In treatment

Posted on August 16, 2010 by threlkeld

I had session 2 of myotherapy this morning. My next one is on Thursday to be followed by a fourth on Saturday. Sandra leaves town after that so I hope this gets me well enough to run since she’s not back until early September.

Since I did session 1 without any pain relief whatsoever, I decided to take a painkiller before this round. She’d said that was probably a good idea as she needs to get deep into the muscles and that’s difficult when I’m screaming and attempting to squirm off the massage table.

Today I revised my opinion of Percocet (Oxycodone), which I previously thought was the bee’s knees. This morning it made me feel like warmed over dogshit. While I know it killed some of the pain, it also made me nauseous and drowsy (sensations that don’t go well with driving), and, eight hours after taking it, I’m still incredibly fatigued even after an hour nap. Not just tired, but also dimwitted and hopeless. It reminds me of my occasional bouts with moderate depression, with a touch of flu thrown in.

Much as I’m tempted to take it again before Thursday’s mauling, I’d rather experience pain than lose the entire day to feeling like this again. I think these sessions are supposed to get easier anyway, since I’m getting used to it and with each one the knots and scar tissue are broken up a little more. In my next one I get heat and ultrasound.

It’s only been a week since my hip implosion, but this issue feels intractable. Part of the problem is that I still can’t even walk without pain. Every morning, I get faked out — I get out of bed and for the first few minutes I think everything’s fine. Then the pain comes back and settles over me for the rest of the day. If I try to do anything that puts significant weight on my right leg, the problem flares up and I’m screwed for hours, meaning I limp and grimace. On Saturday, after a few pain-free hours, it happened when I did just one dynamic stretch on the right side. Yesterday, again feeling relatively pain-free and hopeful, I took a few exploratory jog steps — meaning I just hopped across the dining room to assess if I could go for a short run. My hip complained bitterly about this latest transgression and there went the afternoon and evening.

I am walking like my dad did right before he had total knee replacement surgery. I list to one side and grab onto any available item for support. It’s pathetic and infuriating. How did I go from running an 82 second 400m repeat on the track to not being able to walk just a few days later?

The good news is that both Jonathan and I got into the Houston Marathon, which is using a lottery system this year. Houston in late January is my goal marathon. Even though I’m prepared to travel there alone, I registered Jonathan just in case he wants to train for it (assuming his fall plans are blown due to his own injury, which it looks like they are), or just run it for whatever reason. He is running again, with some pain. But, hell, he’s running. That’s after two months of not running — so he’s lost a lot of fitness despite having biked like a fiend.

The idea of running a marathon seems entirely theoretical now, for both of us.

One other piece of hopeful news is that I can ride our stationary bike without it making things worse. I did 90 minutes yesterday. If I can manage to tear myself off the couch, I’ll probably do 2 hours later on today. If I still can’t run this week I’ll also look into pool running somewhere. I can feel my fitness ebbing away. I’m glad my motivation is still there, at least.

Fuck. I really miss running.

I’ve used the word “hope” in this post several times in both positive (“hopeful”) and negative (“hopeless”) forms. Sandra said something to me this morning that made an impression on me, and which in an unintended way gave me hope: “You’ll never run faster if you don’t fix these problems.” That got me thinking about the possibility that one reason I may not have been able to run faster so far has been because of tight muscles. I like to think that all this painful work will lead to not only being able to run again, but perhaps — as a bonus — also running faster than I could have otherwise.

Filed under: coaching, injury, physiology, recovery | Tagged: , | 9 Comments »

Diary of a hipster

Posted on August 11, 2010 by threlkeld

The hip issue marches on, as it were. After a few days of experimenting with various self-treatments and observing their effects, here are some conclusions I’ve reached:

My hip does not like leg pulls. A leg pull is when I lie on a bed and Jonathan grips my foot and leans backward as though attempting to pull my leg off of my body. It feels great while he’s doing it, but it seems to  exacerbate the problem in the hours following the leg pulling. So no more of that.

My hip likes Nabumetone, an anti-inflammatory. My hip gives me a piece of its mind when I forget to take one every 12 hours. It would probably also respond well to Naproxen, which is a little stronger than Nabumetone, but which wreaks havoc on my innards.

My hip’s enjoyment of a nice, long ice bath verges on sexual. The colder the better. Later in the evening, it likes relaxing in the recliner with a chilly bag of ice wrapped around it. Yes, my straight-laced hip has a secret ice fetish.

My hip’s appreciation for Hydrocodone continues unabated. I take half 1-2x a day. Oddly, sometimes the hip pain goes away completely but the hamstring pain becomes more pronounced after taking one. Or maybe I just notice it more. But one would think a painkiller would kill all pain sources in equal measure. This does not seem to be so.

My hip likes Voltaren, a topical anti-inflammatory. It likes it very, very much. I might have to use the term “love” in this case.

My hip has gotten hip to stretching. It especially likes this stretch a whole lot. Runner up favorite is this one. Despite its complaints, it also seems to like being rolled around on a tennis ball for long periods of time.

