On a different note

I love things like this, saw it on a yahoo site and couldn't resist posting it. I kind of enjoy figuring things out like this even if some of them take me a long time to figure out.









If you can't figure them out, go to the yahoo site or feel free to post your conclusions.

Running is getting back on track

I am becoming familiar with running again. I have now run 5 out of the last 8 days. I did back to back runs on Saturday and Sunday with my long run being 6 miles. To be fair, my running is not of great quality, meaning no speed and I take walking breaks whenever I think I need to. My thinking is that if I take it slow than I will be back to training for a longer race soon enough. I really do miss my long runs in Lebanon or Murphy and look forward to doing them in the coming months.

As to races for the year, right now I will only focus on possibly doing the Afton 25k. Since I have dropped  the last two years during the 50k at the 25k split it doesn't seem  to make sense to try and ramp to the 50k distance in a month. I did have a goal of entering it healthy which I think I can do for the 25k but for the 50k, I might be able to do it but I am pretty sure I shouldn't so it is definitely out.

One issue I still have is the inability to push off strong with the right ankle. When I try to sprint or accelerate I get pain of some sort. I feel it when I am sitting sometimes, it just feels like someone is pressing on the top of my foot right below the ankle or like you have a shoe with no padding and the laces are cutting into the top of the foot. This may be nothing more than something I need to work through by running and by continuing to make sure that the ankle is stronger and that I have full flexibility. I would like to say that I didn't have this pain before I started the ART and Graston treatments but I think the truth is I don't know if I did or not as the ankle was hurting elsewhere.

So for the moment, I continue one day at a time and hope to be back in decent running shape by the end of June.

I ran and am hopeful :-)

I went for a run on Sunday morning in Lebanon Hills. I only ran a total of 3 miles with no significant pain during the run. I used a run 4 minutes/walk 1 minute strategy to make sure I took it easy and I was ready to flip the ratios or modify the ratios if issues developed but none really did. I did have knee pain which has happened to me at the start of many runs ever since I had knee surgery years ago. It was a delightful pain to feel knee pain versus ankle pain.

I delayed posting for a day in order to see what the ankle felt like a day later. Well, the answer is, I think ok. The ankle was a bit tender after the run but not really painful. So tomorrow I will try to run after work and see how it goes but as of today I am hopeful.

4 weeks and counting

Quick update, still not running.

Long update, still not running.

I was really discouraged last week and into the weekend. The ankle did not seem like it was getting any better. I am pretty tired of it but I am following the advice of the guy I am seeing for it. He has said if I can't walk without pain I shouldn't run. A concept that I have to admit has some degree of merit.

Last week played 2 softball games, not able to run to first without significant pain. I can't push off and accelerate at all. What  I end up doing is simply pushing through it and then hoping I don't have to run too far or stop to quickly. If it didn't hurt on the first steps I would say softball is making it worse but it hurts before and after, and the after doesn't seem to be that much different. Now my shoulder that's a different story, I hate rotator cuff pain and it's a big reason I didn't want to play last year. A year off hasn't helped oh well. I am better off than a buddy who broke his leg in 2 places sliding into second. I didn't see it as I was scoring but it's safe to say that a broken tibula and fibula plus 9 screws can't be good. Made my ankle pain seem pretty minor.

Over the weekend, the pain seemed to change when I was walking. On Monday I had it worked on again, it continued to feel better, Tuesday saw some additional progress (able to go up and down stairs almost pain free). Had another treatment today, where he did the Graston technique again but he focused on my achilles, heel and arch. It was not pleasant at times but no sharp pain. It just felt like he was rubbing me with a metal bar, oh yeah that is actually what he was doing.

He also did ART on the ankle but added a few additional movements that really didn't feel too good but I left with hope. I am thinking (ok hoping, praying) that in another day or so I will be able to walk without pain and then this weekend become a runner again.

I have pretty much abandoned any hope of doing any significant races this year. Chester Woods is out, Afton is fading. Basically any goals I had for this year are just not going to happen. After Afton, I haven't looked ahead, who knows, maybe I still shoot for TCM (I keep expecting it to close) and Surf the Murph. Not much of a running year but if I could do those two healthy that would be the way to go into winter. Now doesn't that thought just basically not settle very well at all. Oh well, first things first, walking without pain.

Proprioception?

So what does "Proprioception" have to do with a running blog. Hold it, I am not even sure I qualify as a runner since it has been 2 weeks with no running.

First about the running, it has been really tough but I decided to quit running until the pain was reduced. I have been getting the ankle treated by a Doctor who specializes in ART (Active Release Technique) and here is how it has gone.

Treatment 1 - Last Thursday - ART and Graston

Pain during treatment - not as bad as I thought, only during one movement was it somewhat intense and even then it seemed like a good kind of pain.

Pain a day after treatment - could barely walk, the pain was different but I had pain on every step.

Treatment 2 - Monday - ART

Pain during treatment - less than the first day, just some minor twinges.

Pain a day after treatment - could walk much better, the pain was less, almost felt like I could run.

Treatment 3 - Today - ART and exercises

Pain during treatment - almost none, just once did I even notice some Before he did the treatment he had me do exercises for about a 1/2 hour, more on that below.

Pain a day after treatment - still not 100% but hopeful.

