FLOAT ON

Bruce Deacon really hit the nail on the head in regards to how it feels to be injured in his comment on the last post.  When I’m banging on the elliptical it gives me an outlet and I feel like I’m making progress because I’m working hard.  I had a bunch of good workouts on the dang machine in the past week and the running has progressed a little as well.  Baby steps with the running, but steps in the right direction nonetheless.  I talked to Ian Carswell the other week and he had some good advice for dealing with an injury (from his experience of chasing the Olympic 5000m standard in 2000). Basically,  I have to make the most of each day and know that I’m making a step in the right direction towards my goal.  No regrets.

I also got involved with Team Darfur last week.  This is a great opportunity for athletes to help do something about the horrible situation in Sudan.  I first really became aware of the situation a few years ago when I read the book “Escape From Slavery” by Francis Bok (I recommend reading it) and now Team Darfur provides a vehicle for athletes to help out.  China buys two thirds of Sudan’s oil and also sells weapons to the Janjaweed.  If athletes can put pressure on China by making others aware of China’s contribution (indirect or direct) to the situation then perhaps it can make a difference and help bring some peace to Sudan.  Athletes will have more influence than usual this summer with China hosting the Olympics so the campaign is really trying to go hard between now and August.  So check out the website and see what Team Darfur is all about.

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I know it’s been a while since my last entry but, I haven’t had any exciting news.  I do have a lot going on and hopefully someone can learn from this experience. 

THE INJURY

This past week I saw a Neurosurgeon and a Neurologist.  With the Neurosurgeon we went over the MRI results and he concluded that I don’t need surgery, which was a big relief.  Although it would of been nice if he said, “oh, there’s a little problem in there, let me fix it.  It will only take a second and you’ll be as good as new in a couple of days”… but that’s just wishful thinking.  Then I saw a Neurologist and he conducted an EMG (electromyography) and he figured out that I have a 1.6 differential in my Soleus H reflex.  Any difference higher than 1.2 is abnormal.  In other words I cannot recruit my calf muscles as quickly and with as much power as I would need to run properly.  This happened because at one point I caused damage to my sciatic nerve at the S1 (upper sacral vertebrae) level.  This would have been around April 12th when I woke up with a locked up SI joint.  There must have been some sort of impingement to my sciatic nerve and everything around it tightened up as I couldn’t even bend over.  My last three weeks have been pretty much pain free with my back and things in there seem to be in their right place.

RUNNING

There was a one month period (April 12th to May 12th) where I did less running than I normally do in one day.  During those 30 days I ran less than any other 30 days in the past 10 years.  I’m finally able to run (if you want to call it that) for 45 seconds at a time.  I will jog for 45 seconds and then walk for 45 seconds, for a grand total of 35 minutes worth of jogging.  It’s good for me to get out there and do this so that when I come back running won’t be too foreign and I won’t get all the usual aches and pains associated with starting back up.  The downside is that when I’m doing this type of running I feel so far away from being able to rock and roll on the track, it would be quite depressing if you saw me doing this run/walk thing. When my left foot hits the ground I don’t have enough strength for a proper foot plant and I lack even more strength for a proper toe off.  From where I’m coming from though, it’s a good step in the right direction.  It may be another month before I can really run again, it may be shorter, it could be longer, nerves are tricky and a time-line cannot easily be predicted like, say, a stress fracture or a sprained ankle.

RECOVERY

To get the nerve to recover I need to let it heal, hence the lack of running for four weeks straight.  I’m doing exercises for it, such as flossing in the slump position, and other things to make sure my back is in proper alignment.  I’m also seeing massage therapists to ease the recovery and get CranioSacral therapy.  Another therapy that I’ve recently begun is Intramuscular Stimulation (IMS), which is sort of like acupuncture because of the use of needless.  With IMS the needles go into different points and the muscles react with a spasm.  It feels quite awkward but, it has been highly recommended for my specific injury.