Sometimes my hip makes a popping noise, but this happens when it’s at its most obstreperous, such as after leg pulls or an hour of lurching around in the outside world. So my theory is that some very slight imbalance came into full bloom on Saturday when there was a lot of compensatory action going on during my lopsided racing. The result? Lots of angry muscles, connective tissues and perhaps even inflamed bursas. The major bone/joint areas are caught in the middle of all of this, being thrown this way and that, and are making their popping protests during the worst of the arguments amongst the other battling body parts.

For now, I’m giving it a few more days to see if it sorts itself out. I’m convinced the issue is inflammation and not actual damage, such as a stress fracture. If it’s inflammation, I’m just going to be prescribed all the stuff I’m taking already. If it’s something else, I’ll know when it hasn’t resolved itself after a week.

Filed under: injury | 3 Comments »

Lurchapalooza

Posted on August 9, 2010 by threlkeld

Injury update: I hate to even call this an injury. I refuse to think of it as an injury. Until I’m told by a trained professional that this is an injury, it’s a weird problem that has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Right now, I’m in the middle. I don’t need crutches, although a cane wouldn’t be a bad idea. But I don’t want to use one, because that would be giving this issue more credence as an “injury.”

I can’t walk properly. For now, I lurch around. I’m taking Nabumetone, an anti-inflammatory and half a Hydrocodone every once in awhile, which is an Rx painkiller that’s no stronger than what you can buy in any Boots in the UK. Percocet was making me a little loopy, plus I think I need to be somewhat aware of this thing’s progress. Meaning that rather than totally masking the pain, I need to track its severity/improvement.

I’m not that much better than I was last night, but I think walking around helps. I can’t imagine running yet. I think I’m a few days away from that. This evening I’ll see if I can hop on it.

Argh.

Filed under: injury | 6 Comments »

Race Report: NYRR Club Championships

Posted on August 7, 2010 by threlkeld

Well, fuck. This was a bad race. A five miler I’d really been looking forward to, for a variety of reasons:

  • It was my first club championships race, since I’ve only just joined a team a couple of months ago.
  • The work I’ve been doing lately has set me up for some faster shorter races.
  • We were gifted with ideal summer racing conditions: low-70s and relatively dry.
  • I’d more or less tapered since Tuesday, so felt ready from that standpoint.

All I needed to do was better than 34:45 for a PR today at the 5M distance. I felt it was well within the realm of possibility. I ended up with 36:24. So what happened?

As often happens the day before a race, I had a new little niggle to deal with, in this case a weird issue with my right hip that came on quite suddenly in the evening. If I put weight on it while standing at a certain angle, such as when twisting to load the dishwasher, it hurt a lot. But I had been fine on a run in the morning. As long as I didn’t make dishwasher-loading movements, it was under control. I decided to ignore it.

This morning I got up and the issue was still there, although it had eased in intensity slightly. But when I set off to do my warmup and strides near the race start, I had a new issue: a sore right hamstring (which has been giving me trouble for the last 10 days, although it comes and goes). This was worrisome. I briefly thought of bailing on the race altogether, but hated the idea of doing that. So I set a goal of 7:00 pace (down from the original 6:50 goal) for the first mile and figured I’d see if I could loosen up the hamstring over the course of the race.

I hit the first split in 6:58, which was good, as it’s one of the harder miles, and I was more or less on plan. The hamstring hurt and, worse, had obviously limited mobility. I could extend my right leg about 80% compared to my left one. I kept at it, albeit with a slight limp.

Mile two was a 7:00 split. I was doing okay, but nothing was improving and I was having trouble maintaining my lopsided stride. So I shortened my left leg’s stride to reduce the stress on the right side. I had to slow down too, as it was really beginning to hurt, especially on the downhills and flats. The last three miles averaged around 7:28. It was the best I could do on an increasingly gimpy leg.

I thought of dropping out, but figured there was an outside chance that I could score points for the Harriers master’s team. Had I not had this issue, I’m sure I could have, as teammate Addy and I kept passing each other (she while walking up hills, me while slowing on the downhills so as not to further strain the problem hamstring). I also decided against dropping out as I was afraid that if I stopped running I wouldn’t be able to start up again. This turned out to be a good call, although I wouldn’t realize it until hours later.

Yes, the worst was yet to come. After I stopped running, new problems emerged. Now the pain’s geographical coverage migrated to include my right hip. Between the hamstring and hip, putting any weight on the leg was really becoming quite painful and I was limping all the way back to the car. Once seated, I felt fine. But we got stuck in bad traffic, and I could feel the hip tightening up over the course of the hour or so it took it get home. Once in the driveway, I discovered that I could no longer walk. At all.

Crutches got me into an ice bath. Percocet got me out of the ice bath. Now I’m lying on the bed, hoping this isn’t serious.

Goddamit. I shouldn’t have run that race.

Filed under: central park, injury, ny harriers, racing | Tagged: , | 12 Comments »

A few minutes with Lornah Kiplagat

Posted on August 1, 2010 by threlkeld

Lornah Kiplagat, 36, has been absent from the racing scene for awhile, but she’s back. She has excelled at distances from the 5K to the marathon, and has continued to race competitively across that distance spectrum throughout her career. She holds four world records for road racing: 5K, 10M, 20K and half marathon. Originally from Kenya, she has been a Dutch citizen since 2003. The Mini 10K was one in a series of post-surgery “comeback” races for Kiplagat. A four-time winner of that event, she’d hoped for a fifth title and was leading for the first half of the race before being overtaken by the eventual winner, Linet Masai. Kiplagat would finish fourth.

