Fall!

Fall is upon us and it's getting cooler out there!

Yesterday I took the ole Element out in the Fells and it was amazing. The bugs were all but gone, trails that were overgrown a few weeks ago already have their plants receding and spots that all summer were wet and muddy were pretty much dried up. It was the first time since I can't remember when that I didn't come home with a fresh spackling of mud on me or the bike. I love fall.

We're coming up on Fat Tire Narnia on October 9th. FTN is a celebration of mountain biking and beer (two things that go hand in hand) and this year we'll be heading from the Middlesex Fells near Boston to the Kingdom Trails of Vermont in a New England expedition of riding and good brew. Should be SICK. Let me know if you want to attend.

Otherwise I'm rehabbing my eternally injured ankle and looking towards the 2010 race season. Look for more posts from me soon.

Big Week

This past week was a great week of training.  Kicked it off with a 4.5 mile trail run on Sunday, strength  on Monday (incorporating Core Performance and Gym Jones exercises), 5.5 mile mixed run on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and a 20 mile road bike on Saturday.  The ankle is responding really well to ratcheting it up a notch. 

The mixed run I did during the week was a loop from my office out Memorial Drive in Cambridge across the Mass Ave bridge and back on Storrow.  The good part is there are plenty of dirt paths to run on with a few sections of roots and rocks so it's actually perfect to re-integrate trails into my training.  I have some thoughts on this loop that I'll post later.

Kicking off this week with a 6-8 mile trail run...we'll see where I end up!

Since last we spoke: Part 3

Release!

Through six weeks I went to PT religiously, did my exercises at home and scaled back my overall activity as not to aggravate the injury...and it finally paid off.

Last week I received the green light to resume normal activity.  I need to continue the band exercises at home and I need to ramp up at a controlled pace but I'm allowed to run on back to back days and I'm eyeing new races.  I regret not having gone to therapy last fall, but at least I didn't wait until June and miss most of the summer.  Dr. Steve did all the tests that he did on me when I first arrived at his door and the motion had significantly reduced and my range of motion and strength were both almost normal!  Yeah Dr. Steve!  If you live in the Boston area I cannot recommend the good folks at SMART Physical Therapy enough. 

To celebrate my progress I immediately went out and overdid it.  On Saturday I took an old pair of GoLite Sun Dragons, turned them into screw shoes and did my 7 mile round trip to Winnekenni, 4 miles of which are on trails (slushy, slippery trails this time of year).  Having not run on trails since before my injury I was definitely pushing it, but much like a sober crack head indulging in that first hit in a long time...it felt oh so good.   My ankle seemed to survive my jump into poor judgement and I'm excited to focus on training and racing and not recovering.  This weekend I'm planning on signing up for the XTERRA Muddy Moose 14 miler up in NH.  Really can't wait.  I'm not even bummed that I'm missing the Fells 50K.  There will be plenty of other opportunities to do a race like that, I'm just stoked that I'm on the path to recovery (knock on wood).

More to come...I'm making a career change and there's a fun story that goes along with that too.

Since last we spoke: Part 2

Following the ten miler that resulted in my ankle digressing about, oh, two months, I ended up at Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Therapy in Reading.  I met with Doctor Steve and I gave him the skinny on the injury itself and what I'd been up to since early October.  He took a slew of measurements to gauge the strength of the ankle and range of motion.  After everything he deduced that my injury was a grade 2 sprain (meaning torn, but not all the way torn) of the posterior tibial ligament.  That night back in October, I didn't sprain my ankle in the typical sense of rolling it to the inside or outside.  I planted my foot, and for whatever reason a rock or rut in the trail, my foot stuck and I kept moving forward.  I may have did some residual damage to the surrounding muscles and tendons, but the main injury was in the back of my foot, and I did a real number on myself.  

At the time of Doctor Steven's diagnosis I still had some swelling and the joint was very loose.  All of this confirmed what I had hoped I wouldn't have heard: I should have gone to therapy in November!

And so began my weekly trip where I'd do lots of different exercises, receive massage on the ankle to help break up scar tissue and force blood into the afflicted area as well as a healthy dose of electric stim.  Finally, Doctor Steve would take a stick of ice, formed inside a plastic cup that had half the cup removed so that a rather large chunk of ice remain, and he would rub it directly on several spots around my ankle.  If you're used to ice therapy, trust me, you've never experienced this.  Serious cold.

I would then do several exercises at home with large latex bands as well as continuing to stretch and do my morning yoga.

The last portion of my first appointment was learning that I should plan on skipping the Fells 50K.  Even if everything went great, I would be able to start really ramping up until late February at the earliest...and why push it at that point?  So I bailed, and scaled back my workouts tremendously, in hopes that the PT would pay off and I'd be back on track in no time.

Since last we spoke: Part 1

So in December I thought I was making progress with the ankle.  I had my eye on the Fells 50K at the end of March and the training plan I had found required me to start running by the middle of the month.  I didn't push it and instead went for my first run on Christmas Eve.  It was a 2.5 mile jaunt that I did by running a few laps around the block.  My ankle felt good the next day so I declared myself "back" and started following the training plan for the 50K.

