Recover Your Stride

Top Ranked Running Blogs

2012-01-28T16:54:00.003-05:00

There are a lot of good running blogs out there and many of them are filled with information, inspiration, and anything else someone just might jot down. I write my blog because I can go back and remember things I have done or tried as well as a place to find links to things I found interesting at an earlier date. I try to make Recover Your Stride a mix of the personal, injuries and recovery as well as a place to write about training and racing. I do like to focus on all sorts of injuries and finding out how the body works. I also have tried to include the history of running from my point of view having been running since 1972 and I think I have provided lot of good information such as reports on the early years of the Falmouth Road Race. As a fan of the sport I include information on current elite running events and races that interest me. I also review books that I read, videos that I use, or other equipment that I find valuable. If you think I do a lot of these, you should just see how many books I read and running tools I try that I never mention here. I just like the sport of running, so my blog is a big mix of things I enjoy. If someone finds it interesting then I find that encouraging.

On the left side of my blog, I include some blogs that I like to follow. Some are from my local friends and teammates as I enjoy getting inspired by their endeavors. Others are blogs I have found whose authors offer good information on human movement and health.

Rick Kimbal over at Marathon Training Schedule started the new year with a blog post of his picks for the Top 100 Running Blogs of 2012 and I am happy to see that my blog is on the list at number 86, ultimately slotted just two places behind a blog called The Boring Runner!

There is another blog ranking website that lists The Top 50 Running Blogs. Rather than being based on an opinion, Blog Rank uses over 20 different factors to rank the blogs in any category. Some of the factors include: RSS membership, incoming links, Compete Alexa,and Technorati ranking, and social sites popularity. Currently Recover Your Stride is ranked 35th on this site for running blogs.

I guess it is encouraging that someone likes reading my ramblings. Thank-you to all the readers who do check in here. If you are looking for other blogs to read, you might want to check out some of the blogs on either of these two ranking lists.

Running: The Slow and Running: The Show

2012-01-22T14:36:00.000-05:00

Running: The Slow:
I still can't get the mileage going as I had to take 3 days off due to the third round of trigger-point injections.

Monday: 5 miles treadmill
Tuesday: 3 miles treadmill
Wednesday: 2 miles treadmill
Thursday: trigger point injections
Friday: no run
Saturday: no run
Sunday: Freeze Your Buns 5k 23:45

I had the third series of trigger point injections in my glutes. This time the trigger points were more discreet, but I had 4 shots in my upper glute maximus and piriformis. One of the shots was much deeper in the muscle. I may be done with these shots. They have been interesting and have certainly loosened up my chronically tight muscles. During the final appointment in two weeks, she may look at other muscle such as the hamstring and calf, which she said were really tight, but she can only do some many shots per session.

My legs feel good while racing, but I have no conditioning as it is my breathing that slows me down in these races. My breathing is part conditioning and a whole lot of extra weight. If I were to go to the tables that say how much each extra pound slows you down for a mile (1 pound = 2 seconds/mile), and ran that fast in a 5k, I would be super thrilled with my time and back to running near the front of the pack. As it was, I ran about 6 seconds slower than 2 weeks ago. It was the first time I wore the Skechers GoRun shoes outdoors. I like the feel of the shoe when running and wore them for all my mileage this week. You cannot wear orthotics with these shoes, but somehow for now my feet work just the same without the orthotics in them, probably due to the rounded nature of the forefoot. The muscles on the bottom of my feet and lower legs need to get used to running without the orthotics as they do have to do more work, but I do get a better feel for the road. I am still not sure how often I will use these in the long run, but I have no other alternative for now as I have to decide which other shoe I may get for training.

Running the Show:
Here is a weekly race recap show on Youtube called Running the Show. This edition has the USA Olympic Marathon Trials, the Houston Marathon, the Mumbai Marathon, the Tiberas Marathon, and the Cross International de Italica

Congratulations to the newest Olympians

2012-01-16T22:52:00.000-05:00

The 2012 USA Olympic Marathon Trials held in Houston are history and what a great race in both the men's and women's division. We have a strong experienced and Olympic marathon team. We just may be able to get a medal or two in London.

There is much deserved celebration for Meb, Hall, and Abdi as well as agony for 4th place finisher Ritz.

Shalane Flanagan, Desi Davila, and Kara Goucher console 4th place finisher Amy Hastings. Here are some nice pictures of the Trials.

Meanwhile, while the best Americans were running a marathon, I only got in 18 miles for the entire week:

Monday-0 miles
Tuesday 5 miles hard treadmill
Wednesday 1 mile treadmill hard to move
Thursday 0 miles
Friday 4mile treadmill
Saturday 8 miles outdoors very slow
Sunday 0 miles

I am trying some new shoes and while I feel great wearing them, the next day it is hard to run. I realized I have been doing all my training the past 2 months in a very old pair of Asics Hyperspeeds. I have had 3 pair since I wore this version (without the holes on the bottom) and they had basically been my snowshoe racing shoes for the past couple of years. I couldn't decide what type of shoe I wanted to try, so I kept wearing this old decrepit pair of shoes. As someone who likes trying new shoe technology, I finally ordered a pair of Skecher GoRuns. They feel fast when running with them, but I use muscles differently and that is why the day after I run my muscles are tired. The good news is that if I like the shoes and if they agree with my body, then these are the shoes that took Meb to his 2nd marathon PR in 69 days and a win in the Olympic Trials. If not, they end up in the box with the Vibram five-fingers, the Hoka One One Biondis, the Newton shoes, and a few other "misses" I have tried.

2012 USA Olympic Marathon Trials Women's Predictions

2012-01-13T22:10:00.001-05:00

The Olympic Marathon Trials are tomorrow morning, but I want to make my late picks for who will make the Women's Olympic Team. The real question for me is who will win out of Shalane Flanagan and Desiree Davila. I think Davilla will be the ultimate champion. She is more experienced at the marathon and keeps getting faster. Who can forget her heart as she almost won the Boston Marathon last April.

Pure guts and confidence will win it for the Hanson star. Shalane has more raw talent, speed, and those Olympic and World Cross-Country Championship medals. She may someday get the American record in the marathon, but this is only her second marathon and sometimes Shalane has had off days when going for it in a race. I see both of these women making the team and being potential medal threats in London.

My Predictions (just for fun)
1st Desiree Davila 2:25:17
2nd Shalane Flanagan 2:25:32
3rd Amy Hastings 2:27:11- just short of her 2:27:03PR and joining the Olympic team with her former college teammate Desiree Davila
4th Deena Kastor 2:28:40 gives it a great shot -but falls apart in the final miles
5th Magdalena Lewy Boulet is the only other runner under 2:30 in 2:29:12
6th Kara Goucher
7th Dot McMahan
8th Jennifer Rhines
9th Janet Cherobon-Bawcom this new American citizen will be an early leader until tying up in her first marathon
10th Clara Grandt

It will be fun to see what really happens tomorrow. I hope both races are much faster, more competitive, and more surprising than my predictions.

2012 USA Olympic Marathon Trials Men Predictions

2012-01-10T23:01:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, January 14 the United States will pick their Olympic marathon team for the 2012 Olympics in London. Actually they will allow the picking to be done based on racer's performances in just one race, the 2012 Olympic Trials Marathon held in Houston. For this Olympics the trials will be held for both men and women in the same place on the same day. I rather liked the trials for the Beijing Olympics, the men's trials were held in Central Park the day before the New York City Marathon and the women's trials were held in Boston on the day before the Boston Marathon. What I liked best was that I got to go watch the women's trials and it was such a wonderful setup for spectators, but the Olympic committee felt otherwise this year. The biggest problem I have with this years trials is that there will be no live video of the race. Really? It is 2012 and we can't get a live video feed to show the events as they happen and the "whole" event. Instead NBC will do a 2 hour show on the trials later on Sunday afternoon. That is fantastic, but I know I won't keep away from the computer so I will already know the results; plus a two hour show means that a vast amount of both races probably won't be shown.

It will be an interesting day to say the least and anything can and probably will happen, but I would like to throw out my picks for who may make our Olympic teams. I will divide my picks into 3 categories, from which I will chose 3 top picks for each category, and then I will choose a team.

Men's

My first category is for the superstars who have probably earned the top picks in each race

Ryan Hall- Ryan should be a shoe-in unless something unforeseen happens (things do happen- Deena Kastor broke a bone in her foot during the 2008 Olympic Marathon) or he races stupidly. He is that much better and more experienced at the top level than all the other runners.

Meb Keflezighi- He has an Olympic silver medal in the marathon, but he is getting older and he did race the NYC marathon in November. Strangely, he got a foot infection from leaving a breathe-right strip in his shoe during that race and missed 3 weeks of running because of that infection, although the rest could be a good thing). Questionable things like this and signing with Skechers seem to make it look like Meb is losing it, but Skechers seem to work for him as he set a marathon PR in NYC and ditched his orthotics in the process. He may be wily enough to make another marathon team despite a short buildup.

Dathan Ritzenhein - he's got the talent and the 9th place finish in the Beijing Olympic Marathon to be a real favorite, but Dathan is real fragile and has had a slow recovery over the summer from a strange injury that wouldn't heal. He has only run 2 5k road races lately. Is that enough for him to make the team?

The next category is the top level American marathoners. These guys have posted fast time in recent years, but none of them have gone sub 2:10 which means they are barely noticed as international level runners. It would be fun if one or more of these guys has a significant breakthrough on Sunday.

Brett Gotcher ran a 2:10:36 marathon debut in Houston in 2010, but followed that up with a 2:19:30 in Houston last year. Is Houston his city or not!

Jason Hartman ran a 2:11:01 in the 2010 Chicago Marathon and was a high school teammate of Dathan Ritzenheim.

Tim Nelson has a marathon time of 2:15:06from the 2010 New York City Marathon which is less than stellar when compared with many other Trials participants. His build-up races haven't been too fast either, so he doesn't look like the best pick, but he is a quick and experienced runner having a 27:28.19track 10000 meter PR and he did represent the USA at the 2009 World Championship in the same race. He is one of those guys that could have a breakthrough race.

My final category is for debut marathoners. Who can predict what will happen with them?

Mo Trafah has a 1:00:39 1/2 marathon PR. It will be interesting to see what he can pull off at the marathon distance. He tried the London Marathon last year, but went out too hard and dropped out of the race.

Brent Vaughn has a 1:02:04 1/2 marathon PR but I liked the way he looked and ran when he won the National Cross-Country title last year. Can he translate that XC skill and toughness to the marathon?

Brian Olinger is the wildest of all wild cards in the race. He is the only Trials entrant to have never run a 1/2 marathon and full marathon. He gained entry based on his 10000 time. The former steeplechaser was the first American at this years Falmouth Road Race in fourth place with a time that only 3 Americans have ever run faster (Alberto Salazar, Craig Virgin, and Meb Keflizighi. Olinger also won this year 75th annual Manchester Thanksgiving Day race in Connecticut). He just might be the runner with the biggest upswing.

It would be too easy to pick Ryan Hall, Meb, and Dathan as the top 3 picks in these Trials and I would be more than happy with that outcome, but that would be too easy. I will go out on a limb and pick one runner from each category. I am sure my predictions will be way off, but it is fun to play the game.

1st place: Ryan Hall 2:07:19. He should be unbeatable.
2nd place: Brett Gotcher 2:09:30
3rd place: Brent Vaughn 2:10:05

Sure I would like to see faster times. I hope for a real fast race and not a timid one. Whatever happens, I think a lot of guys will be hurting at the end. I just want to see some great racing. I think Meb left things too close to NYC and he doesn't sound too confident in interviews. I don't think Dathan's body will hold up.

I can only hope the finish looks something like this:

What are your thought and predictions?

Trigger Point Injection Therapy

2012-01-08T21:40:00.002-05:00

This week I had the second round of my trigger point injections. Trigger Point injections are used for painful areas of muscle that contain trigger points, or knots of muscle that form when muscles do not relax. A physiatrist is doing the injections. The first injections were two weeks ago in my glutes and I had noticed that my left leg and hip felt "lighter" and more relaxed as soon as I got in car to drive home. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to act that quickly, but I asked the doctor this week and she said that indeed it does work quick like that. This week we talked about my adductor tightness again and she said where it is tight and feels like it is pinching is more a ligament and this therapy won't work on that, but when she pressed on my left vastus medialis she said it was very tight. She also said that the vastus medialis rotates the knee inwards which is part of what my knee does (knock-kneed) so she gave me 3 trigger point shots to this muscle.

Then I four or five more injections to my glutes. She hit one point that I knew I had (can feel like a light electrical shock at times) that was a bit more painful when the needle hit it. I hope this is my major trigger point. She said that was in my gulte maximus. Other shots went into my glute medius, glute minimus, and the edge of the piriformis. I didn't feel immediate loosening this time, but she tried a different type of needling than last time. These were quicker and she didn't move the needle around so much (really it doesn't hurt like you might think!). However 24 hours after the shot things loosened up nicely. I haven't read much information on trigger point injections and their effect on runners, but my glutes are relaxing more so I think it is good so far. She also does PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma therapy) which I think is more for tendons than muscle, but that isn't covered by insurance like the trigger point injections. She likes the trigger point injections over prolotherapy which she can also do. It is all very interesting and I am thankful that my insurance covers these shots. I am not sure the long-term benefits to them are, but they seem to be helping me with my recovery back into running. I go back in two weeks for another round and then possibly another visit after that too. The question I have about trigger points this week is that she is relying on me to tell her where I am tight and sometimes trigger points refer pain elsewhere. Why then would the doctor not actively search out more trigger points?

This week I had to take days off due to the shots so I only covered 16 miles this week, but I think my form is slowly improving as my strength improves. I still have weaknesses and tightness around parts of the hip after a run, but nothing this week like the really tight adductor pain or the glute tightness that I have had previously. This coming week I intend to run more mileage to see if I still do better on a longer runs.

This weeks mileage total = 16 miles
Monday- 5 miles treadmill good pace
Tuesday- 3 miles treadmill
Wednesday-off
Thursday-off
Friday- 3 miles treadmill
Saturday- 2 miles treadmill
Sunday- 5k Freeze Your Buns race

I decided to do the Freeze Your Buns and not worry about racing, time, or embarrassment over either of these. I felt a lot better than I did running the Thanksgiving 5k race. My hips felt solid and my stride smoother than I am used to. I am just way out of shape and have to lose weight over the next few months. I ran about minute faster than on Turkey Day even though I ate a big dinner last night. My goal was to finish under 25 minutes. I did 23:39. My PR for the course is 18:02 set five years ago so the time was rather humbling. That time would have won this race, but instead I finished in 47th place. I was out of breath, but not pushing or trying to race and I did start picking off people after the first mile and only had two people pass me near the end. The good news is that there is lots of room for improvement and I felt pretty good, even when compared to the stumbling around I use to do 5 years ago when I was racing almost 6 minutes faster.

I did notice after the race today, that the major trigger point has a bit of a sharp needle-like feel to it at times, but the muscles are not tightening up like they used to, so maybe that is because I used and stressed the muscle a bit running today.

Two Simple Exercises to Recover your Running Form

2012-01-06T22:46:00.001-05:00

Jenny Hadfield over at AskCoachJenny writes on How to Transform your Running Form with One Simple Exercise. I have seen the single-leg balance mentioned many times as an assessment and balancing exercise, but Jenny adds a tweak to it that is very sensible to me and I can feel its immediate effect when I use this exercise and her tweak. Previously I have seen this as simply a balancing exercise. "Stand on one leg and hold." Jenny has you activate your glute with a simple move. I can feel it work when I use it. This is what Jenny says about the single-leg stance:

The single leg balance activates and strengthens your stabilizing muscles from your feet and ankles all the way up to your hips and improves your balance too! If you sit all day like most of us do, that deactivates your gluteal muscles which stabilize as you run stride for stride. When these muscles atrophy (decrease strength and stability) they no longer engage and support your leg and hip as your foot lands on the ground. It has a ripple effect in translating to wasted energy as your hips move side to side and increases the friction in your ITB (Iliotibial Band).

Those sound like the things that I need work on. Here are her directions for doing the single-leg stance. The fourth bullet is the key maneuver for me particularly letting the hip relax and then tightening it up again. I can feel my glutes activate when I do this. Make sure you check out her directions as she gives further advice in the comments on her page:

Stand up with your feet hip width apart.
Keep your arms out to your sides for balance.
Lift your left leg a few inches off the floor and hold for 30-60 seconds.
Engage your hip muscles to create a long, neutral line up your body. If this is confusing – try letting your hip relax out to the side and then tighten and contract it to align it under your shoulders – this is also another great exercise hip huggers.
Repeat 2-4 times on each side. You will feel all the muscles in your foot, ankle and hip fatiguing in seconds!
When this is easy progress to wearing no shoes.
When that gets easy stand barefoot on a towel, pillow or pad to further challenge the muscles and balance. If you get to SuperStar status, close your eyes (very hard).

Running is basically a single-leg balancing movement where you transition and push off between legs as you run so this type of exercise makes sense. This reminds me of another single-leg exercise that has received much press lately, the 100 Up. Back at the beginning of November, Chris McDougal of Born to Run fame wrote an article in the New York Times called The Once and Future Way to Run in which he rejuvenates and old drill as found in an late 1800s text on running. Here is a video demonstrating the 100 Up. I have done this off and on for a few weeks more as an exercise to work my creaky hip (labral tear operation last July). It certainly can't hurt and it only takes a limited amount of time to do. Both of these exercises can be added to your tool bag of simple exercises to improve your running form.

Update:
The Stark Center at the University of Texas has a PDF copy of the old 100-Up Exercise book written by W.C. George in 1913. Find and download it here. They also have a related chapter on running training by Mr. George published in Training for Athletics. Find and download that here.

Looking Ahead

2012-01-01T16:37:00.003-05:00

Thankfully it is time to close out the year 2011. It was a long year and I learned how much I miss not being able to run and how I am not made to be a sedentary person. The highlight this year was getting hip surgery and feeling the hope that I can recover my stride enough to run pain-free and fast. I only did two races this year. The first was the Feel Good Farms Snowshoe race back in January and that will go down as one of the most difficult and challenging races I have ever completed (well I only did 1/2 of it). The other race I completed was the slowest and most humbling race I have ever done with the Thanksgiving day Turkey Gobbler race. I hope to put 2011 behind me and start all over again.

Today I ran 5 balmy New Years Day miles to start off the year. That gave me 20 miles for the week. I am not going overboard and building up slowly.

Monday: 1 mile Treadmill
Tuesday: 5 mile Treadmill
Wednesday: 3 miles Treadmill
Thursday: day off
Friday: 4 miles in Falmouth
Saturday: 2 miles Treadmill
Sunday 5 miles

For the year ahead I just want to run healthy and consistently. I look forward to racing (slowly at first), training long, running with friends, hard Gate City Strider track workouts (strangely I missed doing hot hard track workouts most of all-I think because the effort reminds me of running in high school and college-without them I feel real old), and losing all the weight that I have gained in the past year (yikes!).

Sure I have goals. My true running goal is the sub 3 hour marathon (it won't be this year). I have time goals and race goals, but I will be happy just turning the sinking ship around and being able to lace up a pair or running shoes each day and putting in a good 8 miles or so and coming home without feeling all the aches and pains.

Best wishes for a healthy New Year to all my running friends!

Somatics: Pain Relief Through Movement

2011-12-28T16:46:00.000-05:00

I graduated from Physical Therapy with Leigh Boyles yesterday. I celebrated with a trip to the YMCA and a treadmill run. I wanted to run harder than I had been going and eventually ended the run at 5 miles at my fastest pace yet. It felt good. Some wobbling on the left side, but things are improving. I also had 4 trigger point injections in my left glutes on Friday. I think they have loosened things up a bit. I have been feeling tightness in my adductors at times and I also feel tight at the front of the left hip. I asked Leigh about this and she said that as the front of my hip loosens up (by pushing back as I run) the adductors should feel better.

One thing that Leigh has been mentioning all along is that I have to retrain the way my brain works through proprioceptive work. This is something the Gait Guys have mentioned as well as Dr. Michaud in the past weeks. There was the mentioning, but finding out what to do about it is hard to do. Sure, some exercises and taping have helped me, I am running noticeably straighter, but how do you get your brain to change your whole-body movement patterns?

Last summer, right before my hip surgery, I discovered something called somatics through Martha Peterson's blog Pain Relief Through Movement and webpage. Some of her movements helped my hip in the weeks prior to my surgery when I was in Kenya. I received her DVD after I returned from Kenya and started going through it again post-surgery a while back. I have been doing the movements more frequently and then I got her newly published book Move Without Pain this month which has new exercises as well as guides to those on the DVD. It also includes a good overview of somatics.

It is a very simple to understand book to both read and use. The pictures and text structure make it easy to read and follow. While the DVD guides you through the exercises and the speed as to how to do them, the book is easier to pull out and review before doing an exercise. These are not exercises that will leave you stiff and sore like yoga or stretching can often do, but they are exercises that feel good and leave you feeling changed. I am not ready to thoroughly review the book at this time, but I do want to highlight the key ideas of somatics. You can read more here from Martha's blog.

1) Sensory Motor Amnesia- This happens when muscles are so tight that they will not relax. One thing that I found very interesting is something that Martha mentions in her book: what looks like a structural abnormality can be an issue of sensory motor function -tight muscles that won't relax. The point of somatics is that because the brain and nervous system control the muscles you have to engage the brain to unlock muscle patterns.

2) Three Reflex Patterns- In somatics there are full body reflex patterns that people us in reaction to stress. The Green Light Reflex involves an arching of constantly tight back muscles. The Red Light Reflex is another stress related posture with a rounded back due to anxiety or fear or from sitting all day hunched over a computer. The Trauma Reflex is a response to an accident or injury and involves a twist or rotation as a way to avoid injury or pain. This can lead to imbalances as your body gets stuck in this pattern.

3) Pandiculation- This is the somatic alternative to stretching. It works like a reset button. It involves making a tight contraction, followed by a slow release of the contraction to lengthen the muscle, and a complete relaxation at the end.

Somatics uses these ideas to help you rebuild your movement patterns and get rid of chronic pain. I highly recommend Martha's website, DVD (more are promised to come out soon), and her book Move Without Pain. It might just be the method to get you to get out of pain, move better, and to recover your stride.

I have emailed back and forth with Martha and she graciously offered to do a Skype session with me. I won't go into too much specifics, but will write down the things I need to remember before I forget them. It was an awesome experience to have someone so knowledgeable take a look at how I move, perform exercises, and offer me ideas to pursue.

We worked on the side-bend (one of the exercises I had found before going to Kenya that helped my sore hip and back before the labral-tear surgery). I learned some tips on doing this move, but most important, I need to slow down when doing it. Here is an tutorial for the side-bend.

We also worked on the back-lift (directions here) and then she gave me a different exercise for my tight illiopsoas that I don't recall as being in the book or on the first DVD but is found right here.

I was also told to check out this post on 3 common mistakes when doing Somatic exercises and this post on Standing Tall and Walking.

I had a valuable learning time with Martha on Skype (first time I have ever Skyped) and a thank Martha for her time, knowledge, and inspiration.

Arms up - Face Forward

2011-12-26T13:02:00.003-05:00

A recent article Healthy Running Comes from the Arms and Head Connection over at The Natural Running Center by Jae Gruenke gives two tips to improve your running posture that counter the notion that you tuck your chin in when running and keep your hands low. Her tips are based on the Feldenkrais Method of movement. One is to keep your hands close to your chest, and bring your knuckles to the midpoint of your breastbone on the forward swing as in the photo taken at the World Cross-Country Championships.

Her other tip is on the face forward head position.

