Muscle Restoration Therapy

I've been off my running game for the last several months due to an injury that I recently acknowledged was plantar fasciitis. Yup, the dreaded PF. Pretty sure I got it as a result of ignoring some of the cardinal rules of running by adding too much mileage too fast and not giving myself adequate recovery time. Stupid things to do and I ought to know better.

I DO know better, I just didn't listen.

After a chance encounter with Mark Van Akkeren I decided, on his advice, to see Josh Shadle at Tri-Massage (http://tri-massage.com) for some treatment. Mark warned me to bring something to bite down on for the treatment, boy do I wish I had listened.

Josh began by asking me about my problem and the symptoms, and what had been done to treat them. I'd been doing plantar stretches, calf stretches, foot massage with a plastic spiky ball the size if a golfball and icing my foot.

Then he moved on to a series of muscle tests to determine where the weakness in my musculature was that caused the PF.  He found the deficiency pretty fast and began to, painfully, loosen up the affected areas.

The problem, he explained, isn't my calf or the sole of my foot (which he barely touched). Those are symptoms. The calf muscle was overworking due to another imbalance on the outside of my lower leg. The muscles and ligaments there were weak and tight and not doing their job, so other parts of my leg picked up the slack and got overworked.

He loosened up and activated the tight, weak areas and showed my some self-massage to do frequently throughout the day to keep them loose and active.

And that was that. Do the self-massage and I should be fine. No follow up should be necessary. If it's not feeling better in a few weeks, go back for some more deep massage, but usually that's not needed.

But Josh, when can I start running again? Any time. The next day if I like. Running should help strengthen the now loosened and activated musculature. Just take it easy, be smart and do the self-massage often. Ten times a day or more.

I'll admit to being slightly skeptical. It couldn't really be that simple, could it? But this morning the pain in my foot was significantly reduced. My leg feels like hell from the massage, but that's not unexpected, I've had deep tissue massage before and I know the price. If this is the price for health and running, I'll pay it any day.

Muddy Mesa fun

Recently my Saturday run has been up south on Ninth, then along the Mesa Trail in Chautauqua. It makes for a hell of a climb to start and Mesa is a great place for 'quick feet'.
Last week my 90 minute run brought me a respectable 7.5 miles. When I was finished though, I knew I had more in the tank and vowed to get to 8 miles in the same time this week.
In between this week and last, there was the small matter of the first snowstorm of the year here in Boulder. Twelve inches of snow fell, turning Mesa trail into a snowy, icy, slushy, muddy mess.
In spite of this, I still managed to pull off 8.04 miles in the trail nastiness... and I still felt spectacular. Next time I do that route, I'll see if I can push it to nine miles instead.
I also decided to take some video of my feet during one of the descents, being curious to see them myself. I've also posted the video for your viewing amusement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm5vN99lnew&feature=youtube_gdata_player

My loss

I don't normally talk about personal stuff here. Running, architecture, cycling, mead making, n+1... these things are important to me in their way, especially running, but they're not personal. This isn't that type of blog.

Today is an exception. I've felt the pull to share this for a while, and I've decided that ignoring that pull is just not healthy.

So...

A couple months ago my grandmother passed away. 

She had been sick for several months and went downhill quickly and suddenly. So suddenly that in spite of moving up my flight to visit her twice in the 4 days before I flew out, by the time I arrived she had been asleep for a while. In the 24 hours that ensued, I barely left her bedside, I stayed awake all night waiting and hoping she would wake up long enough for me to at least tell her that I love her. She never did, and she passed away right before I left. I'm no stranger to death, I worked in a nursing home as a CNA for a year. I got to know death better than I would ever want or choose. I sat there and saw her draw that last breath... I saw it and in seeing it I knew it would be her last.

My grandmother was a paragon of the loving grandmother stereotype. A feisty little old lady who let nothing slow her down. She knit and crocheted and taught all her grandkids to cross-stitch. She baked goodies, and gave warm, soft, loving hugs that could take away any hurt or pain in a moment. People would practically come to blows over batches of her fudge. She welcomed everyone into her home and wanted nothing more than to cook you a hot meal. The most important things to her were being a mother and a grandmother (and a great-grandmother). That was how she identified, it was who she was. So much so that in her last night, she called out in her sleep for my grandfather. Not by name, but rather, "Dad... Dad..."

