Columbia 2012
In short…I survived.
And with half as much training as previous years, was 15 seconds away from posting my second best time in six attempts. Go figure!
I signed up for Columbia back in March, when things looked promising. I hadn’t been on the bike much outside and was only swimming once a week, but I was finally able to build my running mileage without pain.
Then, I tweaked my knee. Then, despite the tweaked knee, I ran the National Half Marathon…through the pain that had me wincing by mile 5. Then, took it easy and figured it was okay to run the Cherry Blossom 10 miler two weeks later. Couldn’t bend my knee at the finish line.
Cherry Blossom was April 1, which left me with seven weeks to Columbia–a notoriously hilly Olympic distance race. I hadn’t really been riding or running hills–and seven weeks out with a knee injury wasn’t time to start.
Instead, I played it safe. Started riding outside, but didn’t push the once-a-week outdoor rides to more than 30ish miles. Dialed back the resistance in my twice-a-week Spinning classes at any hint of knee pain. Ran conservatively, avoiding the hills for the most part.
I’d already shelled out $160 for the race and wasn’t about to have nothing to show for it. The greater incentive: I hadn’t had raced a real triathlon–a swim-bike-run–since 2009, what with my 2010 injury and a slow comeback and then cancelled swim at Nation’s Tri in 2011. I needed to get one under my belt.
Several changes a month before the race ended up helping immensely with training. First, I started a gig in Silver Spring, and to get up there dusted off my rusty old mountain bike for the commute three times a week. It’s only six miles but there are rolling little hills the whole way, which wouldn’t be much on a road bike but are that much more challenging on a rusty old mountain bike with a hefty pack strapped to your back. The extra 36 miles a week more than doubled my outdoor riding mileage, sadly enough!
Second, because of the commute I switched my swim to the Columbia Heights WSC pool. It’s shorter than the Y pool where I’ve been swimming since 2004 (25 meters instead of 25 yards), but is a lot less crowded and, more importantly, a saline pool. In the past year I’ve developed such an allergy to the level of chlorine in the Y pool that it’d leave me stuffed up for a good day after. The saline pool was a godsend, and I swear that my ability to actually breath during swim workouts made up for my limited swim training.
Finally, we got new bikes in my Spinning class–bikes with an RPG readout and very touchy tension knob that made it much harder to cheat.
Those three factors all added significantly to my otherwise lackluster training the month before the race. The week before I was definitely ready for an uber-taper. Tried to run a bit the Monday before and my body felt shot after just a mile. I dialed it way back in Spinning class, laid completely off the running (better to baby the knee!), foam rolled lots, especially the VMO, adductors, and bicep femoris (femori?), and generally took it easy.
My strategy for the race was simple:
* Don’t stress over time. Really, as much as I might begrudge my time later, just finishing this time really would be a victory.
* Try to relax and enjoy the swim (I always panic during the start of the swim, and just thinking of my first tri swim in nearly 3 years made me panicky in the pool a couple times).
* Go uber-easy on the bike. Take the hills in an easy easy gear. Remember the evil hills on the run.
* Chill on the run. If I had to walk the hills, so be it. Better to do so and be strong on the flats than to walk the last flat mile and limp across the finish line.
The strategy paid off. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d finish (again, it’s just an Olympic distance race, but oh the hills! And oh my knee…). I told myself to be happy with anything under a ghastly 3:15, but wasn’t even confident I could pull that off. I ended up finishing in 3:07:10–my third fastest time in six attempts at Columbia, and more than 5 minutes faster than my last time racing it in 2009 (my coach-prescribed speed work five days before the race was likely not a great idea that year). Fifteen seconds faster and it would have been my second fastest time.
Of course, there were other contributing factors. This was my first time racing Columbia on my Cervelo. It was also my first time racing this race with my fabulous fit by master fitter Smiley, and it definitely left my legs stronger for the run. Finally, having a live-in chiropractor in the form of my boyfriend, Dr. John Dandelski, made all the difference.
Every year–especially during the race–I say I’ll never race Columbia again. Now, after feeling relatively strong with so little training, I keep thinking–if I start working the hills now, working on building strength and speed, maybe, next year…
Running, running, stupidly running…
So I’ve been bad…very bad.
After spending the last year slowly getting back to running (but without any appreciable distance runs), I committed myself to building my distance in the first part of this year by signing up for the National Rock & Roll Half Marathon in March and Cherry Blossom 10 miler April 1.
All was going well until early March, when a run on the C&O Canal left me with a nasty two inch blister on my inner left arch (I strangely get these once every year or two, but have never pinpointed the cause). I blamed my two year old orthotics–and foolishly thought the solution would be to do my next long run in my four year-old orthotics instead. What makes us do things that would clearly seem crazy if we heard another person doing it? Alas, that was mistake one.