When you run and therefore lean, you still need your eyes and inner ears upright relative to gravity so they work properly for balance and orientation, which means you have to let the distance between your chin and your throat increase in a move we have nicknamed “face forward.” What actually happens is that your skull slides forward on your atlas vertebra (this is the top vertebrae that along with the axis forms the connection to the skull) the same way it does when you kiss someone or when you hunch up at your laptop. But in running you allow this forward movement of your head to cause your whole body to fall forward, rather than just caving in your chest and hunching your shoulders, and it leads you into a beautiful, free, and easy lean.

Jae can be found over at The Balanced Runner. I have enjoyed doing Jae's cds in the past as a method to warm-up for a run or in an attempt to move better. If anyone these cues on a run, let me know how it goes.

Here is a Runners World interview with 3 time Olympian Jenn Rhines who explains her work with Jae Gruenke and the Feldenkrais Method.

Well, you mentioned earlier in this Chat that there had been some tweaking of your running form. What exactly did you do, and what was the reason a need for that was perceived?
JR: Last year, I was running some decent workouts. I couldn't put anything together in a race and felt like I was really struggling. I felt like my body couldn't do it anymore, so I figured I'm either done or I need to figure out a way to do it differently. I've been working with Terrence; I also worked with a woman in New York. Her name is Jae Gruenke, doing a thing called Feldenkrais Lessons – basically, teaching your body there's an easier way to do things. Things are starting to stick now. It's starting to come around.
Can you explain a little bit what Feldenkrais Lessons re?
JR: They're called awareness through movement lessons. I was actually doing them with her over Skype. To me, the easiest way to explain it is just that you're doing simple movements and teaching yourself to use different muscles and to do things a little move easily than in the patterns you've been stuck in. For somebody like me who's been running for over 20 years, I was definitely stuck in some bad habits.
One thing I've learned about is how everything interacts together. I'll get a very tight upper body and my arms with be way up high and twisting when I get tired, and now I kind of understand you can't just force yourself to drop them and have it be perfect. I understand more how everything works together. It's probably still subtle, because I know I don't look dramatically different, but I'm not overstriding quite as much and I'm using my glutes and hamstrings more so I have a little bit higher back kick. It's better for me; I don't look like a gazelle yet.

Attack Mode

2011-12-23T19:36:00.000-05:00

For the last two weeks, I have been on attack mode. I am doing all I can to get myself healed up and it's been enlightening. I have had 4 doctors visits (3 different doctors) as well as 2 PT sessions. I am very hopeful that with all the advice, knowlege, and work that things will start progressing quicker.

First, I had the visit with Dr. Michaud who measured all my angles and joints and gave me somewhat of a confirmation of things that aren't right and what to do to get stronger. A few days after that I went to Dr. Dannenburg and he did manipulations on my knee-popliteus and on a cuboid bone in my foot that was causing my foot to be stuck and not work or move correctly. I also had PT work each week where I am getting graston technique done on my popliteus and surrounding muscles as well as getting taped around my knee as a proprioceptive thing to get my body and mind used to a better positioning of my knee. Today I had 4 trigger point injections into my glute medius. I will go back every two weeks for more for 2 or 3 more times.

My goal 2 weeks ago was to run only a mile or two each day. I got in 7 straight days of running before my glute medius tied up after one run and things fell apart again. The good news this weel was the physiatrist wanted me to stress my glute medius before the injections this morning so I ran 10 miles on the treadmill last night. That was my longest run since August 2010 and if felt good to go that long.

So I have had work on my feet by the podiatrist, on my knees and popliteus through PT, and on my glutes through the trigger point injections. That should cover a lot of things and hopefully everything will play nice together. I have also been doing all my PT work to get my hips strong. I will say that when I run on the treadmill, my hips stay aligned and straight which is very different from how I ran before surgery. Everything from the knee up looks a lot better than before. It is just the left leg rotating out that looks bad. It had appeared to be pointing out about 40 degrees last month, after seeing Dr. Dannenberg it improved to about 20 degrees, but if I pushed off more on the foot, it got down to about 10 degrees. That tells me I can improve on things.

Despite all that work, I have also written back and forth a bit with Martha Peterson this week and learning more about somatics. I found a few of her videos and postings online a few days before I went to Kenya this summer and some of her exercises helped keep my pain at bay during that trip. I got her DVD, but didn't start working on the movements until recently again as I was letting my hip heal from surgery. She also just published her book Move Without Pain which I have been reading and enjoying very much. Somatics deals with sensory motor training and reteaches the body how to move properly. I enjoy the movements and their effect and they don't "hurt" my body like yoga or stretching often can. I will have more to say on this at a later date, but her book and video are top notch.

Here is a new hip movement from Martha's soon to be released DVD "Pain-Free Legs and Hips" .

A story about consistency and durability

2011-12-20T22:47:00.001-05:00

Earlier in the year I wrote about the Baker brothers from New York, Brian and Jeff, and their ongoing streak of running (now) 33 straight Falmouth Road Races. I have to congratulate Brain Baker for reaching yet another significant (and magnificent) milestone. Earlier this month on December 10th, he ran the Rehoboth Beach Seashore Marathon and just dipped under 3 hours with a time of 2:59:53. The 7 seconds under 3 hours are very important. Back on December 2 in 1979 Brian first ran a marathon faster than 3 hours when he ran the Jersey Shore Marathon in 2:56:29 . That marks a span of time of 32 years and 8 days between his first and most recent sub 3 hours marathon. Soon Brian's name will appear on this international list for longest time spans between sub 3 hour marathons. He will be in 25th place and will be keeping fast company with a list of high quality runners, some with national and world class performances. This is the list I want to recover for and try to make some day. It may take awhile, but it is my primary racing goal, if I ever get up and running healthy again. For me it is just a far in the future dream right now, but the competition is getting stiffer to make the list. It is great to see an extremely consistent runner like Brian make this list. Congratulations and well done!

I think this shows how good it must feel to finish and beat your goal! It must have been harrowing the last few miles trying to get under the 3 hour barrier!

Craig Virgin deserves it!

2011-12-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

Craig Virgin is one of America's greatest ever distance runners. He won the World Cross-Country Championships twice (1980-1981). He finished in 2nd place in the 1981 Boston Marathon, qualified for the Olympics 3 times in the 10,000 meters and won the 1979 Falmouth Road Race among other achievements. Earlier this month he was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. Here is a video of the incredible finish of the 1980 World Cross-Country Championships. Even if you have seen this multiple times, it is always inspiring.

Craig Virgin certainly deserves such an honor. However, I think what he really deserves is to get himself running again. This recent article tells about the struggles he has overcome and still faces. His body has been through the wringer and he just wishes he could recover his stride enough to run a 10K again some day.

Virgin was badly injured in an auto accident in 1997 and ruptured his right quadriceps during a fall on ice a few years later. He has had 15 surgeries and the most he can run is two miles although he still continues to workout at a gym. He has also three surgeries because of a congenital kidney condition.

"I'm no longer Craig Virgin the Olympian," he said. "I'm Craig Virgin the middle-age everyman who wants to lose 10 pounds."

and then goes on to say:

"Jimmy Connors still plays tennis. Jay Haas and Hale Irwin still play golf," he said. "Running is something you do because you love it. I still have a passion for it."

You can't take the run out of a runner and for someone who has reached such high levels in the sport of running, it must be incredibly hard to not be able to run. If anyone deserves to get their legs back and be able to recover their stride, I would put in my vote for Craig Virgin.

I took this photo of Craig Virgin at the 1978 Falmouth Road Race where he placed 3rd.

So not born to run!

2011-12-11T23:23:00.001-05:00

I had the privilege to go visit Dr. Thomas Michaud yesterday. It was actually more than a privilege as he emailed me earlier in the week inviting me in, after he saw my blog post and a question I had over at the gait guys Facebook page. He is a busy man and the earliest scheduled appointment I could previosly get was next April, so it was nice of him to offer a time to fit me in. He also wrote the book on gait related disorders called Human Locomotion, so I was an eager patient.

I think he was just as excited to delve into the mysteries of my running stride as it is quite a puzzle as I was to hear what he would say. He spent a long time measuring angles, testing muscles, and watching me run. He was giving me a running commentary of all the specifics (I couldn' t hold them all in my head) and was very much interested in what he found.

Basically, I should not be a runner! These are not muscular problems, but structural. He was able to give me a clear overview of what was going on in my body. I have heard parts of it all before, but this is the first time someone has put it all together for me. Basically, I have tibial torsion. I forget some of the numbers for what is normal, but I think he said my right foot is pointed out 10 degrees. I don't really notice this one, but my left foot is pointed out to the side at about 40 degrees! You can't fix that!

Don't let your kids sit like this or they could get tibial torsion!

Coupled with that, my left hip has femoral anteversion. That means my hip, femur and knee want to rotate inwards (hello knock-knees). So while my upper left leg rotates in, my lower left rotates out. They both meet at the knee, which collapses down. He said that my body was doing some interesting things on its own, trying to make the whole structural mess work and these things aren't bad, my body just had to find a way to work. He also said my left hip doesn't' rotate out (well it does at about 5 degrees when most people get 60 degrees).

He said I also do have the functional hallux limitis, but actually my right foot has it more than the left. One thing that surprised him when I ran was that my left foot suppinates upon landing (trying to hold everything in line) before pronating sharply over. I wasn't correct in the last post that FHL was my main problem. In fact my orthotics are very good. They were made by Dr. Michaud's brother up in New Hampshire.

Well, there is no easy fix. He gave me some exercises to do and the reasons for doing them. Some are based on very recent research. They are nothing new, but now I know which exercises to do and why. I also bought a copy of his book, which is going to keep me busy for a long time. Flipping through, there are many references to conditions like mine.

I was thrilled with the visit and the time I got to spend with Dr, Michaud. It clarified a lot of things for me. I hope to do his exercises and my goal is to just run a little bit each day (1 mile on the treadmill/day) as I try to strengthen and reeducate my brain into doing better movement patterns. Yes, he confirmed what I had read on the Gait Guys website: the brain's mental map needs to be changed. One key exercise he wants me to do is a dyna-disc lunge. I am to hold the lunge for 3 seconds. They wiggling I will feel as my foot tries to balance and for my knee to provide stability is the way that my brain is to rewire itself.

One final thing: he said my muscles were very strong on all the testing. The popliteus was strong too. I am wondering if it is going into spasm when I have difficulty with it?

I was very overwhelmed after the appointment. I finally found a doctor who could look at the whole picture, explain it to me (although I forgot so much), and be excited to work with my at the same time. I think he found my mechanics very interesting. Unfortunately, as I left, I had to come to the conclusion that there are some things I just can't fix! You can't fix twisted bones that rotate the wrong way. It left me a bit sad that there is no quick and magic fix. I will do what I can to see if I can run how I would like run, but I am stuck with the body that I have. My body did work somewhat decently years ago when I was younger, so I need to reverse a few of the compensations and take things slowly.

I read somewhere this weekend some saying that goes something like this. " Do what you should and not what you can." I am going to take things slowly and see if the exercises work. That is what I should do. I have to get rid of the "can" part. I can run 8 miles, but I probably shouldn't at this point until I get things under better control. That will be hard for me as I like to push things, but it is time to do what I should.

And sadly, biking is not and was not the best thing for to do with a tibial torsion and the femoral anteversion. He confirmed that that is what probably really messed up my hip, although in the 1980s when I did triathlons it was my back that felt the pain. He said that the glutes have a mass five times greater than the back muscles which take over the work when my hip isn't working right (or jammed in the joint) and that is why it could not handle the stress. It is also why I have to keep working on my glutes, particulary the glute medius.

1987 Cape Cod Endurance Triathlon: It looks like I was trying to keep the foot straight, but the hip then was jammed. This was my fifth and final Ironman distance triathlon.

Dr. Michaud did say that when running and biking I should keep the knees straight ahead and let the foot do its own thing off to the side.

The popliteus muscle and functional hallux limitus

2011-12-09T21:34:00.001-05:00

This is just a quick post for myself before I go for a new and welcome appointment tomorrow. I think I have clarified a lot of my thinking lately and I want to see how right I am. The really really good news is that in the last post I wrote about a doctor who I was told I should go see. I got an appointment, but he is so busy that my appointment wasn't going to be until the end of April. Well he found my blog post and emailed me to offer me an appointment this Saturday as he was going to be in the office doing paper work. Well, isn't that the greatest? I also had a running friend email me as he has been a patient and he also says that he is the best and definitely who I should see! I can only say that I am very fortunate to find a doctor who is very eager to fix problems and to make time to see a new patient. That is quite exciting. The rest of this is more boring stuff, and mostly for my reference, but you never know who may read this and offer some insight or get some ideas to help figure out their own biomechanical problems!
So my hip has been fixed and an MRI ruled out a back or nerve problem so what is up? And what is the etiology, or cause, of my messed up mechanics and problems running. I am going to write what I now think and I then want to compare it to what the doctor says tomorrow, but most important for me is what to do about it all and I think I have found the right doctor to do that!

Last week (after a month of feeling my left lower leg was pointing out more to the side and creating instability on my whole left side) I did some massage on the back of the knee and upper calf. It started feeling better and lining up better. I asked my PT about this and she said it is the popliteus muscle and that muscle can rotate the lower leg out. She then did Graston and deep tissue massage on this and the surrounding muscles. My leg felt better than it had in over a month. I also noticed, however, that when I stand or walk, my big toe really doesn't touch the ground and when I walk or run that left foot awkwardly shifts from from the outside to the inside rotating my foot and lower leg out to the side to try to get that toe on the ground. I also noticed that I have no foot tripod on my left foot (I was aware of this before) as when I pronate forward the 1st MTP joint gives way and collapses without supporting my foot. The joint and toe is there, but it is almost like it is cut-off and doesn't do what is supposed to do and just gives way.There is a name for this phenonena and it is called functional hallux limitis and I do have orthotics for this, but they seem not to work correctly anymore. So I took out the orthotics ( a cutout under the 1st MTP joint is supposed to preload the joint so this doesn't happen) and instead put a wedge under the big toe which is supposed to do the same thing for the toe joint but in a slightly different way. It is called a cluffy wedge and I bought a set before I got the orthotics made, but I never really used them as I had orthotics. I used them and had a great 8 mile run on Saturday (my only run of the week) and my foot felt much better (of course I got sore muscles from going so far with a change in what I had inserted in my shoe and using a regular insole instead of an orthotic).

So I think that my big toe is the source of my problem.s With functional hallux limitis the big toe joint doesn't work and the foot can't propel itself over the toe, so it finds an new way to do this through pronation. Over time the pronation then forced my foot to point out and that created havoc with my knee (the poplietius muscle). This created the inward rotation at my hip which caused the hip not to work correctly which led to the back pain on the left side for the past 25+ year and the labral tear in the hip. In other words I think the problems start in my toe. Now the question is can we finally fix it and retrain my muscles to work properly. I will be most interested to see what the doctor says tomorrow.

I was also supposed to see the podiatrist who is renowned for his work with functional hallux limitis and made my orthotics this week. I somehow got lost and missed the appointment, which is too bad, because I was looking forward to his thoughts and to get the manipulations on my feet. I have an appointment next week if I need it.

This is my podiatrist showing one of his manipulations for the popliteus:

soft tissue treatment of the popliteus

more on the popliteus and its role as a knee rotator- also ways to strengthen the popliteus

how the cluffy wedge works

My current orthotic works like this with a first ray cutout:

Here is my PT showing a big toe mobilization that I have started doing:

Here is a TRX guy showing some toe joint manipulations:

Here is his explanations for the big toe joint and if I am right explains a lot of the compensations my body has created over the years:

Often overlooked, the big toe is not a big joint (metatarsophalangeal joint) but vital for performance and non dysfunctional movements. Mobility is key in locomotion and reciprocal patterns with the feet like the lunges in all planes of motion. Compensations will happen when motion can't occur in this part, which can give other dysfunctions higher up in the chain, muscle or joints or both. Proper gait pattern requires ability to flex the knee to 40 degrees, the dorsiflex the ankle at minimum of 20 degrees, and to be able to extend the first MTP joint to a minimum of 65 degrees (Oatis, 2004). The inability to extend the first MTP joint due to joint degeneration, structural change, or general restriction is commonly known as hallux limitus and is often seen in running athletes who wear traditional running shoes (not all but many of them). This range of motion is very important in the grand scheme of the "Windlass Mechanism" , which is a passive loading mechanism that occurs as the calcaneus clears the ground in late stance and the weight transfers over the heads of the metatarsals. Combined, these motions load the plantar fascia and intrinsics of the foot that help to transform the foot into a stable lever off of which to push (Fuller, 2000). As demonstrated by Carlson, there seems to be an incremental, linear relationship between hallux dorsiflexion and increased tensile strength of the plantar fascia (Carlson, 2000). As you know, the plantar fascia and Medial Longitudinal Arch are capable of producing a great deal of elastic return in running, so imagine the detrimental effects when this mechanism cannot function well. Those with reduced hallux extension and pronated feet often have diminished effects of this mechanism and ultimately less efficient (Dananberg, 1986). When the big toe does not extend well during late stance, plantar flexion torque decreases and occurs in a delayed fashion (Hall, 2004), knee flexion increases (potentially as a result of tension from the distal end as the calcaneus raises early), and hip extension decreases. To compenstate, there must be an increased drive of the hip flexors to advance the leg. When the foot is fixed upon the ground, this contraction creates potential for lumbar rotation and lateral flexion can occur stressing the intervetebral disks and potentially leading to low back pain and dysfunction (Kapandji, 1974). Add to that the possibility of the body compensating with an anterior tilt to facilitate hip flexion and you have a gamut of issues that sounds a lot like the makings of Janda's lower crossed syndrome with excessively toned hip flexors, inadequate gluteal strength, and possibly an increased full body anterior tilt placing the plantar flexors under excessive load. It is very common in the running world. Additionally, the early knee joint flexion and limited extension of the hips can beget a loss of transverse plane stability possibly as a result of ineffective use of the "screw home mechanism" at the tibiofemoral joint and ineffective activation of the hip extensors. Put all of the above together and you have a recipe for increased forces at the PFJ, shearing across the iliotibial band, potentially increased contact pressures at the anterior hip capsule, excessive activation of the deep hip rotators forcing the hip into a hyperextended position causing decreased sacral rotation during gait, low back pain, and SIJ instability. Clearly, limited hallux extension/flexion/abduction is not something to be ignored.

Jay Johnston's General Strength Progression

2011-12-04T15:35:00.001-05:00

Coach Jay Johnston has 5 videos online which detail his general strength progression for runners. They originally appeared in Running Times magazine. Jay says, "The General Strength progression below is the content that I most frequently forward when answering questions on how to improve your running." You can find his post with all 5 videos here. The Colorado mountains in the background are just magnificent. Here is the first routine

These directions are pretty simple and I wish I knew and practiced this stuff years ago. The short routines that Jay presents are certainly worth the effiort and he suggests doing them post run. I have worked through the first routine a couple of times now. His lunge matrix is another valuable routine that I hope to be able to start again soon with my hip. Jay recommends doing these before running or any other work.

Coach Jay also put together two DVDs in his Building a Better Runner series. I did a little bit of proofreading work for Jay on them, so I hope you don't find any spelling or grammar mistakes if you watch them! Here I reviewed the DVD a bit. I found that the DVD had tons of good information, but knowing what to do and sorting through the DVD to figure it out was too much for me. If you want to work on your building yourself up using Jay's methods, the general strength progression posted above is an excellent way to start. He has posted a lot of other worthy stuff online. I would recommend the DVDs to a coach, a trainer, or to an athlete how wants to dig a bit deeper into building up their body for running so that they can keep injuries at bay and fun faster.

Detective Work

2011-11-29T16:58:00.001-05:00

I had planned on chickening out on the Thanksgiving morning Great Gobbler 5k in Nashua, but woke up and decided to endure it as I haven't raced a full race since last years Great Gobbler ( I did do a leg in the Mill Cities Relay last December and did the first loop of a snowshoe race -2.5 miles last January). It didn't go well, but it went as expected. I set an all-time personal worst over the 5k distance. I was huffing and puffing, but my stride was way off and was very discouraging to realize how far out of shape I now am. The only good thing was that I looked at all the results printed from previous editions of the race on the side of the shed and realized I have raced in all editions of this race. It is now my only annual racing streak left. Listing the results show a huge decline in recent years in my times. I hope it goes on the upswing starting next year as I don't like running like a turkey!

Great Gobbler race results:
2003 19:59 16th originally called a Nashua High School Alumni race.
2004 19:38 15th
2005 19:19 7th (Awesome snowstorm during the race!)
2006 18:16 13th
2007 18:09 18th
2008 20:10 28th
2009 20:46 31st
2010 22:00 77th (off the fumes of summer training)
2011 24:45 170th (Ouch- even got passed by a guy dresses as a turkey!)

Last week I only ran twice: this race and 8 miles on Saturday. My body isn't working right, so I don't feel like running.

I know something is off with my body and I am still working on figuring it out. The last few days have been helpful. I had an MRI for my lower back about 10 days ago. Yesterday, I went for the result. I was expecting to hear something about my disks and nerve problems. I was stunned when I was told my back looks really good. I have had left lower back problems since the mid 1980s so this was a weird result. It is good news to have a good back, but what next?

The following is more to clarify my current thinking and keeping it for future reference, so don't bother to read if you have even gotten this far. I tell my students that they should enjoy solving math problems as it is like detective work and they are going to be solving problems all their lives. I feel like I have spent half a life trying to solve the problem of my back and hip. So it is back to asking questions and looking for answers.

I was absolutely floored that my back looked fine and I realised that I forgot to ask more probing questions about the MRI results. They did sign me up for another appointment with another doctor for the week before Christmas. This is another physiatrist at The Spine Center in Newton-Wellesley. This doctor will be looking more a musculoskeletal problems. I was told they made look to do things like trigger-point injections if they find a problem. I would guess they they might find a problem in the piriformis area.

I had a couple of valuable internet interactions over the weekend that were very pertinent and thought provoking. The limiting factor in my running now is my left foot/ankle "tibial torsion" or rotation outwards. The Gait Guys commented on this in 2010 for me- although their response was on their previous website and is now gone. My foot seems to be stuck and angling out more, the left side of my knee is also "stuck" and has a twisty feel to it, and because of this my femur doesn't feel right in my hip (where I was operated on), and my lower back gets tight. I have been stuck in this position for over a month now and nothing I do gets me out of it. The Gait Guys had a post last week on an external rotation in the foot. I couldn't answer on their blog, but I did have a Facebook conversation with them on this post. It was an interesting post as the externally rotated foot was seen as a "brain issue" where the brain maps out what is the best position in space for a body part to work in it's perceived "best position".

It is quite possible and reasonable to assume that a motor pattern is a natural mechanism for joint and multi-joint protection. Consciously trying to alter a motor pattern is likely to drive an improper pattern or one that is deemed unstable by the brain.

Scenario: client has right foot spun externally into the frontal plane by 15 degrees more than the opposite side.

In this scenario, this could be the reason why merely attempting to turn inwards a right foot that has drifted its way in time outwards does not hold even though it is clearly a deviation from symmetry. It is likely the fact that the brain, in such a scenario, has calculated that there is not sufficient stability in a more neutral symmetrical foot progression angle and thus has found the necessary stability in a more turned out position. As we have always said, subconsciously turning the foot outwards helps to cheat into the frontal plane, likely because that plane is less stable with a neutral foot and with the foot “kickstand” turned out, stability is achieved. Thus, engaging the foot better in that plane gives the brain and body the perceived and actual stability that it feels it needs to more naturally provide joint or multi-joint stability. (read more)

So I wanted to know "what to do about this"... and I was told firstly that,

"The labral tear does not surprise us and the "wanting to turn the foot out more" is most likely a compensation to avoid internal rotation of the hip and impinging on a labrum that isn't there. The fix depends on the etiology: does it start at the foot or is it from above down?"

