Race Report: Trail Nut Half Marathon

Mountain Junkies LLC
Trail Nut 10k & Half Marathon
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Bedford, VA

This was the second Mountain Junkies event we had the pleasure of experiencing back in 2010 when I first discovered this amazing series of races. The Mountain Junkies are a husband and wife duo that "want you to have a great time", a tagline that is evident in every aspect of the events they put together. This event, the Trail Nut 10k and Half Marathon, is one of my favorites and so close to home I couldn't pass it up even with that vow I made with myself about racing anything this short before Western States (and then of course there's that ridiculous streak of mine).

I ran the 10k in 2010, it was only my third 10k ever, second on trails and I fell in love with the park that the race introduced me to and even more in love with single track. In 2011, hellbent on finishing the series despite being pregnant, I ran the 10k and announced with my t-shirt that I was expecting a 'future Mountain Junkie'. Last year was my first attempt at the half marathon, for which personal problems led to a pretty down evening and morning before the race start. I started the race hungry and with my mind elsewhere, with legs only a week off of my second ultra, and suffered greatly.

After swearing off shorter races earlier this year when the calf trouble befell me I had to sorrowfully remove the Mountain Junkies RNUTS from my race calendar. However, after last weekend's not so stellar performance at Promise Land I began contemplating the Trail Nut. I thought about just coming out, maybe sweeping the course or being a cheerleader, but I'd seen the race t-shirt and wondered just how I could do at a race for which speed of some sort would be necessary. Todd was encouraging that I run the half, not 'sandbag' and race the 10k, he was also excited about seeing what he could do at the half marathon.

Back and forth on registering, as well as which distance to choose all the way up until we arrived at Falling Creek Park kept the nerves and race jitters down to a very fine low, almost nonexistent. Uncertain how my calf would react I registered for the half marathon, figuring the distance would afford a slighter slower overall pace. With a few minutes to spare before the race briefing I joined Todd for a quick warm-up.

The pace was slow and the calf felt good, I began to think I could pull it off. I figured I would be fifth, trailing Dacia, Courtney, Lauren and Carrie, as long as I could hold it together.

Turns out "holding it together" is a real challenge for me.

I positioned myself at the start line around  Lauren, Courtney, Randy, people I thought I should be able to run with if I ran well. When the race began I tried to go out with them. Through the grass we ran, I was keeping with them but also immediately feeling the pace, you can't keep this, Alexis, back off now. Backing off before we even entered the single track was blow number one. When the calf began to tighten, as should be expected at this point, I tried to push through. When the pain in my calf began to spread to my foot like it did at that fateful 5k back in February I had to reign it in further and lose several more positions. This was blow number two. With the calf now irritated and with a diminishing pace I began to fall victim to the negativity, contemplating a DNF. Just tell Josh your leg can't handle this, you just ran an ultra a week ago, this was foolish at best. Struggling along, the determined side of me spoke up, you can finish this, it may take three hours, but you don't DNF, it's not who you are. 

The next few miles were a tad bit miserable, but I was in this thing. I was slipping just slightly in pace as I fought on, hoping the pain in my calf would ease as it is known to do after a few miles. I just kept trying to reassure myself that it would pass. However, by the time I found myself running on pavement the pain was radiating up the hip, not full out painful, but a threat of some kind. To top it off I've been dealing with a touch of plantar fasciitis in the other foot that decided to share it's frustration with me at this point. The persistent pain, while not severe, was blow number three. I was an absolute mess.

Then, shortly before the bike park, Sarah Taylor passed me looking strong. I followed closely behind as we made our ways up the grassy hill, taking in her beautiful stride, admiring her strength. When we came into the bike park and it was flat with countless people ahead of us running seemingly in circles my first thought was this is just cruel! I could see the runners ahead of me, but then as I ran further into the flat, winding section I began to see the happy, strong faces of runners quickly approaching. I always feel a certain weakness on flats and Saturday was no different. I started to focus on Sarah, how strong she looked.

Suffering in the first miles. Photo courtesy Mountain Junkies.

And finally, that determined side spoke up, louder this time: She IS strong! But you are strong, too. Yes, you feel pain, but aren't you an ultra runner? Isn't overcoming pain part of what it takes for success? Push aside the pain, pick up the pace and run strong. I heard these thoughts and I believed them. And just like that, my race came back together, instantly. I picked up the pace and focused on that strength that I possess but consistently forget to harness.

