Laws of gravity...

What goes up must come down (sometimes really hard...)
Last year I learned that you can quickly raise to a level of almost an athlete. In 6 months you an train to ride a bicycle for 100 miles, and run a marathon (or a half-marathon - even if you injured yourself half-way though the training). Then I learned that you can quickly diminish to almost "zero" by not training at all. Over the months following my Nike 2007 half-marathon, the only exercise I had was the one I was doing to rehabilitate my foot, from injury that I incurred during the training season, and the run. The new year came and gone, with me not doing much else than complaining about the foot not being 100%, or my work overtaking my life. But I guess I didn't know that it can go any worse from there. I guess when you think your life sucks, you never think that it can go worse, that you didn't hit the rock bottom. You need some sort of eye-opener, to realize that you're just a complainer, and you need to get your "shit" together - there are worse things than ankle fracture, foot sprain, tendonitis and asynovitis and fascitis - things that can be treated with physical therapy. So then at the height of the summer, I went to my PCP, and complained about a cyst on my chest, asking if it can be looked up, cause it looks like it's bruised up for along period of time, and it's sensitive to touch. The PCP send me to a general surgoen, who in turn guesstimated that it's a ruptured cyst and it can be taken out - nothing to worry about - a pretty much cosmetic procedure (except that in my definition cosmetic procedure leave you looking better not with just more scars, but I guess that not the definition that health-care companies in the US use). This is how my current journey began - and over next few days I'll try to cover that.

Peekaboo!!!

Yes - I know there was no updates for lets see... yes - pretty much 5 weeks. It's not that I'm back to my old habits, but it was 5 very frustrating weeks. First I was sidelined with the stress fracture. Then midway through what supposed to be healing process, I started having some pains in the middle of my foot (showed up to be nothing - at least on x-ray). So anyway today is my "big day" - I'm going in the evening to the TNT track workout, and I'll run for the first time in 5 weeks. It's very exciting - it's pretty much like if I would run for a very first time. The sad thing is that now after being cleared again for running, I was told to start slowly, and I have only about a month left to get enough training and mileage to run Portland on October 7th. Will this be enough? I'm definitely going to talk to our couches tonight, and see what I can do to make sure that I don't bonk in Portland (too bad the running team doesn't have SAG like the cycling team does).
Anyway - you can expect new updates again. I can officially run again!!!!

The road to calvary.

Growing up in a communist Poland, somehow I've never read the Tolstoy's trilogy "The Road to Calvary". Now after running 12 miles on Saturday, it seemed like this would be a perfect title for my blog post. Going to the meeting point, I have a lot of doubts and mixed feelings. I was nurturing what appeared to be some sprain of the ligaments in my right ankle. It was getting better every day, but I was unsure how it w0uld hold after the run. The last 4 miles I had some discomfort from what I thought was a too tightly laced shoe. Now I know that what I really had was stress fracture on my fibula by right ankle. It was "incomplete" fracture (medical term for saying that the bone wasn't split into separate pieces), nevertheless it was showing up on the X-Ray. I'm sidelined for next 4-6 weeks to get it healed, so no running for me. The bright side is that I was cleared for cycling and swimming. Cycling I can do, swimming I'd love to do, but I don't have an easy access to a swim pool. I guess for next few weeks the URL of this blog would not be really a true...
For now it should be actually http://tomekcantrun - oh well... they say that when it heals it should be better and stronger than ever before... See you until next time!!!

Bad things happen...

So I felt some discomfort in my right ankle and foot for a little while, but it wasn't really bad or anything, and I could still run a sub 7:00/mile without any problem. I didn't really pay attention to that, cause it almost looked like it's going away. I kept on training, running and biking. Then on Tuesday at the TNT track workout, it felt like the discomfort morphed into a slight pain of the tibial bone and tibiofibular ligaments. It only hurt when pressed with a finger, so I finished the track workout, with no visible problems. Then the next morning I woke up, and couldn't walk without pain in my ankle...
I called for appointment with a specialist, but that won't happen until Friday 7/20, so I have a little time to try to nurse this, and hope to get it better. For now, I'm really having to sit and wait, all at the time when I should be running weekly about 22-26 miles. I hope this is nothing serious, and it will go away quickly, cause I'm signed up for Wharf to Wharf, and then I need my feet to get me through the finish line in Portland on Oct. 7!!!