Ahh, the question I have been asking for years! Their suggestion for me was to visit Tom Michaud who is a chiropractor in Newton and who has worked on many runners including those of international stature. It seems Tom Michaud just published a new and well-received book this year called Human Locomotion.

In the course of a year, more than 1.9 million runners will fracture at least one bone and approximately 50% will suffer some form of overuse injury that prevents them from running. Despite the widespread prevalence of gait-related injuries, the majority of health care practitioners continue to rely on outdated and ineffective treatment protocols emphasizing passive interventions, such as anti-inflammatory medications and rest.

If you start here and forward ahead to pages 8-9, that is a picture that pretty much looks like how my left leg works. The book is $100 and is written for doctors, so it is not something I would buy, but the parts online sure look interesting as it addresses abnormal gaits and even has a section on labral tears. Do I think this guy could look at the whole picture of what my body is doing? I sure do. So I called to set up an appointment. His office is just down the road from the Newton-Wellesley Hospital where I had my hip surgery and where I am going now to their Spine Center. I got a call into his office yesterday. He doesn't take my insurance, which stinks, but still I wanted an appointment. Seems he is a busy guy. I got the first available appointment. It is for April 19, 2012. Well. that is a bit of a wait!

This weekend I saw another interesting video on the piriformis. I guess since I don't have a back or nerve problem, according to my MRI, that this video is even more important, as I still have an extremely tight or knotted piriformis that can be aggravated by running. I left this comment on the site, because the doctor talks about a link between the piriformis and a foot turning out (hey, my two problems):

I enjoyed the video and have a question. You said this about the piriformis: “Piriformis – this muscle extends from under the front side of the sacrum and attaches to the greater trochanter in the upper leg. The major action is to laterally rotate the hip as well as turn the foot out.” I am a long time competitive runner and my left foot turns out so it is not pointing the same direction as the knee. Could this be related to the pirifomis? I do have a lot of problems on the left side including a pain in the butt post runs, I had arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn labrum in the hip this summer, but the foot twisting out is always there (sometimes worse than others). I am curious about the pirifrmis’ effect on this or does the twist create the pain in the butt?

Dr. Gangemi wrote this in reply:

Hi Jim, yes I’d say that is exactly what is happening to you. The left foot would be the tight piriformis (could be your psoas too), with the right side being inhibited (“weak”). The twist is really not what is causing the pain, but the piriformis being too tight is causing both the pain and the lateral rotation – that puts a significant amount of stress on your labrum, hence your surgery.

It is interesting learning about the connection between the piriformis and my left foot as well as the resultant labral tear, But I really don't' want to wait until April to see Dr. Michaud or even the end of the month to have an initial visit at The Spine Center. Will they address the piriformis? Is there where I could get a trigger point injection? Will it help my misaligned left side?

On the way back from the hospital, it suddenly occurred to me what to do short term. Today, I set up an appointment with Dr. Dannanburg, the podiatrist who gave me shoe inserts and later orthotics for my functional hallux limitis in my 1st MPT joints. When I first got the inserts in the summer of 2010, my foot felt great, within a week I was doing a 65 mile week, which I soon bumped up to 85 miles. My leg had a new alignment. However, while I continued to run, my left hip got worse and worse till I had a full blown labral tear in less than two months and I couldn't run at all. My feeling is that my foot and leg were tracking better and my left leg couldn't compensate and "hide from" the torn labrum (which it had been doing for years).

I was thinking about my orthotics post surgery, my leg turn-out and misalignment is getting worse. Then I remembered that it just wasn't orthotics or inserts that Dr. Dannenburg gave me. He adjusted bones in my foot and ankles as well as my fibula. So I think I might need him to adjust my bones again, as several bones in my ankle, foot, and where the fibula joins the knee feel stuck or trapped. He doesn't take my insurance either, but he is a podiatrist who is known throughout the world for his work, so I set up an appointment and will see what he says and does next week. Hopefully, he can get me up and running again with his manipulations.

So it is all about problem solving. I can't tell if there is an end in sight, but I will keep trying to figure out how to get my body out the door and running pain-free again. Never give up!

Awesome story about getting your legs back!

2011-11-25T16:03:00.001-05:00

Well this is an incredible story. It seems a Paralympic cyclist may represent her country in the Olympics after a bike crash miraculously gave her back the use of her legs.

Monique van der Vorst was paralysed from the waist down and had been confined to a wheelchair for 13 years.

She won two silver medals at the Paralympics by powering a bike with her hands but last year she was knocked off her bike in a crash.

What could have led to a serious injury actually did the opposite. Van der Vorst started to feel her feet tingle and within months she was able to walk.

Her recovery was so rapid that she started competing on a regular bicycle - then progressed to a point that has seen her earn one of just 11 places in a top women’s professional cycling team.

Van der Vorst is hoping her form escalates to such a level that she will be able to compete at the 2016 Olympics.

So in one year she has gone from an expectation of competing in the 2012 Paralympics to signing with the Dutch Rabobank's women's cycling team and dreaming about potentially competing in the 2016 Olympics. This is the best story I have ever heard of an athlete recovering his or her stride!

After an accident in 2010 my body started to change and after a long/ hard rehab period I am back on my own feet again! For me a new competition has started now, I don’t know were or when it is gone finish but I will succeed and I will run!

Monique van der Vorst

Here is a quick interview where she explains how it felt after the accident.

Dathan Ritzenhein on warming up before a run

2011-11-20T16:50:00.001-05:00

I only ran 3 days this week: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and did 8 miles each run as it was just perfect running weather all weekend. That is 24 miles for the week and the first time I have done 8 miles three days in a row post surgery. I also had an MRI Thursday night for my lower back. It will be interesting to see what the doctor finds. Saturday's run was dicey as I had become a bit lazy about my hip stretches and had not been warming up prior to my runs. Today I warmed up first with my stretches and loosened up a lot more. I also pushed today's run the whole way and took almost another 2 minutes off my best time for the course post surgery, however the time I posted would have been an "easy run" time prior to last year. I guess it is a good reminder to make sure that you warm up prior to your run. Here is a video of Dathan Ritzenhein demonstrating how he warms up his muscles and improves the efficiency of his running form using dynamic flexibility movements and form drills. This is not what I do or am capable of doing, but it is always interesting to see what an elite runner can do.

New York Times Article: Hip Procedure Grows Popular Despite Doubt

2011-11-16T22:24:00.001-05:00

There is an interesting article by Gina Kolata in today's New York Times: Hip Procedure Grows Popular Despite Doubt.

It is one of the most popular operations in sports medicine. It comes in various forms, all with the same name: Hip impingement or bone shaving surgery. World-renowned athletes have had the operation — the Yankees’ third baseman Alex Rodriguez had it about two years ago and the sprinter Tyson Gay had it last summer.

Hip arthroscopic surgery is a relatively recent procedure and the doctor's skills and knowledge keeps growing in this field. This summer I had hip arthroscopic surgery for a torn labrum and I was convinced the surgeon would find a hip impingement (cam or pincer) of some sort that contributed to my years of running problems, aches, and imbalances. I choose a prominent surgeon, but one who I later discovered does not treat bone impingements (at least that is what I have heard a few times on the internet). Maybe, my surgeon was a good choice for this very reason. My recovery from surgery was swift and my hip feels solid and is pain free. According to the article some sports medicine researchers are beginning to question if shaving the bone when fixing labral tears is really helpful.

One of the concerns that I had pre-surgery was what the surgeon would find and fix as well as what the recovery would be. There are untold stories of botched surgeries on the internet that would seriously trouble any candidate. As I continue to read forum posts online, so many people still struggle with pain post hip surgery and most of them have had the more invasive bone shaving of hip impingements. This is the group that today's article addresses. I have also read numerous stories of great recoveries from this surgery, where athletes are back up and pain free as they continue to pursue their favorite sport including running. As some of the comments on this article mention, as well as comments on other boards, if the surgery helps you become pain free than it is more than worth it to have it done, even if the long-lasting effects are still unknown or being debated I would recommend getting the best surgeon that you can if you are facing such a surgery. I wish the article had quoted a surgeon like the one I had who will fix the labral tears and other impingements ( I had a synovial tissue impingement that was debrided during the surgery), but who do not believe in bone impingements as being part of the problem in hips with labral tears. My torn labrum surgery was more than worth it, even though I am just getting running again, it feels good to have a working and pain free hip.

Happiness is an 8 mile run

2011-11-14T19:58:00.001-05:00

Well Charlie Brown, there are lots of things that bring happiness, but if you would ever lace up some running shoes you might just find that a good run makes you feel...happy!

This was not the best week for running. I got in a mile at the YMCA on Monday in between work on the stationary bikes. There are 9 laps to a mile and you have to dodge around walkers, joggers, and the occasional kids who is just bouncing in and out all over the track. The tight corners aren't the best for my hip, but I like that I am a bit more agressive with pace. I got it in at 6:55, but I was huffing and puffing like I was going about a minute faster as I aim so out of shape.

Thursday I got in 2 miles on my treadmill, but the next day I was feeling it. I don't think the treadmill gives me enough variety and after every treadmill run I get a bit achy in my joints the next day. It looked like it was going to be another rough week.

I have one new goal and that is not to run when I feel "off" and I was feeling "off" all week. After PT on Wednesday, when I was told what I think is muscle pain could be a pinched nerve coming from a disc problem, I decided to look that up a bit. I found a few articles pointing to McKenzie exercises that look easy enough. Here is a PDF of simple McKenzie exercises. I tried these and they seemed interesting and they made sense as the Sphinx and Cobra are a similar move to what I have been doing with the Foundations Founder and they are much easier. I also found this video that demonstrates a different take on them.

These are easy enough, but I found after doing them that my back and left leg felt a lot better. Sunday, I decided to give running a shot again as it was such a nice day. For whatever the reason, I felt looser than I have post surgery and a lot more balanced. I did my 8 miler and I felt pretty good and I even felt at times that I was floating down the road. I did not get post run tightness and it was my fastest 8 miler post-surgery by 1 1/.2 minutes and on my last two 8 milers I have dropped my time by 3 minutes without even trying. I really enjoyed the run and it left me feeling very happy! It is good to see some progress for a change and my week and outlook suddenly became much better and brighter.
Thursday, I go in for an MRI of my lower back to see if I do have a nerve and disc problem. I wouldn't doubt it and now that I read about the discs and nerves it makes sense from some of the stufff I have experienced over the past years. I know I sometimes feel a twist in the lower spine, and the pains down my leg come and go mysteriously. I would have hoped the labral tear surgery would have fixed me up good, but I created a bit more problems for myself, it seems, over the years.

Here is Dr. Eric Goodman and a co-author of Foundations talking about getting out of chronic pain and that pain is a product of poor movement patterns. He says that learning where the breakdown is, whether a herniation or bulging disk, is a road map towards learning how to change movement patterns, often brought about through sitting. He says a key movement to learn is the hip-hinge. I wish I was aware of this stuff when I jumped into triathlons in the 1980s as I am convinced that is when I started killing my hip and back. I even recall that near the end of that first summer of triathlons that I couldn’t really bend to make my bed as my lower back would hurt too much - and the was the first signal that things weren't going right. I should have learned the hip-hinge at that time. Because my left foot everts out, I locked my left pedal into that toed-out position, which still caused some pain as I kept changing the right-left orientation of my saddle trying to get comfortable. My hip then was jammed further up the chain and due to the angles it did not work right. Did I start developing the labral tear at that time? Because my hip did not rotate properly, the rotation came from my left lower back and I was in constant pain by year 2 of my triathlon racing and that pain stayed with me for the next 25+ years. I am trying to learn, what I didn’t know then, and that is how to move properly. I get worried that sometimes I have done too much damage, but then I get a nice 8 mile run in and it is pure happiness.

Dr. Eric Goodman - TedxAmericanRiviera 2011

And here I am doing the 112 mile bike leg of my fourth Cape Cod Endurance Triathlon (full Ironman) in 1986. I could barely sit or stand without pain at this point during a normal day when not exercising, but I knew of no way to stop the pain and insantiy except by quitting the sport. I didn't and I did one final year. I guess movement is something that brings me happiness, if it didn't, I would have stopped trying to fix things years ago, quit, and become a couch potato, but that is something that I have not enjoyed doing this past year.

Note my race nutrition for the Ironman distance triathlon: a baggie attatched to the handlebars filled with jelly beans!

Keeping up with Ryan Hall

2011-11-13T15:10:00.001-05:00

This is in a subway station in New York City. People are trying to keep up with Ryan Hall for 60 feet. This is his pace for a full marathon. Even Ryan had a hard time keeping up in street clothes. I think it is a neat way to make people aware of how fast the elites do run.

I am a runner

2011-11-09T22:47:00.000-05:00

American distance runner, Adam Goucher wrote a blog post today saying he is retiring from competitive running. He has had a great run: Footlocker champion way back in 1993, NCAA cross country champion way in 1998, US 5000 Olympic trials champion in the year 2000, 6th place in the short course race at the IAFF Worlds Cross-Country Championships in 2006 among other championship races. Adam's NCAA cross-country championship race was highlighted in the book Running with the Buffaloes. He has also cowritten a recently released book Running the Edge: Discover the Secrets to Better Running and a Better Life. On the Run the Edge blogpost about his retirement, I liked the opening quote from his book:

“I am not somebody who just likes to run. I am a runner. This is the difference between a pastime and a passion. I like to play golf, but I am not a golfer. I like to cook, but I am not a chef. I don’t just like to run. I am a runner. It is a passion. It is part of who I am and is woven into the fabric of my personality, character, and psyche.” – Adam Goucher from “Running the Edge”

Yes, I am a runner, too and that quote sums it up for many of us who enjoy the sport for more than just the physical exercise!

That is what has made the last year without running real difficult: not being able to run and compte for the first time in almost 40 years. I can't wait to be fully up and running some day, but it is not going as easily as I would have hoped post-surgery. Improvements are hard to come by, as I feel the same as I did one month ago.

Last weeks total mileage = 20 miles:
Thursday: 8 miles
Saturday: 8 miles
Sunday:4 miles

Some days the running feels good and I feel like I am getting right back into it. Other days, I get a pinching pain in my inner thigh and along with it tight shin muscles and discomfort that goes under my knee, around my ankle, under my arch, and into my big toe. I am always thinking it is muscular, but today I learned from my PT that it is probably a pinched nerve of some type in my lower back that radiates all down the nerve. I guess I better call to get that MRI of my lower back that I have been putting off. The back doctor told me that if the MRI shows something then maybe I would get a cortizone shot. I had figured this may be a temporary thing like the diagnostic cortizone shot I had in my hip to confirm the labral tear earlier this year. I was now told that the cortizone shot could be a more long-term solution to a pinched nerve. Today, at PT I got some heavy ART treatment of hamstrings, adductors, hip, and lower back. I think my skin is still glowing with redness, although the PT doing the ART seemed even more sore because his thumb was pressing so hard it was hurting him. This should relieve some of the nerve issues, but if needed it looks like cortizone may help.

Rod Dixon, the NYC Marathon, and the Helmet Cam

2011-11-05T21:49:00.000-04:00

Rod Dixon ran to one of the most spectacular marathon finishes ever in the 1983 New York City Marathon. I recall watching on television and cheering on the ever gutsy Geoff Smith as the figure of Rod Dixon loomed in the distance running the tangents and them powered on ahead to create an exhilarating victory for Dixon and a devastating loss for Geoff Smith. It also created one of the most iconic finish line photos.

Here is a video of that race.

Rod Dixon also contributed to one of the most bizarre occurrences at the New York City Marathon. Two years later in 1985 again at the New York City Marathon he showed up in the middle of the race running behind the leaders with a helmet cam strapped to a hockey helmet on his head. Here is an article about the helmet cam from 1985.

I think the helmet cam in races is an idea that never really caught on. Now, I guess there is a thing called a GoPro HD Helmet HERO Camera that athletes like skiers, skateboarders, surfers, and others strap to themselves or to their equipment to record stunning photos and videos. There is even a youtube channel just for these videos. Here is a video of a guy using one in this years Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.

This is a picture that I took of Rod Dixon after he won the 1980 Falmouth Road Race (talking with Joan Benoit Samuelson). I did not use a helmet cam to take the picture. In the 25th running of the Falmouth Road Race in 1997, I was running next to Frank Shorter right after the 5 mile mark (29 minutes flat) when we heard an accented voice call out behind us and Rod Dixon caught up. After awhile the two former champions both went ahead of me, but I really wish I had a photo of that moment when I was running with two former champions.

Release the piriformis and stop jamming your hips

2011-11-05T00:42:00.000-04:00

As I am recovering from the hip labral tear surgery, I am still learning new and useful things about the way the body works and correcting poor movement patterns. The book Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidenceis quite a revelation. I had been doing the basic workouts in the book for only two days and I have already noticed some positive things. As I mentioned on the previous post, I had only done 7 miles of running in the previous 2 1/2 weeks with no run over 2 miles. My body was basically saying, "Don't run like this!" so I didn't.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling aligned and moving well again, and so off I went for a run: an 8 miler and it was the best I have felt post surgery. Here is an explanation of probably the most important of the "Foundation" exercises. It is called the "Founder".

Notice how you press the hips back and where he locates the hinge point. This and the other exercises have already started their work. On the run, my piriformis did not hurt, something it has done on my longer runs, whether during the run or post run. I also noticed my hips are much looser and not jammed tight, as well as I was getting a nice rotation in the hips. These are new experiences for me! Of course, today I am sore, but for a change most of it is muscle soreness in the quads, like you get post Boston Marathon, so maybe I was using them more.

Today, I found these other videos which demonstrate the same lessons on using the hips and freeing the piriformis. They say things in a clear way. If you are having piriformis pain and tightness, maybe it is because you are "squeezing your glutes" and if you hips aren't working right, it is because squeezing the glutes might be jamming your hips. These videos are by Dr. Evan Osar at http://www.fitnesseducationseminars.com/free-videos. There are a lot of interesting videos here worth exploring.

This one shows proper femur postition during exercise and why you shouldn't squeeze your glutes.

In this one Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates a squat exercise to create more motion and decrease tightness in the hips. This exercise incorporates proper core function during the exercise.

Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates exercises to begin working the piriformis for strength, endurance and stabilization.

Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates exercises for tight piriformis muscl

Dr. Evan Osar demonstrates exercises to begin working piriformis for strength, endurance and stabilization.

Oh and after 2 days of working on this, I went to my PT session (after the 8 mile run). I was doing squats on a Bosu Ball with an exercise band around my knees to push out against. I was told I was doing excellent squats! I also showed the "Foundations" book to the PT and she said it looked excellent. She liked the exercises and how well the exercises were explained. She said it looked like the book that the FMS (Functional Movement Screen) people should have written.

Losing Power

2011-11-02T19:48:00.002-04:00

Saturday night we had a snowstorm that knocked down trees and leafy branches and the power went out. After three nights in the dark, we finally got power and heat this afternoon. Unfortunately, that didn't help my running. Total miles 2 weeks ago = 4 miles. Total one week ago = 2 miles. This week = nothing so far. There are two reasons for this: one, I feel really tired and two, while my hip feels good and strong I do feel really imbalanced. So I went to the doctor about feeling tired and they did some tests and I was extremely low on vitamin D. They have me doing 50,000 iu once per week for 8 weeks to see if I can get the levels up. I did write about Vitamin D a while back (here and here)and was doing 2,000 iu a day for awhile, but I stopped doing that last winter when I wasn't running. If you are feeling tired, get your vitamin D levels checked.

While my hip feels fine. I was not sure running on it was the best as my muscles just don't feel in balance. I have no problem with that as I had been running for years with imbalances and didn't expect it to change overnight. Knowing what to do about it, is a problem. The PT works on my hip muscles, but the more I do of the exersises the more others things feel off. I had my 3 month checkup last week with the hip surgeon's office. The PA didn't have much to offer as she said that they look at the joint and not the whole body. So she referred me to the Spine Center at the hospital. I went yesterday and the doctor moved my leg around a little, asked a few questions, and ordered an MRI for my lower back. He said he doesn't do the legs, so if he finds nothing on the MRI he'll send me somewhere else. I wish I could find a doctor that actually looks at the whole picture and not just one specific spot on the body!

I think they need to look at my ankle and my knee as something is making my foot evert out to the side again. Some days it seems pretty straight and others days it doesn't. The doctor yesterday did remark to me, "You know your foot is twisting out!" At PT we are working on that some, so I have a lot of question for tomorrow's visit.

Anyhow, when the power was off I did some reading. I read a biography on Mickey Mantle: The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. He was quite a heroic figure playing through some tough injuries, but he was also quite a cad. The treatment for athletic injuries back in his day was pretty rough. I also found a book at Barnes and Noble called Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidence while I was charging my electronics and using their wifi. I had seen the book advertised before, but it had a forward by Lance Armstrong and I don't always trust what Lance signs up to support plus I thought with the word "core" it might just be another "abs" book. This one is very different and the exercises are targeted to the posterior muscles. They were new to me and the program is simplistic enough that I will give it a shot for awhile.

This video gives a peak into the type of exercises. I will write more after I try the program out. I like how it says it addresses muscular imbalances.

Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run

2011-10-22T21:11:00.001-04:00

The 1980's was the decade of the triathlon (at least in my mind). The modern sport of triathlon had its beginnings in San Diego, California in 1974, and eventually the first Hawaii Ironman triathlon was held in 1978 with 15 participants. In 1979 a Sports Illustrated article drew some attention to this strange endurance race which was followed by ABC starting to televise the race in 1980 with Dave Scott achieving his first of six victories. I recall watching the race while at college and wondering whether a runner (my pick) or a cyclist (my roommate's pick) would be the victor. Little did we know that a new type of athlete was being born at this race; a triathlete. It wasn't until 1982 that triathlons really captured the imaginations of athletes and people around the world as Julie Moss painfully stumbled and crawled towards the finish line just at the same time that she was passed by a fresh looking Kathleen McCarthy for the win.

I watched that race on ABC Wide World of Sport and then watched it again when it was rebroadcast (due to so many people talking about the incredible finish) in complete awe. I told myself I would have to try this new sport and I became one among thousands of others that had a new goal to pursue. Triathlons suddenly started to take off! As soon as I heard about an Ironman distance triathlon taking place on Cape Cod in September 1983 I was in, even though I had no bike or swim background. I did three triathlons on Cape Cod during the summer of 1983. My first was a local sprint triathlon held on my hometown of Falmouth on Cape Cod with less than 100 track club participants taking part, the second was the United States Triathlon Series race held at Old Silver Beach in Falmouth. Julie Moss showed up to MC a workshop on triathlons the day before the race that had over 900 participants (all in one swim wave on a stormy day). The third was the Cape Cod Endurance Triathlon where I swam and biked further than I had ever done in practice to complete an Ironman distance race. I competed in triathlons throughout New England for 5 more years ending each season with my favorite, Cape Cod Endurance Triathlon.

It was exciting to participate and to be somewhat of a pioneer in such a new sport. New athletic heroes turned up, including the "big four" of triathlons. Dave Scott, Scott Tinley, Scott Molina, and Mark Allen. Both Tinley and Molina would venture to the Cape Cod Endurance Triathlon and win it in the 3rd and 4th editions. Dave Scott showed up one year to race at the Bay State Triathlon in Medford, Mass. I came out of the bike transition to find myself running directly behind the awkward stride of Dave Scott himself. I held on for about 1/4 mile before I let him go. He was a lap ahead of me anyway! Other than those appearances I had to catch the big four on televised triathlons or on the pages of new magazines like Triathlon and Triathlete. These guys were aerobic and endurance animals of a completely different nature than the runners and marathoners I was used to. They had strengths and skills that were beyond the world class runners, so that while they may have been very good at each sport individually, they became great when combining sports together.