You’ve been running fast forever. How have you managed to have such a consistent career?
I think it’s just good planning. Good support, the right people around you. And a lot of running. So if I can also do that as a career, then you like to do that extra.

After setting the world record for the half in Udine, Italy, 2007.

What’s it like to have a tulip named after you?
It’s nice. How did you know about that?

I went to one of your sites and there was a story about that. I thought that was pretty neat.
Yes, it was nice of the Dutch that they did that for me. They mentioned this to me about seven years ago, even more. They thought it was a good idea, and they started preparation for it. Because it takes a long time. But it finally came out. It’s a very funny flower because it’s very strong. We have tulips and home and normally tulips don’t last long. They were lasting like for three weeks!

That’s very appropriate for a marathoner.
Yeah. Tulips normally just wither down.

Do you train in Holland?
Yes. But mostly in Kenya. Because of the altitude. It’s nice in Holland in the summer. I like it. But in the winter, it’s better in Kenya, for sure.

I was reading about your High Altitude Training Centre in Kenya. It seems like the focus has become less on athletics and more on academics.
The focus is really both. But we’re more into giving opportunities to top athletes all over the world. So they are able to train there.

Did you always have it in your head that you wanted to start something like this?
It was with a group of people. We have one guy in Kenya that’s selecting students. And they are staying in my place. They get coaching. They also get to study there. After that, they can come to America. We do it with four people. My part is to coach them — not so much to coach them, but to motivate them. So it works really good. They are boys and girls, top students from high school.

Is your foundation still focused on AIDS prevention and AIDS education?
Yeah. We are growing, actually. We’re starting up a high school for 300 girls. The training camp was so small. We could do only 12-15 girls.

How did you manage to grow it so quickly?
We’ve not yet gotten funding, but we have the plans for doing that.

How do you select who gets into the school?
They have to meet a certain academic level. And they all have to be doing something in sport. Football, hockey, running.

Do they have to maintain a certain level of academic consistency to remain in the school?
Yes. They have to. You know, they come there and they go down…we want them to come there and go even higher. Academically and in sport. This would be a boarding school. Before we didn’t have a school. They would only stay there during holidays. They could go to schools all over Kenya. They’d come to us in August and December, but it was not enough. It was too short to do something. Finally, I said, “I’m doing something, but it’s not enough.” So we needed to put [together] a better structure. We hope the first class will be 2013. It’s nearby the altitude training center. We’re trying to get the funding, but even if we don’t get it, it will still happen with our own money. I’ve got the ground to build the school already. It’s 18 hectares. That was the hardest part — getting the ground.

What made it so difficult? Finding the right place?
That and getting the right ground in such a place is almost impossible anymore. Getting a space that big. I had to move four families.

Was that difficult? Did they not want to leave?
No, it was an opportunity for them. If they give me one acre of land, then I have to buy them two and a half somewhere else. But in a nice place, where they can really farm. And still with some money on top of that. So they saw it as an opportunity to get more land. That was the most difficult part, and now that’s done. So the rest — putting up the buildings — is not a big deal for me. If we get funding, it will go quicker. If we don’t, it will go slower. But still, it will happen.

Do people know that you’re doing this project? Do people at these things ask you about it?
I don’t even talk about it. When I see that you’re interested, I talk about it. But normally I don’t even mention it.

No, I ask because I was surprised. I did some research on you yesterday. I know you as a runner but had no idea you were heading up all these other projects.
I don’t think most people are interested. They just want to see how the running will be. This is for my own good feeling. I don’t want to be just a runner and then pass by. I want to be a runner, but establish my roots. You want to know where you came from and where you end, what you brought to influence society. That’s what we [with husband/coach Pieter Langenhorst] do. Pieter supports me very well with this work. He’s the one making things happen. Sometimes you can be together, but if the other partner doesn’t have the same motivation, it doesn’t work. For us, it works very well.

I came across an interview with you a few years ago in which you were describing your experience of going to one of your first races in Kenya. You slept in a bathroom. There was basically no support. Have things improved in the last 18 years?
Yeah. It’s improved a lot. It’s like day and night.

Yes, it was really shocking.
It’s quite impossible now to have that kind of experience. There are so many athletes now, so many girls. Girls running now is a normal thing.

Is it still one of the biggest professional opportunities there?
Absolutely. In the last 10 years, it’s grown like crazy.

Can I ask you about your running, or are you tired of answering questions about that?
No, it’s okay.

You’ve been coming back with some shorter races. Are you planning on returning to the marathon?
I will build up slowly now, since I am coming back from injury. But end up at the marathon.

Do you have one in mind?
Not yet.

As you’ve moved into your thirties, have you found that you need more recovery between hard workouts?
Yes.

Are you doing two workouts a week now? Or three?
I run, of course, every day. I do speed work three times a week. But not very sharp, though.

