Training Log Archive: Wyatt

US Relay Champs. 6th team overall, ? on leg.

5 minute error on esp. flaky part of so-so map. ~58 minutes on Green. Greg B. fastest in ~47. (Will Hawkins did ~45 with nearly 1 extra km!) Greenish forest.

Foot doing darn good. While early in the week it was a little stiff while walking around in the early morning, even that seems to be fading away!

Blue - Splits

Post-race test-run of the US Team Benefit Sprint O'. Compeed alone failed on heel, so took it slow.

Night O'. Fun. Lot's of trail choices for much of the routes, allowed bursty speed. R-heel blister taped well and okay, no new blisters - wore new 86% cotton socks, tied shoes tight, and taped both big toes.... R-foot problem 100% fine during race, althought it was stiff when stretching after the race. Generally speaking it's doing great on this trip!

I usually do a warmup, and this time Eric (by example) inspired me to do a good cooldown & stretch too. Finished cooldown at 12:45 AM... :)

Great Northern Goat, first 60%. Foot hotspots (near blisters) kept speed low. Heel blister fine. New one's were probably due to hot feet, and double socks, both of which were largely nylon.

Short O', fairly clean. 3rd, and 3 minutes behind Eric B. in first

A heel blister stayed painful through the warmup, and kept me quite slow & distracted through 3 controls, so I bailed.

Easy loop back while DNF'ing due to bad R-heel (and less-so) L-foot big toe blister.

Easy paved loop around crown-prince palace grounds (Tokyo.) Nervous about foot, but it was only a little sore when running or after.

For the past week or so, my foot has been a little sore when walking around at night, and sometimes it feels like it needs a stretch or something in the evenings. Not too bad compared to when it was a big problem, but the rapid recovery rate seems to have flattened out. Hopefully it'll hold through the PNWOF/Colorady 5-day okay.

I'm not sure what to do to get out of the current state of training of orienteering-races-plus-slow-runs, with occasional light pain. There may be some strengthening I need to do, but I'm afraid to inflame it if I'm not careful in that strengthening. I guess I can take more risk and try different weights for my foot after the next 2 weeks of O races. At this point I'm happy taking it easy - in part because I think for the last 2-3 days, my foot has probably been a little better than last week, even with rain. So that's good. Not great, but good.

Rerun of team trials blue short. Shaved off less than 10%, although I was a bit sloppy. I could probably go back again and shave off another 10%, but running Brian's time, of 31 minutes, even after getting totally familar with the course, may be out of range of my fitness. I would be happy with 35 though.

Foot hurt only a little today, and quite infrequently. But then it's hot & sunny today so I'd expect it to be 100%.

No pain, but not strong (or not confident) while running.)

ONA 2, light calf, no ankles (resting foot). No back--only (forgot.)

And some good stretching.

Lots of walking (slow, 1 hr) with AJ at the zoo today. Foot not really noticable during walk, but tingled behind the normal spot (on the bottom) after taking off shoe at home.

I'm hoping to get a swim in later today, or maybe just a 20 minute run.

O' Race. Overcast, wet forest, but not rain. Waist deep thin-moderate bushes in 80% of the forest which slowed progress, so there was often a route choice between slowish forest or trails, even though there were few hills. It was a little bingoish too in places - on my two ~2-3 minute errors I was right on the line approaching the feature, but I bailed to find a nearby feature and confirm...

Foot a little sore on/off near ~60 minutes, fine later in race and all day.

Reasonable warmup. But no cooldown... oops.

Blue - Splits

Rest day. R-foot mildly sore this midday and evening, although it's dumping down rain... Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be better so the race will probably be okay as far as the foot goes.

I wonder what exercises I should be doing to strengthen my foot beyond it's current sore-when-the-weather-is-bad state?

Was planning to swim but the pool was closed. Trying to rest foot so did some walking loops up a steep hill to get some HR exercise w/o much foot impact.

Foot good, weather sunny.

