A pain in the rectus
hmm, possibly a dodgy title but we'll see what blog spam it generates :)Not much to report from planet Lulu. I tried a run on Saturday and after 1.8km of fooling myself it was going to get better I turned around and walked home. Strangely, now the pain is above my knee and in the special place... Taking my new Zen like approach to the whole running process, I merrily stayed in bed on Sunday :)Back to Easy Tiger this morning for further investigations and his theory is that although we've fixed the psoas other hip flexors have now got their knickers in a twist and are muscling in on the act. The offender this time being the rectus femorus. More rest for the lower body this week but some swimming with no legs and some upper body gym work should at least keep me sane.At least the weight loss campaign is going along very nicely and I'm very happy with the progress so far. By the time I start running again I should actually be able to feel the difference of having a few less kilos on board.
Don't panic!
That's what I've been telling myself since I developed a very sore groin or as my running buddy Ellie calls it 'my special place'.Thoughts of giving up running altogether passed through my mind but I dismissed them at least until I'd been to see Easy Tiger for a consultation. The verdict is I've got a very tight Psoas muscle, which attaches in the groin area and is now a bit inflammed in the special place. Well, it was tight until ET got stuck into it... Unfortunately, he doesn't have a magic remedy for reducing the inflammation over night.It feels much, much better today and I even ran down the road from the gym to test it out. Not too bad and at least I can walk without pain now. A few more days off running and some Vitamin V-oltarin, with luck and a following wind I'll be back on the road by the weekend. After three days of doing nothing (which I have to say was very nice!) and a bit of prodding by Mr lulu, I managed to get out of bed and go to the gym this morning. A 45 minute GRC pilates class, followed by 30 mins on the bike with 20 mins on the 8/12 interval routine.I've also started my diet again today with the intention of losing another 5 kilos. For the first time in years I've managed to get under 70kgs so my next target is getting under 65kgs. I think finally my thyroid meds and other hormones are under control and so I'm hoping that I can do this relatively quickly. At the very least it gives me something to focus on if I'm off the road for a short while. Keep everything crossed that I'm going to have a swift recovery and no reoccurences.
The Maquarie River run
I've spent most of the week in Dubbo and so I had to re-acquaint myself with the available running routes of Dubbo. The main one I've found is a nice 5.5km loop which follows a track along the river, over a bridge, along the river on the other side, and then back over another bridge.I arrived late on Tuesday night and my training course started early on Weds so my first chance for a run in the daylight was about 4pm on Weds. Cold and hard are the words to summarise that little adventure. I just never seemed to warm up and my legs didn't want to work. I was supposed to do at least 75 mins but it just wasn't happening for me and I ended up doing a few add on bits to the loop, and added a fast last km to make up for finishing at an hour. Thursday was a long work day and so it wasn't until this morning that I could do anything further. One loop of the track and a little bit extra to make it 6kms. I warmed up to the first bridge and then did 3 quick kms to make up for missing SWEAT this week, and so I get home quicker. It was cold and damp, with a delightful freezing fog hanging over the river.. noice!I felt a lot better than the Weds run and managed some nice kms at 5.48, 5.38 and 5.28.. you can tell I was dying to get back to the motel.The bad news is I seem to have developed some kind of weird groin, back, glute issue which has been developing over the last couple of weeks. I thought we'd fixed it and I suspect it's all related, but I'm not sure what that will mean for the weekend's training. I'll see how it feels in the morning. I've managed to work out what to stretch to ease the groin issue so I'll work on that this evening and fingers crossed for a miraculous cure. I'm just getting back to a decent level of training so I do not want any more injuries... ARE YOU LISTENING, RUNNING GODS?
Mountains and Oranges
Saturday, I braved the rather stromy Sydney weather to head out to the park for an inside loop. Fortunately, the wind had abated but it was still pouring with rain. I'd put on a rain jacket but ended up being too hot and just running in my singlet (and tights!).Saturday afternoon, we headed up to the Evil Twin Sister's place in Mount Vic and a bit of a late night involving roast duck and more red wine than was wise.Sunday, there was no mercy from mr lulu as I was dragged out into a cold, crisp mountain morning for our run. We ran down the Victoria Falls lookout road which is a nice undulating dirt track to a look out. Wrapped up in long sleeves and gloves the cold air didn't seem so bad, the hangover wasn't too bad either.. I only felt sick for the first 10 minutes and then I felt fine. I was glad I'd recently bought the slightly bigger water bottles for my fuel belt as I needed all the water I could get. What seemed like undulations turned into mountains on the way back up the track and I was glad to see Mount Vic again althoughI indulged in some walking on some of the bigger hills on the way back. Happy to have another 12km in the bank.Off to Orange on Sunday evening and a lovely long lunch at one of our favourite wineries.. and too much red wine again. Good thing I didn't have to run this morning!
Meet Walter
Off to a very dark and damp park this morning for my first encounter with Wild Walter. WW is a 400 metre circuit up and down a hill, with a short recovery in between: up to 10 reps.
Off we went, with the whippets flying up the hill and me tagging along for the ride! Being at the back of the pack meant I had a very short recovery, maybe 25 secs which included having to get back to the start; so really no recovery as I couldn't exactly cruise back to the line. Consequently, the second rep was a bit slower. Sean instructed me to jog out the next one and I was relieved as I could see me getting slower and slower and not having any break at all. In fact this did happen on rep 5 where I didn't quite make it back to the line and had to start and cut across. My legs didn't want to go up the hill at all this time. Good thing I could have another break and rejoin the group for the last one. Times were all over the place with the fastest being 2.07 and the slowest 2.38 with most being around 2.15- 2.20. More work to be done to improve my hill running, but at least I was out there giving it a go.
