Heh. It really isn't all that impressive. To me, "bad-ass" would be someone who ran through the pain for an extended period of time. I think from the time I felt the pain to the time it was gone was no more than 20 seconds. Now, to be clear, on Sunday when the doctor told me to just feel around and push it back in if I felt pain, I was as disgusted and freaked out as you'd expect. However, when the time came to do it and I thought for even a second that I could make it stop hurting and continue my run, it was a no-brainer. Really the most surprising/shocking part is that whatever it was stayed in for the rest of all that moving around for the rest of the run and hasn't been the least bit of trouble the rest of today. But after this morning's experience, I'm definitely planning on the "surgery ASAP" route. I'm not terribly interested in needing to do a repeat performance at some point, plus I want to get back in the weight room,

haha, yeah, I don't see myself running in skimpy little jogger shorts or even less in compression biker type shorts, thank you very much. These are my very comfortable Nike Dri Fit short. Seriously like them very much. Probably last year's model though since I got them for dirt cheap at some outlet store ;)

Pretty good hill workout this evening, some 45 minutes. Have yet to look at the map, but six times up a hill that was maybe 250m long and with a pretty good grade... Off to play with the file now ;)

FM

Hernia confirmed. Surgery 9/6.

Good luck, hopefully everything goes smoothly. What did they say about recovery time post-surgery? Same as I went through with a few weeks off, or do they feel you can come back quicker from this?

2 weeks for running. 3-4 weeks for lifting. Can do walking on incline treadill and/or biking as soon as I feel like. I figure I'll get the heart rate going with those two things for those two weeks, go hard the week of 9/23 and the first half of the next, then taper down to 10/20 with shorter but more intense runs. Not an ideal time to not be running, but I'll survive. It might "force" me to do another HM just to see how I can do time-wise, though. ;)

There will always be more races available. Important thing is getting healthy!

Actually the wife and I just talked. There's another HM 12/14 at Kiawah Island (like 40 minutes away from my house). I'm thinking I'll just eat the entry fee for Myrtle Beach and do the 12/14 one. That gives me plenty of time to recover and build back up. Plus, SWMBO just pointed out that we'll be in Columbus for Thanksgiving: absolutely perfect timing for some hard hill work the last hard week of running before Kiawah.

So....

Any tips on how many miles I can run when I get back to it after 2-3 weeks off? I'll be up to ~45 miles per week at the point of the surgery.

You likely won't lose too much fitness from just 2-3 weeks off. Fitness is long term to both accumulate and to lose it. For me, after surgery I took it easy the first 2-3 times because for whatever reason I didn't feel right where the surgery was performed. It just felt weird, and I was being overcautious due to nerves.

My recommendation would be for the first week back (after 2-3 weeks off), go every other day instead of every day, just to make sure you have no discomfort during the run, or after the run or the following day. After everything feels ok from the test drives, the next week, work back into a base week, don't do the speed work or the overly long run, and turn those into additional base runs to add the miles back.

After that, my opinion would be you'd be ok to work back in close to where you left off. I tend to be pretty cautious about adding miles slowly just due to chance of it causing additional injuries, but that is probably what I would do. If you were following a plan to finish at a specific goal race, you may need to re-calculate that, but many people who reschedule a race just continue on and then repeat the weeks prior to taper until they reach their new taper date.

My personal priority in return would be:
1) Make sure everything is feeling ok cautiously the first week back. Re-injuring anything by rushing in would stink.
2) Put the base miles back together again. I don't like running 10+ mile long runs without an appropriate 35+ mile per week base.
3) Re-introduce your long run when you feel ok with the base miles
4) Add back your speed work days last (since those tend to have the highest risk of new injury).


Edit: and with the way fitness works, taking 2-3 weeks off and then a gradual re-introduction would be pretty similar to a post race cool down period that the body usually needs anyways. You may find yourself when you start back feeling your legs are fresher than before and without much lost in cardio stand point. So you may even feel pretty ok once it is all said and done.