What kind of mileage are you doing right now?
70-80 miles a week. Not a lot.

What do you get up to when you’re peaking in your training for the marathon?
If I’m going for the marathon, for sure over 100.

Do you think after you turn 40 that you’ll keep competing?
No, I think I will just go to easy running. But not competing. It depends.

Because a lot of women are running well into their forties.
I’m not far from 40…

That’s why I’m asking.
I will just see how it will go.

If you scale back the running, will you spend more time on these other projects?
Yeah. That’s like my baby.

Do you think doping is widespread in women’s distance running?
No, I don’t believe it. Because I know most of the women in distance running and most of them are really clean.

I know it was bad in the eighties. A lot of the Chinese times, people don’t even really count because it’s assumed they were all on something.
And it is possible [to excel without drugs]. It’s just a matter of training hard. Simple. No shortcuts. Knowing most of the girls in long distance, you can tell that they train hard. Even in competition, you can see somebody who you can say, “Hey, something is wrong.” So it happens, but it’s not common.

Do you train by heart rate?
No.

How do you know how hard to run?
I used a GPS watch. Every kilometer, I know what speed I’m running and I feel. So if I’m running under 4:00 per K, and I’m feeling good.

Do you race with a GPS?
Sometimes [Kiplagat wore her Garmin 310xt at the Mini 10K]. When I’m not sure, I race with a GPS.

A lot of people are funny about it. They think it’s cheating, that you have an advantage over other people in the race. Or they assume that elites never use them.
No. It’s no different with a watch. Every kilometer, you can see [the split]. What’s the difference? There’s no difference.

Filed under: central park, elites, injury, inspiration, olympics, racing, reading, resources, training | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Ridgewood 5K: A mitigated disaster

Posted on May 31, 2010 by threlkeld

Today we headed out to Ridgewood, NJ to race a 5K or 10K. I was undecided and for $10 extra I could register for both (and even run both if I was feeling in a particularly self-hating mood today — which I was, but not to the level required to double). So I registered for both.

After a terrible night’s sleep, which is par for the course for me prior to any race, no matter how inconsequential, we got up and it didn’t seem that bad out. A little warm, a little humid, but not oppressively so. At least not at 5:15AM.

As we would discover, it was about 10 degrees hotter in New Jersey. But it still didn’t feel that bad. Yet.

Jonathan was committed to doing the 10K and race it he did. He was 30 seconds off his last one, felled by the heat, which by the 8:45 start had become a factor. In the shade, it was warm. In the sun, it was baking, maybe high 70s at the start.

Still, he looked pretty good when he whizzed by on his way to the finish, well behind a gaggle of Africans (it was a money race: a whopping $200 for the winners) and some young skinny guys, but coming in 18th overall. He got second in the 50-54 AG.

I met up with him, supplied water and food and got him back to the car for a change of clothes. Then it was my turn to get ready. Now it was hot. I went off to do a warmup: half a mile jog around a parking lot followed by some short strides on a baseball field. Running at 9:00, I was out of breath. The strides were even worse. And so commenced a cascading crisis of confidence.

Frequent readers and other shut-ins will recall that I suck as a hot weather racer. My ideal racing conditions are right around the freezing mark, in which I will happily wear a tee shirt. I’ve also run some of my best races with windchills in the low teens. But put me in the heat and I melt. Or do I? Today I learned a big, painful (yet very encouraging) lesson about making assumptions.

By the 10:15 start, the sun was over the trees and the course was maybe 20% shaded. I was thinking someone should at least sprinkle me with cheese to benefit from my state of being. Can I find other ways to say that I was really, really hot? Probably. But I’ll go on.

Here are the lessons I learned today:

1. Commit or don’t bother. I screwed myself during the warmup, all of it mentally. I was afraid of the heat and didn’t want to race. Yet I’d driven all the way out here and felt obligated to. I was completely conflicted at the start, having convinced myself already that I’d have a bad race, yet struggling with a sense of obligation to bludgeon my way through the experience anyway. And the mindset that said, “I can’t race well in the heat.”

2. You can’t spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S with the letters C-R-A-P-P-Y-A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E. You can’t. I’ve had several runners whom I respect tell me recently that my attitude sucks and I need to work on it. You know who you are. Okay, I’m listening now.

3. Look at the damned watch, and look at it early. Here was the most interesting aspect of this race. I went out fast. I may not have had my head in the race, but my body was going full bore. But I’d told myself not to look at my watch, since when I’m having a bad race, looking at my watch will only make things worse.

Here’s how the first mile played out: I was running what I thought was a reasonable, but conservative, effort for the first half mile or so. My original goal pace for the race (earlier in the week, when it didn’t look like it would be so hot) was 6:39. I “knew” that wasn’t possible today. So I thought I was taking it easy in the first mile.

I knew we were coming up on the 1 mile mark and I felt shitty. I was thinking I was probably running well over 7:00 and decided to drop out and walk back. Pull over to the sidewalk, hit the watch and turn around and start walking. For the hell of it, I thought, “Well, since I’ve just bailed, I may as well see just how slow I was going.”

I had been running a 6:20 pace.