In the early portion of the plan most of the work during the week called for 2 mile runs with longer (6 - 10 miles) on the weekends.  I ramped up steadily but slowly.  The snow and cold was consistent so all the work was done on the road.  I was fine hitting my daily 2-milers during the week and the first few weekends I capped the mileage at 8 and everything seemed to be going well.  I was completely focused on this race and stopped going to spin class and stopped lifting.  The Fells 50K also has a 23 mile division so while I was still shooting for the 50K, I knew that I could still do the 23 miler as an alternative.

In mid-January I had a physical and I told my doctor about the ankle injury.  She recommended that with such an aggressive goal of a 50K I may want to have the ankle looked at and wrote up a referral to a Physical Therapist in Reading.  I planned on going just for due diligence but didn't make it a priority.

About a week later I did my first 10 mile run since the injury.  During the run itself I had no issues.  The next day my ankle felt like it did just a few weeks after the initial injury.  Stiff, sore, swollen...it was awful.  That Monday when I got to work I made an appointment with the PT.  I was still optimistic, but I also had a lingering doubt that this was something I probably should have done in October....turns out that ended up being true.

WHOAAA!

December 6th was my last post?!  Holy crap. 

Well, this is the right day for me to come back.  Several reasons: my friend Tarah, who is my blogging inspiration has been battling the evils of cigarettes and I told her that I would start blogging again when she quit...low and behold I received a note from on Facebook today that led me to believe that it was time to start writing again.  Secondly, my ankle is finally on the road to wellness.  Since we last spoke, I began training for the Fells 50K and I couldn't get over the 10 mile mark without being in some decent pain the next day.  I finally went to physical therapy, got diagnosed and began getting treatment.  Six weeks later and I've been given the greenlight to start ramping up again.  I'll write a more detailed post about this whole process, but seeing as the focus of most of my posts last Fall were about my ankle I figured that today was a monumental day and time to get back into this thing we call writing.

I've also begun the process of enrolling back into college to finish my English degree.  There are many reasons why I've come to this place...and I'm not quite at liberty to talk about it.  To summarize I was placed in a position where I began to doubt myself...and a change needed to be made...and I'm making that change.

I'm going to do my best to blog more consistently.  Blogging is sort of like working out.  When you're actively doing it, you're always happy that you have, but it's easy to fall off the wagon.  Hopefully I keep at it.

We set the clocks ahead this weekend, despite the recent cold and snow Spring is coming...time to start thinking about getting the bike back on the trail.  My ankle is doing well...changes are being made.  Good times.

Gym Jones and other stuff

If anyone reading this wants to get me something for Christmas I'd like to take a seminar at Gym Jones in Utah.  I've started incorporating a few of the exercises I saw them doing in some videos and wow...It is serious stuff.  Check out the site and look up some of their vids here on YouTube.

Despite the fact that my ankle seems to be in a constant state of not healing, I've been getting

 after it pretty good.  I've decided to spend my weekends on the mountain bike since 1. I need to improve my technical riding and 2. it's way more fun than road riding and pretty soon winter will dictate that I ge

t back on the road ride.  So why not enjoy the rest of fall on my fat tire ride?

I've had the chance to ride with two awesome athletes the past couple of weekends.

Two weeks ago I got out for a two hour spin with Jen Shultis of Team EMS.  It didn't get above 28 degrees all day and we were frozen up pretty good by the end.  Jen showed me around some of the trails near Bedford and Lexington which were super fun to ride and go through

 some spots of historical significance; another cool perk of riding in New England.  All sorts of 

Revol

utionary War memorials.  

Last weekend I met up with Kate Walton, who raced a the pro level on EMS's downhill mountain bike team, and since downhills are something I've resolved to work on, I'm thankful that she took it easy on me. We road the trails at

 Willowdale and Bradley Palmer which sits in between Ipswich and Topsfield.  The amount of quality riding around here never ceases to amaze me.  These trails were so much fun, not overly technical but rolling with lots of singletrack.  One of those trails systems where it pays to get lost because you never know what you'll find but you'll easily find your way out too.

This week 

was pretty intense in the gym, adding in the aforementioned Gym Jones exercises as well as spin class and I got out today for another hour and a half on the mountain bike. I'm officially whupped and with some snow coming tonight, I'm taking the day off tomorrow to do Christmas activities with the family.  

I'm going to add a few mountain bikes races to the docket next year in addition to any multi-sport or

 trail running races that I do.  I'm getting more and more confident on the bike and I think it's time to see what it's like to race them.  Plus if my ankle needs to be rehabbed longer than I planned, than it will help to have another few goals in mind if I can't get back to running when I want.  If winter takes it's sweet ass time getting here I'm take advantage by riding the mountain bike...but once the snow and ice stick around, I'll start building endurance on my road bike.  As well as spin at least once a week.  So if anyone knows of any good mountain bike races out there that I should do, I'd love to hear it!