BQ or Bust

Better

No running again this week, and I had to toss out any notion of doing the No Excuses 5k on Memorial Day. Fortunately for once, I hadn’t registered.

My sciatica has improved significantly, though I still need one Vicodin right before bed in order to sleep through the night. I’m off the Flexeril entirely, as the muscle spasms have ceased. Strangely enough, I get quite a bit of relief from a hot water bottle placed on the most troublesome area, which is just outside my right shin.

All right. There’s nothing more boring than other people’s ailments. I feel confident that this episode is nearly over and I’ll soon be back out on the road. I’m not quite ready to give up my BQ quest, but I am considering training at PR marathon pace (8:30/mile) instead of BQ marathon pace (8:12/mile). Staying healthy is more than enough of a challenge for me this year.

Nerve-wracking

I didn’t run at all this week, and I’m typing this from a prone position on my living room floor. Yes, it’s yet another injury, but strangely enough, one not directly connected to running.

I ran 7 miles last Sunday and while it was a crappy run, I had no pain or twinges. Nor did I feel any soreness all day afterwards. But at about 4 a.m. Monday, I awoke with a stabbing pain on the outside of my right lower leg. Assuming it was a cramp, I massaged it. Nope. How about a peroneal tendonitis flare-up? Tried some ice and all I got was a frozen pain.

I took an Advil and went about my day Monday, but still had a dull ache. Monday night was sheer hell. I had migrating pain and muscle spasms deep in my right buttock,  then next to the fibular head behind my knee, then the outside of the right shin, leading to pins and needles and numbness in my right foot. I’m no doctor, but that sounds like nerve problems to me.

I was up all night with excruciating pain and I couldn’t find a comfortable position. Tuesday and Wednesday were a little better, but Wednesday night was ghastly. The stabbing pains were accompanied by muscle spasms. My right calf and thigh locked up. I finally broke down and made an immediate appointment on Thursday morning. My doctor is pretty sure (as am I) that I’m experiencing sciatica. He prescribed Vicodin and a muscle relaxant.

So now I’m hopping around the house like, well, House. But it beats running around the house like Jack Bauer, with all the screaming, torturous pain, and no sleep for 24 hours.

I have zero back pain, but sciatica can be caused by spinal problems, so I had an x-ray and will have a CT scan this week. Training is obviously on hold, considering it hurts to run, walk, stand still, sit down, lie down and bend. Other than that, I can do anything I want. However, recovery from this should be quicker than from an ankle injury or tendonitis. Technically, there is nothing wrong with my leg, just that one long nerve that runs the length of it. It’s firing off like the 4th of July and the muscles are responding accordingly.

I’m disappointed (again) because of the interruption, but unless some serious underlying cause is discovered, it will probably dissipate over the next week or so, and I can gradually get back to business as usual. In the meantime, I’m trying to learn to type while standing on one leg.

One Mile Closer

A 27-mile week at 8:47 average pace, including a brutally bad 7-miler this morning. Nevertheless, it was a good week because on Tuesday I ran 5 miles at 8:10 pace. That’s faster than my target marathon pace, so I bumped up my tempo runs to 6 miles.

Again, my theory is that it’s hopeless to try to run a marathon at 8:12 pace unless you can do 16-18 miles at that pace in training. And you can’t do 16-18 miles at that pace until you can consistently do 12 miles at that pace. And you can’t do 12 until you can do 8, etc. So all my emphasis is on the tempo runs and the accompanying mileage. My Sunday long runs are simply a few miles longer than the tempo runs and my Wednesday speedwork totals half the tempo mileage. Every third week I step down by a third.

When my tempo runs reach 10 miles, I’ll switch the emphasis to the long runs, which will start as 14 miles with 10 miles at target marathon pace. I’ll then build those the same way while keeping the weekday runs at 10 miles or less.