CROSS-TRAINING

I’ve been able to stay fit with cross-training a ton (elliptical, bike and pool running).  It cannot replace running but it can be very beneficial.  I really believe that aerobically I’m in very good shape although I’m missing out on the specific pace work and lactic acid building workouts.  I find that workouts on the elliptical give me the best bang for my buck.  The good part about the elliptical is that I can turnover faster than the on the bike or with pool running.  In fact, many of my workouts are done around 230 strides per minute (significantly faster than running).  The downside is that the stride on the elliptical is much shorter than my running stride.   When I’m hammering on the elliptical and breathing hard I feel like I’m making progress and getting fitter, so it’s also a good tool to keep my sanity from not deviating too far. 

The bike is good because I can get on my mountain bike and use the dirt roads to get out in the open air.  It’s easier on the brain to put in time when the scenery is changing.  The pool is good because it allows me to open up my stride, it’s just at a much slower pace and you can’t get the heart rate up as much in the water.  The pool can be deathly boring though.

With my current aerobic base I know that once I’m able to run mechanically properly that I’ll be able to ramp up fast.  I’m doing way more overall training minutes per week and more workout minutes than I normally would when I’m running. 

OLYMPICS

During the past five weeks I’ve had a crushing blow to running the 10 000m this year at the Olympics.  It’s simply not going to happen because I won’t even have a chance to race a good 10 000m and get the A standard.   I know that I would of had a good shot at running sub 27:50 at the Payton Jordan, a missed opportunity for sure.  Racing and training was pointing to a PB over 10 000m and the PJ ended up being paced quite well for a 27:4X.  This year I had planned on doing a mini-peak for the race which would have been different from when I ran 27:56.  Mentally, the 10 000m was my event this year, not just a good preparation for 5000m races later in the season, like last year.

I’ve re-evaluated the importance of the Olympics to myself and the reasons I want to go.  Of course I still want to give it a shot in the 5000m.  Getting to the Olympics is, of course,  tough enough when I’m running and healthy.  It got a whole lot tougher seeing that I haven’t really run for five weeks and I still have a ways to go.  I like the challenge of getting to the Olympics, it keeps me motivated and is a definite goal.

More than going to the Olympics I simply want to run faster than I have before.  It’s too bad that Canadians don’t get until July 23rd to qualify, (Canada gives us until July 6th) because where I stand right now those 17 days could make a big difference.  Of course this deadline set out by Canada may deserve it’s own post  down the road sometime. 

MENTAL

By not having any significant injury in the past 10 years, this current injury has been a major blow to me both physically and mentally.  Most people will attest that it couldn’t of come at a worse time because I’ve previously never had a real shot at the Olympics.  Sure I’ve made it to the World Championships, where the competition is the same, but the Olympics are a obviously a bigger stage for the sport of Track and Field.  Not even being able to attempt a 10 000m just plain sucks.  Not being able to run right now is very frustrating.  I may have gone a little mental lately but I think I need to be to get through this cross training. 

I find solace in reminding myself that everything happens for a reason, I still cannot completely figure this reason out and I may never, that’s life.  I know that I’ve changed as a person and as an athlete through this ordeal and I think these changes are for the better.  Maybe that’s the reason right there?  Something good will come of this and I’ll eventually get to where I want to be, I simply cannot say when that will arrive even though I know it will happen.

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I’ve been injured for three and half weeks now.  It still seems kind of unreal to me as I’ve, practically, never been injured before and this is pretty much the worst time an injury like this could hit me.  Four years ago I wasn’t in a position to make the Olympic team.  This year I am.  I hit Olympic B standards in the 5000m and 10 000m in 2007 and my 2008 campaign started out better than any other year, hands down.  To say that I am frustrated is an understatement.

