Week 4: The Last Comeback

In the month of March I pulled the plug on the Shamrock marathon and decided to fully heal before I started training again. In the month of April I thought I understood what fully healed meant... started training, and then pulled the plug 4 weeks in realizing I was doing myself a disservice to repeat this same old pattern. Manageable pain is only manageable until it’s not... and by the time you realize it’s no longer manageable you’re too deep into training to stop. Too invested, too much work to waste... so you risk it all until you lose it all. I’ve repeated this pattern a few times. I manage pain well... a thing I used to be proud of... but as I age I know I need to give my body a better place to start from. It’s so hard for me to trust my own insight on this having made so many repeated mistakes. In the month of May I took this more seriously. I’m 4 weeks in to the Last Comeback but still have not run a step. I still have pain but extremely limited in comparison to previous benchmarks. I also feel like I’m about to make enough changes that the result will hopefully change. This will hopefully be the last week of NO running. But next weeks totals are probably going to be <5. A less than gradual approach. But enjoy my last recap that has ZERO running.

Monday: I don't know if it's bad or good that I've already forgotten. I had to look this up. It appears I did nothing on Monday and on Sunday. I think it was Matts full day back from Switzerland and I just wanted to not think about fitting something in the schedule. 

Tuesday: Pool workout: 10 min warm up; 10x (50sec hard/10 sec easy, 40 sec hard/20 sec easy, 30 sec hard/30 sec easy); 5 x 90 sec (faster every 30 sec) w/30 sec easy between each; cool down. This workout was directly from my coach. The pool at the gym I joined is not a deep water pool. The very center of it is 5 feet deep so if I wear a belt I can do deep water running if I turn around every 15 seconds. I basically just go in a small circle in the middle of my lane like a lame fish... but I also did use the shallow end for the warm up, cool down, and the 90 second repeats. It takes me roughly 30 seconds to run a length of the pool so it was easy to run down and back for 90 seconds and measure if I was getting faster or staying on pace. I wrote a whole blogpost on water running with a few workouts on there if you missed it. Check it out! I also had my last Shockwave appointment. I'm still not 100% but I'd say my range is now between 95-99% on any given day. I more notice pain or chronic tightness in my shin and calf. The podiatrist feels pretty confident that the orthotics are going to relieve a lot of that.

Wednesday: 60 minutes on the bike and glute band drills plus box steps and other box stuff. I was shockingly sore from the pool workout so just kept it easy! I've been having real trouble sleeping lately so I'm trying not to overwork myself.

Thursday: Squeezed in a quick sprints pool workout (FREE on my Water 101 post!) before heading to get a massage. My massage hurt really bad. Lots  of deep abdominal work done reminding me that I still have a long way to go in terms of pelvic floor stability. However, reading this blogpost that Sarah Canney put together I felt  hopeful. I can perform all the exercises mentioned but my guess is I can't perform them after a run or after a workout or without putting thought into it. It takes a lot of concentration for me to breath correctly! Being able to do it without fatigue is, to me, just the baseline. I need to be able to do it when I'm tired, so that's what I will work on. My massage therapist keeps saying "it's not a strength thing, it's a vascular thing. You are strong enough, you just aren't getting enough oxygen and blood flow, you're not breathing correctly". So I got this little thing called "expand-a-lung"... I had heard about it on Tina Muirs podcast and it helps with the diaphragm and emailed her guest who is local to here. I remember when I went to pelvic floor PT I had an issue with my piston breath and my diaphragm lowering on inhales because it was so tight. My massage therapist basically did deep tissue massage in that diaphragm area and I gotta say I've never felt so good (and sore... in a good way). The expand-a-lung puts some pressure against the breath to sort of force the correct engagement and coordination... I guess it increases your lung capacity which sounds cool for runners, but Again, I just got it because the guy on the podcast is legit and recommended it to me when I emailed him about my pelvic floor. at least that's what I understood from the podcast episode it was mentioned in! Here is a great video below that the pelvic floor PT I worked with sent to me. I fall in the category of tight upper abs and diaphragm. I do not leak at all though because my pelvic floor has compensated and is in a constant state of contraction in order to hold everything up since my abs and diaphragm are not fully expanding and contracting either. Anyway, I was able to get correct movement almost 2 years ago when I saw the PT, but again, I think I need to do it really conscientiously and it doesn't happen when I'm running or doing sports or transporting or restraining a child at work... as a result I sometimes have pain and sometimes ​do not. 

Friday: I planned to get up early but slept 5hours and 3 minutes according to my app (which usually means I slept less than that). It was the Flag Day show at school and it took every bit of energy I had to make sure every student was happy and able to participate nicely so that I didn't need to transport anyone out off the stage with a million parent eyes on me. It's part of my job and I'm trained to correctly and safely remove children who are a threat to themselves or others, however no one wants an audience for something like that... especially when it's supposed to be a celebration! Fortunately the kids were great during the show(s) (they perform twice), but a change in schedule for kids with autism is hard on everyone and I was psyched to just go home and chill. 

Saturday: On Saturday I took the approach of doing two back to back classes in order to make it a "long run" day. I did the shallow water H2O class which wasn't exactly hard, I can make it much more challenging on my own, but the introduction of some​ impact is good before I start running next week so I just went with it. Some things were very hard and others were... meh... but I reminded myself that long runs shouldn't be hard... jut long. I followed up with a spin class. To be honest, I didn't love the instructor. Mostly because I couldn't hear her and didn't know her cues and had a really large (like tall) man blocking my view so I also couldn't see. But I give her a pass because I overheard her telling another member of the class that she ran 3:32 in the marathon "Not the BQ I wanted, at one point I was on pace for a 3:11"... Knowing nothing about her I wanted to be like "if you were looking to BQ why 3:11 pace?..." sounds like she got out too hard. Anyway, I was impressed she could spin after because spin class is legit hard for me! But not sure I would take her class again. Too much of the class was centered around the music for me. I would rather be told "30 seconds" than "find the beat"... I don't run with music and really don't want music to dictate my workout. When I finished up I headed over to Raeas dance class to trade off with Matt and made it back just in time to check out her handprint being added to the wall! So cute! 

Sunday: Everything about this day just wasn't good. I don't even want to get into it because I worked really hard to just let it go and don't want to rehash it.. but I will say that I posted about it in my story on instagram and was overwhelmed by the support by other parents out there! I honestly got so many messages of support I couldn't even respond to them all individually. Amazing amazing people willing to support a total stranger! It's funny how we can be that way online, but I wonder if I would have received the same support in person. It reminded me to be kind. Always be kind. You don't know what someone else is dealing with. We Can't be perfect all the time (not even close, for me)... but I pulled my head out of the fog and meal prepped... that's all I could manage for Sunday. My kids also returned to their angelic state (after the devilish one that sent me for a loop) and I got this adorable footage of Maebel reading with Raea. Love them so much! 

Hope you had a really great week! Sorry I’m a little inconsistent with posting in terms of day/time. I’m going for weekly consistency (2-3 posts per week always with weekly training recap)
Comment below!
Have you ever done spin class? what parts you like or don’t like?
Tell me your parent fails
how was your week of training?