Thursday, June 30, 2011

Wed & Thurs workouts w/Jim

Wednesday I was going to do an easy 12K with Jim, but in the middle of the day when it was hot for some heat training. Neither one really worked out. A thunderstorm came through right when we started walking (Jim was on the bike), and pretty soon, about 10-12 min into the walk, we had to duck into the Arby's across from SugarHouse Park because the lightning was so close. We watched as it hailed, then poured rain, and after about 5 min we were able to resume. I was feeling great through 6K, and then my adductor/groin started to hurt. Jim tried a bunch of things to help me out, but the muscle was already spasming and there wasn't much to do about it at that point. We stopped in Liberty Park for him to try and release the psoas and give me some relief; we got a few stares and an "Are you OK?" because I guess we looked pretty funny, but I was a bit too far gone for this to help much. I made it about 1 more km and then had to just regular walk/bike for about 0.5-1km. Then I was able to racewalk a little when Jim suggested I walk on a straight line to get my biomechanics in order. That really helped, and I racewalked probably 500m then called it quits. I went probably 9.5km in about 1:02:xx, but who cared? I was frustrated, and hurting.

Jim very kindly gave me an extremely painful deep tissue massage that afternoon, and I think that helped to loosen things up a bit too. We talked about what was going on with my technique to cause the pain. The walking in a straight line helped us sort out that it was my right hip causing the problems - knee needed to come through straight and lower, and I needed to allow the hip to go back a bit farther.

We planned for a hard track session today (Thursday), but I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it. My friend Nancy met us there to gather some pearls of wisdom from Jim, and I really enjoyed having her there with us (and she LOVED Jim's coaching!). Anyway, I warmed up for 1600m in about 10:12, and was feeling good. Then I was going to do some strides - went too hard on the first one and the muscle spasm started up again. GRRRRRR! Fortunately, after some stretching and some technique work, I was able to keep walking. I felt better and better as I walked, and I did 8K with the last 400m pretty hard, and I felt much better. I think I'll be up for the hard track session tomorrow instead. Anyway, the 8K was pretty slow, as I walked w/Nancy a bit, and I also went slow to focus on technique and fix the problems causing my adductor pain. It worked! I felt SO much smoother by the end and Jim said I looked really good. I just need to let the muscle rest and try the track workout tomorrow. I did the 8km in 51:31 with ave HR of only 143 (obviously taking it quite easy here!), but my last km was a nice 6:09, so I felt like that was progress with my muscle spasm. Here's the workout data; after the first 2 laps (500m then 1500m) they are more or less 1km splits.

1 comment:

Harriet said...

Ahh, trying to be an athlete while being middle-aged. Much of it is just plain old injury prevention/management. For me, things got worse at 45 years old or so.