Recovery + Injury Prevention

My running has been going really well for the past year and a half, and I have a ton of things to attribute my health to. I've really been focusing on recovery. I've started tracking my recovery in my training log, as a reminder of how important of a component it is to my training.

My favorite recovery practices are:

• Epsom baths: At least 2 times a week, I am taking an epsom bath for 20-30 minutes. Sometimes this is after a run, sometimes it's a true rest day, or other times it's when work has been crazy and I need just some quiet moments to chill. I'm obsessed with the Dr Teals Lavender Epsom Salt . Lately I've been adding the Dr. Teal's Lavender Bubble Bath which takes it to an awesome level. I do need to drink a ton of water after doing it, as epsom bath's can be dehydrating.
• Hydration: Speaking of drinking all of the water, I've really been upping my water intake this summer. When it's hot out, I sweat like crazy, so I know I need to drink a ton of water to replace everything I've lost. It's been helping to flush out some of the soreness in my legs.
• Compression socks: I've been a firm believer in compression socks for years, so I've been wearing them a lot in the evenings and after runs. I've even contemplated wearing them to work with knee-length dresses, but I think I might get weird looks. Kyle just loves when we go out to lunch and I refuse to take them off. 
• Massages: I started doing monthly massages this past spring, and I think it's really helping! I look forward to massage day so much! I would really like to do 2 massages a month but that's just not in the cards money wise. It's moments like this that I wish I was a sponsored runner. :P

In addition to recovery work, I've been focusing on injury prevention as well!

Injury prevention practices:

• Glute activation drills: I'm doing these before EVERY run. Whether it's a see-saw lift, or clam shells, or a standing banded leg lift, I'm doing *something* to get my booty woke up and ready to run. And it's truly making all the difference. Sometimes when my legs feel super heavy on a run, I will stop and do some quick leg lifts to invite the booty to the party. I got a pair of resistance bands for Christmas that were just okay, but I recently ordered this set, which is what we use at POWER and they're amazing.
• Sanford POWER: This is one of the #1 things that has kept me injury free, and I know I've bragged about it a million times, but I'm going to keep doing it. I LOVE POWER. It's functional strength-training specifically for runners. My runs after POWER are always rockin' because my form is so spot on after a 60 minute session. 
• Foam rolling/stick: This is probably my least favorite practice. I know I need it, but I don't love it. And my runs the day after doing it usually feel junky, but I still do it. 
• Core work: Somewhere during the time of doing all the yoga during teacher training, I stopped doing core work. I thought I was getting plenty during yoga, right? Wrong. But now I'm getting back to it. I know that my posture is the first thing to go when I'm tired on a long long run or a race, so I'm hoping that more core work will lead to better form when races and runs get really tough and tiring. Not quite Operation: Alba Abs of days past, but I also wouldn't mind being able to shed the shirt on some really toasty runs without fear of being judged.

**I've included a couple of affiliate links to Amazon for specific products that I have been buying, using, and loving. If you purchase from the links, I get a few pennies back!

Tuesday Date Night Sanford POWER

This November, I've started a new addition to my training schedule: Tuesday night dates with Sanford POWER. Myself and about 20 other women runners in the area meet for an hour and are taken through runner-specific drills and lifts to help with injury prevention and increase running efficiency and form. 

It's SO MUCH FUN! The first night I was so incredibly nervous, but by the time the hour was up, I felt like an athlete again leaving practice for the night. Shocking fact: you can't push yourself as hard as someone else can push you. The trainers are all incredibly knowledgeable and do a great job of demoing the moves and explaining what they'll help with.

I had to coerce co-workers into swapping many many evenings with me so that I could make this work into my training schedule, and I'm so thankful that they were flexible so I could have this opportunity! I'm excited to see how it helps my running this spring.

Becoming a Yogi

When I first started going to yoga classes regularly again, for the first time in probably four years, I made it clear to myself and anyone I'd have general chit chat with prior to class starting, that I was a runner who was coming to yoga to better myself as a runner.

Somewhere along the way, that has shifted.

I find myself scouring the yoga studio's class schedule and booking my classes weeks out to ensure I get a spot to my favorites. There's enough variety in classes that there is almost always something that fits my mood and daily level of fatigue. When the weather is nice, I'll look for a ~30 minute spot of time to head out for a run. No distance in mind. No pace locked in. No heart rate data to obsess over. Speaking of data, my garmin refused to charge for months, so often I had no idea how far or how fast I was going.

