Hips don't lie

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been having a lot of pain issues in my right hip. The pain started after a handful of pretty crummy training runs following the half marathon, but really peaked a couple days after my last long run. Basically any time I put any weight on my right foot I was treated to sharp stabbing pains in my lower back/hip.

Even after a week of rest I was still having on and off pain so last week I decided to get my first sports massage. Since that appointment I have had almost no pain (HOORAY!). So let's talk about that massage.

I decided to book an appointment with Chris for a few reasons, the number one reason being that he is a former University of Michigan track athlete. I figured another runner would understand my determination to make it to the starting line. Add to that experience working with Big 10 varsity athletes and physical therapy patients. And two years coaching in the university's Olympic Sports program. Yeah, Chris definitely know athletes. I definitely made the right decision.

The appointment itself was not really what you would expect when you hear massage. There was no laying on the table and relaxing. Chris started my comparing my right and left hips and established that my right hip was rotated forward. Then I was treated to a lot of "Hold your arm/leg like this, I'm going to try to push/pull it away, don't let me." This helped Chris identify which muscles weren't working properly so he knew which trigger points to focus on (or something like...I'm not an expert). He also gave me some homework to do twice every day and before/after every run.

1. Lie on the floor with knees bent. Bring my right knee to my chest and clasp my hands behind my thigh. Try to push my leg down but use my hands to resist the movement. This should help rotate my hip back into the correct position.
2. Massage the tender area at the bottom point of my right shoulder blade. I don't honestly remember what sort of voodoo magic this is supposed to do but supposedly it will help with my legs/hips. 
3. Use a lacrosse ball to massage my glutes. As a bonus this hurts on both sides, but kind of in that hurts-so-good sort of way.
4. Bonus: Massage and stretch my hip adductors. 

Per Chris' recommendation I headed out for a short run later that day. I was able to run 2 miles, but I could tell things were falling apart quickly during the second mile. I experienced some muscle aches in my hip for about an hour after that run. My complete lack of self control lead me to running another 2 miles the next day. I could tell that I felt stronger, but the last mile still wasn't perfect. This time the muscle aches only lasted about half an hour. Those two post run segments of pain were the only pain that I have had since the massage.

I utilized some better self restraint on Saturday and took a rest day. On Sunday I managed a glorious 5 mile run with only minimal discomfort during the last half mile. I maybe could have pushed it up to 6 miles, but I didn't want to risk causing a setback. I had no pain after the run.

With just a week left before the marathon I know that I can not make up any of fitness that I lost during the past two weeks. It is what it is. What I need to focus on is getting to the starting line as healthy as possible. I booked another two appointments with Chris for the upcoming week, so that should hopefully keep my hip in check. So long as I can keep myself from overdoing it on the running, I should make it to the starting line (fingers crossed on the finish line part of things!)

Training lately...

I haven't managed to post a training update for the past two weeks. Unfortunately this is because things have not been so great after the half marathon. I'm sorry for the radio silence and for the excessively long post you are about to read.

In the week following the race (September 21-27) I was pretty worn out. I did my best to listen to my body and took a few extra rest days and, when I did run, I reduced the mileage. My total for the week was 30.48 miles. The worst run was my final 20 mile run. After some moderate discomfort/pain in my glutes for the first 13.5 miles, my right hip flexors cramped up and refused to relax. Feeling defeated and discouraged I walked the rest of the way home (about 2 miles). Weekly total 30.48 miles.

Not an ideal final week by any stretch, but finally I had reached the taper! The next week (September 28-October 4) was complicated by the fact Thursday-Sunday would be spent in Toronto. I was planning on front loading some mileage, but after cutting Sunday short, I thought this sounded stupid. My body definitely agreed because on Monday and Tuesday my lower back/right hip was in complete agony. I needed to rest.

I looked through Advanced Marathoning and was relieved to discover that missing up to 10 days of training within the final 8 weeks of training should not have any negative affects on my goals. Hooray! I took full advantage of that fact by taking almost the entire week off. When I got home Sunday night I went out for an easy 3 mile run. I'd be lying if I said it felt great. It merely felt okay and didn't seem to make my pain any worse. Weekly total 3.1 miles.

Which brings us up to this current week (October 5-11). I tried to run on Tuesday and made it less than a mile. Too much sharp, stabbing pain in my hip. That night I realized that rest alone was not going to get me through the race. That night I booked an appointment for a sports massage for Thursday morning and hoped for the best.