Weekend Adventures

This was probably the best weekend, I had since I started this blog. In some sense I made a full circle. You see my second post (but chronologically should have been first) was about biking up the Mount Hamilton. This weekend I did that again. I rode SAG for Justyna, so now she has something to brag about too!

Anyway, let's go back to the Saturday. For me it was a day of craziness. If I had only went swimming, I could have done a mini triathlon. Why? well first I went running with TNT folks. For this weekend, we had two options for organized runs. First was Rancho San Antonio starting 7am (uhh... ohh... if only people were on time), and then there was the option for Lake Almaden at 7:30am. I promised my friend Adam, that I'll go biking on Saturday, and we agreed to start around 9am (that way we would be done before it gets too hot). For that reason, I picked to run 6 miles with the folks running at the Rancho San Antonio. I've got there about 6:50am and found parking at the equestrian parking lot (no, I wasn't horse riding, but parking space is a parking space). I took the short (maybe not even 1/4 mile) jog to the meeting point as a warm-up. Then reality check - if you want people to start running at 7am, you need to lie to them, and tell them that the start time is 6:30 or at least 6:45. First we were waiting to about 7:10 to make sure that nobody else comes over for the run. Then (indeed few people showed up) we were waiting for the marauders to find a parking space (sorry, at that time on the weekend day, it's nearly impossible). Finally after they gave up, we went runing - at 7:30am. This made me stress that I'm gonna be late biking. I'm not sure if that influenced my running, or the hills put more stress on me than that. In the end the run was a good lesson about uphill (way more uphill that I'd ever wish for). We finished our 6 miles in about one hour, but I was really happy I went, since this was my first encounter with running uphill (about 600-700ft of elevation gain). It was also great to motivate other people - I think I made Mike start thinking about qualifying for Boston Marathon too. He's just about 1 month younger than me, so he can try to qualify with me in Portland, and then we can run together in Boston in 2009.

Anyway, as soon as I finished the run, I jumped into the car and went to meet with Adam. When I arrived at his house, he was already outside, and ready to go. I get myself readied and we hopped onto our bikes, and too off on (according to Adam "easy") about 20 miles loop over the Silver Creek area. His easy definition wasn't entirely matching my definition of an easy ride. We've hit about 8-9% grade hill shortly after getting out of the residential area, and it lasted for about 5 miles. Then it was recovery time - short steep downhill, and another short hill (about 10% grade). After the second ridge, we had crazy down hill with sharp switch-backs and turns. It was a little less hectic with about 5 miles of flat road, but then there was a time for a final climb - 10 maybe 11 minutes uphill, to burn the legs, and punish yourself (I guess that's a reward for having a good ride?). Anyway when we finished, I was really happy I did it. All I was missing at that point was a short swim, and I could have felt like I did a triathlon backwards. Well maybe next time :-)

When I've got home after all these escapades, I thought we were pretty much done for the weekend. I had both my run and bike ride, and Justyna had her cycling training ride, but to my surprise, she said she wanted to go to the top of Mt Hamilton. For me it was like making a full circle. Second post (but chronologically should have been first) in this blog was about my first time ride to the top of Mount Hamilton. I was really surprised, but agreed, that we'll go on Sunday morning for the challenging ride to the highest peak in the whole neighborhood. We started a bit (like 1 and half hour) later than we expected. The road to first ridge and then down to Joseph Grant Ranch, was something she already knew - we did that ride few weeks back, but aborted the ascent after seeing thousands of people at the park, for Muddy Buddy. Today, the conditions were perfect - almost no traffic on the road meant that we could ride at times two abreast and talk easily. We've made it to the park in about the same time as before (just over an hour), but the idyllic ride changed a little after starting the second climb. On the road to the next ridge Justyna's legs started to remember the ride she did the day before. I offered her to turn around many times, as I knew how hard it was for me that first time, back in April, but she had the true spirit of a warrior today. We were stop for few seconds when we had a chance and shade, so she could rest the legs a bit, but then she just keep going. At about 2 miles away, you can see the Lick Observatory so close, that you could almost reach it with your hand. That's when she knew she will make it to the top today. She bravely made it to the top and back and now has a big smile on her face, every time she thinks about it. And yes it is something to be proud of. Her head coach from TNT wrote to her:

