Michael Sandler in Seattle

Michael Sandler is in Seattle on his book tour for "Barefoot Running," and fortunately I had a chance to go hear him talk about his barefoot journey last night. It was great to hear his story, and to get some in-person demos of some of the exercises he suggests. I was also glad to see I'm not the only one obsessed with foot-strengthening exercises! I've flipped through the book, but am looking forward to really digging in and giving it a proper review.
  I was surprised at how diplomatic Michael was (considering we were in a shoe store), about the shoe options folks might use on their way to barefoot running. I suppose I shouldn't have been -- for as many purists who say the only way is to go cold turkey, and switch entirely over to barefoot, there seem to be more who propose gradually making the transition. I wonder if the former might be better in some ways, but you are just aren't going to convince most everyday runners of that -- so I liked that he made barefooting seem more accessible to ordinary shod runners.
  I also enjoyed learning that his running flat of choice (when not barefoot, of course) is the same running flat I bought last year. I don't wear mine these days, as I now prefer my Vibrams, but I somehow feel vindicated in knowing of another barefooter who wears them.
  Inspired by the talk, and anxious to enjoy the sunny part of the day, I got out for a 1.2 mile barefoot run-- I stopped not because my soles hurt, but because my ankle started to hurt. I'm thinking of keeping the mileage low and obeying the ankle pain a little more for the next couple of weeks, maybe focus on riding now that the weather seems to be turning (ever so slowly) toward warmer(ish)ness. After the run, I went for a 1 hour bike ride with some hills....and finished just before the massive downpour began!

Bikilas are on their way!

I ordered my new pair of grey and green Vibram Bikilas today! And since a friend of mine just happens to be visiting this week from Boston, he's going to pick them and bring them with him so I don't have to wait for shipping. Can't wait to try them out! Thanks to Justin at Birthdayshoes.com for the heads up about their release at City Sports this afternoon!

40th Birthday Goal Setting

I ended my 40th Birthday Week celebration with the 8k Beat the Bridge this morning. I'd once hoped to celebrate 40 with a spectacular running feat (a Boston qualifying marathon, for example), but I'm doing my best to be grateful that I can run as far as a can right now, in spite of some ankle pain that is holding me back from longer distances. Several months ago, I couldn't run at all without pain, so this is good progress.

Plus, I'm now getting to run with a friend who is new to running, and seeing her enthusiasm for setting and meeting new goals is helping me look forward to setting and meeting my own, as I continue to heal. I decided to forego barefooting for my Vibrams today-- a healing blister on the ball of my foot near my pinky toe was just still too tender for 5 barefoot miles. But the desire to do this run barefoot had me out barefooting more often than I might have been otherwise these past couple weeks, so I'll just have to keep that momentum going.

I set a whole plan for Birthday Week -- and while some of the plans came off beautifully, others not so much. Nonetheless, I like the planning part -- even if having a plan means that sometimes the plan has to get adjusted to the day's realities. My big-picture running "plan" was to try to qualify for Boston this year. Clearly that's on hold until my ankle issue is resolved, but still I think I can set a BQ marathon as a goal. I want to qualify for Boston. Preferably while I'm 40. I'm pretty frustrated right now, with an injury once again impeding forward progress, but I'm saying out loud, I'm not giving up. My goal is Boston. This year, next year, whenever. I've been fighting back from injury for a year now, and I'm a lot better off than where I started -- and at least now I'm running with dramatically better technique. So WHEN this thing finally gets resolved, I have every reason to believe I will be able to run stronger than ever. Until then, I won't give up. I just won't.

Up to 4.5 miles barefoot

I ran a full 4.5 miles barefoot yesterday, along the Burke-Gilman rather than Green Lake, since I've found it to be less pebbly. Not that the pebbly will be so much of a problem here soon, but as I'm just in the process of regaining my summer feet, less pebbly is more appealing than more at the moment. I cut off the run at 4.5 miles because my usual ankle twinge was starting to cause some pain, but it's just as well. The soles of the balls of my feet, though feeling good during the run, were stinging last night. So it'll be a day off before another barefoot outing.

In other news, it's now 3 days till my 40th birthday, and I began Birthday Week with an afternoon visit to Red Mango. I'm tyring to figure out whether I want to do a barefoot run on my birthday, or just a long run, or maybe a long bike ride. Nah...now that I actually give it some thought, it's going to have to be a long run-- particularly since my goal is to try to run a Boston-qualifying marathon sometime in the foreseeable future. I'd like to say "in my 40th year" but feel like it's hard to be so ambitious with this ankle still posing some issues. But a good goal shouldn't be one that's too easy to meet, now should it?

