November Over

How's November go?

Goal 1 - Fix My Hip B+

I'm still going to physio but I've cut back to going every 2nd week instead of every week. The sessions are typically 15 minutes of my therapist working on my hip (digging his thumbs into the muscle and stretching it out) followed by 15 minutes of icing. I'm not sure how much I'm really getting out of the sessions and the cost of weekly visits are adding up. So far the only homework I have is squats and rest.

I have gotten back into strength training (and the prescribed squats). Back to my beloved Chalean Extreme three times a week. I've lowered the weight for all lower body exercises until I get a better sense of what my hip can handle and what it can't.

I did get the okay to try some running - on the treadmill at 0 incline. For the most part, that's been fine. I have increased the incline to 0.5 now and keeping my pace on the slower side. I've loaded Zombie's, Run! back onto my iPod to keep me entertained.

My first outdoor run this past Thursday didn't go as well. I felt fine while running, but my hip tightened up later that day. I think running in snow with my yaktrax on might not have been the best idea for a test run. Think I'll try clear sidewalks and no added weight on my shoes next time.

Goal 2 - Daily Yoga A

I practiced yoga 25 times in November so I missed a couple of days. Getting back into yoga has been the silver lining of my injury. I'm loving my time on my mat.

All of November's sessions have been at home and mostly shorter sessions of 20 to 30 minutes. Yoga Download is my main go-to, I love their 20 minute free audio classes. DoYogaWithMe and this video are also great. I picked up Christine Felstead's Intermediate Yoga for Runners DVD at the Scotiabank expo and that's been a nicer longer session.

Goal 3 - Get My Eating Under Control B-

I have been planning my meals and doing some cooking but there's still room for improvement ( a lot of room). Treats at work are my downfall as are all of the Christmas goodies that have started appearing. I've been losing and gaining back the same 3 pounds all month. I am tracking my eating though most days, just need to make some better choices.

Stats for November:
# of Work Outs: 28 (actually higher, but I'm counting double work outs and days where I followed up with a yoga session into 1 work out).

Running Stats - I have been tracking these all year, but this is my first time posting to my blog. Compared to earlier months, these make me sad. I'm reminding myself that this is a start point.

# of Runs: 7
Total Distance Ran: 20.52km
Longest Run: 5.01km
Fastest Pace: 7.09/km
Average Pace: 7:33/km

Still Healing

We're into week 6 of physio and week 5 of little to no running.

Last physio session, I got the okay to try a bit of running - 10 minutes on the treadmill at 0 incline. Yay! I did give that a try and had no hip pain. So of course, I decided to try 20 minutes of running. Again, no pain but my hip just felt not right. So I'm taking another restful week. I'm still very focused on yoga and I'm getting back into strength training.

I have training plans all ready to go for my early 2014 races with three different potential start dates. The "early start" plan starts next week which probably isn't going to happen. My more realistic plan starts on December 10th and my "late start" plan starts on January 10th. I'm so looking forward to getting back into regular exercise.

Waterfront Half 2013 Recap

7th half marathon in the bag!

I had a lot of mixed feelings going into this race. Hip strain + spotty training for 6 weeks did not put me in the best spot to run 21km.

I got a ride down to the starting area with a friend than hung out in my office for a bit to keep warm. Met up with my running room clinic and we headed to the start line together.

I still had some hopes for hitting my 2:30 half so I positioned myself between the 2:30 continuous and 2:30 10/1 pace bunnies. After standing around for quite sometime we were finally off. When my foot hit the starting mat, I told myself that I'm going to finish no matter what.

The first 7K flew by. I was feeling good, chatting with people from my clinic, cheering everytime I passed a course marker. I was about 2 minutes ahead of my pace band for a 2:30 finish.

Heading onto the Lakeshore, my hip started tightening up. I stopped a couple of times to stretch it out a bit. I turned on my music for a bit of motivation (no idea what I was thinking when I put together my race playlist. Had to keep skipping songs). Still about 1 minute ahead of my pace band.

Kilometre 17 is where everything started going downhill. My hip went from tight to painful. My right glute hurt, my whole quad hurt. My hamstring started cramping up. I must have been overcompensating for my right hip so the left side started hurting. I went from 10/1's down to 5/1's with the occassional road side pigeon pose thrown in to help loosen things up. I debated stopping, but I was so close to the end, I wanted to finish. And really, if I had stopped, I would have still had to walk back to the finish anyway to meet my husband and get the subway home so may as well get a medal.

Smiling through the pain

Alternating between running and limping, I made my way up Bay Street. The crowd support along the way was what kept me going and in relatively good spirits. I just wanted to finish.

Happy to be done! Can't believe I purchased an overpriced race photo!

I finished at 2:33:44, 42 seconds behind my half marathon PR. I'm happy because I did that on an injured leg. But at the same time, I'm frustrated cause I could have crushed my 2:30 goal on a good leg. Oh well.

I stopped off at the medical tent for some ice and a chiropractor tried to loosen my leg up a bit. Limped my way to the subway and back home.

Despite not having the race I wanted, I had a really great time. The atmosphere was amazing, so much energy. The spectators were great, the race was so well organized.

 I'm disappointed that I didn't reach my goal this year of a 2:30 half marathon, but I've got big plans for 2014 so it will come.

Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon 2013 Goals

I've been away from blogging but couldn't skip my usual pre-race goals post. I have a couple of other things in mind that I want to write about (like the name change of my blog) so maybe I'll stop by a bit more often.

So - Waterfront Half Marathon tomorrow! This will be half marathon #7 for me my third time with this race. However, I'm not sure what to expect tomorrow.

My training was going really well through the summer. I was training with my running room clinic, getting my hills and long runs in. I felt good about the progress I was making and even changed my goal time from 2:30 down to 2:25.

Than second week of September rolls around and I end up with a hip flexor injury. I spent two weeks alternating between trying to run (pain) and resting it. Than another two weeks of pretty much no running while on vacation in New Zealand (which was AWESOME! I'll post some pictures soon!). I finally admitted defeat and headed to a physiotherapist this past week.

I've been icing, resting and stretching in hopes that I'll make it through the race tomorrow. My leg isn't feeling bad right now, but in the past 6 weeks, I've done a total of 7 runs. 1 run was 17k, 1 at 13 and the rest 6km or less.

I'm hoping that 3 solid months of training pre-injury and the fact that this isn't my first half marathon will get me through tomorrow. Running for 2.5 hours probably isn't the best idea right now, but I'm going to do it, maybe regret it on Monday. I can take the next two months off if needed.

I do still have some time goals in mind, but I'm not going to feel too bad if I don't beat them:

A - 2:30, my year long half marathon goal.
B - sub 2:33 (my current half marathon PR)
C - finish in upright position

I spent a lot of time thinking yesterday that I need to be okay (mentally) if I need to stop because of my hip and I'm almost there. I think taking a DNF will be more painful to me in the long run than limping the course, so I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that.

With that said, I'm heading to my couch and my ice pack and a few episodes of Downton Abbey to rest up!

Good luck to everyone else racing tomorrow!

DNS

I'm supposed to be lining up soon for the Yonge Street 10K. Instead, I'm sitting at my computer in my pyjamas.

After 3 weeks with a stress fracture in my left foot, I did a pretty good 5K run on Friday morning so it was looking like a possibility that I could run today. But I figured that running 10K on pavement might not be the best thing right now. Then I woke up with a cold yesterday so I think that my body was saying "sit this one out".

Ah well. I'm bummed, but if I ran the race today, made my foot worse and couldn't run the half marathon in two weeks, I would have been very sad.