November kickstart

I think I may have overdid it with my run a few days ago, because my knee has been in a pit of pain. More like discomfort, actually. So I decided a short, but intense bike ride would suffice for today. I wanted to see how fast I could pull off a 10k ride, so I poured it on for the entire session. I managed to finish in 20:28. I was hoping to get under 20 minutes, but that was still pretty good.

My drippy suit hanging to dry in the locker room.

After, I went down to the pool for a swim. My shoulder still bothers me, as always, and I slept on it funny last night, so it was particularly sore this morning. I decided to use fins during my laps, so it would take some of the strain off it. It worked perfectly. I was able to get some decent cardio and yardage in without any real pain.

On a side note, thanks to those of you who still read my blog every now and again. I'm sure they've gotten kind of dull after a while, but last month, I set a new record for page views since I started this thing. THANKS A TON!!! It's very encouraging.

Total distance: 6.5 miles cycling, 1,400 yards swimming

What's next? Half marathon?

It's been a full week since Bear Lake, which is the longest I've gone without working out since I started exercising again over a year and a half ago. I saw the specialist on Tuesday and, to my disappointment, he really didn't give me any new information about my shoulder. The only thing I learned is that I haven't seriously damaged anything, so surgery or anything like won't be required. He offered me another cortisone injection, but I turned it down, because it only seemed to piss my shoulder off even more last time.

It's torture to use, but it is very highly reviewed for helping with IT band injuries.

I think I'm going to take one more full week off from swimming while trying to strengthen my tendons a bit with exercises the doc gave me. In the meantime, I bought a foam roller to help toughen up and stretch out my IT band in my knee. I say this because Wes is trying to talk me into running the Huntsville Half Marathon with him in a little over a month. That isn't a ton of time to train, but cardio-wise, I think I'm already in moderate shape. A half marathon and perhaps even a full marathon are both on my bucket list, but the knee kind of stopped me the last time I trained for one, although I was making very good progress, reaching eight miles at one point.

I'll start tomorrow with a 3-4 mile run with Wes and see how it feels.

Stairs, and why I blog

I went down to the Roy High track to get in a weekend run, because I didn't work out much during the week. While I was there, I was thinking about my blog. Every once in a while, a friend busts my balls about my blog and how I update "the world" every time I exercise. I guess I can see how that would come across to some as showing off, or looking for praise when I work out. However, the whole reason I started this thing was for motivation. The longer I've been writing it, the more guilty I feel when I don't work out like I should or when I don't do it often enough. It's kind of an accountability thing. When I don't work out, I feel like others know, because my blog isn't updated and it's somewhat embarrassing. "Swimming Upstream" has turned into the most valuable motivational tool I have.

Running stairs is what I call hardcore cardio.

So, I apologize if I annoy when I share the links to it. Just know that I'm not starved for attention or anything like that. It's purely a training tool and away to get my thoughts down in print (sort of).

Anyway, I did some stair sprints today and they were brutal. I was only able to do about five sets worth, with one set being a full snake up one flight, running to the next and down, then running to the next set of stairs and repeating until I reach the end of the field. After that, I did a 2-mile run after a few minutes rest. I stopped before my knee started hurting as a preventative measure.

Total distance: About 3 miles running

Body's breaking down again

Sometimes I feel like I am truly not meant to be an athlete. Every time I think my body is getting stronger, a nagging injury surfaces to say, "Hold on a sec there, bud. I'm not gonna just let you do whatever you want." It has been nothing short of maddening.

Immobilized with ice packs on both my
shoulder and knee after getting home from
the gym. Don't I look happy?

Last Thursday, I started feeling severe pain in my shoulder again. Not the normal achy soreness that I've had ever since I injured it last year, but a legit pain. I took the weekend off after Friday's short swim and it hasn't improved at all. To make matters worse, my knee started acting up again while I was at the gym today.

It seems like I have an injury in both parts of my body that are crucial to getting any sort of cardio workout. When my shoulder hurts, I can't run because of the knee, and visa-versa. It makes it impossible to effectively train for swim events, triathlons or even that elusive half-marathon I've been wanting to do. I've never been so upset with my job and the incredibly shitty insurance I receive as a "benefit." I'm a journalist, so I'm not exactly raking in the dough and just to get an MRI done on one part of my body is going to cost me more out of pocket than I have. And yeah, I'd need two of them.

Anyway, today's session was good, other than the knee pain. I ran 1.5 miles, cycled for 20 minutes, ran for another mile, and cycled for 15 more minutes. My knee started hurting during the second run session. After some extensive stretching in the sauna, I did an easy swim for a cool down, even though my shoulder is on fire.