My biggest concern is that once the pain reaches a level that I can not run through, even walking becomes excruciating. My I'm-not-a-doctor conclusion is that something in my right hip is messed up/out of place. It seems to have varying levels of messed up. When it reaches too far out of place, it starts pinching my sciatic nerve. The only thing that will relieve the pain is keeping weight off of my right leg. I don't know what I will do if this happens during the marathon.

That said, the sports massage really, really helped. I feel like I could write an entire post about the massage. I'm planning to book another couple appointments before the marathon. So hopefully I will have some time to talk more about the treatment! Chris, my massage therapist, said that my right hip was rotated forward (anterior pelvic tilt). He worked on fixing that and gave me a list of exercises/self massage things to do twice a day as well as before and after each run. He also suggested that I try running again that very day, which I guess is what happens when you see a guy with a background in running.

I was able to run 2 miles last night. The first mile felt completely normal! The second mile slowly slid downhill, but I stopped before the pain got too high. Once I did my new post run routine, things were feeling better, but still tender. A couple hours after the run I felt completely fine!

I was originally thinking that I would take today as a rest day; no reason to push myself right back into the pain. However I woke up this morning with absolutely zero pain (for the first time in over a week!). So now I kind of want to run! I've hardly run at all in the past two weeks and I miss it!

Half #7 - CC River Run 2015

Let me start by saying I finally did it! I finally broke 1:45 in the half marathon! I don't think this race could have gone any better; it was a perfect day on the perfect course. It was one of my best executed half marathons (if not the best!) and I managed negative splits.

Pre-Race Thoughts
I was very nervous leading up to this race. I have been chasing 1:45 for quite awhile and I did not want to finish yet another race filled with disappointed. I started drafting up a "pre-race thoughts" post for the blog, but then I started feeling a bit confident. And somehow feeling more confident flipped around to feeling even more anxious. I felt so confident going into Charlevoix and every comment I received on this post was so supportive. I just did not want to have to come back and be all "Look at me, the girl who can't make reasonable race goals!"

So I alternated between thinking about time goals [sub 1:45. If it is a stars align sort of race sub 1:43. I didn't even share that dream goal with my husband.] and repeating to myself: "Do your best and see what happens." My husband also reminded me that my goal race this fall is Grand Rapids, not this half marathon. Pushing to an injury would be stupid.

Pre-Race Shenanigans
The race takes place in Lansing which is over an hour away from my house. My husband's childhood home is just 20 minutes away from the race, so we drove up Saturday afternoon and spent the night. I spent the day hydrating like a champ and obsessing over the race.

Packet pickup was a breeze. There was no expo; bibs and shirts could be picked up from a local running store. For the past two years, the women's shirts have been absolutely terrible; the "long" sleeves are at least 2-3 inches too short. Last year I exchanged for a men's small. This year I registered for a men's small and they upgraded the shirts to a nicer brand. I was a bit disappointed that they wouldn't let me swap for a women's small.

We grabbed some pasta from Noodles and Co. on our way out of town. There is a Noodles and Co. in Grand Rapids as well, so I will be repeating this exact pre-race dinner in four weeks. I was having a hard time relaxing Saturday night, so when my husband wanted to grab a beer from a local brewery, I decided to join him. Maybe not the best pre-race practice, but I balanced it out with 3 extra glasses of water while at the brewery and it helped take my mind of the race, which was really needed at this point.

Race Morning Disaster
The race started at 8:00 am, so I planned to get up at 5:50 and leave for the race at 7:00. That would easily give me 40 minutes to warm up and use the restroom one last time before that race. Unfortunately I had not accounted for a million closed roads (construction, not race related) and the ones that were open were one-way streets making it nearly impossible to get to the start line. Eventually we gave up on parking and I hopped out of the car at a stop sign near-ish the start line at 7:40. I jogged through the Start/Finish area looking for the port-a-johns. Instead of warming up as planned I spent most of my time in line.

Business taken care of, I had a few minutes to warm up a bit and make my way to the start. I had no idea if my husband had managed to find a parking spot or not. I did not think I would be able to find him before the start, so I almost didn't even look for him. Until I realized that I had not taken my inhaler. I usually take it 20 minutes before a race. Fighting through tears I made a panicked search for him and prayed that he ignored me when I said I didn't need the backpack of running supplies that was in the car.

With 5 minutes to spare I found him and was flooded with relief when I realized he was wearing the backpack. Not an ideal situation, but way better than trying to race without taking my inhaler. My exercise induced asthma is mild; I don't take any medication for short, easy runs. I hoped that if I could keep it easy during the first couple miles, that I would be okay.