I still felt pain in my left heel and right hip, but I started to drown them out with this new-found focus on running well. If there was anymore negative self-talk it was only that it shouldn't take me nearly five miles to decide to run on strengths, not deficiencies. The next six miles were run well, I began to settle into a better race, a better day. I was a little disoriented coming through the first loop, unsure whether I should really be crossing the finish line or not. I decided to stop at the aid station to fill up my water bottle, I was worried it would heat up in the second loop, but I probably should have just dropped the empty bottle at what would be the finish line, I didn't end up drinking much of the water and it probably cost me some time.

Going out for the second, shorter loop I felt pretty good, the heel was the only thing still really nagging me and I hoped to drop the pace even more. However, at about eleven miles the fatigue began to set in. I would have to settle for holding the pace, the legs may be capable of holding that pace for a half marathon but they really just aren't trained for it at the moment. When I came upon Blake with less than two miles to go I wondered when he had passed me. He said he'd accidentally cut the course, that he'd already told Gina about it and that he'd see me at the finish as he let me pass by him.

Coming into the final miles a volunteer directing the half marathoners told me I was in third place for females, I had been kind of hoping to chase Courtney down, but there was no one out in front of me that I could see. I had a runner behind me the entire second loop, I kept encouraging him to pass me but he kept assuring me that he was just trying to hold on. The short, but slightly steep final section of trail was not as hard as I recalled last year. I had planned on not pushing the final steps but when I saw I was capable of breaking 1:50 I picked up the pace to secure that feat.

Within moments of passing the finish line I had several people tell me I was third female and several tell me I was fourth. I didn't let the confusion bother me, I was preoccupied with a fair bit of itching. I had sat down in the grass and I don't know if that's what caused the itching but most of my legs and torso itched. Thankfully, Gina saved me with a Benadryl.

Turns out, I was third. One of the females in the race had unintentionally cut the course along with Blake and a few other guys. I felt really bad about this, like I was stealing third. Todd assured me that, while everyone involved felt bad, I was third and shouldn't feel bad about accepting the award.

Courtney Griffin (2nd), Dacia Reed (1st) and Alexis Thomas (3rd)

I urge everyone who hasn't run a Mountain Junkies race to do so, I have started several posts about just how well put together and carried out they are, but I think you just need to go out and participate to really feel what I would try to convey in a post. Conquer the Cove is next month, go sign up! You won't be sorry, but you may be sore!

Once again, post race, I'm floundering, frustrated. I feel lost. I know I can run well but being injury prone and with Western States looming closer everyday I am probably worse than ever before. I told Todd yesterday that I can't wait for July 1st, I'm just ready to see how it all turned out. I keep saying that I don't want to disappoint everyone, but to be honest, I'm most worried that I am going to disappoint myself, fall apart and quit before my time. If I could just locate that strength I know I have, bottle it up and have it ready I know I would be alright but instead I keep misplacing it, and that has me truly running scared.

-Alexis

Good Enough?

Here I was thinking I was healed and on the upward turn. Despite being well aware that I wasn't invincible and that injury beckons I was hoping that I could finally proceed with my training when I started out on Sunday's Promise Land training run. I had begrudgingly agreed to start at the camp with Todd. To be fair, I never actually voiced my opinion about leaving from the camp, but I wasn't in love with the idea, wasn't 'feeling it'. Most of the group assembled for the run were driving to the location of aid station one to avoid this very climb. Within a half mile my calves, both the generally angry one and the amiable one, started to tighten. I continued to run for a ways before I finally had to succumb to walking.

And walk I did. As the car loads of smarter individuals drove past, Andrew loudly but playfully wondering why someone who loves hills wasn't running while encountering one. Horton inquiring if we knew our way. Sam and Frank passing by like we were standing still, actually maybe we were at that moment. Todd, understandably frustrated at my hike, suggested we call it a day and head back to the car. I wouldn't even entertain the idea, I'm nothing if not entirely stubborn, I wasn't going to turn tail and run back to the car, miserable or not I was moving forward. I encouraged, nearly begged, Todd to just leave me and move forward with his run. Being a dedicated spouse and an all around nice guy he refused to leave me while I was not only the last runner, but now a good twenty minutes behind the group who had started at the top of the hill.