Magazines and television shows didn't always tell you all of what made them tick. This is why it is nice to finally read a book that delves into the biggest two of these stars: Mark Allen and Dave Scott. Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Runis a book that looks at these two athletes and their physical and inner struggles as they race in the epic 1989 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, a race where Mark Allen finally defeats the 6 time winner Dave Scott in a side by side dual to the final minutes. I enjoyed the read as I recognized the names of the triathletes and races from the 1980s when I was following everything that I could about the sport. There was a familiar feel to the book as I was revisiting past events that I began to recall and in fact since many of the the author's retelling came from the pages of magazines I have read or the televised shows that I watched it should sound familiar. The retelling of the 1989 race is augmented with stories of prior events in the lives of Dave Scott and Mark Allen and because of this the book and author have come under fire from these two men themselves. They are not happy with the book at all and together wrote a letter and have filed a lawsuit against the author and publisher.

We’re writing this because we believe that the soon‐to-be-published book from VeloPress, entitled “Iron War,” inaccurately and inappropriately portrays us. As an example, in the advance copy sent to the media for review, the author stated, “In a sober, clinical sense of the term, Dave and Mark are both somewhat psychologically unbalanced.” We have never been diagnosed as “psychologically unbalanced” by any medical or mental health professional.

And there’s a lot more where that came from—too much more for us to simply look the other way. Indeed, “Iron War” author Matt Fitzgerald has written an endless stream of inaccurate and defamatory assertions about our lives, our thoughts, our motivations and what drove us to such a high level of athletic excellence in what he spitefully and negatively describes as “the showdown that left one battling his inner demons to emerge victorious and one devastated on the pavement and unable to forgive his loss.”

In respect to the author, the book, and the two athletes to whom it is about, it leaves one to question whether to read the book or not. I decided to read it. My observations is the Matt Fitzgerald is a fan of the sport, the Ironman, and these two athletes. In reading the book I got a sense of the respect he had for their achievements. As the author, I guess he took some liberties, because he quotes conversations and small details, like the songs on the radio the morning of the race or actual quoted conversations, that I am sure are not accurate, but help propel the "story" that he is trying to tell. I think that is what all authors do, as long as they remain true to the story. He also makes a case that both had some type of "psychological imbalance" (as noted above quote from the letter) that drove each man to his athletic greatness. Without coming out and actually saying it, except for one mention of the word, he hints that Dave Scott might be bipolar. He also talks about the relationship that Mark Allen had with his father. It sounds like the father was pretty much absent in Mark's life until he achieved his fame, and that Mark was on a type of "spiritual" search throughout his life that culminated with Mark looking into shamanism due to events and "visions" leading up to the race in 1989. With the recent revelations that Frank Shorter made about his abusive father, it was hard to tell from the book exactly what the extent of Mark Allen's relationship with his father was and what difficulties they shared, but it does add a bit of mystery and uncomfortableness with the remarks made in the book.

If you read the book for the excitement of the race and for the background information about triathlon's beginnings and first heroes, I think the book is a purely enjoyable read. I believe that Matt Fitzgerald was reaching for writing a book that might rival the popularity and excitement levels of Chris McDonald's "Born to Run". He, like the author in "Born to Run", even added chapters that related to the science behind the pain and the brains that make athletes achieve great things like these two men. As for the athletes being "psychologically imbalanced" I think that may apply to many if not most great endurance athletes. As for Dave Scott and Mark Allen, these are not really new definitions of their character or inner demons. I decided to take out all my old VHS tapes of the Ironman races and other triathlons from the 1980s and 1990's after reading this book. While watching my copy of the 1987 Nice Triathlon a segment mentioned Dave's "down period" in the previous winter when he gave up on competing and training due to being in a funk. It also mentioned Mark Allen's forays into spiritualism and shamanism which marked his spiritual search and while not mentioned in the book, it would certainly denote a need and search in Mark Allen to find a mentor, guide, or fatherly figure to help him bring clarity and meaning in his life in replacement of his own father. So Matt Fitzgerald is not saying anything new or revealing. He is just organizing a book around a race and the personalities of these two men to sort out their "greatness" among lesser athletes.

I found it to be a worthwhile read and it has me revisiting my days and races in the 1980s when being a triathlete was full of excitement, physicality, coupled with a spirit of adventure and testing of my own bodies strength and resources. Fans of the sport should find as much inspiration when reading the book. I am not sure how much the book will do for those who know nothing about these two athletes (can that really be so?). Mark Allen, Dave Scott, and the early triathletes should not be forgotten. These were the days when the sport was full of a kind of wonder and bravado that is missing from the modern day triathletes, who to me seem overly scientific, clinical, and spend-happy. Who cares about getting online coaches, data from meters and computers, as well as bicycles, gear, and entry fees that cost exorbitant amounts of money? Just get out there and train all that you can, have fun, and see where your body can take you. That was the spirit of the 1980s! A better book is waiting to be written. Maybe Mark Allen and Dave Scott can add some input, but I would like to know about what drove all the stars as well as the common athletes to suddenly pursue a sport with so much passion. It must be noted that "cross-training" wasn't even a word on the mouths of athletes until triathletes started and people decided to be more that one-sport athletes.

One further note. I stopped competing in triathlons in 1987. I got married in 1988 and no longer had the time to train plus my body had completely fallen apart due to back pains that I guess are related to the hip surgery that I finally had this summer due to a torn labrum. I trace all my pains and problems over the past 20+ years to my faulty cleat and bike positioning. Post surgery I feel better on the bike than I did in all five years of triathloning. In 1990 my son Andrew was born. The day after his birth I watched the Ironman broadcast of this 1989 race at the hospital and held my newborn son on my lap watching his first television show. I was hoping that my interest in the sport might rub off on him at an early age. Last year he completed his first triathlon just for fun! I guess it worked.

Getting greedy

2011-10-17T21:00:00.002-04:00

Last week total running miles: 16 miles
Monday: 10 miles mountain bike/ 3 miles elliptical
Tuesday :6 miles mountain bike
Wednesday: PT
Thursday: 8 miles running
Friday: nothing
Saturday: 6 miles mountain bike/ 8 miles running
Sunday: nothing

Wednesday, I told the physical therapist I would keep the daily runs to around 4 miles, and then the next day I went and did 8 miles and then I did the same thing on Saturday. The run feels good, but the next day I end up being sore.I have to stop being so greedy and be happy with more limited miles.

I took out my box of old VHS tapes after reading Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run hoping to see if I have a copy of the 1989 Hawaii Ironman. I guess I didn't always label things well. I have a bunch of tapes that just have "Ironman" printed on them and there are tapes with all types of races from the 1980s and 1990s including triathlons, Olympics, World Championships, the Tour de France and other bike races and more. I am slowly going through them to see what it on the tapes and digitizing them. Here are two interesting segments I have found. The first is from the 2000 Boston Marathon when my school district would not allow me a personal day to run the Boston Marathon as the superintendent called it a "free and leisure time activity" that should not interfere with the school day. Instead of running the race, I taught a full day at school and then I went down to Hopkinton at 4:00 pm where I met racer director Dave McGillivray and I joined him in his "midnight shift" running of the Boston Marathon. I should have a few other news interviews from before and after the race on other tapes. This is the first one I found.

The other clip I found comes from the 1986 Bruce Jenner Classic 3000m race. I must have popped a tape in quickly while watching this race as I missed the beginning. My former Wheaton College teammate Danny Henderson was in the race. He is the guy at the back of the pack who quickly moves to leading the race as the tape starts. When I googled the race to find out more information, I found out that this was the last race run by Jeff Drenth. He suddenly died two days later according to this Sports Illustrated article.

Jeff is the runner second from the right at the back of the pack at the first corner with the short arm swing. He is one of the Athletics West runners .

The Gait Guys on Hip Mechanics

2011-10-16T15:48:00.000-04:00

I am trying to strengthen my hips and straighten out my stride and mechanics after surgery for a labral tear in my hip. I have been doing PT and hearing and working on the same dysfunctions that I previously had (inward rotating knee and outward flared foot as well as post run glute medius problems), I have returned to The Gait Guys (they have moved their website) to find some interesting videos.

The first shows how to do a single leg squat as well as how not to do one (that collapsing hip and knee!).

How to (and how not to) do a single leg squat, CORRECTLY ! Here Dr. Allen has one of his elite marathon and triathletes demonstrate how to correctly and incorrectly do a single leg squat. The single leg squat can show many of the pathologic movement patterns that occur in a lunge. The single leg squat is more difficult however because it requires balance and more strength. Many people do not do the single leg squat correctly as you will see in this video. Many drop the opposite hip which means that there is an inability to control the frontal plane pelvis via the stance leg gluteus medius and the entire orchestrated abdominal core. Most folks will drop the suspended hip and pelvis and thus collapse the stance phase knee medially. This can lead to medial knee pain (tracking disorder in the beginning) , a driving of the foot arch into collapse and impingement at the hip labrum. We know that when the knee moves medially that the foot arch is under duress. This problem is often the subliminal cause of all things foot arch collapse in nature, such as plantar fascitis to name a common one. Remember, optimal gluteus medius is necessary here. And the gluteus maximus is working to eccentrically lower the pelvis through hip flexion. So, if you do not consider the gluteus maximus a hip flexor then you are mistaken. Everyone thinks of it as a powerful hip extensor and external rotator. But do not be mistaken, in the closed chain it is a powerful eccentric controller of hip flexion and internal hip rotation. We are The Gait Guys, Shawn and Ivo (visit our blog daily at http://www.thegaitguys.tumblr.com)is/ some more information that they added:

Here is some more information that they added: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2hX4qry5jY&feature=player_embedded

Now, Lets take another look from a little different perspective....

Watch carefully. Did you pick up the bunion forming on both feet (Hallux Abducto Valgus)? This tells us that this individual has a faulty foot tripod, and is not able to get the base of the first metatarsal to the ground (remember the tripod is the base of the 1st metatarsal (big toe), the base of the 5th metatarsal (little toe) and the center of the heel). As a result, the muscles which are supposed to be assisting in forming the longitudinal and transverse arches are pulling the big toe (hallux) laterally. This also means that the medial side of the tripod is collapsing and unstable. This can be seen at :05 as she descends into the squat. You will also notice that this drives the knee medially and is causing some collapse of the arch. You also see the big toe flexing to try and create some arch stability through the flexor hallucis brevis.

As Dr Allen Points out, keeping the arch stable requires core stability, muscular strength and good proprioception. It also requires adequate flexibility (ie Range of Motion) of the 1st ray complex (the proximal and distal phalynx of the great toe and the 1st metatarsal). This range of motion can be seen from :12 to :20 and again from :42 to :51

Dr. Shawn Allen of The Gait Guys discusses Gait Biomechanics again, this time pure hip biomechanics and how it applies to gait and running and compensation patterns. This is Part 1 of the Hip Biomechanics. This is essentially applied biomechanics.

In this second installment of applied hip biomechanics, Dr. Allen of The Gait Guys delves deeper into a complex topic and attempts to bring it to a level that everyone can understand and implement. Here he talks about the hip mechanics in relation to pelvic stability and gait. It is our goal to share as much of our collective 37 years of clinical experience as we can in a medium that is usable, friendly and understandable to all viewers. Thanks for taking time out of your busy lives to care about watching our videos. Shawn & Ivo, ....... The Gait Guys

I have read a lot about the mechanics of the hip, but these videos are starting to give me a clearer picture of exactly what is going on. Dr. Allen helps demonstrate the workings of the hip in an easier to understand way. Here is another set of three videos showing you how to engage your glute medius and abdominal muscles to create a pattern for correcting form patterns.

Here Dr. Shawn Allen of The Gait Guys works with elite athlete Jack Driggs to reduce a power leak in his running form. The Cross-over gait is a product of gluteus medius and abdominal weakness and leaves the runner with much frontal plane hip movement, very little separation of the knees and a "cross over" of the feet, rendering a near "tight rope" running appearance where the feet seem to land on a straight line path. In Part 2, Dr. Allen will discuss a more detailed specific method to fix this. You will see this problem in well over 50% of runners. This problem leads to injury at the hip, knee and foot levels quite frequently. To date we have not met anyone who had a good grasp on this clinical issue or a remedy quite like ours. Help us make this video go viral so we can help more runners with this problem. Forward it to your coaches, your friends, everyone. Thanks for watching our video, thanks for your time. -Dr. Shawn Allen, The Gait Guys

Here Dr. Shawn Allen of The Gait Guys further discusses this gait problem in running form. The Cross-over gait is a product of gluteus medius and abdominal weakness and leaves the runner with much frontal plane hip movement, very little separation of the knees and a "cross over" of the feet, rendering a near "tight rope" running appearance where the feet seem to land on a straight line path. In Part 2, Dr. Allen will discuss a more detailed specific method to fix this. You will see this problem in well over 50% of runners. This problem leads to injury at the hip, knee and foot levels quite frequently. To date we have not met anyone who had a good grasp on this clinical issue or a remedy quite like ours. Help us make this video go viral so we can help more runners with this problem. Forward it to your coaches, your friends, everyone.

Here Dr. Shawn Allen of The Gait Guys summarizes this gait problem in running form. The Cross-over gait is a product of gluteus medius and abdominal weakness and leaves the runner with much frontal plane hip movement, very little separation of the knees and a "cross over" of the feet, rendering a near "tight rope" running appearance where the feet seem to land on a straight line path. In Part 3, Dr. Allen will discuss a more detailed specific method to fix this. You will see this problem in well over 50% of runners. This problem leads to injury at the hip, knee and foot levels quite frequently. To date we have not met anyone who had a good grasp on this clinical issue or a remedy quite like ours. Help us make this video go viral so we can help more runners with this problem. Forward it to your coaches, your friends, everyone. Thanks for watching our video -Shawn and Ivo......The Gait Guys

Just be careful about how much work you do!

Goals

2011-10-10T12:51:00.003-04:00

Total: 20 miles running this week

Monday: 11 miles mountain bike
Tuesday: 2 miles on Treadmill (first time post surgery on treadmill).
Wednesday: PT
Thursday: 4 miles
Friday: 4 miles
Saturday: 6 miles
Sunday: 6 miles mountain bike followed by 4 miles running.

The goal this week was to try to hit 20 miles of total running without doing any 8 milers. It wasn't easy. It still feels like I need a full day off after each run, so to do four days in a row of running was stretching it. I feel OK when running, it is after running that the muscles around both hips get really tight. I have been doing strength work using ankle weights to work on the hip muscles, but there is a lot of work yet still to be done.

I am still very happy to be out running as I am way ahead of schedule. I have an appointment with my hip surgeon at the end of this month and I thought then when I had surgery and was given this appointment back in July that I would not start running until after seeing the surgeon.

My main goal is to be able to run pain-free and to get back to the conditioning that I had a year ago. Being able to run each day would just be great. Of course, I would like to be able to run as fast or faster than I had been doing before the surgery. Unless some setback happens, I can't see why this would not happen, although I am giving it a year post surgery to regain what I lost in my year off from running (and paradaoxically to lose what I gained in the year of not running- ice cream weight!). I feel I am well on my way towards this goal as the surgery seems to be a huge success for me. Before surgery, I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to run again.

I do have specific time and race goals I would love to reach once I am fully recovered. If I get to that point I would be thrilled, but I know it will take time and a lot of work. I won't publish those as some may think I am nuts. I do have one specific goal for the next couple of years that I truly wish to make as long as I remain injury free and can run more efficiently . I would like to go sub 3 hours in a marathon again. If I can do the training without the pain and imbalances that I have had for years, then I think that after 2-3 years of solid running I could reach this goal. In May of 1980, I ran my first sub 3 hour marathon and if I run another one I would make this international list of longest time spans between first and last sub-3 hour marathons. I am a long way off from even racing a 5k, but a healthy me will definitely put a year or two of dedicated effort to reach this goal.

Back in 1985 I could swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles,
and run 26.2 miles in 10:20:13, could I ever
do those same distances again?

This week, I finished reading Iron War about the epic Hawaii Ironman battle between Dave Scott and Mark Allen back in 1989. It reminded me how much I loved doing triathlons in the 1980s and being somewhat of a pioneer in the sport in New England during that time. I completed 5 Ironman distance triathlons between 1983 and 1987 and always wished to get back into triathlons again. I have also come to realize that the way I set up my bike and pedals for triathlon racing probably is what started to destroy my hip as I have been fighting that bad hip ever since that first year of triathloning. It would be a a great statement to my body to complete another Ironman distance triathlon one day in the future. I could get truly behind that goal, but I am not sure I want to make it a real goal as I have already done that in my past. I do think once I have done a marathon again, that I could do a 2.4 mile swim (easy), and then get back to biking and build up to complete 112 miles on a bike. I wouldn't have to do the events on the same day in race, but to do all three distances again in the same year, season, month, or week would be a goal that I could someday certainly accomplish and I think that doing so would be a wonderful goal for me. So I have goals, they are a long way off as I just try to get a few miles in at a time right now, but I have goals, and that makes for good motivation!

Slowly buildling up mileage

2011-10-04T23:20:00.003-04:00

Total of 17 miles of running this week. Probably should not do the 8 milers just yet, but a run doesn't feel like real training if it is not at least 8 miles. Saturday's run felt pretty good stretching out my legs for the first time to a somewhat decent pace. Sunday and Monday however, I felt the efects of the run in various muscles surrounding both hips and the lower back.

Monday: 3 miles recumbent bike, 1 mile run, 2 miles elliptical at the YMCA
Tuesday: 8 mile run
Wednesday: PT
Thursday: 0
Friday: 0
Sat: 8 miles 7 minutes faster than previous two 8 milers
Sun: 0 miles

I am enjoying doing all my running post surgery in the Hoka One One Bondi B. They look huge, but are lightweight and feel very good when running in them. I wasn't sure how I would like them, as I usually can't stand built up shoes and always like lightweight racers, but these feel surprisingly more like a lightwieght racer than a built up shoe.

More miles and Physical Therapy

2011-09-25T21:01:00.000-04:00

Before I had my arthroscopic hip surgery for a labral tear, I had read to expect to start running 2-3 months post surgery if all things went well. This Monday was the 8th week post surgery and today was exactly 2 months. I did not expect to start running until the end of October. This week I ran 21 miles. Things are going real well.

Monday: 5 miles in Mine Falls
Tuesday: 4 miles (first run on roads post surgery)
Wednesday: recovery
Thursday: first physical therapy appointment
Friday: 8 miles on the road (felt good- about 2 minutes slower per mile than normal)
Saturday: 4 miles road
Sunday: 10 miles mountain bike
Total 21 miles
I was really tempted to run 4 more miles today to make it 25. I could have, but it wouldn't have been smart. My hip feels good, but I still get tight hip flexors and a day off from running sounds smarter than to just push things.

Thursday I went to physical therapy for the first time post surgery. I had to ask for it, just to make sure I am doing things correctly and to move things along without getting hurt. It was a smart decision. I went back to Leigh Boyle at Pinnacle Physical Therapy. Leigh also runs the excellent Athletes Treating Athletes website and blog. It is an hour drive to get there and I am sure there are thousands of physical therapists working closer, but I want to go where I can get the right treatment and advice. Leigh worked on my hip last winter, so it was interesting to see what she thought of my surgery. I think she was surprised that I was running already as she said most doctors don't give the OK to run until 3 months post surgery. I had been told to start light jogging just weeks after surgery and as long as I felt OK, I could run. This is partially why I wanted to see a physical therapist. Why ruin the surgery by running too soon.

Leigh tested out my hips range of motion and she was impressed by what it can now do, that it couldn't do last winter. My internal and external rotation is greatly improved. I asked her about the "synovial impingement" that was debrided. She said that along with the labrum (which was torn) this tissue was supposed to hold my femur in place. It was not. When she would mobilize my hip last winter, it was just clunking around with no support. Now post surgery, it is good and secure. She said that I was really messed up last winter and that my leg could not extend back properly. I was given four stretches to work on. It is nice to do them as they take away the tension in the muscles around my hips after a workout. They are all stretches that I have tried in the past with my bad hip, and that I learned to avoid because they would pull my femur around in my hip and lead to problems more often then a solution. Now I feel that my hip joint is solid and it stretches the surrounding muscles rather than mess up the joint itself.


This has more meaning for me post surgery: it wasn't the win, it was how I did it.

Anyhow, the discovery of the tear, the surgery, and now the recovery makes me feel strangely proud of the many years I have been running with this bad hip. I recall many times trying to explain how that hip didn't seem to work right, how it had no stability and clunked around, and how I literally had to concentrate on every running step for years just trying to make it work. I am sure many people thought I was nuts and just liked complaining. Last summer, my goal was to beat that hip up and work it as hard as possible to try to fix it and I knew that if nothing worked, I had to consider a "tear" or possibly surgery of some other kind. In July I ran a week of 75 miles and another week of 85 miles (52 miles in 3 days). I raced a lot. In August I ran 12 races before finally giving up at the end of the month knowing that my hip really needed fixing. I think of one race in particular, the Moose on the Loose 10 miler. I wanted to win my age group because it was an RRCA state championship race. My hip felt horrible in this race. I felt like I was running on one leg and using the left leg for support and balance, but it just seemed to be "stuck" in positions that didn't make it easy to run. Every step was miserable. I had to work hard to pass a guy ahead of me win my age group, but no one will really know how hard it was to move during that race. Performances like that are something I hope I never have to replicate, but it makes me proud that I persevered.

I also showed Leigh the pictures from my surgery (as seen here). She said ideally they should look white. The labral tear (in red) shows how bad it was and the yellow in the bottom pictures show old debris. It is a good thing I got that surgery and it feels good to know I am on the path back to running pain free again.

Congratulation to Patrick Makau for setting an official world record in the marathon this morning in Berlin. I still think the two faster times run at Boston this year by Geoffrey Mutai and Moses Mosop should be recognized with Mutai being the world record holder.

Watch more video of 38th BMW Berlin Marathon 2011 on flotrack.org

Beating Galen Rupp

2011-09-19T21:55:00.002-04:00

Week 7 post hip surgery. After two weeks where my running mileage totaled 12 miles each week, I dipped back into single digits this week hitting just 8 miles of running. I am just being careful of my hip (actually the surrounding muscles and just giving them time to adjust). My hip flexors and left glute medias or piriformis gets tight after running some days. I did have a few post surgery landmarks, however. Anyhow this weeks totals:Monday: zippoTuesday: 5K miles Mine FallsWednesday: 5 miles recumbent cycle, 5 miles indoor cycle, 2 miles ellipticalThursday: 10 miles on the elliptical machine at the YMCA- former best was 7 milesFriday: 10 miles mountain bike in Mine FallsSaturday: 3 miles indoor cycle, 1 mile in 7:14, 3 miles recumbent cycle, 1 mile in 6:53Sunday: 5k run in Mine Falls then 3 miles cool-down on the recumbent cycle at the YMCAFriday I did 10 miles on the elliptical before the program finished. It won't let you go beyond 2 hours. Saturday, I was inspired to try to break 7 minutes for a mile on the YMCA indoor track (previous best post surgery was 7:30. I was happy to do that the second time around, but was sucking wind big-time. The corners on this track (9 laps = 1 mile) are not as easy for my hip. Sunday I was inspired enough by Galen Rupp's recent 10,000 meter American record to beat his time for 1/2 the distance. Galen ran 26:48 in Brussels. I wondered if I could run that fast on the Mine Falls 5k course. My best time post surgery had been 27:29. I was happy to run the course in 25:33. By next spring, I hope to shave another 6 minutes off that time to be where I was last summer with a bad hip, and then if all keeps going well, to start getting faster after that!

