Taper and Race...

I love working out. No doubt about it, but I think every athlete relishes the time when they can take a break. My break starts Monday. May 9th. Iron Gear Sports Rio Salado Triathlon (mouth full yet?) is on Sunday. My spring season will have wrapped up with a little less excitement than expected.

I have had hamstring issues since August of last year. They would get to a point and never get worse, so I would continue pushing through them. However, the running was never enjoyable because of the nagging discomfort. Rolling on my foam and stretching never quite let them totally heal. Even after a month off of running over Christmas, I came back with one leg fine and the other worse. Which led to a very weak spring of training (only 150+- miles so far this year!). My longest week of running has only been 23 miles. No speed training. And after the Marquee Triathlon , my foot was aching. I decided to give up running and take a whole new perspective on my training after this weekend. But, before I get to that, I want to let you in on my cycling and swimming too.

Swimming is going, well, swimmingly. I have put in more distance in the pool this spring then last spring and am already over half my total distance from last year (nearly 100,000 meters, which I will hit this week). While I am not making the leaps and bounds in my times that everyone shoots for, I am slowly making progress and hope for a PR at the Rio Salado this weekend. I have hit certain times that I have never hit before which is always great. Slow progress every year is all I can ask for. I have improved my 400m short course time by over a minute and a half in my four years in college. I can knock down intervals at 6:20 over 400m, when 4 years ago I couldn't break 8min all out over the same distance. I can drop under 8min for 5oom on long course without breaking a sweat. So, I am truly thankful for the progress I have made. However, I am not satisfied and will continually work, with God's help, to make my training and racing even better.

Now onto cycling. I am having a resurgence of love for this sport. As is the case every spring, I tend to fall in love with it as if I was a child. I think it has a lot to do with the wonderful memories I had as a kid in the city-run mountain biking camp that I was a part of for years. Wonderful weather + great trails + all day in the forest + nothing better to do = awesome childhod memories! All that is said to say that I want to get back into more bicycle racing. Not so much mountain bike racing because there is more of a spiritual connection to that side of riding for me. I love just being in the woods, taking my time, enjoying how beautiful the world is around me and getting some excerise in at the same time. But, road racing is totally different. I love the strategy of it all. The break aways, climbs, sprints, points, GC, all of it. I miss it. I don't know if I am in the kind of shape right now to be competitive with those guys. Plus, I need to get a new bike before I dive back into that scene, cause the one I have now is a little embarrassing. It gets the job done, but it does not hold up against other racers.
As for training, I am over halfway to my total mileage for all of last year, similar to swimming. Although, I don't necessarily feel any stronger or faster. My ride up snowbowl last week was a little slower than my PR, but for this time of year and my first time up the road, it wasn't bad. I know I can go a lot faster.

Since those are out of the way, lets get back to my running. I am writing this more as a training lesson for anyone who wants to read it. So, take this as a free long-term training session.
My Issue: Too many injuries from overuse.
Solution: Longer Base Mileage.
Background: I was hardly injured in high school save for a couple weeks of shin splints and a foot strain from running in flats for the first time. Nothing serious. Since I have been in college, I have had ITBS, Runner's Knee, Stress fractures, some odd Osgood-Schlatter's type knee pain that could never get a for sure diagnosis, and odd and end other ailments. In my mind, and I am usually correct in my assumptions, I did too much too soon. In high school, I never ran over 30 miles per week (that's a guess since I didn't actually count mileage). The intensity or training was less and I ran slower times in races. I would then take time off between cross season and outdoor track season and between the end of outdoor track season and the beginning of cross season. Low intensity, low mileage, lots of recovery. No real chance for injuries.
In college, I bumped up race distances, am running faster and take less recovery. I would run a couple to a few days a week between 8-12 week build-up for races. I am going from 15-25 miles/week to a build-up where I want to run PRs over distances as long as half marathon. I would jump in to these races with a small base, and bump intensities really quickly in order to run quickly.
I had little to no long-term base coming out of high school, as more committed runners do, because of my 3-4 month seasons with little in between. It was no foundation for the type of running I wanted to do in college. If you want to run well over a long period with a low chance for injuries, you need a long term (a year or more) base to build on.
My mistake: Too much, too quickly with no base. Lots of injuries.

Solution: I am taking the next couple of weeks off from running. I am going to make sure that I am 100% injury free. I am going to make sure that my hamstrings are no longer an issue. I am going to stretch like crazy, do some extra strength training and come out of the next couple weeks ready for a build-up. I am going to slowly build my base up until december and shoot for higher mileage, at a SLOW pace, than I have ever hit before. Take a week or two off in December to recover from the months' long base phase and then begin a 14-16 week marathon build for a mid to late spring marathon.

I want to race this marathon well, the first time and stay injury free. I am sick of being injured and having to take time off for it. I want to enjoy running well again and fast. I have decided I NEED to make these changes for my own well-being if I want to continue on running for any length of time in the future. I don't plan on racing hardly at all for the rest of the year to really focus on building some good mileage.

Sorry about making these things so long. I need to update more often, i guess. Hope the information in here can help someone. Blessings