Well, fuck me gently. Turn the watch back on, turn around and start running again. But by that time I’d lost all momentum, physical and otherwise. I only lost 7 seconds on my abortive abortion, but the damage was done. I’d run too fast and now the heat was getting to me. The next mile was a full minute per mile slower. I bailed again for good at the 1.8 mark and jogged in the rest of the way.

4. Look where you’re walking. Post jog, while attempting to secure a banana, I bashed my left shin into a metal tent stake. That hurt. I’ve got a goose egg on my leg now and will have an impressive bruise in a few hours. Fortunately, my bones (and this includes my skull) are thick and not prone to breakage, a lucky state of affairs considering how gravity challenged I am. But the children nearby certainly got an earful of nasty.

Denouement: This was my third DNF. All three have had distinctively different causes. The first was a dropout at mile 18 of a marathon when I knew something was physiologically wrong with me, something that was pointless to fight. The second was a violent hamstring pull that put the kibosh on a 5 mile race in mid stride. Today was a DNF that didn’t have to happen.

Still life with trophy and contusion.

Had I looked at my watch and slowed down to my intended pace in the first mile, I probably could have run a decent race. Having a positive, or even neutral, outlook going in would have helped too. I will not do this again.

But I’m glad that this happened. The Mini 10K in less than two weeks is an important race for me. It will probably be hot and/or humid. I need to go in with a positive attitude or I’m going to screw myself again.

The best thing about today was the fact that I ran 6:20 for a mile in poor conditions at an effort that I thought was conservative. The hills of Central Park and the winds of Icahn Stadium have served to mask my level of fitness. I believe I am in better shape than I’d previously thought.

I have well over a dozen races scheduled between now and December. Please, let me have decent weather at just one. I will work on the attitude if the weather gods will work with me on everything else.

Filed under: central park, injury, racing | 13 Comments »

Healthy Kidney 10K: Khannouchi’s Comeback

Posted on May 22, 2010 by threlkeld

As promised, here’s the second report on my journalistic gatecrashing exercise. In this installment, I share what I learned from talking with Khalid Khannouchi and with his wife, Sandra Inoa, who is also his coach and agent.

I was so involved in yammering with Patrick Smyth about altitude training that I didn’t notice Khannouchi had come in. But I did sense people drifting away from our table and eventually figured out why they were flocking to the other side of the room: the comeback story had arrived. I joined them a few minutes into their session.

If you don’t follow elite running, or your exposure to it has been very recent, you probably have no idea who Khalid Khannouchi is. Khannouchi is a Moroccan-born runner (he became an American citizen in 2000) who got on the radar by winning gold for the 5000m at the World University Games in 1993. But he gradually moved up in distance over subsequent years, establishing himself as a world class marathoner in the late 1990’s.

His marathoning career began with a bang: he ran a 2:07:01 in Chicago (a race he would go on to win three more times) in 1997, which was then the world’s fastest marathon debut time. It was also (again, at the time), the fourth fastest marathon ever run. But, as it turns out, Khannouchi was just getting started. Over the next few years, he managed to lower that time in four out of his next seven marathons. His best was a 2:05:38 in London in 2002, a time that still stands as the American record.*

Then, later in 2002, Khannouchi’s fortunes turned. He began to experience problems in his left foot, which would plague him for years an cut short his training for the 2008 Men’s Olympic Marathon Trials race in Central Park. Despite that, Khannouchi finished fourth, securing a spot as the team’s alternate in Beijing. After that, he ran just one more race, the Steamboat Classic in Peoria, IL, a four miler held in June, in which he would place ninth.

Surgery, followed by rehab
Khannouchi has had several surgeries on his foot and he’s hoping the most recent one, which was performed a little over a year ago, will be the one that solves his problem once and for all. When asked about the details of the surgery, he began to describe it, then leaned down and took off his shoe and sock to show rather than tell. There were his scars: one to remove a bunion and another along the top lateral instep to remove a bone spur. (Khannouchi has very attractive feet for a runner, by the way.)

Completing the rehab package are two custom made orthotics, with the left one being completely different in form and appearance from the right one. He has two sets of orthotics, one for running and one for just walking around. It took three months to arrive at the right structural formula for them. He’d get a pair, try them out, report back and then try a new pair that had been tweaked.

In the meantime, he was cross-training on a stationary bike, doing a lot of pool running and testing the waters with some jogging on the roads. He’s only been running again, after a complete post-surgery layoff from road running, for about six months.

Although he occasionally trains with his brother (I don’t know which one; he has several), Khannouchi usually trains alone, doing his track workouts at Sleepy Hollow High School’s track, trail running in Rockefeller State Park and sometimes doing a run in Central Park, where he is often recognized.

Baby steps, starting in Central Park on Saturday
What Khannouchi wanted to make perfectly clear was that the Healthy Kidney event was not meant to be a competitive race for him. He had no expectations of winning. Instead, this was a trial run to test everything out. Could he run fast and hard on pavement without pain? Could he race up and down hills? Could he push himself? These were the questions he was looking to answer on Saturday. He needed a competitive race for this experiment, and Healthy Kidney seemed like a good place to start: it’s in his backyard, he’d have competition around him and he could count on the full support of NYRR.

