Way back

Just like my west trip in 1976 to the Wyoming and Colorado. After experimenting with what does and does not aggravate the achilles, I've narrowed it down to running fast and yard work (pushing a wheel barrow or lawnmower). While the little fast running I've done in the last couple of weeks has only minorly aggravated the achilles, I'm a little worried about any kind of systemic ramp up to real training so, being risk averse, I've decided to not run intervals, TNR sprints, strides, fartleks, and sadly, races. I backed out of MD5K. I am going to jog Pineland 25K. In mid-June I'll re-assess.

Time: 8:35

Distance: 57.7

M East Branch trail

T TMR TNR @ Twin Brook

W HR test on track

R Twin Brook

F Back Cove/East End Beach

S Pineland 

S Community Park/Hadlock loop

          M     T     W     R     F     S      S

Sched Min 45    90    60    90    45    120    90

Sched HR  L0-1  L3-4  TT    L1-2  L1    L3-4   L1

Time (H:M)0:55  0:47  1:04  1:32  1:01  1:51   1:24

AHR       131   132         136   134   144   125

HR %      74    75          77    76    82    71

Miles     5.6   5.5   7.9   10.5  7.2   13     8

Heelectomy

One of the first pieces of advice that I read on insertional achilles is to cut a slit or a V into the heel counter of your running shoe. In fact, I've seen advice to do this prophylactically. I chose not to cut any of my new running shoes but I switched immediately to the Nike Frees (1st edition), which have a very soft, flexible heel counter, for my everyday shoe. After failure to find any pattern in what does and does not aggravate the achilles, I decided to cut a slit into my NB790s for my 10 mile run at Pineland yesterday. My feet felt great when I got home but I put on a pair of Wellies (rubber boots) to do some yard work and hadn't walked 50 yards before my achilles was screaming. I had worn these only a few days before with no pain so clearly there was a run X boot interaction. I switched into my slit running shoes to do yard work but the damage was done, my achilles was sore all evening. Today I woke up with zero achilles pain and ran 110 minutes in the same slit NB790s. Again, everything felt great. I then slit a pair of old NB 901 road shoes for yard work. OMFG, the 901s are considered a lightweight trainer but the heel counter was more earthquake proof than a tokyo skyscraper. It took quite the surgery to cut out a V (a simple slit wouldn't have done anything with the plastic stability plate in there). Regardless, it worked and my achilles feels fine. I'm a little hesitant to slit my new inov8 195s so I'll probably just run in old shoes for a while; hopefully not all season.

I've finished week two of easy running - no tempos, MP, intervals, fartleks, sprints, etc, although I did do strides at Twin Brook on Tuesday. And I did 4 x 800m hill repeats at 127, 132, 137, 142HR (all still very far inside my aerobic zone - less than 80% HRmax). I'm planning on running MD5K Sunday and I suspect my achilles will not be happy about that. And I suspect the 25K at Pineland will be even worse.

Total Time: 8:27
Total Miles: 55.9

M  Passive Recovery
T easy 1:10 (8 mi)TMR TNR @TB
W easy 1:32 (9.3 mi), Presumpscot River Westbrook
R Fast-easy 1:15 (9.7 mi), Back Cove/East End trail
F 4 x 800 slow to fast easy hill repeats 1:08 (7.7 mi), Brook Rd/Halls Hill
S  easy 1:33 (10.5), Pineland
S easy 1:48 (10.8), Presumpscot River Westbrook



            M     T        W        R      F       S        S
Plan (min)  45    75       90       75     60      120      90
Plan (HR)   L1    L3-4     L1-2     L4     L1-2    L3-4     L1-2
Time (min)        70       92       75     68      94       108
Miles             8        9.3      9.7    7.7     10.5     10.8
AHR               133      127      139    128     133      126
HR %              76       72       79     73      76       72

dialing it back

I dialed back my spring training plan from a typical late phase race plan to an early phase base-building plan. I've decided to follow Hadd's method from the looooooooong LRC thread. Not sure at this point how high I'll get my mileage because 1) going forward, I will be running lots of slow singletrack, where it takes me 25 minutes longer to run 10 miles and 2) I'm afraid of doubles given the pain in my 2nd run of the day two days ago. Upper 50s should be easy enough but I'd like to see what I could do off of more mileage than that and I've never really been successful at consistently getting above high 50s.

The insertional achilles is frustrating to figure out. Some runs I never notice it, most I notice it in the first 1/2 mile and maybe the last bit if its a run > 1 hour. More perplexing is soreness* between runs. I ran 90 minutes Sunday on Falmouth singletrack and had zero soreness during or after. Monday was a rest day. Tuesday was an easy run at Twin Brook. Yesterday I ran 90 minutes on Falmouth singletrack and my foot was sore last night into this morning. Was it the rest day? Was it running 80m strides at Twin Brook (no sprints this week!).

*Soreness is level 1-2 on a 10 point scale, so the soreness is very, very, minor

Total Hours last week: 7:38
Total Miles last week: 53.1

M 27 min / 3.4 mi (77% HRmax) Brook Rd + 3 x 12s hill sprints
T 66 min / 7.8 mi (79% HRmax) TMR TNR @ TB, incl 4 x long sprints + 4 strides
W 67 min / 8.1 mi (76% HRmax) Falmouth road loop
R 74 min / 9.8 mi (81% HR max) Back Cove/East End Beach
F 62 min / 7 mi (72% HR max) Brook Rd
S 65 min / 7 mi (76% HR max) Pineland
S 96 min / 10 mi (76% HR max) East Branch/Community Park

Neither epiphany nor style

M - passive recovery
T AM: 5.2 level 3 on track (HR test) PM: 5.8 level 2 @ Twin Brook
W 7.2 level 1 @ River Point
Th 7.5 level 1 @ Back Cove
F 6.1 level 1-2 @ Leighton Hill
S 12 level 2-4 @ Pineland (2.5 mi @ race pace)
S 6.8 level 1 @ Hadlock

Total: 50.5 mi / 7:22 time

What I learned: the 2nd run of the double really really hurt (achilles) for about 1 mile. The 2.5 mile at race pace on Saturday was well short of what I was hoping (5-7 miles). This was very humbling.

active recovery

Started running this week because I was bored not running. Not so much bored with roller skiing.

