Phantom Excuses

Too much speed = Injuries 4 me

If I stopped for every ache and pain in my body, I wouldn't get anything done! We've all been there at the end of a workout. That pain in a ligament or that new crunch in a joint. The one that didn't go away by the morning. So do you instantly skip your next workout? Do you manage the pain and train through it anyways?

I see alot of injury posts lately, luckily most of which disappear in a few days. There is a common theme among the tri-blogs - PANIC! When the pain is still there in the morning it seems the majority of us tend to freak out as to whether it will impact the training schedule. The unkown - we all fear it - 'How long is this injury going to last?!!?!!' and 'What the heck is causing it?!?!?!' Scary stuff.

I think the biggest contributing factor to the crazed panic that has swept everyone's training plans is inexperience. I'm one of them. Ultimately this time of year we're just settling into our workouts and push too hard or go too long and now we're seeing the results of our impatience. I'm guilty for sure. Then again I recall reading an uber-endurance athelete's view on training injuries. Basically he ignored them. There will always be an ache or a pain or a crunch, you just have to manage the pain. If you stopped everytime you felt something 'off' then you would never get to train. Obviously there is a limit to this approach, eventually you could do serious injury with repeated abuse to it but his biggest defence to that was Experience. With experience those uber-athletes have learned which pain is good and which pain is bad. They've felt every ache and pain and by testing the limits of those warning signs they know just how far they can continue to push themselves training 'injured'.

The other neat part of the story was that most are not truly injuries. Discomfort, pain, tweak, inflamed blah blah blah it will all likely disappear in 48hrs so the world is not going to end for you. Dont throw a wrench into a training plan for these phantom injuries. If you keep stopping for the mildest of things - how will you test your limits? How will you learn about your body? Pushing the boundries is key to improvement. Just shut up and run, ride, swim.



No Hope for me lol



So having said that, being the inexperience impatient noob that I am - I went for a run last night. The TP says 12Km, I was going for at least 5 and more likely 10 depending on what my foot has to say about it. Immediately I had to tone it down, I was going too fast. I had a hard time keeping myself at a reasonable pace, I was still riding that wave of energy coming off a recovery week. The foot was present but not overpowering. I did notice a new crunch in my right knee that got increasingly annoying by the end since it never did go away. In the end I did the entire 12Km. Surprisingly my foot was only a 3.5/10 by the time I got home. Some ice and stretch helped keep it down. I think I'll keep Thursday's run on the schedule for now and I'll chalk the knee up to phatom pain, for now. My back pain however is a solid 4/10. And extremely annoying. I've dealt with back pain my whole life. This winter was a welcome release from it, I attributed it to my training but now it is back. I'm very certain is was the bad posture and torquing on wrenches while building the wife's bike. What a wimp!

We spent the rest of the evening curled up on the couch watching season 2 of Chuck. That run combined with the early morning killer ride made for an extremely exhausting day. Again, I slept like a baby.

TRAINING:

Run - 1:10hrs 12Km

Garmin data didn't upload. I'll get it up tomorrow.
Garminconnect SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS lol