Mistake two: I stopped six miles into a ten miler the following weekend with a slight pain in my right knee-slight, but bad enough to feel it when I ran. Again, foolishly, I finished the ten miler. I’m not sure if it was the old orthotics or if the blister had altered my gait, but for two days I couldn’t bend my right knee without pain.
AND YET I still ran the National Half Marathon two weeks later. As a precaution I scaled back my running the two weeks before the race, with little more than two mile runs to keep my legs fresh, and taped my knee with KT tape (or rather, had Dr. John tape it. Needless to say, he did not approve of me racing with the knee pain).
The first four miles felt great! I felt relaxed, well within my modest goal pace, and believed the down time from running had done its job.
Then came mile five. Just as we were approaching Dupont Circle, I felt a sharp pain in that right knee. And wouldn’t it figure–I was so close to home. I hadn’t checked a bag at the race, so there was nothing stopping me from just quitting and walking home–nothing, except the fact that I’d never dropped out of a race before. That, and I was obviously still overcome with stupidity.
It wasn’t pretty, but I went on to finish, my left leg clearly doing the lion’s share of the work. By the end, my injured right knee felt okay–a bit sore, a bit hard to bend, but not as bad as when I’d initially injured it. My left quad, however, felt like it had run a marathon. After a few days I was pain free but still skittish about running, so naturally, two weeks later I ran the…
…Cherry Blossom ten miler. I love this race–it’s flat, is a beautiful course, and despite being a bit too congested (we were forced to walk twice within the first two minutes), the weather is usually great too.
This year was no exception. This time, the knee pain hit about 4.5 miles into the run. I gutted it out again, and felt mostly okay until the last 1.5 miles. At the finish line I had trouble bending that knee again, but with a little stretching and with the bike ride home it eventually loosened up.
It was foolish to do the two runs, I know, and I would have advised anyone else in my situation to just sit them out, but after being sidelined for so long, the sense of accomplishment I felt hanging those two additional bibs on my door couldn’t be beat.
That was a week and a half ago, and I’ve wised up enough to have laid off the running, with the exception of a couple rounds of pool running. I really need to recover, because just before the injury, I laid down $160 to sign up for a race I swore I’d never do again, the very hilly Columbia Triathlon. I’ve done it five times previously, all when I’ve been in much better shape, and each time its hilly bike and run always spank me.
And yet I desperately feel that need to cross another finish line again soon, this time at a triathlon. I haven’t been hill training on either the bike or the run, and this is no time to start, when I’m still nursing a knee injury.
Still, I’m confident I’ll be able to finish the race–not with a great time, mind you, but with that sense of accomplishment I haven’t felt in far too long.
The solution: Dairy free?
Growing up, I was never much of an athlete. I was often second-to-last picked in grade school gym class and never got into running because I always felt winded. Various doctors have diagnosed allergy-induced asthma and put me on various inhalers and allergy medicines, which help to a certain degree…I guess. Symptoms were always the worst in the fall, during ragweed season, giving credence to the allergy-induced asthma theory. The fact that cigarette smoke seemed to shrink my airways to the diameter of pin also bolstered that theory.Two years ago I finally had enough when, running up a hill in Woodley Park at an excruciatingly slow pace, I had my first full-on, bent-over, gasping-for-breath asthma attack. It was terrifying–especially since I wasn’t running with a rescue inhaler–and I was determined to get to the bottom of my problem.
I had my doctor order up a cardo-pulmonary exercise test. Average VO2 max of a female my age is about 34 ml/kg/min. Mine? 62.3, nearly double. I should be Lance Armstrong (not really–his is 83.5–but still, I should be kicking ass). The traditional docs recommended little more than Singulair and an inhaler, so I decided to see a naturopath to see if she could find out what was behind the shortness of breath.
Dr. Rhodo Nguyen ordered up blood allergy tests–different from skin allergy tests because they indicate if your body could be having a delayed immune response to a particular food. While there’s some debate about their reliability, most agree that they’re a great way to start determining what food sensitivities a person may have, and combined then with an elimination diet can get to the bottom of a patient’s issues.
Dr. Nguyen described it this way: we’re all able to tolerate a certain amount of allergens. Picture the amount you can tolerate as filling a drinking glass. If there’s something in your diet you’re allergic to that you consume daily, your drinking glass is already partly full. Add seasonal allergies on top of that and you’re pushed beyond your max. Remove the dietary bomb and you’ll, in theory, be able to tolerate seasonal allergies that much more.