The Sun Shines Again

At long last, we had a nice SUNNY weekend to play with! I took the opportunity to get a couple of bike rides in, 1.5 hours on Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday (and to get a little bit of much-needed yardwork done). I did a short 1 mile BF run on Sunday morning before meeting a friend for coffee. It was supposed to be 3 miles, but it was Sunday morning, and I wasn't moving as quickly as I would've had to in order to get 3 miles in before meeting my friend.  Besides, the soles were feeling a little sore, so I didn't mind taking another day mostly off. Will go out again tomorrow and see how things go.

Barefoot Prep for Beat the Bridge

After doing an 8 miler on Monday with ankle pain starting in mile 5, I was motivated to get out and start getting some real barefoot miles in this week. I'm hoping that will help give my body some feedback to help improve my form in hopes that it might help with the ankle. I'm doing some more regular calf and ankle stretches to see if that will help too. The last thing the podiatrist told me back in January was that if this ankle pain was still around after the PFF was resolved, that I should come back for an MRI so we can try to get an accurate diagnosis of what's wrong. But I guess I've been hoping that this issue might go away on its own as I continue building up strength through VFF and BF running. There's been progress in that it takes longer to start hurting, but actual resolution would be welcome at some point!

I'm running the Beat the Bridge 8k this coming Sunday and I'd really like to run it barefoot. In recent weeks, I had worked up to 3.5 mi. barefoot, but then tried to do some speedwork barefoot (just to see if I could--and yes, I could) and ended up with blisters that put me back in VFFs for a week. That was clearly a genius move on my part.

5/7 (Fri) 3 mi. BF
5/6 (Thurs) 4 mi. (2 VFF, 2 BF)
5/5 (Wed) 1/2 mi. BF, Cycling 50 min.
5/4 (Tues) 1 mi. BF
5/3 (Mon) 8 mi. VFF
4/28 (Wed) Cycling 1:11
4/27  (Tues) 1/4 mi. intervals at avg. 1:52. BQ training goal is 1:41. Eeks!

My fastest 3 miles ever

Before we ran our marathon last May, I had thought perhaps I would set the goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon in the fall of 09 and then running Boston in spring of 2010, just before my 40th birthday. Well, my foot injury didn't quite let me go forward with that plan, so I readjusted and thought maybe instead I could instead try to qualify for Boston as my 40th goal.

So this week I cracked open my marathon training book, and started looking at the interval and tempo run paces for a potential BQ attempt. Dang, those are some fast times! But I decided to see how close I could come to some of the prescribed training paces, thinking maybe I could spend the next couple of months getting back into some speedwork, and then starting to actually train in June/July for a fall marathon, ankle permitting. Too ambitious? Perhaps, but let's play around with it a little....

4/25 (Sun) 8 mi.
4/23 (Fri) 3 mi. (BF)
4/21 (Wed) 6 mi. -- First attempt at a 3 mi. tempo run at the BQ program pace of 7:56 min/mi. I laughed when I read that, and said out loud, "I can't run that!" But I was wrong, I can. I ran 8:00ish, 7:47 and 7:52. The fastest I've ever run 3 miles straight.
4/20 (Tues) 1:30 bike ride
4/19 (Mon) 5 mi.
(1.25 BF, 3.75 VFF 1/4 mi. intervals at 1:46, 1:48, 1:53, 1:55-ish.  BQ training interval pace is 1:41. Eeks!)
4/17 (Sat) 5.3 mi. (run/walk)
4/16 (Fri) 2:25 bike ride
4/13 (Tues) 5 mi.
4/11 (Sun) 2:30 bike ride
*All runs in VFF except where noted as BF.

Feb-Mar Rebuilding

I spent Feb and March slowly building up my mileage (2.5 miles, mixed in with 3s and 3.5 up to a 4, then a 5 in early March, 5.5-6 in mid March) and getting some more cycling miles in. No training goals, just trying to rebuild the running and cycling stamina. I'm running entirely in the VFFs now.

The plantar fasciitis seems to have completely resolved, though the ankle pain lingers. Fortunately, it is coming later and later in my runs, but still I'm looking forward to figuring out how to make it go away. I ran a 7 miler this morning, but in miles 6-7 I definitely had to stop and futz with the ankle a bit to make it to the end of the run (and by futz I mean do ankle circles, and just generally rub on/pound on the sore area). It's like I'm trying to push whatever is out of place back into place long enough to finish the run.

Run-Walk Program Done

The 3-week walk-run program went smoothly, and at the end of three weeks I successfully ran 26 minutes straight.

A New Chapter Begins with Tears

So much has changed since my last post.

On Nov. 13 I saw the podiatrist again, who suggested based on the tenderness of the heel that I "start over" with the effort to fix the PF. No running for a month. And since cycling was causing that weird ankle pain, no cycling either. Wear supportive shoes while walking. He assured me that we needed to use the supportive shoes for the time being, as a "cast to allow my foot to rest." (Fair enough, but if you can call the shoe a "cast" for an initial healing period, good luck if you think you're going to convince me that that's the same shoe I should use for running when that time comes.)