Sean had me down to do the X country on Saturday but has said that I might need a break this week as I've had a couple of quite hard weeks. I'll see how I and Mr lulu feel on the day. He's currently suffering a nasty head cold so probably won't be racing so we might just pass, and head up to the Blue Mountains a bit earlier than planned.
Inside outside
I had an hour on the programme today but my legs were feeling decidedly blah this morning. Good think it's supposed to be a slow run because I couldn't have run fast if I wanted to.I did an outside loop of the park but inside the fence rather than outside, which is what my normal route is. More grass involved and less traffic. I was a little late getting out this morning.I had to have a short walk break at about 7km.. I was over it all. That seemed to do the trick as I felt better and even the big hill home was quite enjoyable. I must be mad:) All up about 9.5kms in just over the hour.I had a laugh at Scott and Gnome's comments. I wasn't abusing her, actually trying to be encouraging as she's quite new to the squad. Obviously it didn't work...must work on encouraging comments!
Gimme five
Off to SWEAT this morning and my legs feel great after my monday massage with ET. No ill effects from the 8km race or the higher intensity week last week.Very dark and chilly down at the park and it was only just getting light when we started the drills. Then it was into the fartlek. I had five laps of the 1km loop, surging on the blue cones and floating on the yellow. There seemed to be a lot more blue than yellow I thought as I went around the first one. On the second lap I realised I'd missed one of the yellows on the first lap which accounted for why I seemed to be surging for a long time!On the third lap I could see one of the other girls ahead who had gone out too hard and she was flagging a bit, so I set my sights on her. She tried to fight back on one of the surges but I picked up the pace enough to drop her off the back... nearly died myself in the process! Anyway she still hung on for another .5km before I could finally shake her off. I think it was when I started speaking to her that she lost heart and gave up... how cruel! Very good effort on her part and made me work for it.Mr lulu came back to run the last 500m with me and that seemed to make it easier, although he wasn't letting me slack off on the floats.Finished 5km in 29.03 with 1km splits of 5.45, 5.52, 5.34 (where I was racing the other girl), 5.50, 5.47. Actually really pleased with that I as didn't really drop off much over the 5km. A warm-down lap with Zoe for a total of 8km and then home to warm up... it's a chilly 9 degrees here this morning. That's getting a bit chilly for us soft Sydneysiders.
More HHH
I received a revised programme from Sean at the end of the week and he had put me down for the MS 8km fun run on Sunday. I decided it was about time I started doing what I was told now I am relatively niggle free so I called on my trusty buddy Running Angel to keep me company.I did a short 28 mins (that's what the programme said) around Queen's Park and felt really tired and fatigued again. Fortunately, this morning I felt a bit more energetic.I picked up RA and we parked the car in Mr lulu's car space in the city and then headed up to the bridge. On the way to the bridge we came across someone's wallet on the street so a quick debate on what to do with it and I ran back to the car and left it there for us to deal with later.Up onto the bridge for our warm-up jog to the start. We did the registration, caught up with Belinda and Horrie and some other people we knew and did a bit more warming up. We even did the aerobics to keep warm!Then we were herded to the start where unfortunately we ended up pretty near the back of the pack. Consequently, we were held up near the start with all the people and at about 3kms were held up at the stairs, coming to a standstill for a bit.Once up those stairs we were able to run pretty freely and kept a good steady pace. The hills seemed pretty endless, every corner we went round there was another one.. but it was all good training I kept telling myself. I was plodding up the hills but trying to make up some time on the downhills.After the turnaround there were more hills and on the last major one I confess I had to walk for a 100 metres or so.. I was over those hills :) After that it was mainly downhill with a few smaller hills and then back along the water front to the finish. At this point I was given a stern talking to by RA who insisted on the sprint finish which we just about managed, to cross the line in 51.12 by my watch. So not breaking any records today but I had a few goals for this race: to have a good solid hit-out, and to not put myself under pressure to run a certain time, and to not break anything. It looks like I achieved all three of those so I'm a pretty happy Lulu this afternoon.Our cool down run was back over the bridge back to the car. Sean will be impressed, a warm up and a cool down, we're practically professionals these days:) A quick debate on the wallet and we decided to go to Mosman and deliver it to the young man's house. A very nice house it was too, clearly the parent's house and we wondered if we might get a substantial reward. Actually all we got was the brother who looked unimpressed, called his brother an idiot, said thanks and shut the door in our faces. Mind you we weren't a particularly pretty sight by this stage!A good solid week of training this week doing about 41 kms so I'm pretty happy with that. If I can keep up that and build it back up to 50kms then I might actually get somewhere.I've put together my race/TT schedule for the next few months as follows:9th June Sydney park X country 7.5km30th June CR 5km challenge7th July Striders 10km28th July CR 5km challenge12th August City to Surf 14km25th August Sutherland 10km30th Sept Cancer Research 10km at Hampton Court UK, OR7th Oct Cancer Research 10km at Beaulieu (nr my parents house) Let's just hope I can make it through that lot without breakages :)
