Progress!

Monday, December 6, 2010

The week after I got home from Calgary was a bust. I caught a nasty cold so all training came to a screaming halt. I started up again last week and am back to feeling energized. Matt has been structuring my training so that a decent amount of aerobic work is done daily on the elliptical trainer while inroducing a little running. Last week we bumped up my run from 10′ to 15′. I run right off of the elliptical. It’s a bit like a brick workout. An hour with my quads taking the brunt of abuse makes for a heavy-legged start to a run. This week we’ll start to seperate the two.  There’s too much twisting and the movement with the arms is unnatural and awkward for me on the elliptical so I have mastered actually running on it.  As long as I use a machine with pedals that are on a slight upward angle, I can keep my weight on my mid-foot, lean slightly forward, use my arms exactly as I do when I run and… ”run”!  I am surprised at how close  you can get to a proper running motion and focusing on my form makes the time pass quickly. I take holding good form on this thing seriously. The last thing I need is to get injured from using a x-training machine so getting away from those goofy poles has allowed me to run tall.

I’m running now on the soft cedar chip trails and I am thrilled that I haven’t felt any pain or discomfort. So far so good. I saw Dr. Backus today for my pelvis stability tests and he was happy to see the running hasn’t stalled my healing so he gave the green light to continue slowly adding time to my runs weekly.

I have been very diligent with consistent strength, balance and flexibility stuff  which I think has helped my improvement. Gaining back my strength has been more of a challenge than anything else. I lost a lot of muscle or at least my muscles went into hiding from doing so little weight-bearing for over a month and I’ve had to start back at it very gradually. I am pretty much back to where I was before I got sick with my strength routine.

I am still hiking every day. If anything positive came out of this ordeal, it’s been that I have hiked hours and hours on most of the island’s most stunning trails.

Here’s what training I’ve been up to:

Tuesday, Novemeber 23:  Sick = Zilch

Wednesday: Zilch

Thursday: am: Hike in the snow!

pm: 30′ spin on the trainer + strength/core [Total: 30']

Friday: Feeling lousy still = Zilch

Saturday: 50′ easy elliptical, 10′ treadmill run, strength/core [Total: 60']

Sunday: 50′ steady elliptical run, 10′ treadmill run  [Total: 60']

Monday: 50′ steady elliptical run, 10′ trail run, strength/core  [Total: 60']

pm: 75′ hike

Tuesday: 60′ steady elliptical run, 15′ trail run  [Total: 75']

Wednesday: am: 10′ wu 8 x 5′ (1′) 10′ wd elliptical run, 15′ trail run  [Total: 85']

pm: hike strength/core

Thursday: am: 60′ easy/steady elliptical run, 15′ trail run (5:36/km) [Total: 75']

pm: 75′ hike

Friday: am: 10′ wu 8 x 5′ (1′) 10′ wd elliptical run, 15′ trail run (5:14/km), strength/core [Total: 85']

pm: 70′ hike

Saturday: 60′ easy/steady elliptical run, 15′ trail run (5:07/km)  [Total: 75']

Sunday: am 80′ easy/steady elliptical run, scheduled day off from running [Total: 80']

Monday (Today): 60′ easy elliptical run, 20′ easy pool run

pm: 20′ trail run (5:05/km) [Total: 100']