Truth is I was over-brimming with anger and embarrassment. Hating my weak and softened legs and a reputation I don't deserve and bewildered by the sudden flare up in the legs after a solid weak of good runs and the three rest days preceding this run. You should have run this defeating hill before submitting your application, Fool. That's right, you want that silly sweater, crawl on then. It went on like this, the down and out self pep talk that really wasn't, well past the end state maintenance sign when I finally saw a runner up ahead. Once again I encouraged Todd to run on, I wanted to be left to thoroughly wallow in self-pity and degradation.

With the promise that I would survive, he left me shortly after the turn onto single track. I think he thought I would pick up the pace as soon as he left but I just continued to walk, even after the calves had started to quiet down I continued on hiking, not wanting to catch the couple of guys ahead of me in such a funk of disappointment.

I walked, hiked and ran the eighteen plus miles like it was my job, not the hobby that I hold near and dear. The highlight of the entire run was coming upon Bethany Williams on the White Oak Ridge, where were you during Terrapin my dear lady, there is nothing more that I love than a good chase up a hill, but then she was behind me and I was left to my own devices once again, more demeaning self talk but now with sweat in my eyes.

I caught up with Kelly and Nicole at Horton's truck parked at Sunset Fields but I was terrible company I'm sure and when we arrived back at the first aid station I ran on through still having to make my way back down to my car. Knowing that we were behind on time and just wanting to be over with the run I ran this section somewhat hard. Unfortunately, it seemed to take as long running down as it had going up, I was thankful to finally pass the squirrel silhouette edging a driveway, the sign that the run was virtually over. Arriving back at the camp I'm sure I was a ray of sunlight, I hurried Joe and Todd into the car, happy to have this most blah feeling run over with.

And I thought that is where the humility would end, with the run accomplished I thought I could move on, but then I came home to record said training run.

Turns out, last year, the week before Promise Land, we did this very same run. Except it was cold and rainy and yet a full four minutes faster.

You're probably asking yourself: Seriously, Alexis, you're going to sob about four minutes? 

Yes. Yes, I am.

At this point I've been running long enough to have a certain expectation that comes from prior accomplishment and performance. I'm of the mindset that I should always be improving, getting better and yet now I'm beginning to wonder if I've been running long enough now (about three years) that I'm plateauing. Wondering if I've gotten as good as I'll get. Despite the fact that I have been injured I still feel as though I should be improving. There are good arguments I've been trying to make, for one I didn't remember or know how long last year's run had taken me, had I known, realized it was a competition with myself, maybe I could have run faster. Instead I'm realizing that my training before Holiday Lake carried me through Terrapin, I'm now feeling those six weeks of injury, the lack of intensity of any kind, the complete absence of road running or quicker leg turnover. The four minutes is just a small thing in the grand scheme, but all the proof I need to suggest I won't PR this year at Promise Land, that I'll be lucky to run what I ran last year. Instead of getting back to real training I am finding myself focusing on my weaknesses, I'm lazy, anxious, pessimistic and doubtful. An all around head case if you will. (This is where you might whisper to yourself, like I sometimes do, poor Todd.)

Really struggling in the confidence and morale department. Wishing I could borrow the opinion some others seem to have of me, borrow a little confidence too.

I think it all stems from the fact that I have never felt good enough.

When I was all of about nine years old I compiled a handful of poems I'd penned, typed them up on our word processor, printed and stapled them together. One afternoon my father who had apparently stumbled across the project titled "Lexi's Limericks" came to me with the booklet in hand and asked me where I had copied the poems from. This was the nature of compliments I remember from my childhood, the praise was present but hidden in the fact that my poems would be good enough to bring my father to think I'd plagiarized them.

Skip ahead a few years, my parents separated and me taking it quite poorly skipped school quite a bit in my eighth grade year. There was a bit of attention seeking in this I'm sure in hindsight. One particular day my gym class ran the mile as part of the presidential fitness requirements while I was out playing in the woods with two other neighborhood kids who had also run from the bus stop. Turns out unlike dissecting a frog, skipping this day of school didn't free me from partaking entirely in the event. I had to go out and run the mile with another student who had been absent with my gym teacher timing us. Unlike previous years, when I had walked in an act of defiance with my friends, I fell in behind the other student making up the mile. I ran right behind her, just watching her feet as we ran our loops around the gravel track. When we were finished I'd run just over eight minutes for the mile, not fast, but surprising for my little rebel self. The gym teacher asked me a series of questions, why did I always goof off, why didn't I try, and suggested that I could even run track if I wanted to, if I cared enough to try. I, taken aback and a tad proud, went to my father as a sounding board and told him the teacher thought I could run track. To which he responded that I couldn't just decide as a high school freshman that I wanted to run track, that it was pretty much too late for me. This was the extent of my running until three years ago.

