Training Log Archive: Wyatt

20 minutes during the WOC Sprint Final, running along the women's course (at least the routes of some women), spectating and cheering. Those women run really fast. I tried re-running the first leg of this course later, and I was on pace for a 4:30 1st leg - the best women's splits were in the upper 3's...

I also ran 10 minutes or so in the evening, as my hip seemed to get a little better after every time I ran and stretched the heck out of my L IT band.

WOC Middle training, on the model map across the street from where the WOC middle will be held.

Map detail was a little inconsistently high. Some knolls mapped in really lumpy terrain. Some rootstocks mapped. Contours were off from the precision I prefer - some slope changes were more gradual than mapped, and some little contour features that weren't really visible in the terrain, and general spur shapes and terrace widths not quite matching what I saw in the terrain. Definitely fine for route choice, not great for detail navigation or relocation.

Rocky parts of the terrain were much like DVOA - hard to really move fast through - but often easier visibility to decide what's what.

Trails (many), rides, lines of yellow, plus compass/pace from those seemed pretty reliable, and will probably be the best for primary navigation, with rock (esp. the bigger pieces) helpful when available.

Hip is getting better, although not via hip realignment - footstrikes are still symmetric. The IT band rubbing on the L-femur is still occasionally painful, sometimes even kinda sharp, but certainly not building up to debilitating as it was before the 10k and for a few days thereafter. On slow jogging on flat and downhill it's barely noticable. It's still painful on steep uphills, although in those cases, the R-leg is compensating and I'm mostly lung limited anyway. Sometimes in the bumpy forest fear of landing wrong and tweaking it is limiting the aggressiveness through which I can thrash through stuff which is currently an actual drag on speed. It would be great if that cleared up by Thursday. Still doing a lot of misc. stretching largely on the L-IT. Should probalby hit it (and L-lower back) with some pineapple now...

C • US WOC Team '08 Blog 1

Loop through Prague - the castle with a beautiful church, some nice hillside park, the pedestrian bridge full of statues, a few of the famous old squares, then a loop back including passing a futuristic/modern greenhouse mixed quite nicely with historic buildings, and a really cool elliptical brick-lined tunnel with just enough space for a stream and a path through the bottom, under one of the narrow-bridge entrances to the castle.

Hip was sore through most of this, and I stopped to stretch the L-IT a few times, but that's a nice improvement over the last few day, I think. Either that or the sightseeing was just fun enough to help me ignore the pain better...

C • Greenhouse and tunnel 1

Event: WOC 2008
 

Hip is a bit better this morning - the 10 minute AM run was slowly getting painful, but not preventing running.

Yesterday I did:
- Hip strength stuff (clock squats, sideways drops, and some simple abduction) - this seemed to make it worse within the hour-ish timeframe...
- Some stretching
- DT pressure, including sitting with hard pressure on my left lower back - this actually seemed to help a lot
- Sleeping with pillow under left lower back (part of the time)

I think the latter two are restoring the old hip orientation and may be useful in that regard. I'll probably do a bit more of the 3rd one at work today...

Hip drops (30, each side) and clock squats (40 each side)

PM run, another 10 minute run in the afternoon, preceeded by some skew kneeling to stretch things out. Worked okay as I wasn't hurting much until the end, and even then it wouldn't have prevented race pace I don't think...

2 sets of clock squats today, and some hip drops too. As often, strength training seems to be making this worse today. Sitting funny is still the best up-to-an-hour pain relief method. Didn't try to run at all today. We'll see how I feel in the morning, and maybe do more funny sitting and a run attempt...

Two attempts to run this morning thwarted by the hip.

Probably around 5am I noticed my hip was sore again. After the first part of the night went by pain free, something apparently slipped back out of whack in the early morning. I was hoping I was imagining that and tried to sleep the last bit of the morning with my legs twisted kinda like I sat last night, and the first few steps this morning were more mixed- not normal like last night, but not clearly bad. But then my attempt to go run on it quickly reproduced the hip pain, so I bailed.

I then tried sitting like I did last night and then going running again, but that didn't work either. Grrrr...

Trying some other sitting positions now...

C • Hip 5

3rd attempt to run this morning. It seems I can now stretch it into near alignment, only for it to slip back, and me to struggle to keep my hips twisted. The foot strikes are now clearly symmetric again, which is bad, as it's not normal. I wonder how I lost the old equilibrium?

If today were the WOC Middle, I could probably warm up through the pain and run okay. Probably. I'd much prefer if this thing would settle back to the no-pain-at-all configuration like I got it back into last night.

Even IF this foot-strike alignment thing is good in the long run, and I just need to work out the hip thing, it's really bad timing for my body to try to make that adjustment...