Damaged goods

To close out the McDowell Mountain race last Saturday, here is how I fared:

Overall: 46 out of 51 runners
Age group: 19 out of 20 runners

I've never pretended I'm super-fast, just durable (though secretly, I'd love to keep improving my 50k times).

This is the first race in a long time that I have almost been incapacitated afterwards. I didn't even feel this bad after the 50 mile Black Hills race. Or IMAZ. While Sunday evening you might not think I'd done anything special, come Sunday however, I was in bad shape. I would have paid a ba-zillion dollars for someone to install one of those motorized chairs going up the stairs. Seriously. That's zillion, with a 'ba' in front...

I was walking on my heels all day Sunday and into Monday - legs locked afraid to put pressure on my quads and therefore reeking havoc on my lower back. Side-stepping down the stairs (unsuccessfully I might add because of the damn garland wrapped around the railing) was only part of the hilarity that ensued in our house that day. Even the kids could have crippled me with a well-placed jab to the thigh. It didn't help that we had to stand in line for about 2 hours to get Santa pictures with the kids either...

Thankfully I had a massage scheduled on Monday morning. I reconsidered after I realized that the massage might actually hurt more than finishing the race on Saturday. And it did. Quinn (AFC Chiropractic) is great and is just doing her job but secretly, I'm sure she loves to make grown men squirm and whimper by just pressing your IT band with her thumb.

Turns out, a massage is just what the body needed.

I am on the mend today and managed to get out for a short recovery run in between the rain storms. There are only a few short weeks of training between my next races (Yes, multiple. Yes, less than 5 days apart) in January. More about that later.

Namaste

During this stretch of training and physical rehabilitation, I committed to myself that I would incorporate several things into my regiment. They include:

1. Speed work (shorter workouts at high intensity)
2. Massage therapy
3. Yoga

I won't bore you with details of the first one - it's just part of the work out schedule. Like this morning, I was not focused on distance of my bike ride, only how fast I was going. Studies have shown that you get the same benefits from doing a short interval, high intensity workout than you do from a longer medium-to-low intensity workout.

Let's talk about #2 and #3 a bit.

If you've been to a spa and gotten a massage, you walk out with a relaxed body, tranquil mind and that lingering scent of lavender in every orifice of your body. If you've ever done (sports) massage therapy, you probably know that it's not quite the same experience. My massage therapist is a petite thing - she weighs about a buck-10 at the most, yet has the ability to make me whimper like a small child with the amount of pressure she can apply with her hands and elbows.

If you consider the amount of work and force you put on the body during a day, week or month of training it is hardly unreasonable for those same muscles to revolt at the idea of being relaxed or straightened out. They're so used to being wound SO tight that anyone giving them attention is going to have their work cut out for them.

I had a massage on Monday and I am still "recovering" from it. I apparently needed it. My feeble attempt at swimming on Tuesday afternoon was met with muscular resistance and fatigue. After 250 yards warm up and a struggle just to get through another 1000 yards, I packed it in. <sigh> It's cool. I hopped into the hot tub for a while and focused on self-massaging my calves and legs which were still a bit tight from Monday's run.

...on to #3...

It's simple. I'm going to start doing yoga twice a week. The hope being that the added flexibility will help the body 'unwind' and relax so that the massage sessions (shooting for twice a month) won't take so much recovery time.

Hello downward dog...