This isn't to say my parents screwed me up, I mean they did, but I turned out normal enough and heck I'm probably screwing my kids up right now with something I'm doing, not doing, said yesterday, etc. It's what parents do, we screw up our kids, at least it's what we get blamed for. Besides, I'm quite at peace in the knowledge that we are all imperfect and I believe that my dad did the best that he could, he probably thought he was protecting me from disappointment or potential failure. In fact it's this opinion that I'm so imperfect that I believe holds me back, I'm so wrapped up in my imperfections that I fail to see that even though I may never be perfect I can be better than I am.

Lately when I pass runners while I'm driving I wonder Are they running hard? Could they run faster? Are they having fun? And I realized today while I was doing this, that really it's as though I'm asking these questions of myself. On Sunday morning, before the Promise Land run I told Todd that I really want, more than anything, to be sustainable. I want to be running for years and years to come. However, even though that's what I want the most, I still really want to be good, keep improving, to someday feel within, that I'm good enough.

-Alexis

Between Valleys and Peaks

Have you ever had the flu or a cold and missed so desperately the ability to breath through your nose? Just hoping to wake up tomorrow and feel good, no headaches or fever? For the past almost two months I have just so severely missed the ability to run comfortably without pain. Dreaming that the next run would be accompanied by relief, result in real enjoyment. Instead, solo runs were spent convincing myself to take another step, yet easy and cautiously. Group runs were spent aching for what others were doing so effortlessly, praying that the tightness would slacken in that weak and angry calf, that some day I would in fact feel good again.

The week before Terrapin I could sense the pain was departing though the leg lacked quite a bit of strength. Then the week after Terrapin I got sick, this along with my new approach on recovery and rest, forced me to take the whole week off with the exception of a slow run with the Wednesday group where everyone was up for a pedestrian's pace.

Saturday, squeezed between Easter egg hunts and family dinner plans, I ran solo at Candler's. The entire run my leg felt good. I kept the run short and ran a recovery pace but it was the first run in six weeks that didn't require a long warm-up or result in muscle cramping or tightness. It was like the world's best gift.

Yesterday, a group met at Candler's. Mike Donahue, one of our original weekly Wednesday night participants, was in town and had arranged a trail run. A large group took off out Panama from the parking lot and before I even realized it and without consideration I was running fast. When the heart began to suggest that the pace was one I wasn't really trained for I offered the compromise that I would only continue that sprightly pace until we reached the camp.

There was a great deal of rapture wound up in this run, in the fact that I was able to run among the friends I've longed to run with over my injury. That I was, in the simplest definition, just running. My legs felt fine, they carried me well. I was grateful for the chance to play in the woods, to play chase, run unfamiliar trails. I knew a mile in that I was having the best run of the past several weeks, but miles later when we began to visit more hilly sections I felt a solid strength that has just been absent from my runs for far too long. I was running hills. Have I told you lately that I love hills? I may not be great at them but they empower me, they force all of my being to compile our strength and work together. There's accomplishment awaiting every hill I run, a certain satisfaction that fuels me, nourishes the desire to feel strong, powerful, healthy.

Running up Peak to Peak my calves were working hard to get me to the top. There was a pain, but it wasn't the crippling, fear drawing kind but rather the kind that suggests weakness being pushed aside to make room for strength to come. For someone who suffers at times from a severe self-confidence deficit there was great reward in feeling simply capable.

I know I must remain cautious, that I could very easily go out and do something stupid and end up all too soon on the injured list once more, but yesterday, I felt like my old self a little. I felt at home.

-Alexis

Convalescing in Apprehension

The consideration that his claim may have no basis in fact made no difference. His words had already been swallowed by my ears and were being digested by my brain.

"You could have run sub 5:30, you're faster than me... Maybe next year."

Maybe.

Of course, I could do any number of stupid things between now and then. But for now the state of things is that my poor choices and obsessive personality have once again conjoined to do me in, the race that could have been will no longer be, not this year.

But the race will go on and I'm swimming in a sea of questions; Am I? Is it? How can we? How can we not?
Will I race, any race, at Terrapin?

Believing that I may in fact be on the mend, but still suffering from slight weakness, tightening, I am afraid of every step I take but just as afraid to not take these steps. Wondering if it weren't this muscle, would it just be that knee? This foot? Will there always be some lump in my throat, some damaging fear in my arsenal?

