Pain and restricted motion. Began with just pain while walking and has devolved into being unable to walk for any kind of distance, much less do any exercise involving the knee.
And I have been to several orthopedic doctors. Was initially diagnosed with osteoarthritis, and was receiving meds and treatment for that. But it still continued to not get better, so went to get an MRI yesterday, which revealed the torn meniscus (in addition to osteoarthritis).
Have an appointment to see a specialist to discuss treatment options, but not for another three weeks, so it seems all i can do in the meantime is continue to take meds, ice, electric stim, and most important, rest.
But going from being highly active to not being able to do all the things I love to do–working out, taking long walks, hikes, golf–it’s been a daily struggle just to not be depressed as hell, never mind the knee pain.
I haven’t run a race since a half marathon last fall, but this is the first winter hibernation season in forever that I’ve been able to maintain decent shape. I was super proud of this run today.
I’ve been trying to keep most of my runs at a heart rate <150 bpm, and that’s sometimes a struggle. But I was very, very happy with this average of 147. I’m not sure how fast I could run right now, but I’m hoping to do a marathon this year and need to spend most of my time on these types of runs.
I’m a running donk, so you are gonna need to ELI5 this for me. Isn’t that time way slower than your half marathon time? What is the cause for celebration? What kind of HR were you at during the half? Is 285 ft a lot of ascent (I assume the half had none)? What kind of half marathon time do you think this run projects to?
Yes, this is slower then my race pace by quite a bit, but my focus is on getting most of my training mileage in slow runs. We talked about this earlier in this thread, where empireman had a lot of good stuff to say.
The celebration is because I sometimes struggle with keeping it slow and at a low heart rate. I’ll be going along at 9:00 or 9:15 or 9:30 or whatever and think, “Spidercrab, you don’t have all the time in the world to train. You need to make each run count, not run at this sissy pace. Pick it up.” So rather than a polarized easy/hard training schedule like I want, I might end up doing these in-between runs that are neither ideal for building a base aerobic capacity, nor a for building speed.
The half statistics were:
average heart rate 174bpm
max heart rate 191bpm
total ascent 268 feet
Right now, my watch is giving the following predicted race times:
5k: 19:14
10k: 40:46
Half: 1:33:27
Marathon: 3:36:07
No idea how realistic any of those are at the moment. I’ve never run a sub-20 5k, and that 10k time would be 3 minutes faster than my best. (To be fair, my best was from the last half, so I should be able to do better than that in a situation where I didn’t have to run another 7 miles.) I’m confident I couldn’t run that marathon time right now because I haven’t been doing any long runs.
Last week I received a hyaluronan injection in my knee, and after being basically unable to do more than hobble around my house for the past two months, suddenly I can walk again.
In fact, my biggest impediment to walking longer distances now isn’t knee pain, but rebuilding my walking muscles.
Been a bad week food wise. First time in 8 weeks I’ve eaten junk food.
Went into the office 3 times, and out for drinks twice. My work from home habits and home eating habits were pretty good. I clearly need to build healthy habits in other environments as well.
I am keeping up the higher activity and walking which is good. I’ve also been doing well on various squat variations, for fitness and strength. This is really the only exercise I can do at full weight without hurting the elbow injury. It sucks.
Have you read any running books? I’ve found some that helped me understand training a little better. I’m going to compare ones I have to poker books.
I started off with Hal Higdon’s Run Fast after I had been running for about a year with no real plan. It could be the Super System of running books: very popular, easy to read, but lots of filler and doesn’t get very deep.
Recently, I’ve been reading Faster Road Racing by Pete Pfitzinger and Philip Latter. This is more like a first generation 2p2 book (e.g., HEFAP). This goes deeper into the physiology of running and explains the different purposes of different types of training (building aerobic base, improving lactate threshold, improving VO2 max, etc.). It has also has a lot of training plans for specific distances. They all require higher mileage than what I’m ready for, but the principles in the book are helping me get more out of my lower mileage plan.
Another book I have is Daniel’s Running Formula by Jack Daniels, and I’ve set this aside for later. Like Bill Chen’s Mathematics of Poker, this is a more advanced book with a lot of good quantitative information that also expects the reader to do a significant amount of work to apply the lessons it lays out to their specific circumstances.
A few. I bought this one in 1999, before my second marathon: How to Train For and Run Your Best Marathon. Flipping through it, it’s pretty basic but still a nice comprehensive book for a first timer.
I bought Lore of Running around the same time. This is longer and more technical, and I don’t really have any recollection of it.
I bought Daniels’ Running Formula a couple of years ago. It’s good, and I should probably read it again.
Not particularly a training book, but Born to Run is a really good read. I remember that I read it on a plane, and I got off the plane absolutely CONVINCED that I was going to become a barefoot runner. (Spoiler: I did not)
I think being given codeine as a cough suppressant has kinda fucked me up.
Sure my cough has dramatically improved but now I’m constipated, dehydrated, exhausted and for some reason still have a very mild headache that won’t go away. I also have something that I can only describe as brain fog.
I only took 1 30 mg pill Monday night before bed and because of the effects, I opted for a half pill the next night (I mean it dramatically helped my cough). But now I feel a bit worse.
Tomorrow morning, I have to talk to the GP about it and she’ll either give me the okay to go back to work which I hope she doesn’t or she won’t. Either way the last 5 days have been shit. I’m not even hungry. I just eat because I know rationally that I have to in order to survive.
Following up on the “slow running at low HR” post, I ran harder last night:
Average heart rate was 173 bpm
It’s not clear at all to me that this was a more productive workout. I certainly felt more banged up afterwords - my ankles were a little sore and my legs felt heavier after the longer, slower run from Sunday. I think this type of faster run is good every once in a while, but I definitely can’t do it consistently - too much risk of injury and, even without injury, it just makes it so hard to build up mileage with back-to-back workouts.
I got better results mixing comfortable longer runs (1 hour +) with fast runs that were more like interval training for 20 minutes. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest running 1 hour runs at an elevated heart rate, I would do shorter runs at faster past and very slowly increases your pace in longer runs.
Yes, definitely, this is something I try to do once a week on the treadmill. The run last night was a weird confirmation - “I wonder if Melkerson is right and that I should be going faster on these longer runs.” “Nope, definitely not.”