She was not perfect. She was human. She would sometimes gossip unpleasantly and like many of her generation, some of her attitudes towards people who were different were outdated and unfortunate. Generally she was aware of this though, and tried not to impart those views on us.

I don't think I ever fully realized how truly special my relationship with my grandmother had been until that last visit to see her. One of my cousins, who had been practically raised by my grandmother, along with her sisters because their mother was divorced, came up to me and told me she was sorry she had always been so resentful of the special relationship I had with gram. I had no idea my cousin had been resentful or envious, and I hadn't realized until then just how special I had been to my grandmother.

I think back on my memories of her and the pain is sharp and hot and frightening, but I reach for them anyways. I think of her bringing me to the bus stop on my first day of kindergarten. I think my other grandmother was there as well, though I'm not totally sure. I remember her coming to my first half-ironman, my mother flew her out to Colorado and kept her to the shade of the 100 degree heat that day. Somehow Gram was the one who spotted me coming out of the water. A few years later she was cheering at my ironman... was that really just two years ago? I think about sitting next to her at the kitchen table in the morning, talking about school, work and my romantic trials and tribulations. She'd fill me in on how everyone was doing in the family... Tell me about bowling every Monday night (at 87 years old). I think about talking to her on the phone the last time and hearing her slipping away and her crying...

Every time I think about these things I feel like something inside of me breaks, and every time the pain is sharper instead of duller. Still, I go back to them because I miss her so badly. Even when she wasn't nearby, I knew she was there... and now she's not. All I want is to have her back.

The Name of the Metheglin

In my last post I mentioned a metheglin that was inspired by a well loved book. The book is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. In it, the protagonist is served a mug of metheglin, which he describes thus:

I took a drink from the tall tankard to give myself a chance to clear my wits, and something wonderful happened in my mouth: cool spring honey, clove, cardamom, cinnamon, pressed grape, burnt apple, sweet pear, and clear well water. that's all I have to say of metheglin. If you haven't tried it, then I am sorry I cannot describe it properly. If you have, then you don't need me to remind you what it is like.
 

Being a bit of a crazed mazer, I immediately decided I had to try making it. I did some research into how the various spices and fruits were used in other recipes to get a grasp on what proportions to start with, since I had done very little experimentation with spices before, and settled on a recipe. I put about a week into deciding this before finally going out and buying myself myself some high quality ingredients and went to work.

Mead is a product of patience, and I am not a creature of patience, so while it's been a fairly short wait for a mead, for me, it's been torturous and I've been half-convinced it was going to be a disappointing or even disastrous batch.

Last week I finally poured off an ounce to taste it since it had finally cleared. A bad batch? I couldn't have been more wrong. It was amazing. Certainly the most delicious thing I have brewed, probably the best mead I've ever tasted and maybe even the best thing I've ever tasted. Well, perhaps not, but I can't think of anything that compares, aside from my grandmother's fudge. I nursed that one ounce of metheglin for more than half an hour (the batch being only one gallon, I wanted to savor it).

 

That said, the batch wasn't perfect, or at least, not exactly what I was planning. The clove was a little stronger than I intended (though my fellow tasters enjoyed the clove) and it was overall sweeter than I had anticipated. The pear was almost indiscernible. The apple and cinnamon were right about where I wanted them, and I'm hoping that the cardamom will be more prominent once the clove is dialed back. Also, I forgot the grape entirely.

For all my nitpicking though, it is truly delightful and if I could never improve on what it is now, I would not mind in the least.

The only thing remaining was a name. With some of my meads, I've gone the amusing route for naming. My first batch was called the Hammer (in reference to a cult neo-classic musical video blog), one of my bacon recipes is Sir Francis Bacon Mead. For others, I've opted for simple, such as Traditional Honey Wine or Apricot Mead. In this case I'm going to go slightly sentimental and name it in honor of the friend who introduced me to the book which inspired the recipe. 

The name of the metheglin is simply Meadow Wine.

Mead Update!

Since my last posting I've been a busy mazer! Let's get up to speed...

Bottled!