This is a bit different from my usual approach, but I’m not sure running 6 miles at 7:30 pace during the week and 16 miles at 9:20 pace on Sunday gets me to where I want to go. I’ve probably got one good shot at this, otherwise it’s wait until I’m 55 and my BQ time goes up to 3:45 – assuming my legs hold up.

Unhappy Ending

I had a very satisfying stepdown week, totaling 17 miles at an average pace of 8:29. I finished the month of April with 91 miles.

I missed my Wednesday run because I was up all night Tuesday with this little guy.

A feral cat (actually, Zen‘s sister, “Tuna”) gave birth on our patio to a pair of kittens. One must have died shortly after. She rejected the other and ran off. We took him in and after a frantic hour of research to figure out what to do, we spent the night bottle feeding him every two hours and trying to keep him warm.

On Wednesday morning, he was not doing well and we called around trying to find someone who could care for him properly. But if you’ve ever faced a similar problem you know that rescue charities, humane societies and the rest are overwhelmed at this time of year with newborn animals.

I wish I could report that we saved him and found him a home, but in fact we had to take him to the city animal shelter, where he was euthanized.

My wife and I cried our eyes out.

Double Digits

Most running blogs are either personal or global, and I’ve bounced back and forth between the two. I’ve now decided I can do both, but I’ll keep them compartmentalized. So from now on weekday content will consist exclusively of funny or odd running stories, while weekend content (nonexistent until now) will consist exclusively of what I’m up to — for the half-dozen or so of you who care.

This was my highest mileage week in ages. I finished with 27.5 miles. Today’s 10 miler was my longest single run since last October. I did it at a 9:20 pace, so it didn’t water my eyes, but it was steady. My best run this week was in the rain – 2.4 miles at 7:45 pace.

I’m up over 83 miles for the month of April, but this will be a step-down week, so I won’t break 100. I’m doing everything I can to avoid injury. It would be nice to run my third marathon after a four-year hiatus. Knock on wood.

Progress

It has been a long time since I had positive news to report about my running, but after Sunday’s decent performance and my training for the last couple of weeks, things are looking up… finally.

My gun time gave me an age-graded percentage of 60.62 – which simply means my time was the equivalent of 60% of the world record for my age group. That’s right in line with my percentage from last year.

I’ve run 42 miles so far this month at an average pace of 8:25, with a 9 mile long run scheduled for Sunday. Today I ran 8:11 pace for 4.43 miles, so it’s time to bump up my tempo runs to 5 miles. I don’t have a 10k race on the schedule, but for the next three or four weeks I’ll be training as if I had one.

The weather is finally starting to warm up, so all is well. The perfect time for disaster to strike!

Fat Tuesday

The other day I was stepping out of the shower and while trying to avoid the hamper and the trail of cat litter I stepped on the face of my analog bathroom scale, cracking the glass. Alas, this meant engaging in that once-every-20-years activity – buying a new bathroom scale.

Like everything else, simple function scales have largely disappeared, replaced by high-tech machines (iScale, anyone?). Not wanting to be considered a technophobe (despite my lack of a Blackberry or a Facebook account), I went ahead and sprang for the $22.50 to get a digital scale with a body fat and body water analyzer.

You input your age and height to get the readings, which are obtained by firing electrical current through your body. It works on the same principle as the electric chair, only without the cool metal beanie. Of course, if you input your weight, you wouldn’t need the scale. Anyway, I’m 164 pounds, 19.3% body fat, and 54.8% water. Drinking a pint of water didn’t alter the reading appreciably, and the body fat effect of holding a pork chop in either hand was negligible.

The handy chart that came with the scale shows my body fat percentage right in the center for males over 30. Of course, that’s all hogwash, since I had a DEXA scan of my body fat a couple of years ago and the reading was 30.7%. Still, I guess it’s helpful as a relative base line for future readings.

It’s well-known that you don’t have to be overweight to be over-fat, but the approved solution seems to be to build muscle, and we all know how you’re supposed to do that. Ugh.

The goal, I guess, is to have a body like this guy’s. Ha! I console myself with the fact that my marathon PR is seven minutes better than his.