Workout Notes - Spring 2013

       

          About three times a week, I do abdominal workouts usually consisting of sit ups, crunches, twists , or sit ups with a 15 pound weight which I hold against my chest. All of those without anchoring my ankles to anything. Occasionally, I also do leg lifts. With the weighted sit ups, I could normally do 30 to 32 reps. Then I discovered another variation of the weighted sit ups a couple of weeks ago. That time, I held the 15 pound weight against the back of my head then tried to raise my upper body off the mat. I managed half a crunch and a huge grunt, but no sit up. Wow, that was way harder than I thought! I couldn't help but laugh at myself when that happened. I then tried a 10 pound weight with similar results. Down to 5 pounds I went, and was finally able to lift my torso from the ground and managed to do it 16 times. Remember, this was without anchoring my ankles to anything so by the 14th repetition, I couldn't keep my feet on the floor due to the forced reps. I could feel my stomach muscles burning. So that was  surprising sit ups discovery - lesser weight but more resistance and lesser repetitions required. I think I may add that to my routine.
          One Saturday morning, I planned on driving to the bank to get some money from the ATM machine. It was not cold outside so I decided to do a 1 minute jog with 1 minute walk to the bank and back. Just to remind you, I haven't done a run in months because of the myopathy problems I have been having while taking generic Lipitor for my high cholesterol. When I was still running fairly well, that round trip would have taken about 25 to 26 minutes. That Saturday, it took 35. Well, my legs generally felt slightly but pleasantly sore after doing that jog/walk. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), the pleasant soreness I had is however totally different from statin myopathy which feels more like a cutting pain. This time it affected my right thigh muscle as opposed to the left side a few months ago. To add to that, this run didn't even hit the pleasure areas of my brain and left me dissatisfied. Maybe the reason is because I don't do it as often as I want or can anymore. What was good though was that the afterburn of that brief workout kept my weight down the next day even after eaten a lot of red velvet cookies with white chocolate chunks.
          A couple of weeks after that 1 minute jog/1 minute walk workout, I went to have an oil change for my car and instead of waiting around while the mechanic did it, I walk/jogged around the area. I didn't keep track of how long the jogging and walking parts were but did it by feel. That way, I was jogging more than I was walking and the whole workout lasted 45 minutes.
          I did a rowing machine workout one morning while watching a Japanese documentary film called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Since the wind resistance machine makes a lot of noise, it helped that the movie had subtitles. You would think that after watching that movie, I would be craving for sushi. Well, I did not.
          And finally, my workouts before and after my colonoscopy. On the day of the procedure, I felt so weak from the clear liquid diet and the trips to the bathroom so I had no choice but take it easy on my 30 minute workout on the recumbent bike. My discharge instructions after the colonoscopy said no vigorous workouts for 24 hours after the procedure. So it was more of the same the next day on the recumbent bike. Two days later, I did a somewhat vigorous uphill walking workout on the treadmill for 45 minutes then a full body weight training workout using rubber tubing. Don't even say I don't follow doctor's orders.
          So there it is folks - dreary descriptions of what it takes to stay in shape: a little bit of this and that which even included some running.

The Soreness of an Infrequent Runner

You’ve heard of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner which was one of the books that started the first running boom in the 70’s. I have not read it and neither can I identify with it since in my case, it has become the soreness of an infrequent runner. Please allow me to explain. If you have been reading my blog recently, you would know that I do power walking now when I train with my running club - A Running Experience. Last Saturday morning, I was feeling a little frisky after doing a three hour walk two days prior so I thought I’d try to do a little jogging. I did my usual one mile brisk walk warm up then set my GPS watch interval timer. The plan was to jog for two minutes then do a one minute recovery walk. With a bit of delusional thinking, I thought I could keep up with some people whom I’ve run with before, at least during the first two minute interval at the start. I was woefully mistaken when reality struck me in the face after I saw that those people had gotten much faster since I last ran with them. That, plus the combination of me having gotten so slow. No matter. I kept plugging away and didn’t do the walk break after two minutes and numerous more times thereafter. I mentioned in my previous post that I didn’t sweat very much during the three hour walk. Well, within the first five minutes of slow jogging, perspiration was dripping down my brow. I kept shuffling along not knowing how far I could take it before my ankles start to protest. When my stride became heavier at about 3 ½ miles, I decided it was time to do the walk breaks, but not until I reached 4 miles. A couple of people passed me at that point which was a surprise because I thought I was again the last runner. The one minute walk break ended and I started jogging again but this time I opened up my stride a little bit until the two minute alarm told me to do another one minute walk break. During the two minute run, I would catch up with one or two runners and they in turn would pass me on my walking breaks. This pattern kept on for the last 3 miles of the 7 mile route.

                Let me tell you how it felt to open up my stride for those two minutes of running: it was two minutes of pure bliss at a time which made me feel like a runner again. Look at the picture below with the forward lean while I neared the finish. Do I look like a runner? LOL! And of course look at the picture above with the more upright posture near the two mile mark when I was just shuffling. Oh by the way, those runners going the other way were from another training group. (Thanks to our intrepid and speedy club VP - Dave K., who runs all over the course to take these pictures.)

                So how does the title of this post fit in? Well, as can be expected, when you don’t do a certain activity often enough, you feel soreness in your muscles and joints afterwards. What surprised me was that I didn’t feel as sore as I expected even though I had to work the next couple of nights. But oh, boy was I tired Saturday night and it took every ounce of energy to keep myself awake while on the job. As far as my muscles and joints? I lucked out this time because the soreness was minimal.

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Post Saturday Run Blues

After Saturday’s AREC run, I had to work my usual 12 hour shift from evening to morning and the exhaustion I mentioned carried over at my job. I felt so drained, that by midnight, I could barely stay awake. The next day my thigh muscles were sore (it’s Monday afternoon now as I post this and they are still sore). Kinda similar to post marathon soreness but not quite as bad. It felt as if I haven’t run in a long time and just started again. Well, duh! For someone who used to run every day for so many years, four days of not running is a long time. After that many days off then suddenly running 10.42 miles, of course my legs would be sore. At least my ankle joints didn’t fare so badly, so I hope I can resume my current three days a week running schedule. No matter how much cross training I do, it’s not a substitute for running. As I mentioned in a blog post last year explaining the training principle of specificity, you have to run to get in shape for running.

              People probably wonder, since I mention that I have a permanent ankle tendon injury, why I keep on showing up at the Saturday morning runs. If the injury is so bad, why am I still running with them? It must not be as bad as I claim it to be, you might say. The truth is, it is really bad and I shouldn’t be running anymore, but I am just hanging in there, prolonging as much as possible what I love to do despite the pain. The permanent injury is on my right ankle, but in the past few weeks I’m feeling similar signs and symptoms with my left ankle, which is not good. If my left ankle goes, so goes the running.

This is the reason why I’ve been taking so many days off. With so many days off, my running conditioning suffers. That’s probably why I felt so flat and exhausted last Saturday. Maybe instead of taking extra days off, I should just reduce my running time to 30 to 40 minutes during the week instead of my usual hour. That way, I hope my ankles are not too battered, but I would still be able to maintain my running conditioning. I may try that this coming week and see what happens.

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