And it was freeing.

And maybe that's the yogi mindset: freedom, less rigid, jumping off the severely Type A train, with an emphasis on fun and enjoyment. Running to me is fun when I'm doing well at it; it makes all the hard work worthwhile. But dedicating myself to a sport only to get knocked down by injury again and again is not fun, and clearly something I've struggled with.

But I'll be lying if I said that I didn't hope and expect all of the increased strength and flexibility that I am gaining will benefit me as a runner. I have high hopes that when I get back to running consistently, I will be able to continue attending the yoga classes that I l-o-v-e and keep injuries at bay, and maybe, just maybe finally see some breakthrough progress in my running.

And if that doesn't happen, I'll be bummed. But it's not such a bad thing to be a yogi that runs for fun, right?

Massage = Torture

Monday morning I woke up with one thing on my mind: massage.

I scoured the web for every massage therapist that specialized in sports massage, and as soon as the clock struck 8am, I started calling everyone to try to get in ASAP. Of course everywhere was booked out except for the most expensive option in town. Uff. But I've already invested time, money, and so much energy into my upcoming 26.2 that getting healthy takes precedence over having $$$.

I went in and let her know about my knee pain, I shared my usual tight spots: IT bands, piriformis, and QLs. I guessed that something in my back/butt/hips was the culprit with the recent lower back pain, and something in that same boat was likely pulling my knee out of whack as well. She told me she'd concentrate on those and then reminded me that this would be very uncomfortable.

Well, so is running 26.2 miles with knee and/or hip pain. Trust me.

Oh.

Sweet.

Jesus.

I got destroyed.

She started with my back/QLs which were tight, but not nearly as painful as the last time they were worked. She then moved to my glutes. It was during this part of the massage that she told me to tap into my yoga practice and implement some deep meditative breaths to get through the pain. I was *that* knotted up. I was practically in tears and hoping that 60 minutes had already past.

She then went to my calves. Which never give me problems. And of course she found a huge knot in the top of my calve, likely pulling my knee off. More excruciating pain. Yay.

Next up was my hamstrings. Also, NBD, right? Wrong. Remember after my 3k XC race I had some hamstring tightness? Well I had forgotten. I was smart and rested extra and foam rolled it out until I couldn't feel it anywhere. Well apparently it was still there. Can you request an epidural during a massage? Because I'd pay extra for it at this moment. I had a giant knot in my right one, and my left was ok.

She did some hip opening leg swings before moving on to more torture.

She flipped me over on to my back and did some work on my shoulders/neck and finally told me that she's never seen someone so asymmetrical as me. One shoulder was way higher, my hips were off, and what would be super tight on the left would be not so bad on the right, and vice versa with all the muscles she worked.

Apparently she saved the worst for last because I told her I needed a second while she was working on my IT bands and she was shocked because she was only doing the "muscle warm up" portion before she actually worked them. Oh Em Gee.

She also wanted to work my adductors since those are usually tight with hip tightness, and again I couldn't hack the pain. I apologized for being a wuss with an apparently low pain tolerance, and she said that most people would've been crying with what she put me through. It made me feel better for having my eyes full of tears for 80% of it.

The Aftermath

I drank and drank and drank and drank for about 48 hours after the massage to help my body heal. And really I've tried to keep up that excessive drinking beyond that 48 hours because I could really stand to drink more water daily anyway. I felt incredibly nauseous most of Monday after the massage. At work. It was a treat. Tuesday I had worst DOMS than I've ever had from a race, marathon included. My whole body just felt wrecked.

Wednesday I still had quite a bit of soreness, but it's definitely subsiding. I had toyed with going for a run Wednesday after work, but instead decided to do some stretching and yoga to further help my muscles along.

My current plan:  an easy 2-3 miles Thursday morning with hopefully no knee pain. Friday, I'm going to try my hardest to knock out my last major long run before taper. I hope to run somewhere between 3 hours and 20 miles, legs dependent.

I also plan to get in weekly for more massage/torture up to race week. Based on the pain I wasn't even able to bear, there's still quite a bit of work to be done, apparently.

So please cross your fingers my body behaves and I can make it to the start line in Bemidji ready to tackle 26.2 miles. I'm not looking for another marathon hobblefest. I've had enough of those to last a lifetime!