Foot much better today, as the weather became sunny, and I switched insoles/shoe usage around. Foot totally fine during warmup/cooldown run. Very lightly sore during some of the calf work (afterwards I thought probably should drop that back a notch too.) And lightly sore on and off for about an hour, about 2 hours after the jog-to-gym-and-gym-weights.

I feel better than yesterday, in that I think it's less likely that I did some significant reinjury.

I plan to do water aerobics, or maybe swim tomorrow morning. Nothing on Saturday, then O' on Sunday. O' will use active ankle and will include warmup and bailout if needed...

Next week will probably be fairly light, and the week I'll try to do something short while in Japan (business trip...)

Ran in the rain, 90% on grass, in old O' shoes. R-foot mildly sore before I started and didn't get better during run.

My foot is now moderately sore in the spot this afternoon. What's up with that? What's changed?

A) It's pretty rainy today, but this pain seems a little worse and more persistent than any of the rain related pain for the last 2-3 weeks.
B) I got new running shoes and I ran 30 minute in them on Monday, ~50% on pavement. Foot didn't bother me much then.
C) I walked in my old orthotics around a parking lot and did a little running (a few short chases of kids) which made my foot sore fairly quickly (see earlier note.) I've since replaced the insoles in my walking shoes, but still not with the same Spenco insoles.
D) I taped and didn't wear an Active Ankle on Sunday. First time I've done that since an earlier attempt that seemed to cause some issues. I guess I'll need to put the active ankle back in for running.
E) I did a 5 min/km Park O' on Saturday, but the pain didn't get particuarly noticable until Tuesday...?

Actions:
Overall) No running at all until Sunday's orienteering, and then only Green?
A) Reassess tomorrow and Friday as the weather improves.
B) I think the new running shoes are okay ??? but 30 minutes w/15 on pavement, w/no active ankle may be bad. No more >10 min. paved runs for a week or two.
C) Wear new running shoes when walking outside until new Spenco's arrive (and go into walking shoes.)
D) Wear Active Ankle on O'run this weekend and any future runs of > 10 minutes, as I had been doing up until last Saturday.
E) As I had planned before, no really hard runs until this thing totally heals. I didn't expect the Park-O' to be quite that fast, but then it was mass-start and only 3 easy km, so I may have exceeded my current speed limit.

By the way, I got new running shoes on Friday. Nike Pegasus. Apparently some of the more snug fitting of running shoes - to approach the snug-fitting, good feeling of my O' shoes.

I first wore them on yesterday's 30 minute run. They worked out okay, although my right toes went slightly numb near the end. I think I may have gotten a little overenthusiastic when trying to make them tight. A little looseing near the toe laces and all was well.

It was also my longest mostly-paved run in running shoes since the foot injury, and my R-foot injury didn't hurt. Good!

However, as a result, I moved my cheap Spenco orthotics from my old running/walking shoes to my new running shoes, and my old running shoes became my walking shoes. Since's I'm out of Spenco orthotics, and to try them out again, I put my fancy orthotics in my walking shoes.

Running around the parking lot with kids in the afternoon, my foot injury got a little sore. I thought it might have been the early run. However, my foot was totally fine barefoot around the house, and even in sandals outside. Then, in the evening, I put on my walking shoes w/fancy orthotics and walked ~100m across the parking lot. Ouch again. Not major, but enough to suspect that those orthotics are a big part of the issue with my foot injury (at least at keeping it bad, but not at instigating it, since I wasn't wearing them during the race.)

Anyway. The old fancy orthotics went on the shelf, and I just ordered some more Spenco's online.

To/from Gym. Foot a little sore during early part of run. Ended run with soccer drills and foot got better.

A little sloppy on several attacks (patchy briars didn't help), but I could have used compass/pace a heck of a lot better. Running felt good and I think I was finally running at aerobic limits for the whole race, with no foot pain limits. Yay!

Need to warm up better... but with two kids and Angelica waiting...

RED - Splits