And which race are we even really talking about, is it the one looming in six days or the one that beckons closer every day, arriving the last weekend in June? I'm so frightened, have been ever since the morning after Hellgate when I was properly rested and first allowed the effects of my whimsical decision to drop my name in the lottery to take hold, I'd signed up for and subsequently been chosen for a race I fear I've no real place to partake in. More questions in the sea of what's to be; Can I? Will I?

I've most likely been given a once in a lifetime shot, you don't just walk away even if you're riddled with fear, even the crippling, fatiguing fear of failure. All I need is a chorus of "Not you, not now, not ever" to complete the scene, my utter lack of self-confidence versus the need to prove myself, which will overcome? And there are other fears, pulling and pushing in every direction. The fear of regret. The fear of being seen as reckless, stupid, foolhardy. The fear of disappointment.

I digress, though parallels in my mind, the focus, at the moment, is on Terrapin.

Terrapin is less than a week away, I intend to participate, to complete the 50k. Neither fast or slow I don't see myself as particularly talented, I am just a runner with a profound competitive drive and a little bit of heart to match. I'm in no place to win or set speed records, but I'm driven to compete in next weekend's event for a handful of reasons, but namely, simply because I want to.

Scratch that, upon further reflection the word I mean to use, is need. I need to go out next weekend. I need to know for my own sake and satisfaction that I can be smart, run easy, listen to my body and manage any pain within the 'run through' limits. I need this experience. Understanding that I may in fact do further damage or be seen as stupid is not enough to compel me to change my mind. The stronger other's argument that I shouldn't may become the more the need to becomes, you're pushing me into the arms of my star crossed love with every well aimed criticism. Might you know me better than I know myself? I desire this finish in a way words would fail to convey, in a manner that is felt but cannot be described.

Not running would take me out of the LUS but that weighs ultimately rather low, I know I'm not trained to run like I was hoping and that my personality is such that I may face great effort in overcoming the inability to race. Truth is, I can't even promise I won't shift into race gear should the leg give me the green light. However, I am struggling not with the decision to race but with the opinion I am gathering is forming now that  I've decided to go through with the race. People whose advice I do respect but don't necessarily want to follow, the fact that there are people who think I am foolish, stupid. The looming "I told you so's" should I further injure myself or fail to finish. Between the draw of the race and fear of your disappointment I'm once again drowning in doubt and self-loathing.

But you see, I know me. I know my own regrets and what I don't regret is any race I've ever run, because I know how they turned out, I know what I put into them, what I got out of them. Even that 5k at Liberty several weeks back, I honestly hold no regret, I know I made the choice and there was no other way it could have gone. I gave it everything I could and to my crazy, delusional self there is success of a certain nature in that. There is a whisper, it is telling me I have to give Terrapin a try. I have to see how it all turns out. Maybe I won't finish, maybe I'll have to quit, but then I will know that I couldn't finish, that I had to quit.

More than ever before it may just be that the odds are in favor of failing and in my own mind, I need to test the waters and risk how the failing may feel in order to go forward with Western States.

-Alexis

Time for a little (more) self-reflecting.

Since the pain in my lower right leg intensified four weeks ago I have been on a roller-coaster that simulates the mountains that I long to run pain-free. In a craze to diagnosis, treat and prevent further occurrence I failed to perform the thorough job of self-reflecting. Yes, I conceded stupidity for a number of bad choices but I misfired when I left it at that, further frustration forthcoming when I failed to flip back through the pages of my precise mileage accounts and detailed training logs. Having finally progressed past denial, anger and depression but not arriving at what I would term the upward turn, I was lingering in limbo.

Last night I ran, third time since that painful 5k after Holiday Lake a few weeks back. The leg was feeling fine walking, just the occasionally twinge of weakness and resulting worry, so I was hopeful that a run of true comfort and ease might follow. We arrived early enough to get a warm-up in, I did two loops of the parking lot but in the first few steps I felt the weakness. Hard to describe and even harder to stomach, the stiff ache in that lower leg beckoned for more of my attention. I went to the van and resumed my current addiction to googling all things calf and injury and waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

A poor choice of running shoes coupled with the slushy leftovers of a diminutive snow day and I was instantly urged by my body to heed the advice I'd promised to follow. Dropping pace and slipping to the back of the group my leg commenced tightening. Being alone in the woods and fighting the frequent slip on slush and sludge I focused on the tightening. A mile in I yearned to catch up to the group, I had them in my sights, but the faster I moved the more the leg tightened, not cramping, just tightening. Again, I dropped my pace, decided I could call it quits at any time having faith in my ability to find my way back to the car and settled into the run that was to be.