First was a pumpkin pie mead that I started last fall. It's a little dry for my taste, but I've got quite the sweet tooth and i think it makes a nice break from my other sweeter meads. It's got a wonderful spicy aroma and bite to it. For that batch I made pumpkin pie filling from scratch and used that in the must.

I also bottled a traditional sweet mead, basically The Hammer but less sweet and less alcoholic.

Secondary!

I haven't moved anything too exciting to secondary, though I do have a quartet of one gallon batches that are ready for bottling. These include a peppermint mead, a saffron mead, an apple cinnamon mead and a metheglin inspired by a favorite novel of mine. The first two varieties are tastily dry, while the other two have been back-sweetened to taste. The metheglin is quite exquisite if I do say so myself.

Primary!

There have been a couple exciting new experiments slipping into primary. One is a show mead, which is a mead that uses just water, honey and yeast. No nutrients, cleansers or any other additives. It's very slow in brewing, but I'm excited about how it will go.

Another batch I'm particularly excited about is a batch of hops and hibiscus inspired by Viking Blod mead, a delicious Danish mead that I've had on a couple occasions.It started off as a 2 gallon batch but I think it will have to expand to 5 gallons because the hops and hibiscus are currently quite a bit stronger than I had intended. That said, it's still pretty tasty.

Apricot Mead

I've ben working on a troublesome Apricot mead for quite some time for a friend of mine. It fermented slowly (somewhat by design), was bitter, wouldn't clear... It's been a very tricky batch.

The clarifying has been my recent bane. I've re-racked it two or three times to get it to clear, heck, even just trying to get all the apricot chunks out. This past Sunday I decided to re-rack it again. To say this mead was not pretty, would be an understatement. Ugly would be a good description. It was a yellowish, milky color and it still had chunks of apricot in it. Overall it looked like something that had curdled and gone bad.

I siphoned the mead off, using a fine net as a filter (which I had done before with this same batch) into a clean, sanitized five gallon carboy. Then I added a clarifier, Kwik Kleer I believe, and tucked it away again. I always take the opportunity to taste a batch when I re-rack or do just about anything to it, but not this time. This wasn't a mead I wanted to look at, much less taste.

Little more than a day later, the transformation has been dramatic. Where before it was a milky brownish yellow. Now almost all the sediment has settled and it's been revealed as an absolutely beautiful warm chestnut color that's begging to be sampled. When I went to check on it, I wondered where I had put it because the change was so complete. I didn't believe that was really the apricot batch I had looked down on in disgust the day before.

It hasn't completely cleared yet, I'll give it a bit more time to finish, but the next time my friend is over we'll certainly be giving it a try.

Stuff I Love - Vibram Five Finger

There are few things that have made running more enjoyable for me than my Vibram Five Fingers.
Early in my running days, while living in Boston, I gave barefoot running a try. The less than savory city sidewalks brought that to a quick halt and I found myself wishing I could just paint a layer of protective rubber on the soles of my feet. When I finally saw a pair of Vibrams, many years later, I was  instantly smitten. It took a while to get a pair, but now I have three.

It would be difficult to get into the exact reasons why I love them so much without going into a long discussion about barefoot running. Suffice it to say that if you asked me who designed the better foot, Phil Knight with his waffle iron or thousands of years of Evolution, I side with Evolution. Vibram Five Fingers enable evolution's work to apply seamlessly in the modern world. They fit like a glove, shed water faster than you'd believe, they're light and warmer than you would expect. I even ran in slush in them with less discomfort than in other running shoes which hold water next to your skin. I have also found them to be absolutely amazing for blister prevention. Beyond amazing really.
 
One complaint I have is that they seem to get stinky faster than most shoes. Fortunately, tossing them in the laundry is also less of an issue than it would be with other running shoes.  The other potential drawback is that they stand out and draw a lot of attention. This isn't necessarily bad, but when I'm out on a run I don't want to have to stop and explain how much I like my shoes all the time.

If I didn't love them, I wouldn't run the hundreds of miles in them that I have.

Focus: In Running & Life

I happened to pick up an article today at lunch on Scott Jurek from a year ago. As it turned out, it was the somewhat infamous King of Pain article, which I had never read.