Starting All Over Again

2011-09-12T22:19:00.002-04:00

I had another successful week testing out my hip to see what I can do. For the second week in a row I did 12 miles of running, however last week I did no gym work. This week I also went back to the YMCA to work on the bikes, elliptical, and indoor track. I also went out mountain biking for the first time post surgery.
Monday: nothing
Tuesday: 5 miles run. I felt OK during the run, but my piriformis or glute medius got real tight after the run and into the next day. I decided to be careful of pushing too much.
Wednesday: 10 miles recumbent bike, 5 miles stationary bike, 2 miles elliptical
Thursday 5 miles stationary bike, 2 miles elliptical, 1 mile run
Friday: nothing
Saturday 10 miles mountain biking-felt great- only a bit of difficulty getting my leg over the crossbar, 1 mile run, 1 mile elliptical, 1 mile run, 1 mile elliptical, 1 mile run
Sunday: 5k run through Mine Falls Park

I am being careful to not hurt things, my hip feels fine, but the muscles around it can act up a bit. Last Monday, I called my doctor's' office to see if I really was OK to run. I was told it was find as long as it doesn't hurt. I called again today and asked for a referral for PT, just to make sure I know which exercises to do and which to avoid to speed things along.

I saw this video posted on two sites that I follow last week: Better Movement and Conditioning Research. It shows one of the greatest explorers of all, a human baby, as she learns to move. Babies work hard to figure things out, we sometimes forget how to move and our bodies become rigid and locked. This leads to a lot of aches, pains, and improper movement patterns. The video reminded me to continue to practice Feldenkrais movements, particularly after surgery. I have written plenty on Feldenkrais before as it is a gentle and powerful way to get back in touch with how your body should move, just like the baby in this video. Despite having plenty of Feldenkrais audio lessons I decided to try out The Fundamentals of Better Movement as well as Becoming Bulletproof: An Uncommon Approach to Building a Resilient Body. I will review them later at another time as well as review Martha Peterson's The Essential Somatics Pain Relief Through Movement DVD. I found her website through this link on labral tears two days before heading to Kenya and learned a few of her Somatic exercises that literally kept me out of pain for the longest time in over 25 years (you have to explore more on her website- look for posts written in February on the hip). I was free from the pain that I normally get and can never fix the whole trip. Except for the day when we flew to Kenya, I was able to control all pain by doing less than 5 minutes of exercises that I found on her website. The whole flight to London, I was very uncomfortable because I did no exercises that day. When we stopped to change flights to Nairobi, I did the exercises and I was fine the rest of the way as well as the rest of the trip. Every time I felt like things were getting out of balance, I did the exercises and I was fine. Some of the exercises are similar, but presented in different way with the Feldenkrais movements on "The Fundamentals of Better Movement".

Exceeding Expectations: Back to Light Training

2011-09-04T22:03:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow will mark six weeks since I had labral tear surgery on my left hip. My recovery continues to exceed my expectations. Am I actually starting to train again? This week I ran 4 times. Each run was on the 5k trail for the Mines Fall Trail series race. I ran Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday for a total of 12 miles! I feel fine, but slow as I run. Each run was at about a 28 minute 5k pace. My left hip feels stable, balanced, and strong (something that has been missing for 25+ years) and I can sense my muscles readjusting and reorganizing each day. I can definitely sense and see more symmetry between both sides of my body. My hip joint doesn't hurt at all. After each run, I can feel some of the stabilizers and rotators around the hip, but it is not a pain, more like they have been used and are strengthening. I take a day off between runs to let them adjust. My hopes keep getting higher and higher that this surgery is doing more for my body than I could have ever asked for or imagined.

It has been exactly one year from when I decided I needed to see a doctor, as I was pretty convinced at that point that my hip pain had to be caused by a labral tear. I made this post Hip Hobbling Around to announce my thinking.

It took a long time to decide go to a doctor about my hip, but I had some deep suspicions about what is wrong with it and after everything I have tried it has suddenly become worse. I got an x-ray of the hip last Friday. It turned up negative, but I saw an orthopedist this this week. After a short time, he said the words that I expected. He thinks it may be Labral Tear and he wants me to get an MRI to confirm it. I have read about labral tears for the past couple of years, and many things about it seem to fit my hip, however, I wasn't ready to look into seeing if I had that without trying all the available options, particularly when I could still run (even with my constant imbalances, stability issues, and loss of coordination in the hips).

It is also interesting to note that in that post I made one year ago, I mentioned what I though recovery would be like:

If I need surgery, it seems like it might take 6 months before you can return to running, and a year until you are back in form.

Well, this is what I mean by exceeding expectation. I returned to light running 4 weeks post surgery. I have a long way to go, but that prediction was way off! I did have one prediction that was spot on, however, as I wrote in the same post last year:

I haven't been able to run since the aborted run on Tuesday. I have been able to eat extra ice cream to compensate (this won't be good).

I was extremely accurate on that! I only was able to do a few exploratory runs here and there over the past year.What a miserable year for someone who likes to run and exercise. I compensated by eating I guess, or at least not reducing my eating as I was no longer burning calories. Yeah, I ate ice cream and it wasn't good for me. I now have 40+extra pounds from one year of inactivity and I predict it is going to take a year to take it all off, but at the current rate of progression, I predict it is going to be a very good year.

A Fresh Beginning: Running Again

2011-08-29T20:13:00.001-04:00

Boy does it feel good to run outside again! Last week I added "jogging' on the indoor track to my recovery from surgery. I added 1 mile at the end of three different indoor bike/elliptical machine workouts. The first day I did it I ran the mile in 10 minutes flat. The next time, knowing I that survived the first run, I did it in 8:30. The third day, I completed one mile in 7:30. I am happy to run, even if it is slowly.

Today, I had to try running outdoors. It was such a lovely day and tomorrow I go back to teaching, so I needed a nice summer run in the woods. I went out to Mine Falls and did the trail series 5K loop. My goal was to run the whole way unless I felt pain and to complete the loop in under 30 minutes. I ran it in 27:51 which I will take, even though last August my fastest 5k was 19:11 with a bad hip. I have a long way to go, but at least I am a jogger now! Actually the legs felt good, it was just the breathing that was labored-I guess that is what one year of inactivity and 40 extra pounds can do. It is great to be able to progress so far just 5 weeks post surgery and I am exceeding expectations of what recovery is like post hip surgery.

Star American sprinter Tyson Gay had the same labral tear surgery as me and his surgery was a couple weeks earlier than mine. In an article last week, Tyson said his surgery was successful..But his recovery is much slower than mine:

Gay is one of the fastest men on the planet, but his rehab has been tediously slow from hip surgery last month. His right hamstring is weak and he still walks with a slight limp.

These days, Gay trumpets his biggest accomplishment as being able to walk backward in a swimming pool.

Of course, I am sure an injured Tyson Gay could hop a 100 meters on one leg faster than I could run it with two healthy legs!

Creaking...

2011-08-24T19:42:00.002-04:00

It has been just four weeks and two days since my hip surgery (arthroscopic for a torn labrum) and I am testing out running again. Today' workout: 1/2 mile around the block. This was my second run. I ran around the block a couple days ago and nothing bad happened so I tried it again today. After "jogging" around the block, I went to the YMCA and did 10 miles on the recumbent bicycle, then 3 miles on the elliptical, and finally I ventured forth to attempt one mile on the track. It took 10 minutes, but it is a starting place. The new Nashua YMCA has been great for me. I have been using the elliptical for a couple weeks now. Thw longest distance I have completed on the elliptical is 7 miles on the day after the Falmouth Road Race and I did so in its honor. That was also just 3 weeks post surgery. I am happy with my recovery, but the joints are a bit creaky.

Speaking of Creaking, my son Andrew did an internship at Regenerate Music Company in Tennessee this summer. At the end of the summer, he was allowed to record and produce his own song. Andrew wrote "Creaking Door", recorded and performed the singing and guitars (everything but the bass and drums), and produced the music track. It has become my favorite song of the summer.You can listen to it here. I think he did an excellent job for being self-taught in singing, writing, and playing. You can even download it for free if you like it. It is a little tough to hear your son, who is exactly half my age, wishing for a moment that he was younger. I would gladly take his 21 years!

Two other Regenerate musicians I enjoyed listening to this summer (and Andrew got to work with) are Hawkboy and the smooth voiced Asiah Mehok. Here are both of their versions of Hawkboy's Two-Bit.

Chasing Ghosts by Philip Reilly

2011-08-22T21:31:00.002-04:00

I was looking for another interesting and inspiring book to read as I recover from surgery and came upon a fictional story called Chasing Ghosts written by Philip Reilly that was released earlier this year. Recommendations for the book compared it to the classic Once a Runner so I decided to order it for reading on my Kindle. The book was an excellent and entertaining read. The story rang true as it was written by runner and tells the story of Joey McNeal, a runner from Philadelphia, who decides to take out his running shoes one more time to see how far he can really go with his talent after having retired from running post-collegiality. Still having regrets about his racing career, he decides to vanquish any ghosts of his past, so he doesn't have to ask, "What if?" As he says to his girlfriend midway through the book as she question his devotion to running:

You want to know why I am running so hard? Because I still can. It's what I do, heck it's what I am. If I am not training hard for something, then I feel like something's missing. Ever since I was twelve years old, I've run....I just need to know. I need to know how good I can be before it's too late... Every time I wake up in the morning with aches in muscles I didn't know I even had, I realize I am not 20 years old anymore. But I sure ain't dead either...I want to run to the best of my abilities and try to be great.

That quote tells it like it is for many a runner. It is a story that runners from aging weekend warriors to highly competitive athletes can thoroughly enjoy, because it is the story that we all live every time we go out on a training run in anticipation of getting the best out of our bodies. Joey McNeal had given up competitive running and was working as a teacher and coach when he decided to give running one more shot. He gets three former teammates and friends to join him in his running quest. An acerbic old Irish coach guides them as Joey strives to make the 1988 US Olympic team in the 800 meters race. One thing I enjoyed about the books was the likeable characters and their realistic lives as they go about "living the dream." I also enjoyed hearing about the training and racing along the way as Joey attempts to qualify for the trials. As a distance runner, I was interested in the training and the racing accounts for an 800 meter runner. It is a distance I have never raced, but the more I follow racing it is a distance that gathers my respect and admiration. It is not really a distance event and not nearly a sprint. It takes both speed and endurance as well as a workable strategy. Go out too fast and the gorilla jumps on your back as you near the finish, go out too slow and no matter how fast you sprint at the end you may be outrun or boxed into a position that keeps you from winning the race. It is a wonderful distance to watch if you enjoy the drama of how a race unfolds and in the book the pain of the distance is abundantly clear.

Chasing Ghosts is also realistic in its portrayal of racing choosing the Millrose Games and the Olympic Trials as key races, as well as the Broad Street 10 mile race in Philadelphia. The Millrose Miles turns out to be a realistic race with world class runners Bernard Lagat and Craig Mottram competing with our fictional hero. Alan Webb, Galen Rupp, Letsrun.com, and other names and places give the story a real and familiar feel. However, the most important race in in the story, no matter how wonderfully and agonizingly portrayed, cannot compare to the actual race that really took place at the 2008 Trials. I am talking about the 800 meter final in the 1988 Olympic Trials as seen in this video. How do you compete with that? I get goosebumps every time I watch it!

Well the racing scenarios and the story of Joey McNeal and his friends, make for an entertaining read. The 800 meter Trials race and the ending is satisfying and leaves an opening for the story to continue.The one thing that I didn't like may be just something related to reading the story on the Kindle. There were some mistakes, but most glaring for me was the formatting of the story. There was a mix of indented paragraphs and paragraphs that were not indented at all, which was the usual case. My brain hesitate at each of these mistakes as it didn't just "appear right" as I was reading. Maybe these will be fixed in the future if it is a Kindle formatting problem, but other that that if you are looking for an inspiring read, Chasing Ghosts might just be the book for you.

The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop

2011-08-09T20:40:00.004-04:00

John Tarrant was the ultimate running bandit: a man who obsessively loved to run, yet was denied the opportunity to officially participate in the sport he loved so much. So he ran unofficially without a race number and the media soon dubbed him "The Ghost Runner." He was good too, Good enough to win major races and to be a man with dreams of participating in the Olympic Games. I didn't know anything about this book The Ghost Runner by Bill Jones and had never heard of John Tarrant before buying the Kindle Version of the recently released book. I am not sure many people, particularly here in America, have ever heard about this amazing runner, and there is a reason for that.

While a young man in 1950's England he had tried his hand at boxing and took a measly £17 in payment. For this minor infraction (and the fact that he naively reported it), he was not allowed to run as he was no longer an "amateur" athlete. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get the "powers" to be to let him officially run, so he became the "ghost runner" sneaking into races and running without a number or official recognition. Whether he won a race or not, he was ignored and never entered into the results. John had Olympic ambitions, and when the British officials finally relented and allowed him to race in England, they would not let him represent England in any race outside the country and put the pressure on other countries so that he could not participate as an official runner when he came to run races in America and South Africa. So, he remained a "ghost runner' again as he raced in those countries.

John did set two world records, one for 40 miles and another for 100 miles, as he became a marathoner and eventually an ultramarathoner. The story tells of his upbringing in England and is as much a story of a man railing against "the man" as it is a story about running. John was born in 1932 and eventually due to the war and his mother's illness he was sent to a children's home home with his beloved younger brother. It was an unhappy experience and one that formed his attitudes towards life. It is also a story about the impoverished working class life of post war England. Points were also made about the divisions between the working class athlete versus the educated upper class "amateur" athlete that was prevalent at the time.

John's fury over his circumstances and his single minded hard-core devotion to running does not always make him a pleasant character. He virtually leaves his wife and son to live a life of poverty and loneliness as he seems to have no other goals and ambitions outside of running. But his goals and ambitions are laudable as I can't think of many, if any, athletes who would put up with his lot in life without giving up. He becomes one of the best ultra runners in the world and won the London to Brighton Ultramarathon twice and traveled to South Africa to race and try and win the the Comrades Ultramarathon. In South Africa he formed a kinship with Indian and Black runners, who also where not allowed to compete in Comrades due to apartheid. He even went on to run in a "mixed race" ultramarathon as the only white runner the first year, playing a small part in the breaking down of racial barriers in South Africa. The book tells of his devoted and long-suffering wife and his relationship with his brother, who seems to be a conspirator to get him into races.

John with his wife Edie

John and his brother Vic

Here is a video of John Tarrant winning the second of his two London-Brighton races in 1968.

LONDON - BRIGHTON RACE

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There are many tragedies to John Tarrant's story. Certainly, he pursued his dreams with uncommon optimism and dedication, despite the ridiculous ban on his competing in races. He lived simply and cared for little: work, possessions, or a normal family life. He received much sympathy and support from other runners and the newspapers of his day, but ultimately never received the honors and recognition that he deserved and so desperately wanted.

The book makes an interesting read, telling about the transition of running and sport from the formal "amateur" "Chariots of Fire" athletics of the prewar world to the coming running boom of the 1970's and the professionalism of the 1980's. Sadly, John Tarrant never saw those days as he died from cancer at 42 years of age in 1975. An astute observer of the sport would pick up a few names mentioned in the book. Harold Abrahams, the 1924 Olympic Champion in the 100 meter sprint as depicted in "Chariots of Fire" is one of the British officials who at first sympathetically started the process of allowing John to officially race in England, but who later helps stand in the way of allowing him to run in other countries. Runners from the 1970's will notice the mention of American ultramarathon runners Tom Osler and Ted Corbitt as well as a young Ron Hill. Chris Brasher, a pacer for Roger Bannister's sub 4 minute mile, also turns up as the person who helps John Tarrant get his autobiography, also called "The Ghost Runner" published. Brasher was also one of the co-founders of the London Marathon.

All in all it was a fascinating read. I also think the story would make for an interesting movie- if a director could delve a bit more into the human side of John Tarrant. It was not written for runners necessarily, as I think people outside the running world would be intrigued by the conflicts presented to John and his single-minded devotion to sorting out the wrongs given to him by the authorities. He was an uncommon character in an unjust world.

Excellent Hip Recovery

2011-08-08T22:47:00.000-04:00

My recovery from the labral tear hip surgery is going wonderfully! It was only two weeks ago that I had the surgery and I did not expect it to be this easy. I am taking it slow and cautious, but I have heard very few accounts of people doing so well after this surgery, so I am pleased. The above photos is from the surgery and shows inside my hip joint. The pictures look like little planets! The top left red shows the labral tear. I was told that they wouldn't have placed much money on me for doing so well after hearing my running history, but I was found to have only minimal arthritis (I think that groove is part of it) and that my hip structure was like that of someone much younger. The yellow yolky stuffy is junk that was cleaned out.

I could walk without crutches days after the surgery and I no longer use them at all. I was told I can do light spinning and also try an elliptical machine. I did 15 minutes of spinning and then 30 minutes the next day. It felt good, but I do have a minor pinching so I am taking it easy. I think my left leg is lining up much better and my muscles need to adjust. I was even told I could do some easy jogging if I felt like it (would be better on my hip than attempting power walking). I have never heard of anyone starting that up so early, so I haven't tried it yet even though I barely notice the hip at all and my leg feels strong. I even tripped over a cord yesterday and my left leg made a huge lunge forward so that all of my weight rested on it and there was no pain or anything after that. I was told no tennis, basketball, and weighted squats. I was also told that after 3 weeks, it may possibly be a bit more sore as they "cleaned" out the joint and things may build up again, but once I make it past Labor Day I should be OK. I am determined to take things slowly and not rush., but I can't help but marvel how easy recovery has been and how pain free my hip has felt.

I think it may be because my tear was not where I bear weight, but a little to the side. Also, the labrum was still attached so it did not need reattachment. I think they doctor used a tool that uses heat to refuse the labrum rather than using stitches. I was worried that my bone may need some shaving or reshaping, particularly because it always felt like that hip got stuck and something was blocking its movement. I didn't need that, but the doctor did find some synovial impingement that the doctor debrided (smoothed down) and this was what was causing that "stuck" feeling. I can recall back to a PT that worked on my left hip capsule over 10 years ago due to it getting stuck, so I am hoping all this work is freeing my hip up from years of working improperly. I won't be able to tell until I actually start running again. I was told that my funky running stride and mechanics may have come from my body inately "protecting" itself from what was going on in my hip. When I walk around the block or ups the stairs I can feel the hip bearing my weight properly. I have run for years without fully being able to push off that hip joint properly, it always was very unstable. So I am thrilled with the surgery, taking things slowly, and hoping that I will have a great recovery into being a runner again some day soon.

Running for the Hansons: by Sage Canaday

2011-07-28T19:34:00.000-04:00

What else do you do after having hip surgery, but fire up the Kindle with a few motivating books and read away. The first book I read post surgery is the newly released Running For The Hansons: An Insider's Account of The Brooks-Sponsored Marathon Training Group Made Famous by Olympian Brian Sell (Volume 1) by Sage Canaday. If you ever wanted to know what it is like to be a struggling professional runner hoping to make it big in the running world than this is the book for you. Sage Canaday joined the Hanson's Brooks Distance Projects soon after graduating from Cornell and wrote about his and his teammates experiences with the team.

I enjoyed the book and found it an interesting read. The organization of chapters kept it humming along. It wasn't strictly a linear journal as it bounced along to other topics to keep a flow going. Athletes like Brian Sell and Desiree Davila are highlighted. You get a good feel for what it would be like to train full-time while trying to work and progress as a runner. It doesn't sound easy!

If you are a fan of running, you might find inspiration in the book. It seems written for the Letsrun.com crowd, with even a singular reference to Kip Litton. Another Letsrun mentions involves Sage reporting from the January 2010 Boston Indoor Games, where he talks about trying to be the first to get results up on Bernard Lagat's World Indoor record 5000m run. Here is his video:

Here is my video:

I had a better view of the finish right at the line. Lagat handed his victory flowers to the girl next to my daughter. I am not sure who got the video up first!

Sage on pursuing his dream, " Within 5-10 years my body is going to be done in terms of being able to run a national class marathon time. I already hobble down the stairs like and old man, feet blistered, tendons swollen, and muscles banged up. The body can only take so much before it breaks down. We seek to capture our youth, cherish it, and utilize it to our advantage!" Sage most recently ran 2:16 for 8th place overall at the 2011 San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon.You have to give credit to the runners who are pursuing their dreams and if you never had the talent, it can be fun to just read about what it takes to follow those dreams.

Successful Hip Operation!

2011-07-27T17:12:00.000-04:00

Monday, I had my operation for a labral tear in my left hip with Dr. Joseph McCarthy at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital. The surgery is a hip arthroscopy that is a rather newer type of surgery. You can read more about the surgery here and even see a video of what they do on that link if you dare!

Having read all the message board posts of various athletes and people that have had this surgery, I wasn't sure what I was in for. One warning: on message boards you tend to hear from all the people that had things go wrong! I was extremely pleased with the results so far! I am doing better than the "best of" scenarios that I imagined. After waking up from surgery, I felt fine. Where was the pain? Of course, I had limited mobility, but I was happy to not have any pains!

When I got home I could sleep on my back and right side and move around slowly without hurting. I was walking gingerly with crutches, but moving OK. Yesterday, I started some light PT movement exercises at home. Today, two days later, I got out the door to go blueberry picking and got some ice-cream with my family. I used the crutches, but I can walk in a straight line without using them. I have to be careful of twisting and rotating the leg, but I never would have guessed that I would feel this good.

Now, I know there is a long recovery and I intend to take it very slowly, no heroics here as I want no setbacks, but it was good to hear Dr. McCarthy tell me before the surgery that I would be running again. The interesting thing will be: at what level? Will my hip go back to where it was a year or two ago? 10 years ago? 25 years ago when I started having problems? or what? I will be happy to just be able to run again, it has been a long year without running.

Tim Thomas, the Bruins Goalie, had the same surgery last year. Things worked out pretty well for him!

Tyson Gay, America's top sprinter, had the same procedure done earlier this July.

Running and Racing in Kenya and Tanzania

2011-07-19T20:04:00.002-04:00

Last week I got back from spending two of the greatest and most rewarding weeks ever in Kenya. I was on a mission trip to work in the Mathare Valley slum of Nairobi helping out in the schools and with teachers. Despite the incredible poverty, I found the children to be happy and friendly and it was a privilege to be part of this trip. You can read more about the trip here: although there is plenty more to report and on that blog.

Who would have thought that I would ever be in Kenya and then who would have thought that when I was in Kenya that I could not run? Well, that was the case as I have not run a step since around March due to a torn labrum in my left hip.

Fortunately, I asked the doctor before leaving if there was anything I could take to relieve the pain I was feeling on my left side. I was told it is nerve pain from something being pinched due to the hip. I took a drug that left me basically pain-free for the first time in many years. My hip was not a worry at all and I was able to focus all my energies on the work that I was doing.

Anyhow, I could not resist the urge to run just a little bit. So while on safari, we got out of our vans at a marker seperatating Tanzania from Kenya and I did a short two country run. Then I invited some teammates to join me again for a race between the two countries. It was a blast. Never mind the 40+ pounds I have put on since not being able to run, it was good to move again.

To top off that day, I did some dancing and jumping with some Massai Warriors. I am suprised I got off the ground.

I got to talk Kenyan runners with many of the students I worked with and Ethiopean runners with a host at an Ethiopean restaurant, but I saw very very few Kenyans running. School children were all walking. I guess the runners are up in the mountain of Kenya.

Now the good news. My surgery for the torn labrum has been moved ahead to this coming Monday. If all goes well and after a long recovery, I may be back on the road to running by the end of the year!