M 3.5 miles @ 8:36/mi, Back Cove
T 5.7 miles @ 8:15/mi, Twin Brook
W 6 miles @ 9:02/mi, River Point
Th 5.8 miles @ 7:50/mi, Back Cove
F 7.8 miles @ 8:44/mi, Pineland + 48 minute roller-ski (two good climbs)
S rest
S 9.8 miles @ 10:03/mi, Hadlock

6:30 total training hours

Beginning of week I had mild (1-2/10) soreness at about 1/2 mile in but zero after that and zero between runs. End of the week I had zero soreness during runs but mild (1/10) between runs. The Twin Brook, River Point, Pineland, and Hadlock trails all contain short steep hills which didn't seem to particularly aggravate anything. The no-pole climb on roller skis at Pineland definitely aggravated the achilles (pain 2/10).

My training hours were light last week and normal this week but I was hoping to ramp it up this season and maintain 9-10 hours per week and see what that does for me (other than give me achilles injury).

State of the Union (between my achilles and heel)

Running injuries are a balance between running and recovery. This is as true for returning from injury as it is for creating injury. Old school injury management was RICE - rest, ice, compression, elevation, and of course vitamin I. Lots of anecdote and some real data suggest that tendon/ligament injuries recover faster with continued running, to encourage proper blood flow and inflammation, and of course, no vitamin I (again, inflammation promotes repair). Given all the panic stories about achilles tendonosis, I followed the old school management school for the past 4 weeks, sort of. I continued to train, but on roller skis.

I've decided to transition back into running, for no other reason than I want to. I did a 3 x 2/3 mi jog yesterday with 1/3 mi walk breaks. Pain was 0/10. Pain last night was 0/10. Pain this morning was 0/10. This afternoon, I was going to do something similar but a 2/10 achilles pain began within about 1/4 mile. I then decided that walking would be fruitless. So I decided to run 1 loop of back cove, easy, but without walk breaks. After maybe 1.5 miles, the pain settled down to maybe 1/10. There were hints of it disappearing all together, but these were short lived.

Now its 3 hours later and I have 1-2/10 pain simply walking around. Do I go back to old school and not run, or do I have faith in the new school and run (ez) through it? With the exception of my metatarsal stress fracture, I've largely run through my injuries, with at most a few days off. This includes multiple bouts of minor plantar fascitis, calf strain, achilles weirdness, posterior tibial tendonosis, "piriformis syndrome" (both sides but at different times), and osteitis pubis. But these running injuries didn't really hurt while running although the OP hurt to cough or sneeze and the piriformis hurts to sit. Running through the injuries has taken a variable amount of time. The OP took 2 whole seasons. The left piriformis too 2 whole seasons (that is, the injury lasted through ski season despite effectively not running for 2-3 months).

I can't say I'm very optimistic about my achilles. First, it's a weird location. While running, it feels like plantar fascitis, but I'm fairly convinced its insertional achilles tendonosis/itis, that is where the achilles joins the heel bone. I don't look forward to running with this all season, or simply dealing with it walking around. But, I'm an experiment of one and I'm impatient to run. So inflame on!

Breaking the 4 minute mile and other good news

Good news from the stress echocardiogram on Tuesday...no achilles pain! I also learned that I had no long QT interval while my heart was working at about 93% max HR and the cardiologist gave it a clean bill of health.

Things I've learned wearing my HRM while roller skiing the last two weeks

1. my HR is very low (<130, or very ez run rate) when I'm skating without poles but raises about 10-15 bpm when I V2 (poling with each skate push). Indeed, when I'm V2ing, my HR is often near 140 and its hard to have a really easy HR (say 135 or below). Here is a video of a V2.

2. My HR while skiing is not a good indicator of my effort level, at least if I compare to my running HR. Today I did a 3 x ~9-10 minute cruise intervals. The first two I did just skating (no pole). My average HR was 145 on the first (downwind) and 151 on the second (stiff headwind). My max HR was 157 and 159. I was rolling as fast as I could go (without poles) yet my max HR was about the average for something like Pineland 25K or the Maine Marathon. The last interval I did with poles and it was, again, down wind and my avg HR was 153 and my max was 164. That's about my max HR during the Maine Marathon or Pineland 25K, but again, I was rolling as fast as I could, this time with poles.

My fastest mile (the 2nd mile of the 3rd cruise interval) was 3:52.91. This was a rolling net descent of about 85-90 feet (1.7% grade) and down wind. This is also 15 mph. Elite skiers AVERAGE 15 mph over 50K. Helige schiesse! That is wicked awesome power and wicked stunning balance (and wicked high cadence with the poling as well).

This all sheds some light on why I suck so much at ski racing: 1) I simply don't have enough leg strength to generate the power to ski faster (that is my heart is overdeveloped for my skiing power) and 2) I don't have the balance to pole during really high speed skiing. This is harder on roller skis of course (where a mistake hurts more). I can run as fast as Moses Mosop's marathon pace, at least for a very short distance. But I cannot ski as fast as Petter Northug's 50K pace, no matter how short the distance.

(I also learned that skating really hard stressed my achilles a bit much)