This summer has been anything but normal for me. To start off this past spring I was attacked with a super immune bug which made me bed ridden for 3 months. I had been training intensely up to this point and then just crashed hard. I spent those 3 months mostly on the bed, couch, or at the doctor’s office. After 100’s of tests, liters of blood drawn, they never determined exactly what caused my illness but I finally got better with lots of time and rest. So this bout of illness totally screwed my training for upcoming spring and summer races. I had lost over 10lbs of lean body mass, mostly muscle. My power was very weak to non existent on the bike and it took a lot of mental and physical effort to just not quit. I did get better and gained some strength back. I also decided that I was not mentally fit to do pack road races this year since my spout of nasty crashes that I had. I decided to switch gears and do a lot of Time Trials and start swimming and running to train for triathlons. This was a new thing for me since I had never done a triathlon, never swam competitively before, or did much running other than playing soccer 8 years ago. I joined a local pool and just jumped right in with swimming. I did a lot of internet reading and talking to friends to figure out just how to do it. I’m still a very beginner but gaining strength and skill every day. My run training however has not gone so smoothly. I started off pretty easy doing some walk / run sessions for 20-30min max 2-3 times a week. After a few weeks of that I picked it up a bit and started running for 30-40 min. After a couple more weeks I started having knee pain every time I would run. I entered my first 5k race which was the Winthrop Friends of the 4th 5k race on July 4th. I did very well for my first ever running race and got 41st place overall out of 436 entrants. My time was 20:21.78 for 5k which equates to 6:33min miles and I ended up 4th in my category. After the race I continued to run with pain until I went to the doc to have it looked at. I found out that I had bursitis of the knee. Pretty common and I got some drugs, stopped running for a few weeks which cleared it right up. After that I started running again pretty easy on mostly off pavement. I would go to Bates and run on their synthetic track which was really nice. It felt like a big sponge. My knee felt better but not 100%. I had a dull ache right under the knee cap which would never go away not matter what I did. I had x-ray done, which showed nothing. Then I went ahead and had a MRI done. I was still running on it at this point. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t really affecting my running at all I just had a dull ache all the time. I found out from the MRI that I have stress fractures of the medial tibial plateau.
Image taken from The American Journal of Sports Medicine 34:78-83 (2006)Not good. I was told no running for many months. When I found out I was totally heart broken it affected me more than I thought. I had a total mental breakdown and just wanted to quit all training and be the typical fat American bum. I had already signed up to do my first triathlon which was the next weekend which I had been planning to do now for months. I was totally excited about doing it and had put in a lot time, training and mental will power to tackle this feet which is now null in void. I got the word from the doc that I could continue to swim and bike but couldn’t run for a long time until I had zero pain which he said could take months. I decided to keep on training on the bike, because you know me I couldn’t just quit. I am also really concentrating on perfecting my swim. I decided also to enter the Lobsterman Aquabike which is on September 15th in Freeport, ME. It starts at 11am and I only have to swim then bike. It’s not the same as doing the full triathlon but I’ll take what I can get at this point. So that is my next serious goal other than doing a few Time Trials here and there. This gets us caught up to date and I’m going to try and do posts more often. I’ve got a few in mind so stay tuned.
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