A week after I took the tests I got a somewhat urgent call from Dr. Nguyen. Turns out that on a scale of 1-6– one indicating a mild response, six indicating a major reaction–I’m a five for dairy. Auughhh!! Since childhood I’ve always been disgusted but the thought of drinking a glass of milk, but no more cheese? No more ice cream? What about pizza?!?! (I’m supposed to mostly avoid soy too).
Fortunately, we live in an age where there are plenty of substitutes–coconut milk ice cream, rice milk, strange no-dairy cheeses–and I’ve mostly avoided dairy, caving to the occasional Italian meal and ice cream. I have to say, the difference has been noticeable. I’m not saying I became a super-athlete overnight, but I have noticed that congestion and shortness of breath tend to follow the “dairy-sin” days, and that I’ve felt far fewer symptoms and felt stronger in my workouts when I’ve been good and avoided dairy.
So for now, I’m down on the dairy and looking forward to the positive impact it’ll have moving forward.
Back in the game…almost
So with my injured ankle (and months getting my withered right calf back to normal size), 2010 was a wash race-wise. I was determined to get back in the game in 2011. I had a new secret weapon too, all thanks to Okcupid.com: a new boyfriend who happened to be a fantastic sports chiropractor with an extremities specialty–and that means he knows feet and ankles!
He won me over on the first date when, after I described my ankle issue, he had me remove my shoe at the bar and gave both ankles a once-over there and then. He even diagnosed a “lazy glute” issue on the right side and offered a range of exercises to get it firing again. Swoon!
With the steady attention of a wonderful partner my ankle was soon good enough to begin running again, starting carefully, avoiding hills, and building mileage gradually. I set a goal of hitting a modest 10K distance by June and hit it by the end of May. I really wanted to dive back into racing and get an Olympic-distance race or two on the calendar for August or even July, but I also knew I had a busy summer of travel ahead (Belize, Peru) and would be out of town more than I was here–meaning a scattershot training regime.
I needed a goal though so I signed up for my hometown race, the Olympic distance Nation’s Tri. I’ve volunteered for this race in the past but always swore I’d never do it myself. With fall rains there was always too great a chance of the swim being canceled, the price was steep for what would likely be a duathlon, and from what I’d seen of the bike course, it looked like a pretty crowded race.
Still, the lure of a no-travel-required hometown race was strong, and I signed up.
The summer was tough training-wise–besides a lot of travel, for the third summer that I’ve swum at a particular outdoor pool in the area, I ended up with a bad ear infection–one that required three rounds of antibiotics to cure. As a result, I’d been in the pool once during the five weeks leading up to race day. Between travel and illness my running was so sporadic that I never progressed beyond the 10K distance.
Fortunately, the strong odds of a swim cancellation worked in my favor. With abundant rains, lots of debris in the river, a strong current, and no doubt high fecal count, the swim was called off several days before the race. I was frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to tackle a “real” triathlon this year and really feel like I was back in the game, but at the same time relieved given my lack of swim prep and general open water swim fears.
The race went well enough. I had modest goals–average over 20 mph on the bike (my first race with my Cervelo P2) and under an hour on the run. The bike course was fun but frustrating–far too crowded for the distance, with dozen of people blatantly drafting and too many newbies riding in the passing lane. The road quality was great except for one area where I had to swerve around a guy riding in the left lane (with no one in the right–grrr!), hit a big pothole and lost my primary water bottle. Even though I lost time stopping to try to find the bottle (for naught–it had rolled across the highway by then) I think it actually helped–it left me with just a half a bottle of fluid on my frame, lightening my weight significantly.
In my age group, I finished in the top 10% on the bike and 20% for the bike-run–not bad given my limited training this summer and fact that I hadn’t raced in two years. Running is still slow going with some tenderness in the ankle after long runs, but I finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hoping to get back in the (indoor, fungus-free) pool this fall, and slowly build my running with these cool fall and winter temperatures. The goal is to be back in half Ironman shape by next spring–and knock off one, maybe two next year. It feels good to be (nearly) back in the game.
2010: Down but not out
So 2010 was rough. In mid-December 2009 I started to have a nagging pain in my left ankle that wouldn’t go away. It felt like a strain on the inside of the ankle, with a slight, nagging not-quite-pain-but-something’s-not-right on the outside of the same ankle. It was the sort of pain that would go away about 15-20 minutes into a run, allowing me to complete a 5-6 miler, only to have me hobbling by evening.
I iced it lots and went to see my sports podiatrist, who ordered up new orthotics and suggested a change in sneakers (you could twist my current pair in the middle–a sign, he said, that it didn’t have the support my problem feet needed). He also had me lay off running for a couple weeks.