Anti-minimalistic running shoes

2011-06-27T15:17:00.000-04:00

I have always liked training in lightweight racing shoes and was certainly a minimalistic runner long before the recent fad of runners running in Vibram five-fingers or simply going barefoot. I recently spent a couple of years doing a large portion of my running and racing using Puma H-Street "slippers" and have not yet found a trainer that I like running in. I most like doing all my running in racing shoes like the Asics Hyperspeed. Last summer I attempted using trainers again, bulky ones at that, and I don't know if that helped make my hip worse or not. I haven't been able to run since last August due to a torn labrum in my hip. I will have surgery to repair it next month. I think I always liked minimalistic shoes to help my hip and feet deal with the peculiar imbalances that I have had for years. Hopefully the surgery will clear up my stride and mechanics and let me run pain-free again.

I do think the minimalistic fad has gone a bit overboard, there are some great choices in shoes with a low heel drop and light weight out there now, something that was hard to find up to recently, but I doubt that minimalism and barefoot running is for most runners. It works for some, but many more end up injured.

Which brings us to a newer trend in running shoes: maximalism. A couple of companies are making shoes that oppose the minimalistic attitude with big cushiony shoes that are also supposed to help runners with their stride. The most interesting shoe is made by a company called Hoka One One.The ultramarathon trail-running crowd seems to be gravitating towards these behemoths of a shoe. I have heard that some claim it is like going mountain biking when you run the trails in these. You can step over and on anything. Running Times says it is like using a hovercraft. Hoka One One claims it is like levitating:

By using an EVA 30% softer and increasing its total volume to 2.5 times that of a typical trail running shoe, we allow for more cushioning than any other shoe on the market today, dissipating up to 80% of the shock associated with heel striking when running. Allowing for as much as 20mm of compression in the heel, with a low ramp angle allows for tremendous confidence running downhill, as runners can now engage their gluteus and lower back as opposed to isolating their quads, relaxing the body and making running downhill

Despite their outrageous clown-sized foot plant they are also very lightweight. The first model made by Hoka One One is the Maffate which is their trail shoe.

Recently they have come out with the Bondi B which is not as severe a shoe, but still loaded with cushioning and meant to be also used for the roads, Many reviewers say that they can run 20 milers and still have fresh legs that don't feel beat up at all.

The Hoka One One shoes also have a rocker sole:

40mm high sole design enabled to design a 13cm rockering profile , representing 50% of the sole length. This design allows for fluid and natural stride transitions, lessening the movement of the knee by as much as 20%, increasing efficiency.

These shoes, although silly looking, intrigued me. I thought that the cushioning might be a good thing to have post surgery and the rocker sole sounded interesting for my functional hallux limitis (inability to bend the big toe when pushing off the ground). When I saw a pair of Bondii B's on eBay for far cheaper than the $170 retail price, I decided to get a pair. I am hoping that they may help me recover and get me back running much easier once I have recovered from my surgery. Now that they have arrived and I have put them on my initial reactions are 1) they are very big looking 2) they are very lightweight 3) boy, they are really cushioned, like walking on marshmallows 4) they seem a bit unstable walking around and 5) I think these might be very interesting to run in - I am not at all put off by them (usually a cushioned bulky shoe drives me nuts right when I put them on 6) I am going to try walking around in them - I really wish my hip let me run!

Here are some Hoka One One reviews:
Dan Empfield review of the Mafate on Slowtwitch
Dan Empfield review of the Bondi B on Slowtwitch
Runner's World forum reviews
Ultramarathoner Dave Mackey's review Minimalsitic Running and the Bondi B
Slowtwitch forum reviews

Ultramarathoner Karl Meltzer ran an average of 51.6 miles a day on his 2,064 mile journey across the historic Pony Express trail from Sacramento California to St. Joseph Missouri using 7 pairs of the Mafates.

Another recent running shoe that seems to be anti-minimalistic is the Mizuno Wave Prophecy seen here:

Mizuno says this of their shoe:

The result of seven years of intense research and development, Wave Prophecy is our most advanced, most dynamic shoe ever. Our engineers designed Wave Prophecy to match your running gait and the natural spring rate of your muscles and tendons. Whether you land on your forefoot, midfoot or heel, Wave Prophecy’s full-length Infinity Wave plates propel you forward with a smooth ride mile after mile. No matter how far and how often you run, you’ll always have the ride of your life.

This review on Ransacker mentions that:

Probably the most eye-catching and controversial design feature of the Prophecy shoe is the sole. It is almost completely separate from the rest of the shoe, connected by rubber posts. This creates 4 large holes that run right through the sole. A friend of mine joked that you could store your energy gels in there. The sole itself is shaped by the famous Mizuno “Wave.” This runs through the whole shoe and not just part of the sole as with previous Wave incarnations.

There you have it, you can go minimalistic or you can go maximalistic. The choice is yours.

Charlie Spedding: From Last to First: How I Became a Marathon Champion

2011-06-15T21:08:00.002-04:00

When the names of greatest runners from the 1980's are mentioned, there is quite a list of runners to discuss. One runner that may be overlooked is the British marathoner, Charlie Spedding; however to overlook his achievements would be a mistake. Who, you say? Unless you are a true fan of the sport, the name might not ring a bell, but just take a look at his marathon record:

1984
Houston Marathon Texas January 15th 1st place 2.11.54 (the result was so close it took 15 minutes to figure out who won and 3rd place was 1 second behind!)
London Marathon 13 May 1st place 2.09.57
Los Angeles Olympic Games 3rd place 2.09.58 (bronze medal)

1985
London Marathon 21 April 2nd place 2.08.33 (English record)

1986
Chicago Marathon 26 October 3rd place 2.10:13

1987
London Marathon 10 May 8th place 2.10.32

1988
London Marathon 17 April 10th
Seoul Olympic Games 2 October 6th place 2.12.19

Charlie Spedding has an Olympic Bronze medal and a 6th place Olympic marathon finish, wins in London and Houston and other impressive finishes and times. He still holds the English marathon record of 2:08:33 set in London in 1985-Steve Jones (from Wales) set the British record by winning the race. Got that? A runner of this caliber certainly begs a bit of study, and fortunately Charlie Spedding himself has written an autobiography chronicling his running career. He describes himself as someone without much talent, so he must have done something right to reach the heights he did. He spells out the secrets to his success in his book From Last to First. I read the recently released Kindle version.

Charlie Spedding winning the 1984 London Marathon

The 1984 Olympic Marathon

The book is a compelling read, but not just because it is interesting to read what is going through his head as he runs the Olympic marathons and other races. He had a deliberate plan to bring a positive mindset to his racing, and it worked very well. Charlie Spedding could be called one of the all-time great peakers, because the bigger the race, the better he ran. Charlie could sense that the highly touted runners like Rob DeCastella did not have a winning attitude as they started and ran the Olympic races as favorites and thus they never got the medals that others predicted they would win. On the other hand, Charlie looked for the positives and produced when it most mattered. This unfortunately led to his demise as a professional runner, as he couldn't muster the mental focus to cash in on his marathon successes after the fact. He could prepare himself for the big races, but that meant he couldn't run the smaller races with the same mental and physical peak.

"The better I became at digging deep in a major race, the less able I was to run hard in any other event. I tried to do my best, but I became less and less able to produce a performance if a race didn't matter to me"

If you enjoy a well-written book and want to learn about one of the marathon greats, then this book is for you. You might also pick up some tips on how to mentally prepare yourself to be the best runner that you can be. One of my favorite running quotes (I listed it in my high school yearbook) comes from Frank Shorter, "...to me the object is not to beat someone, but merely to live up to your potential. If you do this, then you will end up winning a lot..." Charlie had a similar mantra, that he wrote down in his notebook at the start of his quest to become a champion, "Success is measured by how much I fulfill the talent I was born with." Charlie Spedding was a successful runner by all counts!

1984 Olympic Marathon

Bronze and Silver (John Treacy)Medalists in 1984

New England runners got a closer look at Spedding before both Olympic Marathon races as he trained and raced in the Boston area leading up to both races. He also ran the Falmouth Road Race twice: finishing in 9th place in 1981 and 30th in 1988.

Charlie Spedding on reaching goals:

"I achieved my targets because I knew what I wanted. I knew why I wanted it; and I knew how much I wanted it.I also stuck to it when things went wrong, and I wasn't distracted by other things that came along."

Charlie Spedding on his greatest moment in running (a moment that all runners have dreamt about and that Charlie lived) :

"...the question usually includes a choice between winning the London Marathon and being third in the Olympics. Both of these are very high on my list, but neither is my greatest moment....My reply would often cause surprise because my greatest moment was not a result, but a spell of running which lasted about five minutes. The greatest moment in my two decades of running came 22 miles into the Olympic marathon when I took the lead and pushed the pace. After all the setbakcs, injures and failuresm I was living the fantasy that every distance runner has on a long, cold winter run, I had the initiative. I was calling the tune. I was grasping my opportunity with both hands. I was taking part in Olympic proportionsI was running as fast as I dared. I was trying my upmost to fulfill my wildest dreams. Today was indeed the day. I was doing it. I was flying and I felt absolutely fantastic."

Check out the 3:05 mark in the Olympic marathon video above for this moment.


1985 London Marathon 2nd in 2:08:33 with Steve Jones 2:08:11 1st place.

1986 Chicago Marathon with Mark Curp 12 and Thom Hunt 10

Here is an interesting interview with Charlie from back in 2003.

Diving for the line

2011-05-25T21:32:00.003-04:00

Here is a dive toward the finish line at West Virginia AAA 880 a week ago. Burcham (in red) wins, 1:54.01, to Brandon Doughty's attempt at being Superman in 1:54.03.

You can see the drive and dive towards the finish line in the race video here (at about 1:50).

Here is another diving finish at the Footlocker XC national Championship: Zachary Torres dives to tie for 15th with Dylan Sorensen earning both athletes an All-American (top 15) award.

I think the all-time greatest dive was the one Christian Smith made to take third place in the 800m in the 2008 Olympic Trials.

This is one of the most exciting racers ever, and it is hard to get tired of watching the finish and the celebrations after the finish.

Here are some other finish line dives:

Arizona State's Lewis Banda, nips a diving Jeremy Wariner from Baylor by 1/100th of a second in the Drake Relays final event of the day, the 4 X 400 University Men's relay in 2003 in Des Moines, Iowa. Wariner, a Baylor freshman, went on to win an Olympic Gold Medal the following year in the 400 meters at the summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Superman Adriel Tay lands 1500m A Division win in third Raffles Institution podium sweep.

I am not even sure what is going on here, but it looks like fun!

Triathletes crawl or dive all the time.

Similar things happen when women race in stilettos.

Another dive.

Not just a dive, but a somersault for the relay win (quick view- start at 3:00)!

This dive earned David Neville a bronze in the 400m at the 2008 Olympics.

Inspiration for this post came from Letsrun.

Finally, this race video from Japan has to be one of the greatest race finish line dives ever recorded!

Surgery has been Scheduled

2011-05-14T21:55:00.002-04:00

August 8 is the scheduled day for my hip surgery. I am very much looking forward to seeing if this surgery will fix things and I wish that August would get here quickly. Dr. Joseph McCarthy will be the surgeon and he is one of the most well-regarded surgeons for hip arthroscopicy in the the nation.

Here is another doctor explaining what he did during surgery for a labral tear. They don't know exactly what damage is in there until the surgery, but besides a torn labrum, I am hoping they find something they can do to fix the way my femur sits in the socket by shaving an impingement down. There has always been something wrong with that hip, even before I started running in ninth grade. I did learn at the last appointment that I have a shallow hip socket and that I have very minimal arthritis, which is good.

However, before I have surgery, I have to finish out the school year and then I will be going on a trip to Kenya. I will be working with with a group of people from my church in the Mathare Slums of Nairobi. My primary job will be working with Kenyan teachers who teach in a school in the slum. I am very excited about this trip and to see what I can learn and do. The only negative is that I am going to Kenya and I can't run! It will be a very life-changing summer indeed: a trip to Kenya and surgery to make my body work again.

Here is another interesting video by Kelly Starrett over at MobilityWod. File this under things I wish I knew and did a few years ago. He gives a simple visual tutorial of how the femur and hip fit together with the hip capsule. He shows how to create stability in the hip and to keep away from having an impinged hip. Great stuff....I highly recommend following his blog.

Runners who Streak!

2011-04-30T22:02:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow online registration opens for the 39th running of the Falmouth Road Race. I have been debating what I should do about this year's race and have decided to pass. I won't be able to run due to my hip (hopefully I will have had surgery by then). I hate missing Falmouth and I am sure I have a small streak of over 15 years going (my records aren't the greatest) and have completed the race around 25 times. I have never really been a streaker (someone who races the same race year after year). I wish I had stuck to running Falmouth every year since I first ran it in 1975 but triathlons and broken bones got in the way. I do have to admire the people who have been able to keep at running favorite races year after year. There are 5 gentlemen who have run each of the first 38 Falmouth Road Races and that is an amazing accomplishment. Here are four of them.

Falmouth friends, from left: Brian Salzberg in the original Falmouth Road Race t-shirt from 1973 (apparently there was some confusion about the distance); Don Delinks; Tommy Leonard; Ron Pokrara; and Mike Bennett. Leonard was one of the Falmouth founders, while Salzberg, Delinks, Pokraka, and Bennett have finished all 38 Falmouths.

You have to really enjoy a race and be dedicated to your running (and maybe be a bit crazy) to keep up such a running streak. Sports Illustrated gave a "Faces in the Crowd" recognition this week to Neil Weygandt after completing his 45th consecutive Boston Marathon this year. Some of these long-time runners have slowed down considerably due to age and other issues. I enjoy hearing about streaking racers who still can run pretty fast. Scott Graham is my age and last fall completed his first Ironman Triathlon which is pretty heady stuff indeed, but Scott is also a long time runner. This year he completed his 26th consecutive Boston Marathon. He is just not completing them, he ran it in ‎3:00:50. That is quite a streak and a fast time!Years of running can really beat up the body.

Two other Falmouth Road Race streakers who have one of the longest consecutive ongoing streaks at Falmouth are Brian Baker and his older brother Jeff, who are both from New York and have a 32 year ongoing streak each. I have seen both of the Bakers in the starting corral for years at Falmouth and many times, because of the familiarity of their faces, have keyed parts of my races off of them. I have never formally met them yet, but Brian and I have been writing back and forth about our experiences in running and at Falmouth and I look forward to officially meeting them both this year, even though I won't be running. Brian and Jeff are not just consistent runners, but they are very fast. They both started running Falmouth in 1979 when a high school friend told them about a "really cool race on Cape Cod." They entered and ran, their friend entered also but sent in the wrong sized envelope and didn't get accepted. Brain and Jeff have continued running Falmouth since that first invitation and they do it quickly year after year: Jeff's fastest Falmouth was 37:21 in 1983 and he has a lifetime average time of 43:47 over those 32 years! Brian's fastest Falmouth was in 39:32 in 1984 and he has a lifetime average of 42:43. That is quite an amazing feat!

Brian and Jeff Baker

A history of Brian's and Jeff's Famouth Road Race times.


Jeff Baker at Falmouth

Brian Baker at Falmouth

Some of the posters, numbers, and Falmouth Road Race paraphernalia that Brian has collected over the years. My wife was pleased to find out the someone has collected more race stuff than I have!

Now for a confession. I almost had my own "Falmouth streak" going one year. When I was a freshman at Falmouth High School back in 1973, streaking was the current fad. I was shopping one day at the local Bradlees department store and I saw what I thought was a very funny shirt. It said something like, "Member, USA Streaking Team". I bought it and brought it home. Then my mom saw it and made me bring it back to the store. That was sort of awkward, "Um why do you want to return this shirt?"

My suggestion to you is if you have never run Falmouth sign up for the online registration and see if you can make it into the race this year. If you do get to run Falmouth keep doing it again and again and try to stay healthy. See how many years you can go. A 32 year streak will take you to 2043! These long time streakers are doing something right and they keep doing it again and again. Later I would like to have Brian explain a method he has discovered for keeping injury free, particularly after so many years of racing.

The 10,000 Kettlebell Swing Challenge

2011-04-30T00:28:00.001-04:00

I can't believe that it was the end of August when I had to stop running. I got a few training runs here and there in as I kept testing things out with my hip as well as two 5ks in the Fall, but there was nothing I could train for without my hip hurting, and the only goal was to figure out what was really wrong with my hip. It has been almost two months now since my last attempt at running. That is the longest I have gone without running a step since I began running in 1973. With the warmer weather I had at least hoped that I could do some cycling. I found I could cycle pretty much pain free, but that if I did, the next couple of days would be really painful with what I think is an irritated nerve on my left side. That means there is not much else I can do for exercise without bothering my hip. Fortunately I did find I could do kettlebell two-handed swings (doing one-handed swings put enough torque on my hip to cause irritation). So in the last few months I began swinging, I went from a 35 pound kettlebell doing about 100 swings max on a good day to using a 50 pound kettlebell and reaching a goal of 1000 swings (not continuously but with breaks like doing intervals on the track).

At the end of last month I learned of a kettlebell 30 day 10,000 Swing Challenge for the month of April. I decided to join in and was thrilled to have some training goals. It was just the push that I needed. Well today I finished my 10,000th kettlebell swing of the month and I am sort-of-sick of doing them, but very happy that I could complete some sort of athletic goal for the first time in months. Doing lots of swings can be very monotonous and boring, but it is at least doing something. They get the heart really pumping and the lungs really working like when you are doing a good hard run, however I miss the feeling of the wind in my face and the changing ground underneath my feet. It is also weird to be feeling that my arms and shoulders are becoming the fit parts of my body and not my legs, even though the swing is a whole body exercise. Holding onto the kettlebell was a lot harder a month ago, but my grip is much stronger now. I also find it funny that my hands were getting blisters instead of my feet.

Last Saturday I also thought up my own challenge within the challenge and did what I am now calling a Kettlebell Swing Marathon. To complete the marathon you have to complete 2620 kettlebell swings in one day. The number comes from the fact that a marathon is 26.2 miles long. Let me tell you that was one long day! The most swings I had ever done in a day was 1300 so it doubled my previous best day. The last 600 swings were mentally very similar to the last 6 miles of a marathon. It would have been very easy to give up and call it a day, and I was getting fatigued, but I was still able to keep good form and press on to reaching my goal. I doubt I will ever try that again in my life, however! I did this kettlebell marathon with the 50 pound kettlebell.

Throughout the month I used the 50 pound kettlebell for the high repetition days. On the easier days I used the 35 pound bell at times. I like my 50 pounder better as the handle is wider to fit both hands. The handle on my 35 pounder is thicker and doesn't have quite enough room to fit a full grip with both hands which makes it uncomfortable for a lengthy swing session.I did intervals of 25 -50 with the 50 pound bell and intervals of 50-300 with the 35 pound bell. Here is the progressions I did. There was no rhyme or reason to my training, if my hip felt good I did more, if my hip was sore I only did a few or none at all. I missed more days than I would have liked, but some days my hip wasn't feeling up to it. The kettlebell marathon day also took a bit out of me and I put off those final swings.

April
1-500
2-500
3-1000
4-200
6-200
8-500
9-500
10-600
11-200
12-800
15-200
18-800
19-200
20-300
22-200
23-2620
29-680
Total 10,000

Next week I finally get to go and discuss my labral tears with a doctor and find out if and when I can have surgery. I am not sure when I will have the chance to run again. The best case scenario would be the fall, the worst would be a year or so, and I can't even contemplate being told I can't run anymore! I am just so excited to finally get going on taking the steps to finally fix my hip.

1984 Falmouth Road Race

2011-04-09T14:23:00.000-04:00


6 miles: Mark Curp, Adriain Leek, and eventual winner David Murphy

From the Falmouth Road Race site.

1984 — Prize money was officially awarded for the first time at Falmouth, although financial compensation and inducements had long been a part of the running scene. But this year it was above the table, and Dave Murphy of Great Britain and Joan Nesbit of North Carolina stepped forward to claim the $6,000 first prizes. In all, $46,000 was awarded and 5,004 answered the starting gun on a hot, sun-splashed day. Murphy worked hard for the money, overtaking Mark Curp in the last 200 meters to win Falmouth's closest race ever. The race marked Curp's third top-five finish in three years. This was an Olympic year and defending champions Joseph Nzau and Joan Benoit stayed home, both recuperating from running marathons in Los Angeles, where Benoit captured the gold medal. Nesbit, helped by a new staggered starting system, recorded the fourth-best women's time at Falmouth with a 37:12.

I recall reading after the race that Joan Nesbit was being coached by my former high school teammate Don Lockerbie.

finished 251 in 40:46

6 mile mark

Sarah came to watch her first Falmouth. She eventually ran it in 2006.

1983 Falmouth Road Race

2011-04-02T19:32:00.002-04:00

I only have a few photos and no articles from the 1983 Falmouth Road Race.

Here is eventual race winner, Joseph Nzau, 2nd place finisher, Simeon Kigen, and 3rd place finisher, Mark Curp, at a little before the 6 mile mark. Joseph Nzau was the first African winner at Falmouth. It wasn't until 1991 that the next Kenyan, Steve Kogo, won Falmouth.

I can't find my time or place, but I ran it. I was getting into triathlons that summer and less than one month after Falmouth I would compete in the first Cape Cod Endurance (Ironman distance) Triathlon.

Joan Benoit won for the 5th time and set a new course record.

Previous year winner, Alberto Salazar, handing out winner trophies.

From the Falmouth Road Race website:

1983 — If she wasn't already, then this was the year Joan Benoit became the First Lady of Falmouth. Running as the favorite, she went wire to wire to win for the third year in a row and fifth time overall. Her effort was the all more remarkable because she was competing with a painfully infected toe and still she set a course record (36:21). The men's race figured to be wide open and it was left to a diminutive 31-year-old from Kenya, Joseph Nzau, to emerge the victor in one of the most competitive races in Falmouth history. He won by just seven seconds over countryman Simeon Kigen. Two-time defending champion Alberto Salazar, saddled with general fatigue from a bout with bronchitis, watched the finish from the press truck. Olympic pole vaulting gold medalist Bob Seagren was one of the official finishers.

The Kettlebell Swing

2011-04-01T14:37:00.004-04:00

This is an outstanding video lesson on performing and troubleshooting the kettlebell swing. It comes from Delaine Ross from All About Kettlebells.

While the labral tears in my hip won't let me run or bike, strangely enough I can do hundreds and even over 1000 of these in a workout without any hip or back pain. It must be because both legs are stable and all motion is forward and back. On the other hand, if I perform one-handed swings I get an irritated back and irritated nerves down my leg that will last for a day or so just like when I bike. It must be the little bit of twist through the hip and back. The kettlebell swing is cardio and strength training all rolled into one exercise.

I joined a Kettlebell Challenge where you are supposed to try to complete 10,000 kettlebell swings in the month of April. My goal is to do 15,000 swings. You just can't take the distance runner out of me!!

On the other hand, this video shows you how to NOT use kettelbells, even though the instructor says it is the "funnest" way to use kettlebells!!

Looking for a Surgeon: Labral Tear

2011-03-29T22:31:00.002-04:00

At the end of a busy racing month last August (11 races), I finished my first 5000 meter track race in 30 years just like many of the other races that month; with a very sore left hip and glute. I had to hobble to the track's infield, sit down, and think about another poor race and a hip joint that just wasn't right. Then I had to try to stand up and move with a painful hip that just didn't even want to cooperate enough to help me walk easily to my car. I knew it was time to realize that I couldn't run through the pain any more and I had to think about the possibility that something was so very wrong that just wouldn't fix itself no matter how hard I tried.

I had been wondering if I had a labral tear in my hip and wrote this post last September. It pretty much sums up what a labral tear is, so I do not have to repeat it. What I can say is that my MRI images show that I have a possible small labral tear in the superior (front) labrum, as well as another possible small tear in the posterior labrum. I guess that they can't tell if I have a hip impingement until they do surgery, but I bet they find that too. The report says I have mild degenerative changes in both hips. So I am looking for an experienced surgeon. Here is my thread on Letsrun.com. There are numerous threads all over the internet that I am scouring for advice and recommendations. Unfortunately the first doctor I called doesn't even have an appointment available for a consultation until August. I definitely want surgery, but don't want to wait that long! Anyhow, it is fun playing with the images taken during my MRI. I don't know how to read them, but it is interesting to see your internal muscles and bones, particularly the ones that have caused me so many problems.

