in pain.  I mentioned stuff to my coach here and there but figured it would get better.  I went to a second doctor for his opinion.  He thought it was just some scar tissue build up.  He gave me some mobility work and said he would see me in a couple weeks.  I followed the mobility plan to a 'T' but alas it did not solve my problem...  I returned to the doctor after my win at Sylvania because of no improvement.  He took some pictures of my bones and determined that it was most likely a torn ligament.  Two doctors and one diagnosis.  He prescribed me a carbon insole and to continue training if I could.  Well... it took awhile to get the insole and in the mean time I taped my foot up for training.  The tape only holds for a couple miles though.  After that it is just consistent damage to the injured foot.  This past weekend I had a big training block which destroyed my foot to a point of no return.  My coach, Scott Proscia of IREP Athletics, and I made the tough decision to remove the aggravation and try to recover. This means that there will most likely not be a National Championship for me this year.  I need to focus on recovery so I can come back strong next year.  

This will definitely not be my last blog post for the year though! I will continue to update everybody on my recovery and training plan.  I still hope for exciting things to come! 

Remember to stay positive and roll with the punches.

Until next time

Stay Strong, Stay Determined

Number 1 Ranking in the Nation

This is only the beginning.  Road to the national championship.  Thanks to IREP athletics, USMES, and of course my family!

Long Travels and Long Standing Races

This past weekend I decided to travel 9.5 hours to a race and to visit some great friends.  The journey began on Friday where I drove 6 hours from Asheville to Cincy to stay with a good friend.  We ended up hanging out that night, not ideal for a couple nights before a race, but sometimes you need to live a little.  I have had an injured foot for the past couple of months so I was going into the race knowing I wasn't 100%.  I have just been running base miles without speed work and cycling a lot.

The foot injury is related to my first metatarsal area.  I have seen two doctors about it without much movement towards 100%.  I am positive it is related to the accident but not directly related (if I wasn't an athlete it probably wouldn't bother me).  The second doctor did provide me some improvement which was promising.  I will see him again this week to see what else we can do.  It is important as an athlete to understand how your body operates.  At least in a basic movement pattern way.  There are certain movements that humans should be able to perform without difficulty.  The long journey home from the race provided me opportunity to listen to my favorite podcasts.  Kelly Starrett was on one of them discussing human movement and flexibility.  For those who do not know, Kelly is the creator of mobilitywod.com.  This website is an informative website on flexibility, movement, and recovery techniques related to life.  I would highly recommend checking it out, at least for a couple minutes.  But one of the things he was talking about was an overhead squat.  Overhead squat is not that complicated of a movement but pulls together so many aspects of endurance athletics. The most important lesson it can teach is hip stability and shoulder mobility.  Kelly describes some important information about the overhead squat below.

I am making a goal to increase my mobility drills for the day.  It only takes a couple minutes a day to increase mobility which increases efficiency.  Efficiency is an overlooked aspect in most athletes training plan.  There are a few coaches out there, like Scott P. of IREP, that focus on form and efficiency because they realize how important it is to running, swimming, and cycling faster.  A couple of minutes a day can be more beneficial then running 2 extra miles on an easy day.  This was basically a long winded way of saying do some mobility work everyday.  Look to mobilitywod.com if you need some ideas.

Sylvania International Distance Duathlon:

Sylvania Triathlon/Duathlon has been going on for over 30 years!  30 years for a smaler triahtlon is very impressive.  Events like these cannot survive without the local community support and they definitely get it.  The organization of the event and the support on the course is phenominal.  I haven't experienced such friendly volunteers and determined organizers.  I commend them on such a great event.

Like I described earlier, I came into this event with a foot injury.  I didn't expect strong runs and it was kind of just seen as a good workout.  The bike was a different story.  I got on the bike and really wanted to test myself in the TT position.  I did a very crappy standing mount because of my tender foot.  After that, the first couple of miles were extremely rough road.  It was flat but had a lot of bumps.  My two gels fell out of the compartment on the in between arms aero bottle within the first couple of minutes.  I was pissed but didn't get too worried.  My main goal was to destroy myself on the bike, get the fastest bike split on the day (triathlon/duathlon).  The fact that it was super flat and few turns made that pretty easy.  I ended up getting the fastest bike split by over 5 minutes.  This was a huge boost to my confidence.  The second run (10km) was brutal though.  I cramped extremely hard in my upper abdominal around mile 2.  I even had to do a walk/run for a half mile until I got the cramps under control.  After that my foot started to bother me so I kept it on the tempo side and didn't want to push it too hard.  I ended up with the win by a long shot.