The group, or at least a portion of them, waited for me at an intersection. Todd inquired about my leg which was at it's tightest but I decided to carry on seeing as the group had waited for me. Fortunately, being among the group afforded conversation and a shift of focus from the leg. Oddly enough over the next mile or so the muscles began to loosen up. The more I ran the more I felt I could run. This is exactly what happened during this past Saturday's run in the mountains. I would imagine if it were a stress fracture this would not be the case.

With the leg warmed up and the pain lessening I strove to continue to take it easy. I realized, over the next few miles, how hard this is for me. I wanted so badly over the later part of the run at several points to speed up, it was an effort not to do so, that is just how deep the crazy runs within. In a way I was happy to see that a few weeks rest and recovery had not lessened the crazy (sometimes it's best to embrace what you are). Suffice it to say it was a struggle to constantly remind myself to keep my hands on the reigns, but the urge was overwhelming at times, I want so badly to be fast. Kevin Correll reminded me in the parking lot after the evening's run that just last week I was just happy to be out there. In other words, don't try and screw it up.

Long is the list of reasons why I love to run with others, but it's this source of outward reflection that I take with me, the insight and advice from fellow runners, that is perhaps the most beneficial. During the course of the run Grattan Garbee remarked that I was learning something, he wasn't sure what, but if I didn't learn it, really learn from it, I would be bound to repeat it.

Home from the evening's run, feeling better than I did at the start, I sat myself back down with my favorite book on running, Tom Noakes "The Lore of Running" (4th ed. 2003) and began to more thoroughly than ever read the chapter on 'Staying Injury Free'. Noakes insists several key points, his "Laws" of running injuries, including that they are not acts of God, seldom need surgery and cannot be cured until the causative factors are eliminated. He goes on to clearly spell out the treatments for most running injuries for which he claims to have a success rate of nearly 75% with injured runners in a 1983 study, and most of the runners who weren't successful, he claims, didn't follow the protocol correctly (Noakes, p 753).

Moving on from the laws, he lays out treatment, step two after determining that the injury is running related is 'Diagnose and determine the cause'. First, Noakes says, look at your shoes, have you switched them recently, are they worn out, etc. He is very thorough in his explanation for why you must look very closely at your shoes and how they can cause breakdowns throughout the body from the feet upwards. Then, Noakes says, if you are done looking at your shoes, look at your training to see whether your methods or patterns have changed that might explain the injury, including speed, daily and weekly running distance and  number of days per week run (Noakes, p 772).

I stopped right there. I laid the book down, went and collected my training logs from this year and last and sat down with a calculator and a blank piece of paper. I had a good guess that I had increased my mileage in January but I hadn't really sat down and crunched the numbers.

What followed was an inquiry that lead to such an eye opening reveal I just had to share.

Turns out there is an awful lot you can learn from yourself if you keep a log, journal or both and actually go back and read and analyze the data. I had in fact increased my mileage too quickly in January. After a few minutes to figure out with Todd's help the formula to figuring out such increases and percentages I learned that over a five week period I made an increase of over 150%. Talk about stupid.

You see I ran Hellgate. Then I got sick.So I took a few easy weeks. Then I remembered I was training for Holiday Lake, looking towards Western States and now potentially had a sponsor. My intense desire to be good led to a very bad move in my training. In that five week period I jumped 18.5 %, 27%, 29%, 26%, and 1.5%.  However, I never got my mileage up as high as I thought I had, my highest Monday to Sunday week was only 68 miles. But when you rearrange those weeks, look at them from say one particular Friday to the next, I had an 81 mile week, my highest ever.

But it wasn't this fact that was the eye opener. It was that on this same list of weekly miles I decided to record, due to Noakes suggestion, the number of days in a week run. In that same five week period I jumped from running three days to six days a week. And in the two weeks that followed the huge percentage increase I stayed at six days per week. The second six day week was when in fact my leg first began to hurt.

I almost never run six days. So I looked back further into the training logs into last year to see number of days per week run. And I learned two more things. First, through all of November and December I ran only 1, 2 or 3 days a week. Seriously, in those two months the most I ran was three days in any given week. Prior to January 6th the last time I had run four days in a week was the week ending October 28th. And from January 6th to January 27th I had jumped to six days. For someone who doesn't feel stupid, I certainly act so.