I don't know what the hell to do.

Total distance: 9.6 miles cycling, 2.5 miles running, 600 yards swimming

Cycling only for today

I don't have a lot of time to write today's blog, so I'll keep it short. I rode the bike this morning, thinking it wouldn't hurt my knee like running does. I didn't have any pain until about 45 minutes in and I stopped right there, so I wouldn't aggravate it further. I wanted to go for an hour, so I lifted weights for a little longer than usual to make up for it.

Tomorrow is my last swim of the month. Looking forward to it...

Total distance: 13.2 miles cycling

Latest exercise injury

Lately, I've been noticing some pain on the outside of my left knee after long runs. It usually doesn't hurt until later that night and during the following few days. It was still tender from the run I did with Wes on Monday, but I decided to give it a go at the Ogden River Parkway again today.

I went with Jen, Kelly and Jessica. Kelly was attempting another personal high of 12 miles and once again, I just wanted to see what I could manage. I was a bit nervous about Jen coming, because she doesn't run and quite honestly, hates it. I had to talk her in to coming, because I wanted to spend some time with her before I went into work. Anyway, Jessica and I kind of stuck together and we ended up leaving Jen in the dust. Kelly passed both of us after about 2.5 miles, which was where Jess and I turned around.

The discomfort started almost immediately, but it never really hurt so much that I had to stop. After five miles, Jess was pretty tired and I didn't want to leave Jen by herself anymore, so we all walked a half-mile back to the trail head together. I'm glad we stopped, because my knee was (and still is) hurting, but not so much that I couldn't walk. I did some research online about the specific pain I have and how it hurts the most when I walk down stairs, and the obvious answer online was my Iliotibial band. The good news, it's easily treatable with rest and ice, so I'm going to try one last short run before the end of the month and take it very easy in the running department during the next week.

Ughhh.. If it's not one thing (shoulder), it's another thing (knee). Looks like I will be logging a lot of time on the stationary bike in the near future with both running and swimming as alternate exercise options. That's the only form of exercise that doesn't seem to eat my body alive.

Total distance: 5 miles running

February swim Round 3

With a recent bout of knee pain from my run on Monday, my mind was off my shoulder and I was glad to get in the water today for my weekly swim. As usual, I did some cycling first, so I could get a complete cardiovascular workout and then I hobbled down the stairs to the pool. Here's today's swim.

My two best friends for short swims

Warm up
100 free
Core
5 X 300 alternating 100 free, 50 breast (30 seconds rest between sets)
50 fly (Barely managed it. Haha)
Cool down
100 breast

So far, my injury hasn't been hurting during my swims, but I'm still having a difficult time, because I'm simply out of shape. Missing so much time in the pool has set me back to square one and teaching myself to bilateral breath when I swim has been a challenge. I seriously saps my energy twice as fast compared to the way I used to swim. I used to be able to go thousands of yards without stopping and now I am gassed after 100 yards of bilateral breathing. And I still have to start incorporating flip turns. Ugh...

After one more session of doing my sets with legs of 100 free, I'm going to try doing 150 free followed by the 50 breast for a few weeks and then slowly increase the legs. The same goes for the number of swims I'm doing. For February it was once a week and for March it will be twice a week. I'd like to be back to my normal three times per week by April. Hopefully, I can get myself back into good enough swim-shape to be ready for the GSL one-miler in June.

Total distance: 13.2 miles cycling, 1,750 yards swimming

Working off the long weekend

Today was a tough day. I didn't end up making it to the gym as many times as I wanted last week, partly due to a power outage on Friday that kept me from getting in the pool. Also, my wife and I celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary over the weekend, so I ate a lot of crap, drank a few beers and celebrated with reckless abandon.

However, I did go running with Kelly and his wife Jessica up at Weber State on Saturday, pumping out three miles in preparation for my first sprint triathlon, which is scheduled for November 18, just a week after my big swim meet.

That being said, I hadn't swam in almost a week when Kelly and I hit the pool today and I was definitely feeling it.

First we ran for a while, but all I could manage was a measly 2.4 miles before my knee started hurting.

Here's today's workout.
Warm up
200 free
Core
5 x 300 free on the 6:00 descending
100 IM sprint
2 x 50 sprint, 25 hard, 25 easy
Cool down
200 free

I was sucking wind on my warm up and knew I was in for a long swim, but on the 300s I started to loosen up and picked up my pace a bit. Eventually, Kelly and I ran out of time when lap swim ended before we could do additional sets.

Total distance: 1.20 miles