After the race I remembered to check the USAT rankings and even though this race hasn't been added to the total I was still 2nd in the nation for all duathletes.  2nd in the nation is an amazing accomplishment and I am excited to continue to improve on that placing.

Stay healthy out there!

Podcasts

Shout out to my teammate Nicholas Chase (racechase.org) for planting the idea of podcasts into my head.  I read through his entire blog one weekend and saw that he listened to podcasts while traveling to races.  This got me hooked.  Listening to music on long trips is good and all but can get very repetitive.  Now, I listen to a couple podcasts to educate myself and keep myself occupied.  I recommend you all to do the same thing.  Find some podcasts that spark your interest.  In this post I will recommend a couple for you guys (and gals to listen to).

1. Endurance Junkie Podcast (http://www.junkiepodcast.com/)
This one was pretty frequent but has recently died off.  The host might be busy training or just taking a break from creating new podcasts.  Either way, he gets some amazing people to come onto his show.  I highly recommend going all the way back to episode one and listening to every single podcast.  This is by far my favorite podcast.

2. Semi-Pro Cyclist (http://semiprocycling.com/podcast)
This is a cycling specific podcast brought to you by Damian Ruse.  Damian is a well educated host as well as coach.  I have a couple teammates that have used him with amazing success.  These are a little shorter in duration but very regular.  He goes in depth into a wide variety of topics to include nutrition, race tactics, technology, and regular training topics.

3. Endurance Planet (http://www.enduranceplanet.com/category/podcasts/)
This podcast has some good information on it but can get kind of out there.  It is hosted by Tawnee Prazak, a multisport coach, athlete, and model.  She posts a couple podcasts a week that vary from nutrition specific stuff to interviews.  One problem is she can get extremely hooked on an idea and plug it in every sentence.  This can get annoying especially when she talks about fat adaptation.  There is a regular segment called ATC (Ask the Coach) where she talks with a Lucho (an amazing athlete who lives in Colorado).  This is a favorite podcast of mine because Lucho grounds Tawnee when she gets a little too far out of there.  Overall, this is a great podcast with a wide variety of information.  I would just be careful of all of her product plugs and nutrition/training methods.  Do some research before just jumping in to the things she recommends.

These are my top three.  I have listened to a couple others but none have become as regular as the three I listed.  If any of you guys have some favorite podcasts you listen to leave them in the comment section so I can check them out!

Until next time!

Just wanted to say I am still around!

There has been a lot going on in my life which has prevented me from racing... and training.

1. The wifey and I bought a house!!! Man does that require a lot of free time.
2. Military field exercise took up a couple weeks.
3. Sesamodial bone injury.  Still bothering me a little but getting better after some expensive orthotics.

Next race is possibly the end of July.  I will try to write a full life update this weekend.

Stay posted!

Asheville Running Collective

Some great news for the followers!  I have joined an elite running team in the local Asheville, NC area.  The team is called the Asheville Running Collective.  They are a USATF racing team comprised of competitive runners living in Western North Carolina.  The team has an incredible amount of talent ranging from masters national champions to Olympic qualifying athletes.  I am super excited to be part of this team and look forward to racing and running with them on a frequent basis.

Speaking of racing with ARC, we did compete in the USATF 8k NC state championship race this past weekend.  The team easily came in first place with one of the runners taking the USATF state 8k championship.  It was a tough course on a hot morning but the team battled through with great success.