Approaching Monday I didn’t even attempt to run for the 10 days prior, compared to the first 12 days of the injury where I kept trying to run every two or three days.  I finally realized that this nerve problem was pretty serious and wasn’t going away anytime soon.  In those 10 days off I took a couple days of complete rest and cross-trained the other days.  I made good progress with my slump tests, more mobility in my legs and back and was feeling pretty good except for the lack of power in my left calf.  When I went to run it didn’t quite feel right and nine minutes in I had to pull the plug. My calf just started cramping again and if I was to continue running I’m sure I would have strained it again.  (And the last time I strained it I couldn’t even walk properly for five days).  Monday afternoon was the lowest point for me throughout this ordeal because I really thought I’d be able to run for 20 minutes and when I couldn’t I started doubting and questioning a lot of the things that have kept me going for the past few weeks.

I went to the pool after my attempted run and was going to finish up with my planned pool running workout.  I just didn’t feel like doing the prescribed workout and just pool ran instead.  Later that night I realized that if I don’t give this everything I have then I’ll regret it.  And I won’t regret cross-training (unless of course a long and complete rest is what I need, but with the time line I’m working with, that isn’t an option).  As it stands, Plan B is to just keep on Given’r.

“Give’r. You just go out and you give’r. You keep on working hard.”
“Is that a plan?”
“Yeah that’s a plan right there.”

Being back in Guelph has been great for getting the medical attention that I need.  The medical team here (Dr. Mountjoy, Brenda Scott-Thomas, Marcel Meresz, Lance Dawson, Dr. Marco Lozej) has really stepped up and I cannot thank them enough.  I’m also seeing Dr. Scappaticci in Mississauga for acupuncture and ART.  Dr. Brian Stewart has helped me tremendously too.

My next step is to see a Neurologist to get a handle on why I cannot recruit my calf muscles.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words of encouragement and advice, it’s been much appreciated.

Big news for Speed River.  New Balance is now the official sponsor of the club and will be helping out the team with gear and travel.  Press release here.

Finally I’m not really having fun relaying all this crappy news but, I figure that since people are coming back here for updates that I should let you all know what’s going on.  So I’m just warning you now that there might not be an update for a little while.

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I haven’t written for a little bit because I was hoping to change the tone of the last couple of posts and write some really good news, such as “I’m running again!”  Unfortunately that is not the case.  It’s been three weeks with this injury and it has been very frustrating to say the least. I am seeing improvement, I’m able to cross-train and I’m not in pain, so things could be much worse.  I’m still able to stay positive knowing that everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out.  Keeping a positive mind will allow me to heal my body.

I had an MRI yesterday and it turns out that I have a disc protrusion at L5-S1 and at the time of the MRI there was no significant impingement on the nerve.  Which means that the worst is over and my nerve can now heal.  I’m still not able to recruit my calf properly and my reflexes on my left side are not as sharp as my right side.  How long will this take to get better?? who knows.  I am seeing improvements from day to day and especially in the past 6 days or so. 

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It’s been two weeks of, practically, no running.  I’ve been cross-training quite a bit to keep up the fitness and the injury is getting better everyday.  Not being able to run for that long will sacrifice my sharpness, so I’ve decided not to race the Payton Jordan (Stanford) 10 000m next weekend.  At this point it was an easy decision to make and yet, very hard at the same time.  Even though I still feel fit I don’t think it’s a good idea to go into that kind of race not fully prepared, both physically and mentally.  It’s a tough pill to swallow as the 10 000m at PJ is going to be a great race and will likely have many guys running for 27:4X.  Races going out at that pace are few and far between as other quality 10 000m races (there are usually 4 or 5 a year) are paced for, at least, 27:low.  PJ is also good timing with the Canadian Championships on June 4th. 

The plan right now is to get healthy and start running again.  Once that happens I can start looking at races.  I will have to assess where my sharpness is after a couple of track sessions and see when it makes sense to race.