The underlying theme of the article was focus. Having it, losing it, and trying to regain it. It was a topic I could appreciate as I've been having trouble with my own focus lately. 

Focus is important in running. A loss of focus is a factor in non-running mind. Focus is what got me through my 400+ miles in February. The lack of focus, and an ensuing breakdown in mental discipline, I have determined to be the core of my letdown in Moab. I felt a slipping of my focus this past weekend at the Horsetooth Half. I've even felt the loss of focus recently in my professional work.

So, I've lost my focus, now what do I do about it? There are a few things that I find to be important to regaining focus, as I've had to do before. Or perhaps they're all different facets of one thing. 

The first thing is, as the song says, to accentuate the positive. Find those elements in life that bring focus to your life. If you've wandered away from those things, bring them back, but be careful of overdoing it.

Second, eliminate the negative. Are there specific things that are distracting you or breaking your focus? Find ways to deal with them, whether that's moving away from them or integrating them more healthfully into your life or some other approach.

Third, and probably most important, is balance. For me, life cannot be one completely driven, focused action. To focus well, I need parts of my life to be unfocused as balance to the focus.

This is all common sense stuff of course, but sometimes I find it helpful to go over the basics in order to move forward.

The positive: running is a great focus for me. It's there, it's trying to do its thing, but stuff is getting in the way. The negative: there's a lot of stress built up over my performance in Moab. This is making me more stressed about my upcoming events and compounding itself.

What drove the loss of focus at Moab itself though? Balance. Rather, imbalance. I don't think I gave myself the mental break after February that I needed. After a month of real intense mental and physical focus, I didn't really let up. The physical tension I've felt lately is mirrored mentally. I need to take time to relax mentally.

Another important element here is the realization that I've simply taken on too much lately. I've kept myself so busy that finding time to unwind simply hasn't happened.

The prescription? Simplify. Cut back some of the clutter that's getting in the way. Then take that free time and keep it free. Goof off, relax, unwind, and give myself the mental break that I need.

And try not to think about what will happen if I don't get that focus back in time for the Leadman.

Leadman Prep

The first event of the Leadman, the Leadville Marathon, is now just eleven weeks away, which means the final event of the Leadman, the Leadville Trail 100, is eighteen weeks away. Time is getting short!

In spite of my shortcomings in Moab, I remain confident that the 100 mile distance is within my grasp. The biggest challenges will be the hills and the altitude. I've been running Sanitas fairly regularly during the week to get stronger as a climber, I've certainly gotten faster, chopping seven minutes off my best time in the last two weeks.

I'm also going to work Bear Peak and Green Mountain into my weekend long runs, at least on those weekends when I'm not doing a race, as I did with the Horsetooth half this past Sunday.

So, until the Leadman is done, hills will be the name of the game. Short, intense hillwork during the week and long hills combined into my weekend long runs. Love them or hate them, I've got to embrace them.

An Ultrarunning Tale - 400 Miles of February

I wrote the following for the bi-monthly newsletter of the Boulder Triathlon Club. A few things to note, first, I ran almost the entire distance in Vibram five-fingers. The days I didn't wear them were so cold, slushy and nasty I considered trying to run in my snowshoeing boots, but almost 400 of my total miles came in Vibrams. Second, I finished with a grand total of 423 miles, good for fourth overall, though I consider it to be third. Some guy didn't log any miles until the last night. Imagine running a race and having someone pull off an invisibility cloak as he crosses the finish line five feet in front of you. It's a shady move.

Without further ado... An Ultrarunning Tale.

_______________________

I'm not fast.

Even before I moved to an area populated by the likes of Dave Scott, Tony Krupicka and Scott Jurek (who moved here in January) and which regularly plays long term host to people like Macca, Chrissie Wellington and the Japanese Olympic marathon team I knew that the likelihood of me placing, much less winning, in an individual athletic event was pretty low. Which is fine, I don't run or bike because I want to win, I do it because I love it. This particularly applies to running. I once commented to my grad school classmates that the only thing better than running is sex. Not the sort of comment you live down, but I still believe it.