Learn more about the Asheville Running Collective at ashevillerunningcollective.com

Cary Long Course DU

Cary Long Course Du was 2014’s national championship race.  I was excited to make the 3.5 hour journey east to have some competition.  I looked at the start list to see if anybody big was registered and saw last year’s amateur champion was registered.  This made me excited because it was sure to be a solid race.  So I decided to take a half day at work on Friday in order to get to Raleigh in the early afternoon.  This way I wasn’t going to feel rushed to get things done.  There was some awful traffic just west of Raleigh where it seemed that there were 14 accidents!  Just absolutely crazy.  I am a big person on hitting time cuts that I set for myself.  If I set a schedule I like to stick to it.  When I deviate from the path I can feel the frustration building.  The important thing here is to realize this change in your emotion and take steps to mitigate the frustration.  I just do the classic take a couple deep breaths and usually will relax me. 

I ended up getting to Inside Out Sports, location of packet pickup, around 4pm.  The hotel was 20ish minutes from Inside Out sports.  I got to the hotel, unpacked the car, and was battling with myself if I wanted to actually do a shakeout run.  Shakeout runs are not crucial but I like to do it as a tradition and to facilitate some recovery from sitting in the car for 3+ hours.  I watched some of the Amgen TOC TT which got me motivated to go for a little run.  I only went for a 2 mile easy jog and threw in a couple strides at the end.  This made the legs feel good and the mind feel clear.  After that I finished watching the ATOC and Peter Sagan killing it on the TT bike.  Then I drove over to NC State campus area to grab a bite to eat.

Race Day:

I woke up at 0440 and immediately prepped my race day bfast: oatmeal, peanut butter, cacao powder, chia seeds, Beta-Alanine, annnddd most importantly coffee (nasty hotel coffee at that).  I made it over to US National Baseball Training Center (start area) at 0545.  This gave me just over an hour to prep and warm up.  I was only looking to get a 20 minute warm up in because the race was a longer one. Well… turns out that an hour was not enough time for me.  I pulled out my race wheels to find them both flat.  Both of the innertubes were shot.  I hadn’t even ridden on the tubes and they couldn’t hold air.  So I frantically switched out the tube on the disc.  A nice man came up and offered to help with the front wheel but he didn’t really know what he was doing.  I definitely appreciated the attempt though.  I decided to scrap the HED front wheel and just went with my Bontrager 50mm deep wheel in order to still have time to warmup.

Run 1:

I guess last year’s champ didn’t show up because the pace went out really conservative.  I was expecting 5:30-5:40 pace for the front group.  Turns out I was the front group… and only had to go 5:45 pace to have a big gap going into T1.  The run was an out and back course along a bike bath.  The first quarter was flat but with some sharp turns and a ditch crossing.  The second quarter was all downhill which meant the third quarter was all uphill. The course was tough but I knew I had the fitness to carry me through it.  I entered T1 with a 30ish second lead which was nice because it meant I could take my time with the transition.

Bike:

The bike was very uneventful.  I followed as close as I could to my power plan and just kept increasing my lead steadily.  I caught up to up to the sprint distance lead just at the end of the first loop.  This was a great boost to me.  After that quick boost I was let down by one of my gels popping out of my between the arm aero hydration system. L I still had another gel left for closer to the run but it would have been nice to have that extra gel starting into the run.  I entered T2 with a massive lead over second place.  I think I was somewhere in the range of 5-6 minutes ahead of the second place guy.

Run 2

I hopped off the bike and knew the first half mile was going to be a slower trudge.  My left knee was bothering because of a poor cleat fit.  I had experimented with the position a couple days earlier and it gave me some knee trouble.  The knee pain went away before getting out of the parking lot.  I was far enough ahead of second place that I didn’t push the second run.  I kept it around 6 minute pace until the very end.  Once I entered the parking lot to finish I slowed down to almost 7 minute pace.  I was really glad for the win but wished that last year’s champion had been there to test my fitness.  The organizers of Cary put on a great race and I will definitely be coming back next year.

Lesson Learned:

I want to occasionally throw in a summary of lessons learned or basically the moral of the story.

1.      Prep all equipment the night/day prior.  This will allow for a smoother morning and a more relaxed morning.

2.      Get to transition earlier than an hour prior so you can ensure good position.  I was stuck in the back of the transition rack.  This will cost precious seconds in a close race.

3.      Listen to slowtwitch when they say three gels can’t fit in your hydration system.  You will lose one gel 9 out of 10 times.