My problem lies somewhere in my SI (Sacroilliac) joint and my glute.  It is affecting my scaitic nerve from my lower back all the way down to my calf.  During sleep my SI joint gets stiff and in the morning it’s a chore to bend over to merely touch my knees.  Today was a good day, by the end I pretty much had all my flexibility with only a dull ache (usually it has been sharp) in my back.

At the end of the Flagstaff trip I was able to get massage from Austin Baillie and get help from Wynn Gmitroski and Garfield Crooks who are in Flagstaff with Gary Reed.  Since I’ve been back, Brenda Scott-Thomas has thoroughly gone over my problems to figure out what I need to do, and Marcel Meresz has helped a lot with ART and massage.

This injury has been crazy in the sense that for two weeks I have always thought I was a day or two from running where in reality I haven’t been able to run properly at all.  Some of that has to do with the fact that I’m rarely injured for more than a couple of days and also that the injury has had different forms, first my back, then my calf and once that cleared up I realized there were other things in the mix.  It has definitely been a learning experience and I will bring a few things out of this ordeal that will make me a stronger runner.

It was good to see Nate Brannen return to competition this weekend, and he did it with a 3:38 1500m!  I find that result both impressive and inspiring.  To run a 1500m that fast off the bat takes a lot of hard work and talent, I think 1500’s are tough to run well without a couple of them under your belt in a season, Nate hasn’t raced for a year. 

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I tried running again today and it didn’t work out.  I ran for a few minutes then walked back to the hotel.  I went to the pool again and since I knew I was going to be in there for a while I came up with a little something.  I wore my toque and put an MP3 player in it so I had tunes throughout the whole run.  It was a nice distraction and kept my spirits up.

This injury is very frustrating as training had been going very well throughout the year.  I know I can’t rush anything and I need to be patient and let my body heal before I start racing.  Deep breath, relax.  So I don’t really know when my next race will be… I can’t worry about that now.

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I spoke too soon when I said my body was holding up fine.  Physically, things went downhill starting on Friday night…  well, they probably started earlier but, they became problematic by Saturday morning when I couldn’t get out of bed properly.  It was a planned day off so I figured I would rest and hope that Sunday I could run again.  On Sunday morning I ran 30 minutes (planned to run 95 minutes) before I turned back and walked/jogged back to the car.  There was no chance of running on Monday, I couldn’t even walk properly and if I stood up straight I could only manage to bend forward about 10 degrees before my lower back was in pain.  It was pretty obvious that something back in there was not in the right place and it didn’t want to move.

And having this start up on Saturday morning was bad timing as everyone is away on the weekend.  So I made some calls and things fell into place by the following night.  Phil Wharton got me loosened up with flexibility on Sunday night, Dr. Weathersby adjusted my SI joint Monday morning and afternoon and again Tuesday morning and Geoffrey Bishop worked on me later in the day.  I’m glad the community here understands runners and I was able to get quality treatment and get in fast!  It can be difficult being away from the great medical team in Guelph that I know really well but, these guys stepped up and helped me out and I cannot thank them enough.  

I tried to see if I could run today and the warmup was fine, there was no pain in my back.  Then I got into some 200’s and my calf locked up and now I can’t run again because of the sore calf.  I suppose it will be another day or two on the bike and in the pool.  I had to try something today to see if it was worth me travelling to Los Angeles.. and it isn’t worth me going.

Mt. SAC would have been a great race because the field looks very competitive, but it was only meant to set-up Stanford.  Now I’ll just have to set-up Stanford another way.  It will work.

Changing flights is a pain.. that’s all I’ll say for now about that.  uhhgggg!

Canadian runners have to meet tough Olympic standards

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One week until the start of my 2008 outdoor track season which will commence at Mt. SAC Relays.  So far this year I’ve raced an indoor 1500m and 3000m and, a 15km road race.  All the races have gone well and my training is going as good and consistent as it’s ever been.  I’ve also been feeling very healthy and my body has kept up to the pounding as well as I can ask of it.  This year I’ve done more volume in tempo and fartlek workouts than in previous years, such as today’s workout of 20 times 2 minutes.  The longer sessions and the 15km race last month will allow me to handle the 25 lapper better than before.  At least one question still remains… flats or spikes for the 10 000m?  I’ll decide after the 5000m next Friday. 