A few weeks later I was back in the office, still with that nagging pain. I asked about an MRI; he dismissed the idea, saying that the treatment would be the same whether or not an MRI showed an injury and told me to lay off running another month. I continued to teach spinning and swim. Despite being so low impact, swimming bothered it most.
I was doing that dangerous dance all we recreational athletes do at multiple points in our lives: trying to lay off enough to allow the injury to recover, yet not so much that you lose fitness completely. I had the Cherry Blossom 10-miler on my calendar in April, after all, and a half Ironman in May as well as Ironman Louisville in August. I needed to stay in the game. Besides, I had those triathlete friends (you know who you are) calling me a wimp and telling me to just “man up” and work through the pain.
By February my podiatrist said I could run again, ramping up slowly. Mid March I was back in the office with the same pain. Finally, after three months, he ordered up an MRI and took the nuclear option–putting me in walking cast up to my knee. Recall, again, that in February he said I could run again; a month later he was putting me in a walking cast for 3 months. I left the office, promptly walked in the hallway bathroom stall, and burst into tears.
A couple weeks later I was back in the podiatrist’s office with the MRI results. “Well,” he said, “you have a torn tendon in right ankle. Pretty much what I guessed, with or without the MRI, right?”
I looked at him incredulously. “In February you told me I could start running again!” Whatever–I know it’s not an exact science, and frankly, the area where I had the most nagging pain, the inside of the ankle, “just” had tendonitis. The slight nagging pain on the outside–the part I told the radiologist to scan as an afterthought–was where the split tear lay (in the peroneus brevis). I’d be lucky to be running again by the fall. Goodbye, triathlon season. Goodbye, non-refundable $450 portion of my Ironman Louisville registration.
I took two weeks off, then, with the doc’s permission, resumed getting exercise. I booked a beach vacation to Jamaica for mid-June–the time I’d be getting the boot off–as a morale booster. I went back to teaching spinning twice a week in the walking cast, avoiding hills and out-of-seat moves but otherwise getting a good workout. I stayed out of the pool but hit the weights, and got in a long ride on an indoor spin bike weekends. I also walked to and from work in the boot, nearly a mile each way, so I was still able get some exercise. It kept me from sinking too deeply into a pit of despair.
By July I was riding again, and stronger and faster than ever (always amazes me how much faster you can ride when you’re not running 3-4 times a week!). I splurged on an outdoor pool membership to get in some pool running as well as return to swimming. Jumping back into running was harder. I held off until September, and started slowly, as the doctor ordered (slow as in two 6-minute runs the first week, adding only a minute or two to each run each week). I took bad advice from a running coach/triathlete who suggested hill walking (the worst thing you can do for a recovering ankle injury, I’ve since learned–inclines BAD!), then returned to hills on the bike by doing a very hill 120 miles of riding in October at a destination wedding in southern VA–also BAD. With the ankle aching, I swore off returning to running until the New Year.
I had plenty of time to reflect on what caused the ankle issue–both the tendonitis and the torn tendon–and have some suspicions. I’d decided to focus on my running in the fall, in an attempt to become less of a clomper. I invested in a pair of Newtons (and at $175 a pair, they ARE an investment) and built slowly in them, trying to focus on more of a forefoot strike. It think this was my downfall. Structurally, every physical therapist, chiropractor, and podiatrist I’ve seen has remarked on my overly-flexible ankles, saying I have very loose ligaments in my ankles that translate to too much “give.” It’s the reason I can’t wear heels (picture a wobbly baby goat), can’t ice skate, can’t rollerblade. If you think about it, focusing too much on an exaggerated forefoot strike with such “weak” ankles results in the stress of nearly my entire body weight coming down on those collapsing ankles. Is it any wonder I was in such pain? Needless to say, the Newtons have been donated.
So triathlon-wise, 2010 was a downer. It was my first year since 2004 without a triathlon, and broke my five-year streak of completing at least a half Ironman every year. On the up side, I did find myself with a lot more free time on my hands, and a lot less laundry to do each weekend. In a way I got some life balance back, and enjoyed not obsessing over missed workouts and upcoming races. The whole time, though, I had a nagging sense of fear and guilt. What if I learned to enjoy this laid-back schedule too much? What if the whole triathlon thing was just a phase in my life– and one that was ending?
I wanted to hang on to the new-found balance, but wanted my old sense of fitness back as well–that feeling that I could dash out the door at any time for an easy ten miler and crank out a half Ironman each summer without much extra training. The challenge, as always, is in finding the middle ground.