When asked about what other plans he had for his burgeoning comeback attempt, Khannouchi said he planned to do two more 10Ks this summer as similar, iterative tests: the Atlanta Peachtree race in July and Maine’s Beach to Beacon race in August. I went over to talk to Inoa about these races, since I figured she was the brains behind the plan. And she was. But first, she rolled her eyes and laughed when I asked about the two races. “He told you about Peachtree and Beach to Beacon?” she asked, looking a little exasperated. (As it turns out, Peachtree was already out there, but I don’t know if he was supposed to mention Beach to Beacon; a note to them post interview to inquire resulted in permission to publish their plans to go to Maine here).

Khannouchi didn’t do any 10K specific training for this race, primarily because he can’t. Because of his foot, he can’t run 200-400m track repeats, but, as he said, “You don’t need those for the marathon.” The 10K is a distance that’s long enough to reveal any lingering issues, but short enough to race frequently. I gathered that it’s also a distance that will allow Khannouchi to return to the races/courses in Georgia and Maine, where he’s done well and gotten organizational support in the past.

Two more tests, then a decision
Inoa has him running around 70 miles per week at this point. The plan is to gradually ramp up the mileage and intensity of training over the summer, using the two 10K road races to similarly test how he’s handling the load. A hard race will accomplish two things: for one, it will provide a “stress test” from which the couple can gather information about how his body is holding up to the ever increasing demands; for another, it will show whether he’s making absolute progress in terms of speed. If he’s going to compete at any distance, he needs to get faster.

Which brings me to another interesting facet of this story. Khannouchi is 38 years old. That’s not young for a male marathoner. Yet he is making a comeback in the open category, not as a masters runner. He wants to compete against everyone, not just his Age Group peers. Making a statement like that will almost certainly open him up to a wave of criticism and naysaying, which makes it all the more compelling that he’s saying it. As a side note, Khannouchi mentioned Meb Keflezighi’s comeback from what many had declared a dead career as an inspiration and galvanizing influence on his own decision to give competitive marathoning another go.

Anyway, the idea is that by the time he runs that third 10K race, he should be in or approaching full marathon training mode, meaning up to 110-120 mile weeks again. Beach to Beacon is going to be Sink or Swim, in a sense. That race should reveal his level of readiness to take on the full marathon at the competitive level he expects of himself. If he’s not ready, they’ll back off from their plans and reevaluate. If he is ready, then it’s full speed ahead.

Learning to be patient
At one point I asked Khannouchi about recovery time. I prefaced the question by saying that, since I’m a few years older than he is, I felt I could ask him this: “As you’ve gotten into your late thirties, do you find you need more recovery time? What about entire recovery weeks?”

His answer was that he did need a lot more recovery time and that it was not unusual to take workouts that he used to cram into one week when he was younger and spread them out over two weeks. But he does not take entire “down weeks.” Inoa just keeps his workload at a reasonable level throughout the training cycle.

Still, now that he’s running well again, Inoa has to rein him in. As she told me, “He’s been frustrated because he wants to jump back in and run fast workouts.” She has to hold him back and remind him that the focus right now is on regaining his fitness while avoiding injury. That means being patient.

Race day success
I spotted Khannouchi well behind the lead pack at mile 1.5 of the race, but holding up well. He was running fast and looked good. There was no sign of pain on his face, hitches in his stride or any other indicators of something being amiss. For a non-competitive effort, he still placed in a respectable 21st place, a little under three minutes off his best for the distance. He looked genuinely happy when he crossed the finish line.

I caught up with him after the race in the media area, where he was getting a massage. We chatted for a few minutes about how the race went. Here’s a transcript of our exchange:

Me: You looked really good at mile 1.5. You looked smooth and relaxed.

KK: I felt good throughout the race.

Me: So how was it?

KK: It was hard. First race in three years. I mean, it’s not going to come easy, but we felt like it was a good effort and it was very exciting to be out there. I feel like I pushed hard and, 30:30 or so — for a first race in three years, that’s a good time. Well, something promising. Not a good time, but something that we can build on.

Me: So you feel it was successful in terms of what you wanted to achieve?

KK: Just by being here it was a success. Like I said [yesterday], we talk about the fear of having injury in my mind. Just by being here it feels like I’m motivated to start all over again. It’s not going to be easy, right? We know that. So at least it was a start, and it was good.

Me: So no twinges?

KK: No, I’m going for a cooldown now, and [pointing to left foot] it feels good.

Me: I was talking with Sandra yesterday about how, if you don’t race for awhile, you can sort of forget how to race, how to pace yourself. Did you feel any of that today?

KK: Yeah, sure. Not only that, but you lose the rhythm, you lose the impact with the ground, you lose a lot of things that we have to work on. We need to improve everything little by little. It’s not going to come in a day or in a race or two. But it’s going to take patience and it’s going to take hard work and it’s going to take also, you know…the people around you have to be people that can motivate you, people that, in a bad time, will come to you and support you. I think all that stuff has to be together in order for us to make a comeback or do better or improve.

Me: And how was the crowd support? Did people recognize you and cheer you on?