So for the first time in a while, it seems like the ankle is on the right track.It seems stronger overall and I haven't had stabbing (as in very sharp and intense) pain that would happen when it would seem to catch during movements. He seemed to get that resolved during the first treatment. After the treatment he said he could feel adhesions between the ligament and muscle as he moved across the Deltoid ligament, right where I had had the pain last fall. To me it felt like he pulled something apart kind of like, they were released from each other. No idea if that is what he did, just happy to not have that sharp pain anymore.

Ok, what the heck is "Proprioception (HealthLife definition)" and what does it have to do with me?

He explained to me that I had very poor Proprioception (wikipedia definition) and that he believed that once I improved on that, my ankle would respond and get stronger fairly quickly. He said a trail runner having poor proprioception, well that's a really bad thing.

Here is a definition I came across that seems to make sense (it's from an about.com article on "Balance Training and Proprioception")

The term proprioception refers to a sense of joint position. Proprioception training is highly common in rehabilitation of injured athletes, but it can just as easily be used to prevent injury. Even a strong ankle can sprain when running on uneven ground if the runner hasn’t trained the neuromuscular system to react appropriately. Slight deviations in terrain require slight adjustments of balance to avoid injury.

So he said I needed to do some exercises to make long term improvements with the ankle. He initially just had me stand on a 4 x 4 inch by 8 ft beam. As I tried to stand on the beam he explained what I needed to work on. I could not believe how much I struggled to stand on the beam. After a few minutes he had me walk down it's length, basically taking small controlled steps until I reached the end of the beam, then I had to walk backwards and repeat. He emphasized that speed didn't matter only maintaining my balance. He had me go sideways down the beam and back. He then had me do lunges the length of the beam and back. He said  normally he would like me to repeat all of the above with my eyes closed but I wasn't ready for that instead he had me focus on the wall to reduce my visual clues. He said that in a month most people would have it mastered, of course for me he said it could take one to three months. He clarified fairly quickly that was only because my ankle was in bad shape, not because I have no sense of coordination and balance. Sure....

My balance did get better throughout the exercises but still was pretty pathetic and I couldn't believe how much I was sweating just trying to stay on a beam.

As to getting a beam for myself, he suggested going to Menards/Home Depot and buying a cedar beam, sand it down a bit and have at it. He said not to use a green treated beam and that another alternative would be to use a couple of  2 x 4's except that they would probably warp which was fine, it just might would make it harder to compensate for the bowing.

Hopefully I will be running again soon.

Buckeye is back

I have posted more than once about using online running logs. My favorite has been BuckeyeOutdoors, not sure if everyone heard about this but a week or so back I couldn't get into my Buckeye account and then this appeared:.

Buckeye Outdoors has suffered a major outage. A series of electrical storms first knocked out the backup servers that were located at the backup up location. Then the unthinkable happened 4 days later and a second electrical storm caused an extended power outage at the datacenter where the primary Buckeye Outdoors servers are hosted. The current situation is pretty grimm and I'm despritly trying to recover the data that has been lost. If I am un able to recover the data I will put the application back online but right now I am holding out hope and I even might send the Hard Disks to a data recovery place. If you have any questions please email here: questions@buckeyeoutdoors.com

The data recovery was only mildly successful. First the bad news, all our data is not recovered enough to peice it together into something we could use. That being said I do have enough to bring the site back up but it will be completly blank. I am currently working on rebuilding the server and it should be ready by this weekend.


I had a couple years of data on Buckeye, I guess it's good that I use multiple sites but I am still kind of bummed as Buckeye had the most info. So when Buckeye went down, I started using RunningAhead along with DailyMile and SportTracks. I like RunningAhead, it's closer to Buckeye than the other ones so I will continue to use it but based on Buckeye, I think I will still take the time to load my data and run summaries to a couple of places, odds are two sites both won't die on the same day or maybe I should go back to that good old MDRA logback.  In case you are wondering, here are a few summary charts from RunningAhead, ignore that I have almost no data as although I am not running now I haven't bothered to move data into RunningAhead whenI was actually still a runner.

Weekly Run stats  5/2/2011 — 5/8/2011: 0 mi 0:00 4/25/2011 — 5/1/2011: 4.9 mi 1:05:32 4/18/2011 — 4/24/2011: 11.1 mi 2:34:05 4/11/2011 — 4/17/2011: 0 mi 0:00 4/4/2011 — 4/10/2011: 0 mi 0:00 3/28/2011 — 4/3/2011: 6 mi 1:31:11 Monthly Run stats  May: 0 mi 0:00 April: 22 mi 5:10:49 March: 0 mi 0:00 February: 0 mi 0:00 January, 2011: 0 mi 0:00 December: 0 mi 0:00

Overall Run totals  2011 22 mi 5:10:49 Total 22 mi 5:10:49

Treatment update

Went in to get the ankle looked at, by a chiropractor near work who does Active Release Technique (thanks to those who sent me info on who they went to). He checked it out and thought that ART was a good idea and he also did the Graston Technique on it. He said many things concerning what he thought about my ankle, most of which means a few more visits to work on it more along with a slew of exercises.

Experienced some minor pain during the process except for one movement which he did that caused some pain, I was surprised a bit as I figured it would hurt more than it did. Then again, I am used to having it hurt. It felt ok during the day but it is really sore tonight, although it is different so maybe it's a good pain.

He did advise me that swimming would be a good choice right now for exercise, not sure what he meant by that :-). I mentioned running Afton and he didn't say it was a dumb idea although he did give me a funny look. Back on Monday for more.