Progress + Injury Prevention

After my not-so-awesome half marathon performance in NYC in March, I was rattled. I even blogged about passing on a fall marathon because of my finishing time of 2:14:09. When I was planning my spring races, I thought it was feasible to run sub 2 in NYC and potentially shoot for a PR, six weeks later in Brookings.

Instead of panicking (other than that blog post, of course) I reassessed my training. I had zero speed work. I had no fast finish long runs, or long runs with pickups in them. Both things I could add that would make my legs speedier and drop some time off my half marathon.

But I was TERRIFIED of speedwork. Anytime I do speedwork I break. And I didn't want to break.

It was around this time that I was reading yet another running book, and there was a whole chapter on running form. Oh yes, let me read on. One of the pictures in the book was identical to my running form, and of course it was a big no-no. Grr. But in reading on, it explained that someone with that form likely has weak glutes causing the hips to collapse, pulling the legs all wonky on their follow through, LEADING TO IT BAND ISSUES, HIP PAIN, AND KNEE ISSUES. Oh yes yes yes, tell me more!

I started searching for glute strengthening exercises. I bookmarked this one from runners world (click here to go straight to the video) on my iPhone. I also bookmarked this hip stretching exercise and had been doing the leg swings before all of my long runs, and it was helping considerably. I also found a "never get injured" set of exercises from runners world that also got bookmarked on my phone. (I also forwarded most of these to every injury prone runner I know, we're in this together, yo!)

The glute exercises were so hard. They still are, but they've gotten easier. My booty was BURNING when I finished them the first time. The guide says to do them 2-3 times, reps of 15 a time, twice a week. I usually end up doing them on my rest days, so 3x a week. I continue to do the hip exercises, particularly the leg swings, and hurdler exercises before long runs and speed sessions.

Before the St. Patty's 5k, I made Jenn hang out with me as I did dynamic stretches that we did in track practice: high skips, low skips, high knees, butt flicks, kick outs, carioka (lolz, up until five seconds ago, I thought this was karaoke, bahahha). She felt dumb, but my legs felt great. Every time we hit the track, we run our warm up mile and then do that same run through before we hit our hard miles. And it's seeming to work! I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me to do these sooner. I did them every day before a run for 6 track seasons. Derp. (these explained here, mostly)

Better late than never, right?

So in six weeks time, I feel like the strongest runner I've been in a really long time. Taking 12 minutes off my half marathon time in six short weeks is the sort of progress that used to come when I was a newbie runner. But I'm confident that if I can keep injuries at bay, continue to do these strengthening exercises, I can get back to speedy Jeri very very soon!

How to Stay Injury Free

Advice from the LEAST qualified runner out there, as I seem to always be hurt, but here's what I'm doing.

• Sleep.  As mentioned in my last post, I'm making sure I get quality sleep even when getting up at the ass crack of dawn
• Foam rolling.  Ouch.  Sometimes in training, I have been a runner who neglects their foam roller until I *need* something from it.  As in, my left knee no longer functions, or my hip is popping in and out of place.  When I go to town on my foam roller I realize HOLY CRAP NO WONDER I'M HAVING PROBLEMS.  This time around I'm foam rolling at least once, if not 2x/day everyday, regardless if I'm having issues.  Oftentimes, by the time I start to have pain, my IT bands are SO jacked up that it's impossible to roll out their issues, and I'm forced to take unplanned rest days.  By doing it everyday, I'm keeping on top of any issues before they occur.
• HR training.  Some injuries are spurred by running too much, too fast, too soon.  By training with my HRM, I'm forced to run the pace my heart tells me is okay for recovery runs, long runs, general aerobic runs.  This *should* lower my odds of injury.
• Hydrating.  The beer to water ratio has lessened around here, which is sad.  But since I'm doing HR training, I know how much dehydration messes with your HR, and how important it is to be well hydrated on my runs.  Also, in this heat, I'm sweating out way more water than I'm able to keep up with while running, so it's even more important to be well hydrated before I go.
• Compression socks.  I rewarded myself with the pink argyle compression socks from Pro Compression for putting in some quality miles lately, and I love them.
• Eating healthier.  Food is fuel.  My eating habits are hit or miss depending on the week, but I seem to do better at eating healthier when I'm running a lot, so I'm trying to get back on track with that.  I've also been tracking my calories to be sure I'm getting enough fuel on days that I'm running higher mileage.
• Core work.  Part of my running issues stem from my pelvis sitting at an angle instead of flat, so core work is super important to help keep it in alignment.

Anything to add?