"Justyna - you deserve a big pat on the back!! Mt. Hamilton is quite an accomplishment. Hope you didn't have to ride it alone. Congratulations."

The elevation chart is just a picture perfect proof of the ride:

Off from work...

This was a really lazy week for me. I took the whole week of, since we had the 4th of July off anyway. I didn't go to the boot-camp whole week (they had a substitute instructor anyway, cause Russ was out too). I didn't run at the Tuesday track workout with TNT (but I have a good reason for that). Really the only thing I did, was to run a TNT buddy run with Tanja, on Thursday. The run felt really hard, even though we went really slow (about 10/mile pace). I guess we can call it a tough couch-potato pace.

Anyway I hope to pick up some speed over the weekend (will try to run a TNT run in Rancho San Antonio, and possibly bike some too).

Finally it's the weekend!!!

So... I hope this should be a good start for a good lazy week. I know that next week I'll have it a little easier, because I'll be taking a vacation, in addition to the 4th of July day off. To make the weekend successful, first we had a TNT training run. then I went with Justyna and her friends on a ride through Los Altos area. The run was really great. Tanja (my new TNT mentor) and I drove together to Half Moon Bay. It was a big run, since both the Peninsula and South Bay teams run together. They offered runs from 4-10 miles in distance. Both Tanja and I, did the 10 miles loop. It was really great to run with her, not only because chatting while running 10 miles, makes the time goes faster. The greatest part was that we paced really well in the beginning, and we were running faster and faster all the way to the end. We had truely negative time splits for each consecutive mile we've run there, making the whole 10 miles in about one and half hour, with average pace 8:44.

That was the first half of the weekend, the second half was a bike ride. Justyna and her friends were going for a bike ride in Los Altos area, so I tagged along. It was nice roughly 25 miles long loop. The area there is so great, full of fantastic houses, rolling hills etc.

Double duty...

On Thursday I finally made it to the buddy run in Willow Glen. I barely made it I should say, getting around 5:30am is not really my thing, so I snoozed the clock. Before I knew it, I had to go. Thankfully I have packed myself the evening before, so I just quickly jumped into the shorts and shirt, and took off. When I've got to the meeting point, Tanja, Jeff and Trisha were already warming up and stretching. I joined them for a couple of minutes, and then we all went to the trail. We were running at a nice easy pace, and chatting along the way. Jeff was trying out the run/walk thing, so I stayed with him on the first walk break. I was also thinking about going back to the car with him, when he took off at about 2 miles, so that I can make it to the boot-camp, but I decided that I shouldn't slack off, and finish the whole course (~5.5miles). Of course, I wouldn't have a chance to slack off, even if I cut my run short. Today was the boot-camp testing day, so I was going to get some more running, plus some ab crunches and push-ups. Anyway, I finished the whole course with Tanja and Trisha, and after a quick round of post-run stretching, I was in a car going to my boot-camp. I barely made it without getting late, and at 8am I was getting a second dose of workout. I knew I already did 5.5 miles in the morning, so I decided to take the boot-camp "easy" - I did only 33 push-ups/min, 68 toe-touching crunches/2min and the mile I did in 7:16. What a day...

Pace yourself....

At the Tuesday track workout we were running a time trial (12x400 = ~3miles at tempo pace). It's much harder for me to run tempo in the evening - I'm tired after day at work, still agitated from driving in traffic stress, and already thinking about getting home. At least these are my excuses, when I tell you that I averaged only about 7:34/mile. It wasn't really anywhere near what I would want to be, and it felt kinda hard to run. Well just see it for yourself...