KK: There was big support. I was very impressed. I always come down and do my running here when I have to get therapy in the city and people do recognize me. But there was more [of a] crowd today and there was more support. I was thrilled to run in front of them. It wasn’t what I usually run. It was, you know, more than two minutes off my personal best.

Me: Can I check in with you after Peachtree?

KK: Yes, of course! We’ll update you with what’s going on. I’m hoping it will be good news.

Me: Based on today, I think it will be.

*When I asked him which American marathoner he thought had a chance of breaking his record, he diplomatically demurred and went off on a tangent about things needing to go perfectly on race day. The guy certainly knows how to give an interview without getting himself into hot water.

Filed under: central park, coaching, elites, injury, inspiration, racing, recovery, training, westchester | Tagged: , , , | 10 Comments »

Spring Training: Week 4

Posted on January 31, 2010 by threlkeld

The further along I get into training, or whatever it is I’m presently doing, the more relieved I am that I decided to skip doing a spring marathon. This past week shaped up to be a disappointing one, with low mileage, horrible weather and a severe bang to the head. All adding up to less than 45 miles, though not for lack of trying and regret for coming up short again.

If I was looking out to a race in 12 weeks, I’d be feeling pretty distressed. Maybe meandering slackerdom is the source of liberation I’ve been looking for all my life. No goal = no pressure + no disappointment. It also = no achievement, I realize. But everything in life’s a tradeoff…

Monday and Tuesday actually went pretty well. My recovery run pace continued to hold steady around 10:00 and my tempo pace picked up a smidgen. I felt horrible on Tuesday, the fallout of four days of celebratory eating and drinking. Which, don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed immensely. But I was certainly hauling the celebration along with me on Tuesday and forcing myself to run fast, and not particularly enjoying it. It’s times like this when I look back to the years during which I subsisted on vodka, Doritos and generic frozen pizza and realize I must have felt horrible pretty much all of the time.

My legs were dead on Wednesday, no huge surprise there.

Snow, ice and plunging temperatures resumed on Thursday, which featured a morning run I won’t soon forget. Or maybe I will, if I suffered any permanent brain damage. Still, determined to get those miles in, I went out again on Thursday afternoon and struggled through another few, although I had to stop and walk often due to residual ice.

On Friday I woke up and the right side of my neck was swollen and in a fair amount of pain. My back wasn’t happy either. It was a long, stressful workday as well, a 9 on the Stress-o-Meter. So I said fuck it and skipped the workout. If ever there was a day to take off, this was it.

Or maybe Saturday was. I took that off too. A mild headache (probably from that huge martini on Friday), continued neck pain, a persistent malaise and slight fever sent me to bed for the most the day.

And everything had been going so well.

Even though I’ve curbed my hypochondriacal impulses, I Googled “concussion symptoms” anyway. Headache, malaise, upset stomach: check, check, check. But no memory loss or single pupil dilations. Increased irritability? With me, who can tell? Did I really want to go in for an x-ray of my head or whatever they do? Bah. The treatment for a mild concussion is the same as what I was doing anyway: rest.

Even though the latter part of the week fell apart, I did manage to finally sleep well last night and wake up this morning feeling halfway decent. The headache was finally gone, my neck was in reasonable shape and I had some energy (or maybe it was just cabin fever gnawing at me). Sure, it was 5F outside with the windchill, but ain’t no way I was going to go into that stupid treadmill room. I would run outside if it killed me.

As so often happens, the runs I have the lowest expectations of often turn out to be surprisingly good ones. I’d originally planned to run a meandering hilly route through local streets, but at the last minute decided I’d check out the running path to see if it was still covered in murderous ice. It looked okay, so I decided to do a loop down to Bronxville and then see how far north I could get before the path became unrunable again. The Bronx River was partly frozen and I was half expecting to see hapless ducks and geese trapped in the ice like miniature versions of Shackleton’s Endurance.*

My legs felt great after two days of rest, so I decided to just run as fast as I wanted to for whatever distance seemed good. Sounds like a solid plan! I ended up doing a progression run, starting out at 9:10 or so and ending up around 7:25. Not great, but better than I expected for the effort I was expending. The path is still a giant jigsaw puzzle of black ice in spots, but it’s not too bad. We’re supposed to get temps above freezing this week, so I’m hoping those will go away.

I’m scheduled to do 70 this coming week, with 3-4 days of doubles. Yep, well, we’ll see. Between work and the weather, I’ve no clue what I’ll be able to do. But this week I demonstrated to myself that even now, after a year of disappointment, currently feeling slow and fat, and much of the time wondering why I’m bothering to pursue running seriously at all, I still care enough to go out and try.

My first race of the year is next Sunday and I have no idea how I feel about it. Or, rather, I do. I feel worried. And bad in advance. I’m certain I’ll race like shit, all things considered. So should I just race and accept where I am right now? Or skip racing until I feel “ready,” whatever that means? I’ll decide on Sunday morning.

*There. This is the cleverest witticism I could come up with today. I thought that one up while running. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Filed under: basebuilding, drinking, injury, westchester | 5 Comments »

Shiver in my bones just thinking…

Posted on January 28, 2010 by threlkeld

…about the fucking weather.* Not just thinking about it. Being in it. Specifically, trying to run in it.