The Race (finally)
I lined up between the 8:00 pacers and the 8:30 pacers. My tentative plan was to keep the first mile around 8:15 and then work my way up to the 8:00 pacers. After 5 miles, IF I was feeling strong I would start working my way down to the 7:50s and 7:40s.

Away we go! (I'm wearing the purple and orange compression socks.)

I threw this plan away when I breezed through the first mile in 8:03. At least it was over 8:00! I decided to hang with the 8:00 pacers for the next 4 miles (so sort on plan), but a few minutes later I glanced down and saw my current pace was 7:48. That was much too fast for mile two, so I let them pull ahead a little and focused on my own pacing.

The first 5 miles of the race are basically a straight line down a road, then you hop onto the river trail, which is a paved multi-use path, significantly narrower than the road. The pace group was still right in front of me and I knew that a group that large was going to end up creating a bottleneck when the course narrowed. At about 4.5 miles I worked my way up toward the front of the pack, even so once we hit the trail our pace slowed to 8:15ish. This was the part of the race that I wanted to be picking up the pace, not slowing down. I also worried that since the pacers had started a bit fast, they were going to slow it down a bit to get back on track. When there was a section with a wide strip of grass alongside of the trail, I hopped over to the grass and kicked the pace up.

With the pace group officially behind me, I was ready to start picking up the pace. Except I had just run the first 5 miles faster than I anticipated. I told myself that I should hold it steady for another three miles and then make a move into the 7:40s. A couple tenths of a mile in front of me were two girls with matching singlets that seemed to be holding a consistent pace. I used them to set my pace and glanced at my watch every now and then to check my pace. It was too fast, but I felt strong.

That hoard of people in the distance is the 8:00 pace group.

I saw my husband out cheering for me at mile 7, which was sort of expected. That was what we had planned, but with the parking disaster I wasn't sure if he would want to leave his spot. But there he was cheering me on and taking pictures! He even had my inhaler at the ready in case I needed it. Best husband, for sure!

Mile 8 is home to my favorite aid station ever! All of the volunteers are wearing grass skirts and leis and there is Hawaiian music playing. It is just so much fun! I continued pacing off of the matching singlet girls (they were still a solid tenth of a mile ahead of me, so it isn't like I was running right on top of them or anything). They must have had a similar race strategy because the pace was gradually starting to pick up.

One of my favorite race pictures! Feeling strong and still smiling 9 miles in!

At mile 9 the marathon and half marathon courses split. As I turned follow the half course I was surprised to see my husband again! I love the pictures he took, there is sunlight streaming through the trees and I look like I am out for a leisurely jog. The pace still felt easy at this point and I was feeling very confident about breaking 1:45 (compare to Charlevoix when the pace started to feel difficult at the half way point).

Miles 9-11 passed quickly. I don't really remember much about this part of the race. I remember focusing on my breathing quite a bit because I was worried about getting a side stitch, but that never happened. This was also the part of the race where I started picking off some runners as I continued to pick up the pace.

Really making it look easy (love this picture).

With 2 miles to go, I started to wonder if sub 1:43 was an option. I'm not really that great at math while running, so I while I knew it would be close, I wasn't sure if it was a possibility. The last two miles also felt like the longest miles ever, even though they were my fastest. For the first time in the race the pace felt hard to maintain. It did not help that at that point you are on the east side of the river but the race finishes on the west side. You can see the bridge that crosses the river (right at mile 13!) for almost a mile so it feels like you are almost done, but you aren't.

When I hit the bridge I was too focused on kicking hard to take a glance at my watch. I knew I had 1:45, but I wasn't sure on 1:43. I sprinted past two people in the finish chute like they were standing still. I felt like I was flying. I crossed the timing mat and was overwhelmed with joy. All those miles, weeks, months of training finally paid off.

I was hunched over trying to catch my breath when I realized I had never stopped my Garmin. I quickly hit pause and about lost my mind when I saw 1:42:41. It was a perfect, stars-aligned sort of day after all.

Time on that last split is long since I didn't stop my watch right away.

 Post Race
Post race was kind of a blur of emotions. There was a lot celebrating and thanking Kendall for his amazing support. After some pizza and a banana I was able to locate a tent for swapping shirts (hooray!) and track down my official times. I can not believe that I took almost 4 full minutes off of my time!

What's Next?
[besides the Grand Rapids Marathon in 4 weeks!]

Before the race I spent some time analyzing my training leading up to CC River Run 2014, Charlevoix 2015, and CC River Run 2015. I'd like to spend a bit more time looking into my past training so I can work on shaping a half marathon specific training plan. I'd really like to dedicate a large portion of 2016 to half marathon training, because I'm already starting to think about breaking into the 1:30s (only joking, sort of).