Holding myself together

It's starting to feel like the end of a long track season. Sometimes there is a fine line between overtraining and finding that sweet spot where you've pushed yourself to your physical peak. Hopefully I haven't gone too far over the edge yet. I am having a lot of soreness lately in my hip, lower back, and hamstrings. Not good to have at this stage. I've tried to get more running in because my training times have been coming down and my body was holding up pretty well. Then I hit the wall last weekend while running one of my go-to workouts.

It's four 200s with 75-90 seconds rest in-between. The rest time and speed both go down as the season goes on. I try to run the 200s at about 90-95% speed. It simulates the end of the 400 because by the fourth one it feels just like the end of the 400. After that last workout my hip really started bothering me and my hamstring started getting really tight. It was at the point where I could feel it while walking. I took a week off and ran my  primary workout I use to see where I'm at. It's an all out 300 followed by 15 minutes recovery and three 200s with a 200 meter walk in between. I try to get faster on each 200. Here were my times yesterday:


Distance        Time        Rest

300             37.91        15 min
200             28.04          5 min
200             27.67          5 min
200             26.58          Cooldown

The times were slower than the other two times I ran that workout this year. Maybe I can say that I was tentative because I didn't want to injure myself. Whatever the reason, what I need to do now is get past that and mentally get my focus back on running fast and not worrying about getting hurt.

I saw my massage therapist last week and my chiropractor this morning. I'll do the P90X2 Recovery and Mobility workout tonight which has a lot of rumble rolling. Then I will probably use the rumble roller again each night while I watch the Olympics. I won't do any more track workouts, but I plan to do at least one Insanity: Asylum workout this week. Those don't take quite as much of a toll on my body as running on the track does. One more visit to the chiropractor and hopefully I'll be ready to go on Friday in the open 400.

How to break 50 seconds in the 400 meters

There's a great site out there called SpeedEndurance.com that has a lot of great information on 400 meter training. They put up an article about how to break 50 seconds in the 400. The article is mostly about how to figure out if you can break 50 seconds based on how fast you can run shorter distances. I know that one of the keys to getting my 400 meter time down is to improve on my 200. That's been one of my goals this year. I'm currently trying to get it under 24 seconds. My fastest in a race was back in high school at 23.5. That's really not that fast. Since I converted to the 800 meters in college I never ran an open 200 meters.

I ran a 24.00 in my last meet this year so I'm hoping I can get under that at the National Championships in a couple of weeks. My chances of making the finals look pretty slim for the 200 so I'll likely only have one more try. I bring up the 200 time because one of the formulas on how fast you can run the 400 is to take your 200 time x 2 and add 4 seconds. Since I was fortunate enough to run exactly 24 seconds it's an easy formula for me. 24 x 2 is 28 + 4 = 52. I'm shooting to get under 53 seconds so at least I know that's a reasonable expectation.

Here is a video that sums up the article. There's some good information although I wish they would have included the 300 meter formulas as that's what I've been using for my training.

Since it's been so hot out lately I have adjusted my training slightly for this week. I was planning to run 4 x 200s with 65 seconds rest this week, but I think I will shift that workout to this weekend. I have been pushing pretty hard on the Asylum and P90X2 workouts so that should keep my cardio and strength up. The workout I did in place of the 200 meter workout on Tuesday was Asylum Vertical Plyo and I'm sure I got a great workout in so I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I'm also feeling like I should back off a little bit on the track workouts right now. My hamstrings and lower back have been pretty tight lately and need some time to recover.

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes

It seems like we have had all sorts of events lately. The latest one was a walk to help victims of domestic violence. It's called Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, and that's exactly what it is. A one-mile walk in high heels. It's two laps around Riverside Park in La Crosse. The even was very successful, raising over $16,000 for Gundersen Lutheran's Carilee Fund.

If you've ever tried to walk in high heels, you know how difficult it can be. Couple that with record high temperatures and the sun beating down on us and you've got a difficult task ahead. Like most of the other participants I got a pair of rental shoes from the event. The difficulty for me was not the high heel. It was the pointy toe section. I don't know how you ladies do it. While your toes are being squeezed together in the front of the shoe, gravity is pushing your foot forward making it even more uncomfortable. If I have it to do over again, I will get a shoe with a round or square front.

I also thought it would be nice to get some video of the event for work. I never thought it would be so difficult to keep up with the group or to walk backwards. Often when I video tape an event like this I like to get in front of the group and let them approach me so I can get shots of them walking by. I also end up walking backwards or sideways to keep up with them. I guess those are things that I usually take for granted.
Because of the hot temperatures they told us that we should consider only doing one lap, but about half of the guys kept going to make it the full mile. I compromised. I walked the first lap, grabbed my regular shoes, and ran around capturing footage for the second lap.

The DADs and a son

And boy was it hot. We had a small group called the Domestic Abuse Destroyers (DADs). Two of us work at Gundersen Lutheran so we walked with the Gundersen group. My son walked the entire thing with us. We didn't make him put on high heels. By the end we were all a sweaty mess, but it was all for a good cause.

And I didn't injure myself, which is a good thing a month out from the USATF National Championships.

The Warrior Dash

The crew after the race

We did the Warrior Dash race this past weekend. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Warrior Dash it is one of the most popular mud runs. The race is a 5k with obstacles. So how does this tie in to my 400 meter training? It doesn't. A group of us did it last year and someone talked me into doing it again this year. As regular readers of the blog may know, I don't do well with long distances. I have chronic exertional compartment syndrome in both calves and any running over a couple of minutes is difficult. So running a course on a ski hill that is mostly uphill on rough terrain is not the best thing for me. Again, I got talked into it. At least I said no to the Tough Mudder.

So my main goal was to not get injured. I did fine there although I've been pretty sore for the past couple of days. I also got caught by the neck on a section of barbed wire at one point, but didn't have much more than a little scratch. My second goal was to try to make a good workout out of it. I accomplished that too. I pushed fairly hard except for some of the long uphill sections. I was able to move pretty quickly over many of the obstacles.

Overall for our race day I finished 293rd overall out of 8,610 people. That's men and women and all age groups. In my age group and just men I was 102nd out of 1,725 which puts me in the top 6%. Not too bad for someone who doesn't do well with long distances.

There's talk now of doing another one in September. At least I would be done with all of my track races and not as concerned with messing up my training. And if nothing else, it's a good workout.