When running I discovered that not playing racquetball earlier in the day makes it easier to run. Today I did a two part run. Six miles on the trail in the canyon and two miles of speed work at the gym. I finished my fitness day at the Salt Lake Running Company with Lisa doing a follow up to my gate analysis (which apparently is going alright so far) she did suggest looking into another shoe if my Altra's start bothering my legs (my old Altra's are, but they are an everyday shoe). After meeting with her, I went to a foam roller clinic teaching a protocol to use the foam roller for the likes of me who have never used one before but needed to learn how for self preservation. I decided the foam roller is having fun with me as I work with it. To be honest I fear the foam roller.
My run today I did at noon, so I was a little hungry when I went out so I parked next to where my lunch would be... Bajio (where they ended up giving me a huge sweet pork burrito when I did finally go in and get food). I did a solid run and was at my 6 mile time of 1:24:00. So I was at a 14 min mile average (it would have been faster if I wasn't stopped at that red light... oh yeah and if I would have run faster too. I did expend almost all that I had left in my two mile speed drills through. My mind beat me as I was running those and I had to recover. It was two 13 min miles for those, which is a little slow, but I wanted energy to drive to this foam roller clinic. The clinic was amazing. Basic principal was to start at the distal end of the leg (part furthest from the heart) and work towards the hard, assisting the lymphatic and circulatory systems in the process. We started with the calves, then the shin splint muscle (tibialis anterior). Worked 1 leg at a time with hamstrings to IT band to quads to adductors (inside thigh muscles). Then we worked the muscle between the hip bine (greater trochanter of the femur) and the sacrum (the muscle is the piriformis). That last muscle hurt like hell when I found it with the foam roller. I was sweating hard at this point from going through the protocol. It was an additional 30 min workout. We did back, and then lats next. They were both really hard to do.
Today I started to panic about the life of my running shoes. Most of the miles on my shoes have been done at over 300 lbs. (as of Saturday I am now down to 295 so all miles will now be for someone less than 300 lbs.). So the average runner is said to get an average of 400 miles out of a single pair of shoes (I assume it is based off someone who is 175 lbs.). So I am doing the math in my head (175/400 equals a number, and if I take my 300 lbs and multiply it by 175/400 I get 685 and some change which means I go through shoes about 40% faster than someone who is 175 giving me only 230 miles per air of shoes). I understand my math isn't perfect but it makes sense in my artist brain. So I will be retiring my black shoes after my marathon and will use my blue shoes exclusively in my recovery period.
I want to share one last thing. At church a couple spoke who did the Vegas Ragnar. They were both ill prepared for it and hadn't trained for a couple of weeks leading up to it. He talked about how encouraging other people to keep going was something the helped him to keep going. I have noticed I run better when there are other runners around who are polite and smile at me and give me that knowing nod of, "I've been where you are, it gets better." So with the insight this speaker gained, I would like to challenge everyone who is a runner that reads this to make sure you say hi, and give encouraging words to those who look like they are struggling, I am going to try the same thing. Even if you don't run, you will still get warm fuzzies from doing it.
Thanks for reading,
-Riley
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