Ben, I'm sure you won't lose too much fitness in 2 weeks, in fact might even help you to come back stronger.

You are progressing really fast, amazingly fast, seems your body is made for running, seriously.

I'm also going through surgery soon, on the Sept 7th, vasectomy, and also hope won't lose a lot of days of running after it, no sex and no running, life will be so miserable for a week or two, but hope will be back stronger... at both things :D

Good luck, Icy!

So on the hernia, it appears that this sucker is going to cause me issues at random times for the next two weeks. Had to push stuff back in on Tuesday (by the way, the doc said that as small as mine is that what was protruding was very likely just fat that protects the innards, not any actual innards) no issues Wednesday. Thursday it was very annoying both during the run and some just walking around the house, but couldn't feel anything protruding. It was to the point last night that my bride and I agreed that if the run today was hampered by any discomfort, protrusions, etc, then we'd try to push the surgery up to an earlier date. Woke up this morning, no discomfort whatsoever...felt the best since Sunday (when it first dawned on me that "hey....that little annoying pain/discomfort in your right lower abdomen might be a hernia"), and none at all during the run or since, despite it being an interval run and therefore the fastest running/hardest pounding that I ever do, and today's intervals collectively being my fastest ever. *shurg*

shurg indeed...

FM

I finally had a run where I didn't have to slow down for a walking break. Hadn't had one of those since my 5k training.

I guess it helped that I was listening to a podcast to keep me distracted: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Wrath of the Khans.

"Small World" moment:

I created a few segments along my normal running paths a while ago. I was the only person using Strava running any of these segments at the time, but a couple of months or so ago, some dude destroyed all of my best times by a long shot, so I started following Kyle Evans and commenting on his runs on Strava, and eventually he started following and commenting on mine. He lives a couple of subdivisions over from me, probably less than a mile as the crow flies, but his name wasn't familiar, and his face isn't prominent in his profile pic.

Fast forward to today: after church I go to the 4-5 Year Old Kids' Church room to get my daughter. One of the teachers sticks his hand out and says "you're Ben Lewis, right? I'm Kyle Evans."

Yup, the random dude I follow on Strava and his wife are my daughter's new Kids' Church leaders. :p

On my typical information searching and obsession when i get into something (running this time), i read today about "natural running", "chi running" and "pose running" that are basically different versions of the same running technique that tries to find the most efficient way of running (landing with your middle foot instead of with your heel), to improve your times and to avoid injuries as much as possible. The most extreme version is minimal or barefoot running.

While i don't see how running without shoes is a very good idea, and it's probably more of a new trend, the ideas behind it sounds good to me and i just bought the natural running book for the kindle to give the technique a shoot.

Video resume:



Any of you into that?

The discussion about minimalist running seems to be very opinionated by both sides. I don't do it myself, but those who argue for it say that by improving your form you can run without the need for extra cushioning and then that running style will greatly strengthen your foot for running. Those who oppose it site that it greatly increases the chances of injuries or even pretty bad injuries that is not worth it.

What I have taken away from the entire thing though is the understanding that there is great benefits from improving your running form regardless of what type of shoe you run. Some of the most important things that I feel that I have worked on was as you say change my stride to land on the mid part of my foot with each step. I was able to accomplish this by changing my stride to be a much shorter stride and thus increasing my cadence in the process.

The effort of changing the cadence has allowed me to greatly increase my efficiency when I run, especially noticeable now when I can just cruise up hills that used to kill me. Using less effort for each step means I am able to conserve my energy longer during the run.

In addition by having a quicker cadence, shorter stride and landing with a neutral step in the middle of my foot, it reduces the impact of each step, causing less chance for injury to the legs from adding large amount of miles, which is something very important to me running 40+ miles per week.

I have the same conclusion, in my next routine i'm going to try to run at 180 steps per minute instead of 80 that is my current average, shortening my stride and focusing on landing with my mid foot.