Considering that I thought I had already done this no running approach, and had been so good at listening to my body by taking two months off right after the marathon, the idea of starting over, again, 6 months later, with no running at all was beyond irritating. On the one hand, it turned out to be the worst two months of my life to not be able to do the exercises I enjoy most. On the other, I'm not sure I would've been doing much exercise during this time even had I been able. I was spending way more time and energy on my much-loved cat than I had expected. Her health, and extra efforts to spoil her rotten (since we weren't sure how much time we'd have left with her) took a surprising amount of time out of my days (and my nights - I am an easy and deep sleeper, and even I started taking a sleeping pill).

On Dec. 14, I saw the podiatrist for a follow-up assessment. The foot was getting better, so he told me to keep doing what I was doing. Great. Another month - no running, no cycling. I had decided I would give his way 2-3 months and then decide if I was going to go back to my own efforts (I could see the value of "resting" an injury -- but not for whatever I deemed to be "too long.")

This sucked more than simply because I couldn't run. My cat was having some post-surgical issues and this was really emotionally draining for me and my husband. Having now spent 3 months caring for a dearly loved 13-year-old cat with post-surgical/cancer-related issues, I can't imagine how parents stay sane caring for their chronically ill non-furry babies. It's so scary and heart-wrenching, and tiring. Two of the most stressful months of my life, and I couldn't run. Which isn't to say I couldn't do any exercise, but I didn't. I just wasn't in the mood to make the extra effort to go beyond my comfort zone -- too much else to think about.  (Eventually I did buy a new bathing suit, though, and I've gone swimming a handful of times. So at least that little alternative-activity hurdle is out of the way.)

Between mid-December and mid-January, I started seeing someone who is something between a massage therapist and a chiropractor to work on my ankle. This was someone recommended to me by my long-time massage therapist, as he specializes in ankle and wrist issues. I also started standing on a baseball for 3-5 min. a night before going to bed. (I read that a softball should be used, but all I had was a baseball. And after a few days the hardness of the baseball was not a big deal, but instead felt pretty darn good stretching out that plantar fascia.)  I figured this certainly wouldn't hurt anything, and perhaps was at least a good attempt at an alternative to wearing the Strassburg Sock the podiatrist had prescribed, as I found that it hurt my big toe so much that I had to pull it off during the middle of the night.

I don't know what combo of things did it, but around New Year's, after about 2 weeks of the baseball and 2 visits to the ankle guy, my PF started feeling noticeably better.

On Jan. 11, I saw the podiatrist again, who poked at the foot and determined it was time to start me on a run/walk program (we're talking 1 min. run, 1 min. walk x 5 -- serious new runner type program). I was grateful to be at a point where it seemed reasonable to everyone involved that I start back into the running, however slowly.

But then on Jan. 12, everything in my world stopped, as we had to put our sweet BabyCat to sleep. And so we entered a new chapter in our home with considerable sobbing, grief, and heartache. I'm not going to put down here all my thoughts about my supercute kitty and how dearly I loved her and how terribly I miss her, but suffice it to say that the hole she left in our family is enormous. She was like the bookends of our life. Of all the places we went and things we did, she was here seeing us off before, and here to welcome us back home after. She had such a large personality and played such an important role in our lives-- it is only the many years of wonderful memories we have with her that help soothe the pain of losing her.

I forced myself to the gym on Wed. Jan. 13. to start the run/walk program.  Not because I even cared about the running that day, but because I'd been trying since just before the New Year to stop making excuses and do some kind of exercise (mostly just weights/core work at the gym, some swims) to manage the growing stress of my cat's illness. The only way to cope with her death was to just keep putting one foot in front of the other -- and the 45 min. at the gym was 45 minutes I wasn't sitting in a sobbing heap of sadness on my couch.

So I've started the run/walk program, which calls for runs every other day. At the end of 3 weeks, if all goes well, I will end this program with a 20 min. run, no walking. So far, I've done the runs in the VFFs on the treadmill. Once yesterday, my ankle threatened to twinge, but it never actually happened. The ankle twinges after cycling and even sometimes when I'm just walking around (which at least tells me it's not caused by running) though it has done so much less in the past month. I think the ankle guy is doing something right as I'm really noticing improvements in ankle flexibility.

Jan. 13 Run 1 min. Walk 1 min. x 5

Jan. 15
Run 1 min, walk 1 min x 1
Run 1:30, walk 1 min. x 2
Run 2 min, walk 1 min x 2

Jan. 18
Run 2 min, walk 1 min x 2
Run 3 min, walk 1 min x 2

And so the story of my kitty drama ends, and the story of my running starts...yet again.