The second thing I learned was that I had actually run two six day weeks in October training for Masochist. The last day of the second six day week? I got INJURED!!!!! I did something to my left foot, my big toe tendon. An injury that scared the dickens out of me for Masochist, resulted in many trips to my chiropractor, numerous hours of icing, many usages of KT tape, hours rolling out with a tennis ball, took a combined two months to heal while all the while only running 1, 2, or 3 days a week!! When I realized this I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. If you don't learn you're bound to repeat your mistakes.

Thank goodness I'm too busy doing nothing on Friday's other than the occasional visit to the Aid Station or else it may have been worse, I may have pushed one of these weeks to seven days.

I was blind to this fact, hadn't seen the pattern until last night. Here I was running six days a week and instead of getting better I was having to take weeks and months of less days and mileage, in other words more was actually resulting in less and I was doing loads of backwards peddling.  Not that I will never be able to run six days a week. But I can't get there in a few short weeks.

But wait, then there was more. I've done enough googling in these past few weeks that I have a much wider range of knowledge about my lower leg than ever before and yet I still don't know what is wrong with my leg. So I put down the log with all the numbers and I picked up the journal and started to reread my post training notes, the stuff that may not be blog worthy or seem of use to additionally note but still I record for posterity's sake.

And guess what I 'remembered'? After I finally overcame my foot/tendon injury in December, what did I go out and do? I went out and ran my fastest half marathon ever. Not a race, just a tempo run with Todd and Grattan in the snow, but still my fastest by several minutes at the distance. Immediately following the run I had sore, tight calf muscles. The next morning they were incredibly sore waking up, I wanted to cancel my run with Cheyenne and Jennifer but Todd urged me to go. My incredibly tight and painful calves hurt the entire run, I even made those girls walk for me once or twice. I took the next day off because they were that tight and painful. On New Year's Day I suffered through a long, cold run on Terrapin where they never eased up. Finally, after five days, they let up a little. So of course I went out to run a fast 10k that Saturday.

You're calves were bothering you at the beginning of January but you thought nothing of this when they started bothering you at the end of January?  I had been running hills a lot the week this new pain emerged, I thought that was the cause.  Well, what if the calf damage had started in early January and I just exasperated it with hills and more hills and little recovery by way of six day weeks until it finally said 'enough'?

So I kept reading.

I went far enough back to be reminded of something else by way of notes made about races. The Trail Nut Half Marathon, Carvin's Cove Marathon, the Lynchburg Half Marathon, and Deep Hollow Half Marathon all shared a similar ending in their race reports. At every one of these events I finished with debilitating calf cramps, at Deep Hollow they didn't even go away until a few minutes after the race ended. I have failed to narrow down the cause for the cramps other than possible hydration issues and pushing too hard at the end of races. However, it seems important now that I am seeing all of these other interconnected warning signs about calf pain and too much running with inadequate recovery.

Monday I went to Salem to see Josh Gilbert, chiropractor and race director, for his advice and aid for the pain in my leg. In addition to an adjustment he suggested I use the stick and roll out more frequently, say 100 times in a certain spot. Holding his advice in high esteem and suffering from soreness now in my left leg after Saturday's run in the mountains I spent Tuesday rolling out the legs like it was my part-time job. Several times that day I sat down to roll out the legs, both of them, using my stick, my foam roller and a softball. Yesterday  morning the legs felt better, the soreness in my left leg was completely gone upon walking. Yet, I rolled again several times throughout the day. Even though the muscles didn't feel sore to the touch they reacted to the stick. My right leg (the injured one) felt pretty good, almost about as good as the left except in two spots.

The morning of the Liberty Mountain 5k I came home and Todd massaged my legs using the stick and his hands. There were several very painful, tender spots, but they weren't where the focal point of the pain was. They were really only painful when he tried to roll them. Now, nearly four weeks later, the leg is feeling better and better but last night those painful, knotty spots were still present upon using the stick and rolling.

After rolling out I went back to reading Noakes book, this time the chapter had lead into description and specific treatment for injuries.  After reading about shin splints and stress fractures we arrived at Chronic Muscle Tears (muscle knots). They are possibly the 'third most common' running injury and 'usually misdiagnosed' can be very debilitating (Noakes, p. 820). The description seems similar to what I've been experiencing. Gradual onset, pain grew worse until it interfered with training, especially speed. According to Noakes there is only one possible treatment, cross-friction. Once last night with Todd's help and then again this morning I am working out the 'knots' with the help of a technique I read about online.