Looking Forward

2011-03-23T20:09:00.003-04:00

Here is one of those iconic pictures of the great Jim Ryun showing his head slightly askew, pumping arms, powerful stride, and eyes glued on the goal of reaching the finish line in first place. The picture is about Jim Ryun, and not many people may notice the "other guy". Well, I never did. However, I was recently informed that the other guy is a runner named Glenn Ogden, whose name didn't ring any bells with me, even though I consider myself a student of the sport. I was surprised to find out that Glenn Ogden was a 1965 graduate of The Stony Brook School on Long Island, the same small college prep school that I attended. Here is the caption I found for the photo:

Glenn Ogden ’65 was one of the finest runners in school history. After a Hall of Fame career for the Blue and White he attended the University of Missouri where he won 2 Conference Championships for the Tigers and set the 2 mile record with a time of 8:46.0. In the above photo Ogden is running against one of the biggest names in the history of American sports: Jim Ryun. In 1964 Ryun became the 1st high schooler to smash the 4 minute mile barrier by running a blazing 3:59.0 as a junior. His litany of accomplishments include being a 3-time Olympian, setting the mile and 2 mile world records as a 19-year-old and being named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year.”

Stony Brook for many years had a strong and stellar tradition as a running powerhouse with many accomplished running "stars" and "no" I was not one of them (history here). After a little searching I noticed that Glenn was ranked 9th in the USA at 5000 meters in 1966 (former Wheaton College teammate Dan Henderson was ranked 9th in 1984 and 8th in 1985). The all-time USA rankings in the men's 5000 meters can be found here. Another outstanding Stony Brook and national class runner Robin Lingle preceded Glenn at Missouri. Lingle would later coach at Missouri and then return to coach at Stony Brook. It was interesting to find out more about that old photo and discover the connections to my own running past!

As much as a runner looks forward to finishing a race, I am looking forward to Monday when I finally find out results of the MRI I had over a week ago. I hope the doctors can finally tell me what is wrong with my hip. I also hope to find out whether surgery will correct things (it better). I have my ideas about what they will find. I put my money on hearing the words "labral tear" and "hip impingement". I do hope they offer hope for me that I can be fixed. I have completely given up on even trying to run any more. It just doesn't work. I was so excited to finally get warm enough weather last week to go out biking. I took out my mountain bike and it felt good so I did about an hour, but that night the "nerve pain" came again all down my left side and stayed with me throughout the next day. I was hoping that at least I could bike, but I guess I can't even do that. It seems the only exercise I can do to work on my endurance is kettlebells. Yesterday, I set a new PR doing kettlebell swings. I did 1250 swings with my 50 pound kettlebell. It feels good to do these, but the only problem is I now get blisters on my hands instead of my feet.

I have had lots of conversations and feedback online with other runners that have had labral tears and so much of what I have experienced matches up to their stories. The best description offered me explaining labral tears and their cause and damage comes from runner, cyclist, kickbiker-footbiker, and chiropractor Jamie Whitlock, (also runs the No Gears Needed blog). He wrote me this:

Labral tears would be a surgical fix. If that is the problem I would think that it was result of an imbalance. The muscles of the pelvis/hip, especially the psoas, are so prone to tightening, then you get a weakened Glute Medius, which is a stabilizer of the pelvis, and you are rocking side to side vs. gliding forward. This puts undo pressure on the hip joint itself, and shazaam internal destruction in or around the joint....All the muscles around that area, TFL, of course the ITB, G Med, Psoas, Piriformis all culprits!

That about sums up most of my trouble muscles and imbalance problems and tells about what I expect the MRI to show, "internal destruction in or around the joint."

To Live up to your Potential

2011-03-15T23:45:00.004-04:00

"...to me the object is not to beat someone, but merely to live up to your potential. If you do, then you will end up winning a lot..." Frank Shorter

After a training run with Frank Shorter at Brookdale Farm in Hollis.

Back in 1977, when I graduated from The Stony Brook School we could put a quote or two by our yearbook photo. I found a running quote that also was a life philosophy quote from Olympic 1972 gold and 1976 silver medalist in the marathon, Frank Shorter. I included this quote and I frequently recall it to help me pursue a proper "winning" attitude. I couldn't remember where it came from, until I recently found the original article again online in the May 24, 1976 Sports Illustrated article, "In the Long Run it's Shorter" by Frank Deford. This is a great article.

I also recently discovered that a classic running book from 1980 titled The Marathoners by Hal Hidgon has been released for the Kindle. I borrowed this book from a library many years ago, but it was nice to find the Kindle version for just $2.99 and it was worth a reread. It highlights the stories of Frank Shorter and his victory in the 1972 Olympic Marathon as well as Bill Rodgers and his 1975 victory in the Boston Marathon. These two runners and their standout feats lit the fires for the running boom in the 1970s. They are two champions of the sport.

Hal Higdon then tells about the women responsible for challenging the norms of the time concerning women running marathons. In particular he highlights Gayle Barron who won the 1978 Boston Marathon. She may not be as well know today, but she epitomized the female pioneer runners and marathoners of the 1970s who kept stepping forward to win races and bring down records.

Gayle Barron after the 1978 Falmouth Road Race

Talking with Gayle and getting her autograph after that race.

Gary Bjorklund was another great track and marathon runner from the 1970s; one who was eager to replace Rodgers and Shorter at the top of the running pack.He is well known for making the Olympic Team in the 10000 meters in 1976 despite losing a track shoe in the race.

Gary Bjorlund and Bill Rodgers at the NYC Marathon.

Gary Bjorklund

If you want to learn some great running history or be inspired again by the racing of these great runners, then I suggest you read this Kindle book.

On another note, of the numerous emails and notes of support I received back in 2000 during the hullabaloo when the Nashua School Superintendent would not let me take a personal day to run the Boston Marathon, I recall that one of the emails sent my way came from Hal Higdon himself!

Ryan Hall: Running with Joy

2011-03-05T16:12:00.006-05:00

One of the greatest running quotes of all time comes from the Oscar winning movie Chariots of Fire.As you may recall, in this movie based on the 1924 Olympics, Scottish runner Eric Liddell disqualifies himself from the 100 meters because he refuses to run on the Sabbath. A teammate gives up his spot on the 400 meters so that Eric has a chance at winning a medal. During this final scene in the movie, as Eric Liddell throws his head back towards the heavens and races towards the finish line we hear his words proclaim, "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure."

Non-runners don't get it, but that quote so perfectly encapsulates the joy of running that many so perfectly feel and pursue. I think it has become so ingrained in my soul, that I continue to want to "feel" this joy despite injuries and pain that tell me that maybe my running days might possibly be over. When people tell me that I should just quit and find something else to do, I can't. I think running is so written into my DNA. I just want to run and it is one of the profound ways that I can experience the pleasures of being a human.

This week I read Ryan Hall's new book Running with Joy: My Daily Journey to the Marathonon my Kindle. This book is a journal-like build-up of the 14 weeks prior to Hall's running of the 2010 Boston Marathon. In it Ryan details his workouts, his thoughts and doubts, his routines, and his spiritual thinking. Much has been said about Ryan Hall and the decisions he has made as a runner and particularly his spiritual thinking. This year, he even walked away from his long-time coach so he could coach himself with God's guidance. This sent the running message boards into a frenzy. So what is up with Ryan Hall?

Ryan is open and honest in his book as he dishes out his daily thoughts. If you want to know his training schedule and routines, it is here. What is interesting is his chronicles of doubts along the way. Who knew that a world-class runner hurt as much as us normal runners? If you want to get to know more about Ryan's life, this really isn't a biography. Most of the background information in the story has been written elsewhere. This is more of a snapshot of a period of time. He does break apart from the journal routine to give specific short passages on training and other running related issues. These are interesting, but not thoroughly in-depth. We learn he does self-massage with rollers or massage balls, but it would be real interesting to learn the specifics and routines. Fourteen weeks is a short amount of time and we learn a little bit about his running wife, Sarah, but not a whole lot. In fact I found this short blog entry by Ryan Hall to be more entertaining than just the basics in the book. What we are left with is a running and spiritual journal.

The first book on running I ever received was a book given to me when I was about 10 years old called "Running the Race" (1968). I still have it. It was a book about great Olympic athletes and their challenges and triumphs. Many of the stories reflected on the spiritual lives of these champions. I was nothing but a run-around-the-neighborhood kid when I first read the book, but the stories of Jesse Owens, Jim Ryan, Kip Keino, Roger Bannister, Paavo Nurmi, Emil Zapotek, and others certainly influenced the future decisions I made to become a runner.

The next two running books I read when I started running in ninth grade were the biographies of Jim Ryan and Kip Keino, both runners who integrated running and faith. Other books, such as Meb Keflezighi's recent biography tell about a strong faith, but Ryan's book is something different all-together. A non-runner reading the book may find the descriptions of his workouts indecipherable, likewise a non-believer may find his spiritual thoughts and devotional writings incomprehensible. I admire Ryan Hall, for letting us take a glimpse into his thinking processes. I am not sure he did the best job articulating his goals, but I think his thinking was a work in progress. It may just be the journal format, or the fact that we are seeing his thinking more than his actions beyond the running. Or maybe his dream is just too heavenly too describe. I think it comes down to Ryan wanting to feel God's joy when he races. He wants to rediscover that joy he had when winning the Olympic Trials marathon in New York City, finger pointing to the sky, full of run in the final strides, during that overwhelming championship run.

It then becomes a struggle for Ryan to develop a plan for racing. Do you run to win or do you run to feel God's pleasure? What if God's pleasure is for him to win? What if is is not? Ryan tries to make sense of his thinking and in today's world where winning is usually everything, what should be Ryan's mindset? Some people will probably pour hate on the book because of Ryan's spiritual inclinations. Some will not get it at all. Some will see a champion who is trying to keep his head on straight and not let fame interfere with personal growth. Others may delight in reading about Ryan Hall's spiritual path. Even if you read the book and don't enjoy it, at least you know that the profits from the book will be going to Ryan's Hall Steps Foundation.

Here are some interesting quotes I bookmarked (don't know what pages as it is a Kindle)

"I still compare myself to others. But I am getting closer. This is not what running should be about at its fullest. Running should be a pure flood of joy. Comparing myself to others is empty and vain. I rob myself of the goodness and joy of running every time I do it."

"I really struggle with the concept of having only one winner. I don't want to tell kids that if they do their best, work hard, and sacrifice, they will accomplish their dreams. If their dream is to win the Super Bowl they will probably never accomplish it. Instead, I want to encourage kids to focus, work hard, and dream big because the journey is what matters. To dream and live a life of devotion is better than to never dream at all. As we pursue our dreams, we realize the abundant life."

"I feel that it would be robbing those who are interested in my running to not share what it is that makes me tick and about the journey that I am on. I realize that everyone may not agree with everything I believe in, and that's alright. I think we all need to extend the grace to one another to allow people to be who they are and way what makes them who they are."

Running with Joy website and blog.

But if you really want to experience what I think Ryan Hall is trying to articulate in this book, just re-watch the ending to Chariots of Fire.

No Improvements-Need another MRI

2011-03-02T17:39:00.000-05:00

I have been having the best of therapy on my hip. I feel better walking and moving around than I have in years. Most of my muscle pain is gone and I don't even think about it most days. I just cannot run.

The last two weeks of running since having to stop halfway through a trial 8 miler were a grand total of 8 miles. I get on the treadmill every few days and start off running and feeling great. My stride is more balanced, my leg seems straighter, and my foot points forward. I get to the first mile and think it will be a breakthrough day. Then I start getting twinges and the inside and front of my hip starts hurting and feeling like it is pulling, so I have to stop. The last four runs were 1.62 miles, 1.89 miles, 1.89 miles again, and then 1.70 miles. That is my limit, after that my hip hurts for a day or two. I was wearing an SI joint belt for runs since January and didn't wear it on the 2nd to last run which just made my lower back hurt too.

Today I went back to the Physiatrist to see what he recommended. In January, he wanted me to have another cortisone shot, this time in the si joint. I didn't have it because my physical therapy was going so well. I also told him that if I put a kettlebell on top of my quad and did leg lifts that my left leg struggled with this (getting weakness and pain in the same spots) and I would get a clicking in the hip each time the weight descended. He thinks it is time for an MRI again (I tried twice in the fall, but bailed out due to claustrophobia). He thinks there is an impingement in the hip, that the labrum is torn, or a piece of the labrum is torn off causing the troubles. I agree as this has gone on for more than half a year. It is not a simple muscle injury. I think that the orthotics and PT have helped fix my stride, but the structure of my hip can't handle it (and maybe that is why my stride went wonky in the first place).

I have no problem with the thought of getting surgery if that will fix things, but I have a major problem with getting into a casket-like MRI and remaining still for an hour. Hopefully this time I can make it through. He is going to give me some meds, but I'd prefer to be knocked out completely. The good news is he is prescribing an MRI with contrast injection. One thing I have read about torn labrums and MRIs is that the doctor needs one with the contrast injection to get a good read. The previous two did not have that prescribed, even though I asked for it, and I knew that if I made it through the MRI they would just have to do another one anyhow with the contrast solution to get that good reading. So I will sit and wait for a call from the hospital to schedule a date for the MRI. As much as I want to get running again, that is balanced by how much I dislike the thought of an MRI. Maybe they need to do an MRI of my brain!

A Training Week (almost)

2011-02-13T23:10:00.000-05:00

I am getting hopeful that I can get back to training and running a bit more consistently. This week had its up and downs, but I still got in more day and miles of running this week then I have since November when I got a cortisone shot in my hip.

Sunday I ran on the treadmill, where I have been doing all my running, so I can stop if necessary. Things were going good. I hit three miles and I started hoping I could make 5 miles. At 4 miles, I felt a pinching feeling in the front of my hip and immediately stopped. Two days later I tried again and did 5 miles with no problems. Friday I tried for another 5 miler, but had to stop at 3 miles.

I have also been working on kettlebell swings. I have been playing around with kettlebells for a few years, but the swing used to hurt my left hip and that was only when doing about 25 swings. With the physical therapy on my hip, I found out I could swing more and had got up to 500 swings with my 35 pound kettlebell. I was doing intervals of about 75-100 swings at a time. A couple of weeks ago I got a 50 pound kettlebell, but the most I had done with it was 100 swings. I had a goal to do 1000 some day, but never made the time.

Friday I got a DVD by Tracy Reifkind called Programming the Kettlebell Swing. In it she tells how to break down the kettlebell swing into shorter on-off intervals. I only watched a bit of it before I decided to follow a similar plan. I cut the swings down to 10 in an interval, but later bumped it up to 25 with a 15 second break and a longer break after each 100 swings. I started swinging away to see how many I could do, when I hit 200 I decided that it was time to go for the 1000 swings using the 50 pound bell. I also felt that this would tire me out sufficiently so that I wouldn't attempt the snowshoe race the next day. They felt good, and despite the start of some blisters on my hands, I kept good form; actually I think I was developing better form as I went. Let me tell you, the heart rate really races and the breathing gets heavier when performing the swing. It was the closest I have come in months in getting that heart rate up for an extended time. I was very pleased when I finally hit 1000 swings! It was like doing a long run for the first time, when you aren't sure if you can pull it off: gratifying.

The next day, I felt real good. My hips felt nice! By afternoon time, I decided it was time to try running outside again. The last time I did an 8 miler was back in November. The cortisone shot I had earlier in that week had worn off, and I ended up stopping at the halfway point and had to slowly walk home in the cold as I could barely lift and move my left leg forward.

This time I decided to bring my wife's phone in case my hip hurt so she could pick me up. At first I felt good. By 2 miles, the front of the hip wasn't right, but I kept playing around with my form. At the halfway point, I stopped and took out the phone to make a call for help. Unfortunately the phone was not charged and so I had another long cold 4 mile walk home. At least I could walk faster this time than in November. However, last night I noticed, I could barely lift my left knee up when lying on my back, and in the morning, I couldn't lift the leg up without my hand assisting and walking is a bit difficult. That hip flexor is really sore.

By the way Tracy Reifkind is and her kettlebell swing is featured in Tim Ferris' book The 4-Hour Body with her story of weight loss and the kettlebell swing. I have been doing the slow-carb diet as highlighted in the book for about 6 weeks now. I eat eggs and frozen veggies in the morning, grilled chicken, lentils, and more veggies at noon, and steak, beans, and veggies at night 6 days a week. The 7th day is a cheat day and I eat as I want. I feel healthy and energetic on the diet. Everything is going well, except I just can't get the running going.

How Runners Communicate (through the years)

2011-02-11T22:29:00.001-05:00

When I started running in the 1970s everything I knew about running came from my coaches and teammates, books on running, televised track meets, and Runner's World magazine. I was fortunate to grow up in Falmouth on Cape Cod, the home of the Falmouth Road Race and I started running for the Falmouth High School Cross Country team just a couple of weeks after the first Falmouth Road Race. I also learned a lot about the athletes and the sport from participating in the Falmouth Road Race and seeing and reading about all the stars of the sport in the local papers. Being in close proximity to the best in the sport probably helped instill a passion in me for the sport of running.

High School Communication:

Falmouth High School 1973-1974

There was no internet. Runners did not even have timers on their watches to accurately record training times. Results were either written down or mimeographed and distributed later. Results from my first year of running cross-country. I was no running star! The only race that is missing is the final race, a handicap race for the Falmouth XC team. I was one of the first starters, based on my slow best time, and held on for the win in 19:53.

I think this is the first time I was mentioned in the newspaper. It was just for being on the track team. I was pretty slow.

The Stony Brook School 1974-977

Mimeographed sheets again. Communication with Coach Goldberg in the summer was by mail or phone. The only way I could get to the top of the list was if the top guys did not run, but it was fun to get there.

Results always seemed to be in purple. These are from the New York State Suffolk County Cross-Country Championships in 1976. We had an outstanding team, and finished third in our NY State division race. I wonder how many race results are lost to history, except for those saved by racers stored in boxes in garages and attics.

Our outstanding coach, Marvin W. Goldberg, would post workouts everyday on a bulletin board in the gym and send postcards and notes throughout the summer. After a season, he would meet with his athletes individually and go over goals. I think I am the only high school runner, despite loads of effort, who could never break 5 minutes in the mile (all slow twitch fibers and a funky hip and stride).

Wheaton College 1977-1981

In college we had this postcard-newsletter system to keep up with our teammates throughout the summer. How else would you know that a teammate just won an NCAA title or that another teammate spent his summer elongating the necks of Coca-Cola bottles for carnivals (in another newsletter). There was a lot of ribbing and strange humor in these newsletters (maybe the Coke bottle puller was just someone pulling our legs-I still don't know). It was a fun way to keep in contact and stay motivated through a long summer.

Through college and after, if I wanted to stay in-touch with the running world, I had to read magazines and books, run and talk with running friends, go to races, and watch the occasional event of television. It might take weeks or months to view the results in running magazines of races from around the world and in the US, unless they were printed in a newspaper like the Boston Globe. The computer changed all that.

In the 1990s the Gate City Striders had a computer bulletin board in addition to a mailed out newsletter. You would phone in using your modem (I think one person at a time could gain access) and you could read and send messages to teammates and read messages on a newsgroup called rec.running to hear what people around the world were writing about running. The message board was a lot of fun and a place of inspiration: just when you thought you were training well, you could read the messages of your teammates and find out that they were running farther and more often. It was motivating hearing about their training runs and races, as well as being able to plan workouts and long runs.

As the internet exploded and more people became computer savvy, the bulletin board was eventually laid to rest. The Gate City Striders, like other running clubs, migrated their presence to a web page. Runners could now communicate easier and messages and results flowed more freely and with greater speed. Running forums like Runners World and Letsrun allowed even greater communication and then results started showing up online with sites like Coolrunning. Now, you didn't have to copy results from a printout after a race to keep track of your times and placing, but you could go online and see what your friend's times were in races you didn't attend soon after they were completed. Now you can even see a record of your online results at Athlinks.

Technology soon expanded more, so that you could listen to races online. I recall getting up early one Sunday morning to hear the BBC broadcast of the 2002 London Marathon where Khalid Khannouchi defeated Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie in a world record time before getting in the car to go run the Fred's Marathon. Pretty soon races from around the world could be viewed online, many live. Sometimes you had to pay and sometime they are free for the watching. I have a few VHS tapes sitting around from before that time marathons like London and Chicago, where I had to buy a tape of the race on eBay to see the full action in a race.

Communication is pretty instant with runners and races nowadays. Runners on Letsrun often get a bit angry if results are not posted within minutes of a race's completion. Another type of communication also followed for some runners. I started this blog a few years ago to write about my experiences with running, racing, health, and injuries. I have made many friends in the running community from places all over the world through this blog or reading websites and blogs that other runners, coaches, and therapists provide. I have been able to read and talk with others about common injuries and share my own struggles in hopes that others can find some helpful nuggets of information or provide from their own experiences and knowledge to help me. I also like reading my teammates and friends blogs to be inspired by their races and workouts and encourage each other to become better runners.

Eventually I broke down and got a Facebook account (how else do you communicate with you kids when he is in college). This has provided a new set of friends in the running community. I have met some fellow runners in the oddest circumstances through Facebook. One runner found himself in the background of a photo of my finish in the 1976 Falmouth Road Race. I have connected again with former teammates from high school and college (every result and article above has one or more of my Facebook refound friends listed) and I made new friends who share their love of running and racing (some are runners I knew about and others are runners I have still to meet). It is always fun to read other runner's accounts of races and training (as well as the bragging and dissing that goes on). I think that if I was left alone in a bubble, I would probably just give up on the running thing, but I am always inspired by the success and wisdom of others as they relate their own experiences. Who would want to stop running? The running community is full of so many fun and positive people. Technology and computers has certainly changed the world of running and we are all better for it.If you are a runner and like to communicate on Facebook, you can find me here.

Another aspect for having this blog is to practice my writing skills due to the fact that I am a teacher. I try some of the things I have my students do with their writing. So that leaves me with a new avenue, I am tentatively going to try on "Recover Your Stride". I would like to write about other runners and discover their successes and secrets, as well as their history with running. I don't know how it will go, but I would hope to find some willing subjects that might be more interesting to write about them myself, as I am not really that interesting as a runner, I am just persistent runner who loves the sport, I already have my first subject, someone who loves running as much as I do, someone who loves the Falmouth Road Race as much as I do, and someone who has an incredible string of Falmouth runs- even more races than I have done. I have seen him and his brother at plenty of Falmouths in recent years, but have never really met him except online due to this blog, so it will be fun to find out his history and how he has stayed so successful.

"Building Your Body Maintenance Routine" ebook

2011-02-05T16:33:00.000-05:00

Leigh Boyle over at Athletes Treating Athletes has produced a free e-book called "Building Your Body Maintenance Routine" that you can sign up for on her website. This e-book can teach you how to remain injury free:

My big motivation in writing this guide was to show you how to use the resources on the A-T-A site when you are not hurt as a way to monitor common problem areas and prevent the bigger injuries from sneaking up on you. In doing so, I also wanted to dispel some of the common myths about how often and when you should be using this stuff. I think you’ll be surprised by how little it takes and how repeatable the whole process is. That is the guide’s ultimate goal- to help you build a plan that is specific to your injury history, your sport, your job, and your training schedule. Inside you’ll find a blank planning page so that you play along as your read. You’ll also find a filled in chart full off all the A-T-A links you’ll need.

