Filed under: physical therapy, training update | Tags: ASTYM, bottle of whiskey, bruises, leather strap, physical therapy
I missed updating week 5…if I don’t do it on Sunday, it gets away from me.
To start week 5, I saw a PT and started to get my left hip and knee back on track. She decided my gluteus medius and TFL were weak and was forcing my hammies to make up for it. (Funnily enough, I had just been listening to a podcast on this on Tritalk (episode 60) this week.). She also was concerned about latent stiffness in my knees and my history with ITBS. So the program of action is to back off the Fartlek/sprint workouts and just do aerobic runs for now; stretch, stretch, stretch & foam roller; and then start some specific strength work. For the in-office time, she’s doing some ASTYM and massage on me.
Backing off the speed work is helping limit the pain, but it hasn’t left completely. Stretching is returning to where it was, which is good. The foam roller is not yet a comfortable process, meaning that it’s not yet routine. I kind of wonder if I’m doing it right sometimes. The strength excercises are pretty simple and easy to do.
I backed off during week 5 and had a pretty successful training week. I ended it by doing my long run on Sunday, which went very well, but ended up with a sore right knee! Thankfully this has now dissapated, but it did cause me to skip week 6’s Tuesday morning bike ride. Week six was punctuated by some odd Spring weather: we had hail4 out of 5 days from Tuesday on. The weekend brought a brick on Saturday, 1:00:00 bike/20:00 run. And, today, I capped off the week with a 1800 yd swim set at 1:43/100 (plus warmup and warmdown) which made me happy, and a 40:00 run with my HR in the 130’s and at 9:30/mile…with no further pain, which made me happier.
Which brings us to ASTYM…holy crap, that hurts! My PT is working on my quads, hamstrings and connective tissues around my knees. The idea is that the therapy promotes muscle and connective tissue realignment and strengthening. After the first session, I developed a bruise or two. Thee days later, after the second session, I’m ALL BRUISES! They’re not as impressive today as they were a few days ago, or I’d post photos, but they are everywhere. Thankfully the sessions will be spaced apart by a week now. Tomorrow’s my next visit to the PT. If you look at the photos in the ASTYM link, they show lovely healthy skin being massaged. The process is more like they’re trying to skin you with blunt tools. If I were a child, I’d run away screaming. But [sigh] I’m an adult, and a friend has told me that she went through it and came out the other end with a much recuperated knee. I think I’ll ask for a bottle of whiskey and a leather strap to bite on tomorrow.
Hard to believe but there’s only 14 weeks to go to race day!!
This week I need to work on accommodations for the race.