There is certainly more to the leg injury, or at least there was, but I have started to feel better, just maybe not as quickly as I would have liked. There was more to the pain when it began but I'm beginning to believe that what occurred the morning of that 5k was a direct result of my ignorant training, in particular the too quick increase in number of days a week and ignoring the warning signs that my calves needed special attention and care especially when the week the injury appeared I ran six days that included three days of fast, speed workouts on hills. My calves were begging for a break, maybe they decided to incorporate other muscles, tendons and ligaments to help spread their message to me as they alone were unable to reach me.

With a clearer view of how I may have gone wrong I can hopefully go forward better equipped at keeping injury at bay. Still in recovery I am desperately worried about taking any steps backwards at this point, but feel the need to get out and run to maintain some mental strength and physical conditioning. It's a hopeful sign to me that my leg felt no worse at all after yesterday's run and this morning it feels better yet, not strong or tight upon waking which may be due to the rolling I did before bed. I know that the legs seem to do better after they are sufficiently warmed up, which seems to take several miles and they are still in no mood to toy with speed. They still give me that feeling of weakness every so often when I'm walking around the house, but definitely less and less so.

I know one thing, I can almost dance pain free in my kitchen, and that my friends, I'm hoping is a very good sign.

-Alexis

I Want to Run.

I turned 36 years old a couple of weeks ago and wrapped up my first full year as a runner.  And what do I have to show for it?   A knee injury that is healing slower than I run, twenty-two race bibs on my wall, two fewer toenails, and a desire that rivals most crack-addicts to get back out on the trails and run.  But I'm not.  Not yet.  I want to run next year, stronger and faster than I did this year, and before I can do that I've got to get healthy.  And believe me, getting healthy feels like it is killing me.  Every morning when my wife gets up at 5:30 and goes out and runs in the rain and the cold and comes home to tell me how great she feels and how fast and how far her and her running buddies ran I want to kill her.  I want to be cold and wet and sweaty and out-of-breath and sore and stinky.  I WANT TO RUN.
My wife and I took up running last fall for our own very different reasons.  Her to lose weight, she had just given birth to our third child.  And me, well because I've always wanted to run.  I tried a few times in the past, and it just never seemed to click for me.  I always knew that I could run, I just didn't.  As a matter of fact I was always telling my wife that anyone could run, even her, to which she always replied something along the lines of, but nothing quite as civil as, "Go jump in a creek."  I'm confident that the fact that we started running together this time is one of the main reasons we're both still running (or at least trying to run), even if we are becoming totally different runners.
She is a speed demon.  I mean fast, especially for a girl.  I don't mean to sound sexist, but lets face it, the running community in general is to blame for this.  It was not my idea to seperate race results into genders and age groups.  But in the last year she has morphed from the girl who couldn't run one lap around the track without complaining, into one of the top women runners in our little town.  Next year she'll probably run a sub 20 minute 5K and a 3:40 marathon.
Me, on the other hand, I just like to run, and run, and run.  I am a distance oriented runner, the longer the distance, the greater the challenge, the bigger the appeal.  I want to run farther every time I run.  Of course I want to run fast too.  Enter my knee injury. Midsummer, after I'd been running for about six months, I read an article about Scott Jurak in Runner's World, and decided in that instant that it was my Destiny to be an Ultra runner.  So, I signed up for a forty-miler in September.  A forty-miler that ran three loops around a mountain with 2500 ft. of elevation gain every lap.  So I upped my milage from about 25 (comfortable) miles per week to about 45 miles per week over the span of about a month.  I trained like that for about two months, I ran (and finished) my first Ultra, and limped away with this knee injury.
So, I'm taking a month and a half off from running, and planning on starting my new training year on New Years Day.  I'll spend the holidays on the stationary bike, watching old movies and trying not to go crazy.  I've spent this first year as a runner just running, so perhaps a little cross-training will do me good.  My running friends and every article I've ever read about training all say that cross-training is important, but so far it's been hard for me to get on a bike when I could be running.  It somehow feels like cheating.
      Who knows, maybe this injury will help me build some better training habits.  Maybe I'll end up a more rounded athlete.  Maybe I'll try a triathlon next year.  Maybe even an IronMan.  Or maybe I'll go crazy sitting on a couch listening to my wife's running stories and attack the next person who mentions running with this spoonful of cookie dough.

Todd