I don't plan on changing my shoes anytime soon, being overweight, I feel that the extra cushioning they provide is key for my knees.

Not sure if you caught this or not, it was something that I was confused about when I first started reading, but based on what you wrote I wasn't sure.. The ideal cadence is as you say around 180 steps per minute. When you measure with a cadence sensor, your current average is 80, but that is just for one of your feet. So your current cadence is really 160 currently. You just would ideally want to get yours up to 90 on your sensor to be at the 180 steps per minute.

Even that is a little flexible though, as I'll run about 90-93 on my sensor (180-186 steps per minute) when I'm running fast pace. However when I slow down for easy pace, I usually fall into somewhere around 83-85ish instead. So I don't know that I treat it as an exact for easy pace runs, but on my intervals or race pace or tempo runs, etc I definitely try to make sure to hit my cadence.

HAH! you've just explained something important to me. I remembered using iSmoothRun for its cadence sensor but never really understood the number it was giving me since it was around 80 or so. I figured it just probably wasn't working right since it's was impossible in my mind that I would more than double my leg turnaround to make it close to being about good. Now seeing that I'm doing 160, I understand a bit more.

The whole discussion about strides and cadence has been very instructive. I used to run with long strides and was landing mostly on my heels. I have since shortened my strides but I see that I probably need to make it a bit shorter and have a faster leg turnaround...

FM

September's Challenge, The Extender, now with a fifth milestone badge at 200km

I need Strava to introduce a 20 km badge :)

I wish they would do a challenge for elevation climbed in a month. I noticed I've climbed a little more than 20,000 feet in elevation on my runs so far this year. Only 9000 or so to go to match Mt. Everest! :)

Probably nothing compared to some of the ultra-marathoners that climb 10,000 ft in a single run though.

The Mt Fuji challeng really screamed for some sort of elevation gain challenge, they really missed an opportunity on this one. Even more when using this sentence to present the challenge:"Can you reach new running heights? The mountain is waiting."

FM

I'm working on my "Pick it up there, little buddy" badge.

Signed up for my first century ride!: Back Roads Century

What could go wrong? :)

Woo hoo! That looks fun!

that battle is still going strong ;)

12 FrogMan 782
13 Kodos 781

:)

FM

Yours has a lot more running in it than mine. :) Personally, I think running should get more points per mile than walking.

I need to solve the issue where my hips get tight after every run if I'm ever going to become a regular runner. It just saps the enjoyment out of things. Going to try some exercises that are supposed to help, and keep using my roller thing that Alan recommended (I tend to be very inconsistent in my usage of it). Alan/Ben - how often do you use the roller?

At first I only used it when something hurt, but after I went through some continuous issues with Shin splints and ITB band issues, I started rolling at least my calves after every run, and usually roll my IT Band also. If I do some pretty good hill work (or bike) I'll roll hamstrings and quads also.. generally anything that feels worked out now I'll roll after a run.

Doing that seems to have helped keep the nagging aches away for the last few weeks. Now I'm just dealing with the mental struggle of being at the end of my training plan and the wear of all of the miles running and biking are starting to add up for me.

You have been in beast mode recently.

This is my final week. I have a 15 mile run scheduled for Sunday, but because of a camping trip i may do it Monday instead. Once that is done, I wind down the next two weeks before my half-marathon on the 15th.

Then it is a bit of fun time for me for a bit I think. I'm thinking about a 5k that I might run at the beginning of October (my first road 5k I did last year when I first started running before I had surgery). I'm curious to see how much I improved on the same race in one year :). Some friends want me to do another half-marathon with them in mid-October as well. I'm heavily considering doing a Duathlon at the end of October, plus trying to convince my wife to do a zombie run 5k with me in October too :)

Doubt I'll get to do all of those, but we'll see how it works out. Then I'll figure out what my running plans are as far as what I want to train for over the Winter.