It links to the videos that Leigh has produced to explain the different techniques. If you are injured and in the area, you might want to visit Leigh at Pinnacle Physical Therapy in Plaistow, NH.If not check out the Athletes treating Athletes website or Facebook page.

That is where I have been going for therapy the past two months. So how is it going? I am only running once or twice a week, but hope to build slowly. I wasn't too smart and did a very hard 4+ mile snowshoe run two weeks ago. I got the pinching back in my inner adductors after that. It went away after one day. I did a good 3 miler on the treadmill last week. My legs feel much more balanced, straight, and dare I say strong. I can push off with the left foot and my right shoulder and ribs are moving forward to be equal with my left side. I am out of shape, but my legs want to go faster than my conditioning allows! If I don't run at all, my hips and back feel real good and I don't even think about them during the day. I am able to do kettlebell swings much better than I ever could without the former hip problems and I have jumped from a 35 pound kettlebell to a 50 pound bell. Because of all the work, I have feel great, even when shoveling snow. That is an activity that used to kill my back. Now, I like attacking all the snow that this winter has brought. I think I got a little too vigorous after the last storm trying to throw the snow over my cars and snowbanks. I didn't feel it until, I ran on the treadmill after the shoveling and I got the pinch back in my adductor (probably from twisting movements). I have a new policy for myself. I will not run when feeling hurt or any discomfort, so I no longer push through pains. I am just being patient and careful.

I think I am getting all the gunk out of my muscles and stuff surrounding my left hip and inner hamstring. My knee is straightening out and my foot falls better. Sometimes my "bad" left side feels better than my normal right side! I have been going twice a week to PT but dropping it down to once a week now.

My one concern is learning how to run correctly again and not returning to similar patterns in my running. I believe it is true what Carson Boddicker says in a recent post called The Brain Maps Movement, not Muscle.

You’ve heard it before. The brain doesn’t think about turning “on” individual muscles, but rather works in terms of movements. The brain... likewise does not speak in terms of “movement quality,” but rather cares only about movement success. The brain does not care how it gets from A to B only that it gets from A to B."

(note: I used to describe my running that way: just build up momentum and then try to maintain it any way possible! Form? what form?)

Regardless of whether or not you can move in a particular way or via a specific joint movement during a particular exercise does not necessarily mean that it’s good. It simply means that the brain will access plan B by stimulating a slightly different motor area to achieve the same or similar final posture.

With repeated activation, plan B simply becomes plan A due to impediment, and becomes “normal” and functionally dominant. Changes in the brain’s maps are implicated across a range of function and dysfunction. As is the case, remember, our number one target organ for all intervention is the brain.

I know I have faulty "brain maps"and my body follows these faulty movement patterns. The question is how to change my movement patterns so that I can run and move with greater efficiency and allow my muscles to move my bones and joints correctly. I have always run through therapies: maybe that is why rolfing and other things I have tried have never worked. I would start feeling good and immediately push things as hard as I could. I even did that this summer with new orthotics and ART therapy. I would just run with faulty patterns and never allowed my body to recover and learn new patterns and would just reinstall the old patterns on top of whatever therapy I tried.

How do you retrain your brain? I am not sure. I really liked the Feldenkrais movement work I did a couple of years ago. I was happy to see a new book published called The Art of Slowing Downby Edward Yu this month that brings Feldenkrais, Taichi, and something called Bagua together to relearn better movement patterns specifically to improve running. I only got the book yesterday, but I like a lot of the movement wisdom in the book and the Feldenkrais lessons. If you are not familiar with Feldenkrais, it uses non-stressful slow movements that help you feel and relearn how you move. The one problem that I have with the book is that it is only a book. I have followed through many Feldenkrais lessons and the best way to do them is when the are mp3 sound file. There are lessons in the book, but most runners will not do them properly. This is spelled out in the book, but still runners like to get places quickly and it is hard to understand slow. The book should have come with the lessons on a cd or there should be a website where you can buy or download them. Other than that I will be delving into it daily. I like how the beginning movements tie the 1st MPT joint to hip movements. Well I have a left hip problem and a left toe problem (functional hallux limitis). It is amazing how everything is tied together. I also have a right shoulder problem and that too is tied to the left hip. If you have never participated in Feldenkrais, I have a lot of blog posts on it with links to free Feldenkrais ATMs. These are sound file lessons, some made specifically for runners. Here is one post with some links. Jae Gruenke of The Balanced Runner has a cd called "Loosening up to Run" that I have used an awful lot (directions for similar movements are in Edward Yu's book) but it is easier to listen to a cd (nice review on her site too!). I now notice she has a new mp3 called "A Leg to Stand on". I will have to try that one some day. She sent me another cd a while back called "Well-Armed" but I guess she has never released that one.

So hopefully it will all work out soon for me. I am getting my muscles and hip joint fixed and then I can relearn proper movement patterns. I just hope that is all that is wrong as that pinching feeling in the front of my leg makes me nervous. And if you don't want to be a messed up runner like me, then download Leigh's e-book and learn how to take care of yourself before you turn into a mess.

Does the size of your head predict your speed or strength?

2011-02-01T00:06:00.000-05:00

Can the size of your head predict your speed or strength? This is something I have never really thought about, but someone else did, at least as to how it pertains to the animal kingdom. In an article I found at Discovery News, Dog Head Size Predicts Strength, Speed by Janet Viegas, the author relates what was reported in the latest issue of the journal "Behavioral Processes".

Just looking at the size, width and basic shape of a dog's head can inform the viewer about the dog's ability to fight, pull and run.

Brachycephalic, or broad-headed, dogs that participated included American Pit-Bull Terriers, American Bulldogs and Bernese Mountain Dogs. Dolichocephalic, or more narrow-headed, breeds consisted of Samoyeds, Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes.

... all of the more broad-headed dogs in the study were able to pull substantially higher weights than their narrow-headed competitors. Other studies indicate dolichocelphalic breeds are faster and more efficient runners than the brachycelphalic dogs.

Just looking at the size, width and basic shape of a dog's head can then inform the viewer about the dog's ability to fight, pull and run.


American Pit Bull Terrier- wide head- strong doggie! Teach him to shot put!


greyhound- narrow head- fast doggie! Keep him on the track!

"Run to Overcome" by Meb Keflezighi

2011-01-29T16:04:00.002-05:00

I enjoyed reading Meb Keflizghi's biography Run to Overcome: The Inspiring Story of an American Champion's Long-Distance Quest to Achieve a Big Dream. Since getting a Kindlefor Christmas I have been reading up a storm, but I didn't have a Kindle version of this book, I had a hardcover copy so I had to put down the kindle and start turning pages again. This book is written in a pretty straightforward way and you feel as if Meb is talking to you as you read. I was caught up in finishing the story and it took just two nights of reading. While I am familiar with Meb as a runner, this book tells you more about his heart.

It is takes you through his life: born in war torn Eritrea, through his father making his way to Italy so his family could later follow. Then the trip to California where Meb and his siblings excelled in school and sports through hard work and determination. I knew all about his running accomplishments, but it was good to read about the people and circumstances that helped make him a champion. The book covers a lot of ground, but there were few surprises or dramatic narratives as the story winds its ways through Meb's life and running career. It does highlight his relationship with Ryan Shay, the American marathoner who died in the first miles of the American Olympic Marathon trials and Meb's major hip problems and recovery after that race.

It is a positive story that leaves you uplifted about how family, values, faith, and hard work can pull people to the pinnacle of success and then to the very top. I would have wished to learn more of his life in Eritrea. Meb puts a positive spin on many things and I don't feel like the hardships were portrayed fully. I think my favorite chapter was the one chronicling the courtship of Meb and his wife. Meb is a pretty steadfast guy and if his courtship seems old-school and outdated then I think it should be assigned reading to young people if they want to find the key elements of what makes a successful marriage relationship. The chapter reminded me about the section in the wonderful Disney biopic Endurancewhere Haile Gebrsellasie goes on his first date with his future wife (both are acting as themselves in the movie) and they hardly know how to start talking with each other, but they are obviously in awe over the other person.

Meb proves in his book, life, and running that his is a person of strong character and convictions. I met Meb at the Falmouth Road Race this year and appreciated the short conversation I had with him. I admired the fact that he willingly shared and let fans touch his Olympic silver medal as well as his gold medal for the 2009 New York City Marathon. I was surprised at the race (Meb did not run due to illness) when after finished, a friendly face appeared at the finish line with extended hand offering congratulations. Meb was greeting the runners as soon as they finished.

Meb's website is called Run to Overcome. You can find more information on Meb and his book and there is still a chance that you can daily win an autographed copy of his book on the site (until Feb. 11). That is how I got my copy!

Meb. The Champion

Meb in the Athens 2004 Olympic Marathon, where he won the silver medal. This is exciting even if in Italian. Stefano Baldini of Italy finished first, Meb was second, and Venderlei de Lima of Brazil was a triumphant third after being attacked and tackled by a crazy fan on the course.

TRX Workout for Snowshoe Racers

2011-01-21T14:32:00.001-05:00

After getting beat up at the Feel Good Farm Snowshoe race last week, I realized that there is more to snowshoe racing than just basic conditioning. I was vastly out of condition to even attempt that race, but there was something else still missing if I wanted to put my best effort into racing. The downhills were a bit scary due to lack of balance and stability and there is a different kind of strength needed when running over snow than is needed for road or easy trail running. I was happy to find this TRX Snow Sports Fourplex Workout. It may not be necessarily geared for snowshoe racers, but it certainly seems to fit the bill. The TRX is a pretty cool and useful fitness tool with unending possibilities. Douglass Burke, the director of athlete conditioning at Sugar Bowl Ski Academy leads you through the moves which are explained further here.

Here is a video on how the best racing snowshoes, Dion Showshoes, are made.

Wimp Race: The Feels Good Farm 1/2 Snowshoe Race

2011-01-16T22:43:00.001-05:00

Wimp Race? WIMP RACE? Mike Amarello of 3C Race Productions had a sinister grin on his face as he gave the final instructions for the 3rd annual Feels Good Farm Snowshoe Race. It was there because he knew the torture he was about to inflict on the large crowd of snowshoe racers. He can grin away because everyone signed up for this bit of snowshoe Hell. You got that right, Snowshoe Hell! At one point in the race, a snowshoer behind me exclaimed, "What's next some red hot lava to run over?" I think he was having his own vision of Hell as he was racing through the woods of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire. Mike had cooked up his own version of an "icy Hell on Snow".

However for those of us who only did 1/2 the race and only suffered 1/2 half the torture, he dares call our little race a Wimp Race? Let me tell you, that has to be the toughest Wimp Race in existence! It may have only been half the race, but "Wimp Race"? I am sure he was grinning again as he typed in "Wimp Race" and sent the results off to Coolrunning to officially and publicly name all 1/2 racers as Wimps. What will people think when they now Google "wimp" and my name comes up in the results?

I haven't been able to do much running since the end of the summer. I have probably only done about 50 miles total since mid November with the longest run being 3.5 miles, but I was feeling the need to race and I really wanted to race on my snowshoes. I got up to 12 miles total of running last week and things were looking up. This week however my SI joint was painful when trying to run on Monday, so my total mileage Monday through Friday was just that little one miler.

Fortunately, I had another PT appointment Friday which got things put back in order and also on Friday Amazon delivered a something called a Serola Sacroiliac Belt. It is a belt someone recommended to my on Letsrun so I decided to give it a try. It holds your SI Joints in place and allows your muscles to work properly. Rather than inhibiting movement, it is supposed to allow your hip and leg muscles to function properly. I decided to give it a shot and it is supposed to work for athletes.

All week I had been thinking about doing the Feels Good Farm snowshoe race again even if I hadn't able to even run that far on the roads lately. I did it two years ago and told myself never again. I forgot that promise. The Feels Good Farm race is misnamed. Nothing about this race feels good. It is a two lap race up Moose Hill and down then up and down again for about 1500 feet of ups and 1500 feet of downs. Then you get to repeat the whole thing again for the second lap. The uphills will burst your lungs and fry your muscles and the downhills will test your courage as it can be a treacherous plunge down the slopes. Did I really run down the hill out of control and do a two handed arm stop against a tree crossing the path at about 4 feet high before ducking under? I didn't see any blood on the tree so I assume everyone else was nimble enough to run and duck or try a stopping maneuver like I did! That was nuts!

I knew my fitness level was pretty much shot with so much inactivity and who knew if the belt would even work for me. Maybe I wouldn't even get to 100 yards., but I had to try. I did a few strides before the race and seeded myself about 3/4ths back from the start and hoped I could at least make the short loop around the parking lot without pain. Yeah, fortunately it felt OK after the gun sent the racers on their way. The road was flat, the snow was packed down, and never in my life had I seen so many snowshoers running ahead of me. I felt good and decided to indeed go for the first loop. I was thinking that the day would be a huge success if I could make just one loop of the race and was happy to hear that there was an open invitation to drop out after one lap if you needed to. What was there to worry about?

Well, we hit the trails and the hill started. Everything was single track and with a crowd of over 80 racers everyone started single filing it in a long paceline.I fit in behind Keith O'Brien and up we started to go. Pretty soon my breathing got very heavy and my heart rate started shooting up. If someone started slowing they stepped aside and a whole bunch of racers would go by. At one point I tripped and looked back to see a 3 thick branch covered by snow was lying across the path in wait to trap a snowshoe. It caught mine. I kept looking up and the race kept going up. At one point I passed Steve Wolfe as he was fiddling with his snowshoes. His race for a top spot was over even if he could get his snowshoes untangled and fixed. He would never be able to pass so many racers on the trails ahead.

Did I say the trails kept going up? Well they did. I passed a few people who couldn't keep with the steady pace and a few times I asked the person behind me if they wanted to go ahead. They never did! Pretty soon people started walking. I am glad they did, because I needed to also. It seemed to take forever before we hit the top and started hurtling down. I was very leery of going too fast downhill. While my SI joint wasn't hurting my left leg was hard to control. I would veer from one side of the course to the other. The snow was also deep and slushy feeling underfoot, or at least my foot was sliding a few inches or more forward each time they hit the ground.

My untrained muscles were tightening up and I was really pushing the limits of heart rate and breathing. I let a few people go by here and there and passed a few too. And then we had to go up the hill again. Now I was stumbling on the uphills. Near the top I stopped and let two racers go by. From there it was downhill again, but I was shot. I even had to stop and walk a few times going downhill! I knew I was nearing the end of the first lap and you couldn't pay me a million dollars to do another lap. I am not sure if I could have made my muscles respond if I tried to go up those hills again. Now my calves started getting cramps a bit as my toes were pointed going down the hills. I was thoroughly gutted and completely tapped out and happily stopped after that first lap.

And I felt great. Now that I was done, my muscles were trashed, my chest was heaving, blood was pumping, and I was simply elated to have been able to do even half of this race. If you are going to start a comeback, you might as well start with the toughest race you can find. I had missed racing and pushing extremes for so many months that being able to compete was such a thrill even if I was in such poor shape. But then I saw the results and they called the "short version of the race "The Wimp Race"! I gotta tell you I have never been so happy to be called wimpy in my life before! I watched and cheered on the "real racers" as they finished the second lap and it is true that anyone who completed the Feels Good Farm Snowshoe Race deserves to be called an aerobic beast. Congratulations to all, because this race is no walk in the park. I have done over a thousand races in my 35+ years of competing and that includes marathons, triathlons-including 5 Ironman distance ones, cross-country races, track races, and bike races and nothing compares to the" in your face intensity" of this race. It takes strength and fitness to get up the climbs and nimbleness and courage to get back down. There is nowhere to take a breather. If you want to push your limits in the shortest amount of time possible, this race will do it!

How do I know it is tough. I can run up Mt. Washington without walking one step. I had to walk some downhills here. I have cycled downhill at up to 62 mph but at least I had brakes and a clear view of the road ahead. Each step going down Moose Hill you didn't know if you might hit a rock or get your tip caught under a branch or even run into a tree crossing your path. There are points in triathlons, marathons, and bike races when you get a chance to catch your breath a bit. This race doesn't give you that chance. And finally, I think I am going to lose a toenail after doing this race. That only happens in a marathon.

The really good news? The belt seems to work. Oh I had some sore muscles after my half a race, but it wasn't the typical one sided messed up joint pain I usually have. I felt fine all night and was even able to do a few hundred kettlebell swings at night. Today, I took out my snowshoes again and went down to Mine Falls with my son Andrew and I got another couple of miles in. It felt so much better running on the flats for a change! I look forward to seeing how this belt works when I run. If this can help me train while my back and hips learn to heal, I will be very very happy indeed!

Scott Mason has a set of fantastic picture of all the snowshoe champions here.

Here are the results of the full race.

Here are the results of the Wimp Run. I have never been so proud to be called 2nd Wimp!

Mobility Workout of the Day: Tight IT Band and Hip Flexor Fix for Runners

2011-01-13T17:51:00.000-05:00

Kelly Starrett of www.sanfranciscocrossfit.com has a blog called MobilityWod (Mobility Workout of the Day). I was checking it out last summer and lost track of it (it is now listed on my blog list to the left). Today I was browsing through the Competitor network and saw an article by T. J. Murphy: Burning Runner: The Road to Injury Free Running Starts Now that referenced the blog and checked it out again. It is worth a good look and might be something to add to your daily practice.

I particularly liked the January 11 Mobility exercise. It was just what I needed. It is the tight IT Band- Hip flexor Fix for Runners seen here:

The only interesting thing the previous PT (not where I am going now at Athletes Treating Athletes) I saw was the traditional hip flexor stretch with a twist. He had me angle my leg out into internal rotation so as to stretch the hip flexor. This video show a similar stretch, but with more background information and a longer stretch with props.

He uses this to clean up the junk and tightness around the hip capsule, just where I have been tight all week (which has been a minor disappointment). It feels good to do this one!

Physical Therapy had been going great. I have been in 5 times now. Last week, I finally got into double digits for running mileage for the first time since mid November. I know 12 miles is not much, but I am being conservative. My left leg is straightening out and a lot of my muscle pain and tightness is disappearing. I even got out on the roads for two 3.5 mile runs on Friday and Saturday. While my leg pains are disappearing, it is very clear that my SI joint is now flaring up (or the source of all this non-sense). I could have run further on those two days, except that I could feel that SI joint every step. The good news was that my muscles and other pains did not return after both runs. I thought things were going good, but after PT on Monday, I tried running on the treadmill and the SI joint forced me to stop at one mile. I have had my old imbalances back since them and haven't run since.

So the goal is to find out what is up with the SI joint. The interesting thing is this is the same place I started having my back problems with, back in the 1980's, so maybe as I fix everything else the source of all the pain is returning. Today I had a checkup with the physiatrist and he suggests getting a cortizone shot in the SI joint and then having someone do joint manipulations on that joint. So that will be the next step in the process. Hopefully I get fixed up at PT tomorrow, because I am itching to return to the Feels Good Farm Snowshoe race I did two years ago. It was quite a challenge back then plus my hips were very off in that race. If my hips are fine I plan to run it this year even though it is 5 miles (in the snow-up and down hills) and the longest I have run since mid November is 3.5 miles. It could be a good birthday challenge. If I don't feel good I will give myself a present of not running it, but I hope to be there at this years race.

Besides the PT, I feel really good about two other things I am doing. I continue with the slow-carb diet (almost at three weeks now). Each day is easy and I am basically eating the same things. I start the day with 2-3 eggs and a bowl of spinach ( I know, yumm!!). Lunch is some grilled chicken, spinach, lentils, and mixed veggies (broccoli and cauliflower in particular). Dinner is a nice piece of steak, beans, and more veggies. I am full all day long and not eating any sugar, bread, pasta, rice, or ice cream and cookies. Saturdays are my day to eat whatever I want, but there was hardly any good junk left in the house last week to eat!

The physical therapy has left my left hip joint working so much better. In the past, if I tried 25 kettlebell swings, I might be sore the next day. I started about 10 days ago trying them again. I started with 75 and felt good as my hip doesn't' jam up after and am constantly increasing the amount I do. Now I do sets of 100. I did 400 swings a couple days ago. I think I need to get a heavier bell. I am using a 35 pounder and would like to get a 50 pounder.

Kickstarting the New Year Early

2010-12-31T16:43:00.002-05:00

I have kick-started my New Year a few days early. 2010 was not a very good year running wise, I can only hope that I can run in 2011. There are not many highlights. Probably my only achievement was winning the age group in the Moose on the Loose 10 miler which got me a RRCA state champion plaque. It was a very uncomfortable race for me as my hips were all off, but I fought back to pass a competitor to win the age group. I did hit 85 miles total in one week of running this summer and ran about 12 races in August, but by the end of the month I realized I couldn't run my hip into shape and have barely run since.

That means I have been eating a lot of bad foods, losing fitness, and not feeling motivated or able to do other exercise. I have been waiting out the medical care people to figure out my hip and stride, but patience has not helped. Every time I run a couple of miles, I feel it the next day with muscles around my hip lighting up like Times Square on New Years Eve.

This week I started doing something about it and I seeing if I can kick off the New Year and regain the ability to run, move, and feel better. So Tuesday, I started reading The 4-Hour Body. I knew I needed to change from the diet full of carbs and ice cream that I had been living on. I started cold turkey using Tim Ferris's Slow-Carb diet. Basically I am eating eggs, meat, beans, and veggies. You don't eat carbs from bread, cereal, pasta, or other sources so it is a about-face for my body. Fortunately, I am not really running so I am using this to drop some weight pretty quickly. The interesting thing about this plan is that one day a week you can eat anything you want and it doesn't even have to be healthy food. The body needs that jolt to keep up with the rapid weight loss. Here is Tim Ferris describing how to make a 3 minute breakfast. By the way I have eaten more spinach this week than in my entire life!

Also on Tuesday, I am finally getting some excellent therapy for my hip and leg. Back in November the physiatrist wanted me to try some physical therapy for my hip before considering other options. I went along with his recommendation for a therapist. The PT he sent me to was useless. I was getting basic old therapy, just moving my hip around and things like lunges. I have done this all before and the therapy wasn't changing even though I was going in twice a week. He couldn't answer any questions for me, was unwilling to listen to my observations, and if something puzzled him he just shrugged his shoulders. After three weeks I quit and asked the doctor if I could choose another therapist. I had an idea. After discovering the videos that Leigh Boyle was putting online over at Athletes Treating Athletes, I decided that she was the type of therapist who had the skills, creativity, and desire to help. I finally got my referral changed and ended up in Plaistow, NH for my first visit on Tuesday.

What an excellent choice. Leigh is a triathlete and understands the athlete's body. On Tuesday she worked for about an hour on the muscles of my left foot and leg. She is working on the weaknesses and tight muscles, and trying to straighten things out. She also uses the metal scraping tools of the Graston Technique and ART (Active Release Technique) and who know what else. My left leg was a bit straighter after one session. The next day I tried a treadmill run and went 3 miles. I felt much more balanced, but my glutes were still tightening up a bit. That afternoon the glutes got tighter and tighter and all around my hip started getting tight. That night I was up for around 2 hours trying to loosen up, and finally I got the left psoas muscle to release and it all went away. It is not going to be an easy fix.

Leigh wrote up a whole list of things that explained what was going on. Despite my abnormal structure, she thinks the calf tightens and everything else stiffens up. She thinks that my foot and lower leg is what is hurting the hip so that needs to be fixed first. I trust what she is doing and it is the hands on type of therapy that I have been searching for for years. So even if it is a drive of almost an hour each way to get there, I am happy to head out to Plaistow twice a week to get fixed.

Leigh's site is Athletes Treating Athletes. She is putting out some of the best videos I have seen for self-treatment of athletic muscular injuries. Check out the site. Look for the stretching and self-massage sections. She works out of Pinnacle Physical Therapy. I noticed a lot of articles on Dave Dunham on their bulletin board. Dave goes there for treatment and he is a master on running and getting injured.