I typically like to think that here in New York, we’ve got it good. I follow other bloggers who live in godforsaken places like Michigan or Wisconsin and think, “Hey, at least I don’t live there.”

But this year, is it really any better here? In the entire month of January, we’ve had three days that got above freezing. Many days, the windchill was in the single digits or even negative digits. It’s already snowed three times.

I felt compelled to rant about winter because today I was actually looking forward to doing a 9 mile recovery run with strides. In a day packed with meetings and other sources of stress and dreariness, I especially appreciated the opportunity to get outside for 90 minutes and clear my head of the shit that kept me awake for 2 hours in the middle of the night (followed by a nightmare in which Jonathan died).

The forecast called for “flurries.” Maybe on some other planet heavy snow that sticks and accumulates counts as flurries, but not in my world. I got out of the house around 8AM, about an hour after the snow started. There was around half an inch on the ground by that time, and it was coming down heavily. But aside from bare pavement, I had traction on the snowy bits. Or so I thought.

I’d already decided to nix the strides today, not wanting to tempt fate. So merrily I ran along at 10:30 down toward Bronxville on the first of two local loops. I safely made it across Tuckahoe road (where no one ever stops for pedestrians, not even cops!), wended my way down toward the lake and…bam! My feet fly out ahead of me and I’m suddenly looking at the sky. Knowing I’m going to hit hard, I attempt to keep my head up, to no avail. My head actually bounced on the icy pavement a la Robert Cheruiyot.

Nice way to start the day! Now I have a huge goose egg and bruise on my head, plus when I turn my head too far to the left, the area around my left scapula burns. It burns!

Clearly this was not the day to run outside, so I got up and headed back. But in the 10 minutes or so that I’d been outside, the conditions had gone from acceptable to treacherous. It took me nearly 25 minutes to go the .7 miles back to our house. I managed to run a little, but by the time I hit the local streets (and big hill up to our street), the road was like an ice rink.

So in about 40 minutes I managed to run about a mile and give myself a concussion in the process. We’re supposed to get rain this afternoon, but I’ll believe that when I see it. In the meantime, we have a friend from South Africa coming to town for the Gift Fair. The forecast for tomorrow is “real feel” of 2F. I think she’s going to go into some sort of metabolic shock when she steps off that plane. Fortunately, she’s a wool designer, so she can swaddle herself in her own creations.

*Apologies for quoting one of the most boring bands of all time, 10,000 Maniacs (closely tied during that unfortunate era with Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians).

Filed under: elites, everyday life, injury, westchester | 19 Comments »

RLaG in 2010: Plans and goals

Posted on December 24, 2009 by threlkeld

My goals this year are modest. In years past, I had ambitious goals that revolved around mileage and race times. Not this time. Here are my goals for 2010:

  • Enjoy running, training and racing again
  • Avoid injury
  • Listen to my body and rest so I don’t get overtrained
  • Don’t race another marathon until I feel ready to do so

I’m exiting 2009 in a state of extreme rest. This was the year in which, if I ever wondered what my limits were in terms of training, I found out.

For now, between recovering from the CIM race, a head cold, work pressures, terrible weather and the holidays, I’m not worrying about running. I’ll get back into it in January. I accept that I will have lost fitness and will need to have some patience with myself.

The plan over the next few months is to get back into marathon training, but incorporate a lot of shorter races. I have no spring marathon planned. As for those shorter races, I don’t expect to pick up any PRs early on, but perhaps by sometime in late March or early April I can make some updates to my Stats page. Mostly, I’m looking forward to having fun racing again and not having all my eggs in one basket.

I’m awaiting the new training plan. But I do know that the mileage will come down in both peak and recovery weeks. That should help me avoid both the overtraining and injuries that have plagued me this year. I should be racing at least 2-3 times a month from February into April.

I’m registered for the full NJ Marathon on May 2, but I’ll be deferring my entry until 2011. If I’m feeling good in April, I may race the NJ half instead. The room’s reserved, so I can play things by ear without having to scramble for accommodations.

I’m also picking up a pair of inexpensive racing snowshoes. These will allow me to view a coming blizzard with delight rather than dread. The running path from Hartsdale to Valhalla allows for a good 10 mile out and back, except when it isn’t plowed (which is throughout the entire winter). Now I’ll be able to use it.

Plus, there’s this race. I’d have to drive for 2+ hours each way. But it’s at 11AM and it would be a new adventure.

Another decision I’ve made is to stop combining a major marathon with a vacation. Who wants to spend half or most of their vacation exhausted and in a crappy mood? So that era is over. I now get why people fly in and out on marathon weekend. In fact, I may not do any major travel at all in 2010. I spent six+ weeks and more money than I want to ponder on travel this year. My house needs attention and I need a break.

Looking farther down the road, we could Amtrak it to this race in the fall. Small, good course, and many good reviews. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Sitting here with a head cold, knowing my fitness is leaking away just a little more for every day I’m not running, it’s easy to feel stuck. But I suspect this rest is doing me more good than harm, and I’ve got a plan for next year, however loose at the moment.

Filed under: coaching, injury, recovery, training | 10 Comments »

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