Being less than gifted in the area of acceleration I was shocked last March to discover that I had placed thirteenth among men, sixteenth overall, in that year's run focus for the USAT Challenge. Sure, I had stepped up my training mileage after deciding to take a stab at running Leadville (an attempt that dissolved halfway through training), but I hadn't been pushing all that hard, had I? How did I manage to finish 16th out of 1200+ competitors? I stared at the rankings for a while baffled. I absent-mindedly did some quick math while looking at the leaders versus myself and found myself thinking an odd thought.

I could win this thing.

So while the run focus of the USAT challenge is not a race per se, the 2010-11 edition is the first athletic competition I've entered where I went in with the goal of winning. Anything less would be a disappointment. The 2010 winner had 350 miles, I targeted 400 as my goal. I didn't just want to win, I wanted to rock it and not have there be any doubt about it.

I wanted to rock it because 2011 is a huge running year for me. The USAT 400 is a target that I set both because I want to win it and because it will lay the foundation, partly physically but mostly psychologically, for the rest of my year. Even if I just get my 400 for the USAT and the miles from the races I plan to run this year I'll log over 900 miles on my feet. Coming into the year my calendar was blocked out for four 100 mile race, one 50 mile race and two marathons along with a handful of shorter races. The confidence from having run 400 miles in one month was something that I felt could really help me through all of that.

There was a catch though, the competition didn't open at all like I expected. One woman, Kathleen Brush, opened the month with almost 200 miles of running in the first week. Last year's winner, Hunter MacLean, also opened up extremely strong. Meanwhile I had decided to dial back my first two weeks a bit to avoid tipping my hand. I quickly realized that not only was that not going to work, but I was going to have to step up my mileage significantly. Looking at that first week's results rattled me and I had to come to grips with the fact that this competition, which I had set my heart on winning, might be out of reach.

A combination of that gut check, bad weather and allowing myself to get distracted by social engagements put my second week off to a poor start and I totaled only nine miles the first two days of the week. I managed to recover though with a strong weekend, I woke up feeling great on Sunday after doing 28 miles on Saturday, so I put in 13 more. I'd have gotten even more in that day, but a midday break to take care of some chores turned into an all afternoon hassle and I didn't get outside again.

Week three I opened with a roar, faded a bit in the middle due to some some soreness in my hip, then wrapped up with a 40 mile effort on Sunday. The hip soreness was troubling, but I was positive it was muscular as opposed to skeletal and a renewed emphasis on icing, and cold water baths after my runs kept it from returning. With week four about to dawn, I braced for war.

Maclean had been posting a ton of miles and wasn't showing much sign of letting up. I had been tracking his daily mileage and figured I had to average 30 miles a day just to catch him. Hopefully he was wearing down a bit while I was preparing to hit my big surge. I considered backing off, shooting for the 400 as I originally planned and having some semblance of a personal life the final eight days, not to mention some well deserved rest. However, with the way my friends and coworkers had been pulling for me, and with how badly I wanted this, I decided to keep going for it. By the end of the week though, it was clear that it wasn't going to happen. 

MacLean had put on a surge of his own and by Friday I figured I would need to average 40+ miles per day the last four days of the competition in order to catch him, he was on pace for 540 miles! To that point 40 miles had been my single day high for the month and while I had a 50 miler planned for Sunday, I knew I couldn't do 40 miles a day for 4 days, not as tired as I was and not with work and other commitments. I briefly toyed with the idea of skipping work on Monday and doing an all-day run, starting at whatever time I got up and ending at the stroke of midnight, the close of the competition.

That was the moment when I realized there had to be something very, very wrong with me. I had to be demented to call out 'sick' at work in order to do a fifteen, sixteen or even eighteen hour run with no organized support the day after a fifty mile run to win a competition that no one outside of a small community had ever heard of, and even fewer cared about. That was when I discovered I really was an ultrarunner.

As of this writing, the event is not over, it's Friday and I have logged 350+ miles. This weekend I'll do my fifty miler and wrap up my 400. I'm not going to skip work in order to make an insane attempt at catching MacLean the day after a fifty mile run and hurt myself (the Moab 100 is in four weeks after all). I may not have won, but I have gained the confidence I felt like I needed. I've run more miles in February than I ever really believed I could, I enjoyed just about every step of the way and I felt far better than I really had a right to feel.

I'm not fast and I may be crazy, but I'll never let either fact slow me down.