I’m not really expecting a fast time out of the gate next week as I’ve done very little running at 5000m race pace.  There are two reasons for the lack of 64’s in my diet. First off, I’m gearing towards the 10 000m in the early part of the season and secondly, being at 7000 feet altitude does not allow me to run intervals as quick as I would at sea level.  A typical mile repeat up here is about 15 seconds slower, so I’m not even doing my mile repeats at 10 000m goal pace.  However, I do feel really fit so I’m not going to count out a fast time but, the main goal is to set up the May 4th 10 000m.  Preliminary start lists came out yesterday for Mt. SAC and the 5000m will be a competitive race.  Also, by the sounds of it, the 10 000m on May 4th should be stacked (no suprise there), and it will have a little more international mix than in past years from the European continent.

I’ll take some pictures this weekend and post them.  I took a bunch of pics when I first got here but I haven’t touched my camera in a couple of weeks.

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Here’s a little video of Kenenisa Bekele’s World Record attempt last September.  I thought this vid was cool when I spotted myself putting a sock on… it gets better

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Another week in wonderful Flagstaff,  I love this place.  The weather has been cooperating very well even though we saw a few flurries today, yep flurries at 9 celsius(?).  I put in about 175km last week and now it’s time to back off a little and get into the 155-165km/week zone as I’ll be racing in two weeks.  It doesn’t seem like much of a drop but, workouts will feel much better with slightly reduced mileage. 

The pic across the top of the blog is of the New Balance “Coffee Beans” shoe that is supposed to drop in August ’08.

Deer come into our backyard some mornings. I pull out my rifle and take a few shots.  Haven’t seem to kill any yet?

Last Sunday we had a good group for our long run, Mike Smith, Fasil Bizuneh, Abdi Abdirahman, Mo Farah, Rob Krar, Steve Osaduik (Oz), Eric Kiauka, Eric Gillis and myself.  Gillis, Oz, Krar and myself put in a solid 2hrs and covered 30km on Woody Mountain road as the others went a little shorter. 

On Wednesday we went to Biff’s Bagel for the run again and met up with a ton of runners.  There were about 10 Germans and a couple of Swiss runners with the normal bunch of Americans.  After the Bagel run, Dave Scott-Thomas and his family rolled into town, they will be here until the end of the week.  It’s good having our coach here for a few days to watch a couple of workouts and go over training. 

Another random sentence… Nate Brannen and Mark Bomba are now sharing their thoughts on the Internet. And yes, Bomba can write more than two sentences without the “…” (dot dot dot)

The two Eric’s, Oz and I bought golf discs (Frisbee’s) and got out a couple times this week.  We completely sucked in the beginning but after a couple of rounds we’ve improved to the point where we can now take ‘completely’ out of the equation.  Our massage therapist in town, Geoffrey Bishop, knows what he’s doing and we may meet up with him this weekend and figure this disc golf thing out.  It’s a good hobby (or sport if you will) for distance runners….  a $15 disc and no green fees makes for a really cheap sport and you get out and walk a bit.  Shoulder may get sore the first time out…

I was going to write my thoughts on the state of the World Cross Country Championsips, but since I didn’t race myself it would likely come across a tad hypocritical.  Here’s a cool stat, the kid who won the Junior Boys race ran 27:02 tow years ago as a 17 year old!!

Oz is still around for a few days, which is a nice bonus since he drove here from Victoria and we have access to a car for a bit.  Otherwise when we need to get places we usually resort to the sweet bikes left in our garage.  Mine is the “Randor” and is built for speed… at least since I took of the rattling kick-stand.  Oh, I also learned how to juggle this week.

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