I was about to ask if anyone here was considering Duathlons, now that I've been seeing more cycling activities from all of you.

I am planning on doing something epic and stupid tomorrow morning. Hopefully I will be able to end August on the Master leaderboard.

If there is anyone who would be qualified for such a mission, it'd be Subby!

What could possibly go wrong!? :)

I wanted to go for a longer run today but the 96 degree, 74 dew point combo is going to keep this a short one. The heat has been rough lately but I'm not wishing away the summer - anything is better than running in the cold.

I actually enjoyed running in the snow and avoiding 12 foot snow drifts far more than this humidity all summer. I personally have been counting down the days until it gets cool again and the dew point returns to almost reasonable levels!

Stepped on a screw during my run this morning and put a nice little hole in my foot. Awesome!

ugh, that sucks!

FM

I bite on this.

I will do the ½ marathon in Oslo in late September. My target is 1:42:00 but that might be a bit ambitious.

After that my plan is to start training for the ½ Ironman in my birth town of Helsingør, Denmark next year. They will host the first race next weekend but hopefully it will be back next year.
Forside - Go Epic Kronborg

They got both the ¼ Ironman (1 km swim, 40 km bike, 10 km run) and the ½ Ironman (1,9 km swim, 90 km bike and a half marathon).

I know I can do the run and started biking last month and have really enjoyed it so I feel confident about that part. Swimming is the scary part. But we got the swimming facilities just five minutes from were we live so I really don’t have any excuse.
It will force me to loss another 5-7 kg and also start lifting some weights.

As I start to venture off into longer distances (this morning 4.5 miles, and my longest run to date) I'm learning a lot about the mental toughness of endurance activities.

How to you get past the "OMG I'm not even halfway through yet" mindset?

Okay - I did my first 100 mile ride yesterday. Unassisted, with two other cyclists. It was way hotter and more humid than we anticipated. Ended up stopping twice to load up on gatorade. Ended up with just over a mile in climbing and 4500 calories burned. Got enough achievement points to be the first 500 pointer at Fit Leagues! :)

The climb at Sugarloaf is 400 ft in just under 1.5 miles and we did it three times in a row. Coming down was fricking insane. There is nothing like flying down a winding mountain road with hairpin switchbacks. It was so great.

Now that was epic.

Listening to Podcasts helps me a ton with this. I've got stuff of varying lengths to get me through longer runs.

was gonna say something similar to Ben, I listen to music when I run. Actually I more than anything lose myself in the music so time/mileage is not taken into account much. But then again, like in this morning's run of 14.3 km, my longest yet, I find myself thinking about how long there's still to do before I'm back home. Just gotta fight through those moments I guess...

FM

Yeah. I think podcasts are what's going to get me going. I've been trying out different ones over the past few runs: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and Welcome to Night Vale to name a couple. But those started to get a little dry as it went along. I'm thinking of stringing together a few episodes of We're Alive on my next outing.

I agree. The Tony Kornheiser podcast has taken me thru a lot of miles.

On the long run I change my clock from showing distance to just showing pace. Trying to focus on keeping the right pace instead of counting miles has helped me a lot.

yeah, this too. Concentrating on breathing, how I feel, how my feet are hitting the pavement and not how long I have been going, or how long there's left to go have also helped me quite a bit...

FM

I've got a 5K Race coming up this Sunday at Long Beach, CA. It's expected to be a partly cloudy day with a high of 83°F and humidity 63%.

With a 7:30 start time and being in a coastal city, it will likely to be overcast throughout the entire run. Should be a flat and fast course, but also very crowded (I'll probably be weaving through some walkers in the front for the first 1/4 mile).

I've been training at a slower pace than I had before my long vacation and my first 5K race, so I don't plan to break any PR here. I'll just focus on achieving negative splits and then take what my body can give me at the end.

I listen to music as well. Hadn't thought of the podcasts. I may give that a whirl...I'm starting to fall behind on the ones I listen to.

My first 5k is September 21st.