My "experiment" of doing all my training on a treadmill (which I purchased used for $400) for a month to keep my tendon in check and remain injury free - or at least in check - has been working. I got the idea after reading about some others who did the same, and after watching some of the Nike project guys doing their tempo runs on a treadmill I was sold. So I'm two weeks into this four week "experiment" and I've become used to it.
The first week sucked. I kept stopping and trying movies, youtube videos - such as watching the entire olympic marathon trials from 2012 - and that was ok. I settled on good old music. It's pretty cool in the garage and I can go at any time, but do most of the training in the morning just the same.
I've found that of all the Nike+ shoes, the Flyknit matches the treadmill pace/distance nearly perfectly. Of course there's no GPS, so the speed/distance relies completely on the shoe sensor and while you'd think that they would all work the same, there's a huge difference. All the others have me going slower than the treadmill data (which I've calibrated).
The other thing I'm doing this month is the classic "total fitness month" of my youth: no alcohol, minimal coffee - as much fresh food as possible. Oh, we had halloween and I had some candy, and some home cooked burger/fries, but for the most part it's been healthy meals I've prepared and PLENTY of home made banana bread.
Injuries: My left Achilles tendon continues to trouble me daily. It's sore/stiff when I wake up in the morning, and periodically during the day. Sometimes during runs it's been sore, but mostly I've been trouble free and it has not impaired my ability to do the workout schedule for the past two weeks that has included much more speed/tempo work than the preceding month. Now, every day I do the following:
- immediately after running I do 3 x (10 min on, 10 min off) ice treatment. I put crushed ice in a sealed bag and rest my left tendon on top of the ice bag on a towel while reading or watching TV. It takes like 1 hour and I try to get work done at that time.
- Later in the day, like 3-4 hours or more, I do eccentric heel drops. I go to the stairs, and lift up my body with my right leg/calf and lower with the left. 3 x 15 reps, with 10 lb/20 lb/30 lb increasing
- Before bed I do Trigger Point Therapy for 15 min on my calves.
- Often I take ibuprofen pm to keep inflammation down and sleep better
New injury - my left hamstring has been sore from time to time, but not slowing me down, yet.
Weight/Body Composition - I've dropped 1 solid lb from two weeks ago and average 173 now. If I'm dropping 2 lbs/month I will be at 170 for the race. The speed work increase has stimulated some sort of weight loss which should continue.
Stretching: I'm stretching all the time now, and regularly doing trigger point. I'd like to a core40 workout once/week and also do yoga once/week beginning towards the end of the month and keep it up until Boston
No details to talk about, but here's some highlights:
- The 600 @ 6:00/mile pace work is not very hard. I've done that a couple times and concluded it should be at 5:30
- I've not done too much tempo work this time around, and so the tempo lately has been hard. The 10 miles with the last 8 at 6:40 was doable, but a little struggle.
- the long run with increasing speed, done last Saturday, was the only interesting workout
| Actual 11/2/13 | |
| mile | speed |
| 1 | 8:34 |
| 2 | 8:20 |
| 3 | 8:00 |
| 4 | 8:00 |
| 5 | 8:00 |
| 6 | 8:00 |
| 7 | 7:30 |
| 8 | 7:24 |
| 9 | 7:19 |
| 10 | 7:14 |
| 11 | 7:09 |
| 12 | 7:04 |
| 13 | 6:59 |
| 14 | 6:54 |
| 15 | 6:49 |
| 16 | 6:44 |
| 17 | 6:40 |
| 18 | 6:31 |
| Overall Average | 7.24 |
| Last 12 miles | 6.59 |
| Last 6 miles | 6.46 |
