Nice to hear your excitement about your training. Great job on the squats.
I’m really diggin’ the PR & the BBB w/the bench. Excellent work. I bet your confidence is sky high? I am really happy for you.
As for the rest times. I am the opposite of Joe & Nadia. I feel 90sec is plenty of rest. The one exception being the rest before your money set. The only reason I choose longer rest there is to mentally/visually picture how I want that set done.
Glad to hear the results of the MRI were positive. Hopefully you’ll get a rehab program going that will address the issue relatively quickly.
Joe, thanks for the good wishes.
veggie, my battle with squats is constant but I’m happy that I can finally re-engage it.
print, so far your BBB suggestion is working out just fine. I’ll probably try more rest as the BBB weights go up. I fatigue really easily, but want the full benefits of volume.
Bay Stater, I’m seeing my knee doc tomorrow and the rehab for what ails me is exactly the first item on the agenda. Just resting hasn’t really done it.
Speaking of rest, today is a rest day. I am really hopeful that someday soon my days off the weights (Mon. Tues. Thurs. Sat.) can turn into running/cycling days.
i’m going to look into almond milk. i need to do what i can to reduce inflammation (mostly skin, but also joint) and i’m starting to suspect dairy as a likely culprit - but dairy will be very hard for me to give up. so much easier if i can find palatable alternatives.
i guess i was hopeful that you would turn out to be a heel striker and that forefoot striking might miraculously resolve all your feet and knee problems. unlikely… but i was hopeful…
will be interesting for me to hear about your rehab since i’m in a bit of a similar position i think.
alexus, so far I don’t know if dairy is a factor in my inflammation issues or not. But I’m finding this particular food elimination very, very hard. I’m trying it for another 1.5 weeks to give it a good honest effort before deciding whether to continue.
My visit with the knee doctor this AM was very positive. We went through my MRI together, and although I do have some slight inflammation in my quad and above and below my kneecap there is nothing that concerns the doc overly much. My meniscus showed some degeneration but nothing unusual considering my age and activity level.
So I’ve got the OK to slowly start running and cycling again. I will discuss a plan with my chiro/ART tomorrow, who frankly has a much better handle on my overall athletic functioning than does the MD. /I love my chiro!/ Clearly I won’t be lacing up and just trying a normal run again. That worked like crap two weeks ago.
Happy!
^YIPPEE to all of the above.
Outstanding!
Ease back into it and leave the record breaking off for a bit.
That’s great news. Happy and relieved for you.
Now that you’re on the BBB program you are going to start dominating the bench. Congrats on that PR.
That’s very good news about your knee! I’m excited that you get to get back on the road. WIth running, you may want to consider a run/walk approach.
This is from Jeff Galloway’s website: http://www.jeffgalloway.com/training/walk_breaks.html
He’s a very accomplished runner and a big proponent of mixing walking in with running.
Why do walk breaks work?
By using muscles in different ways from the beginning, your legs keep their bounce as they conserve resources. When a muscle group, such as your calf, is used continuously step by step, it fatigues relatively soon. The weak areas get overused and force you to slow down later or scream at you in pain afterward. By shifting back and forth between walking and running muscles, you distribute the workload among a variety of muscles, increasing your overall performance capacity. For veteran marathoners, this is often the difference between achieving a time goal or not.
Walk breaks will significantly speed up recovery because there is less damage to repair. The early walk breaks erase fatigue, and the later walk breaks will reduce or eliminate overuse muscle breakdown.
The earlier you take the walk breaks, the more they help you!
To receive maximum benefit, you must start the walk breaks before you feel any fatigue, in the first mile. If you wait until you feel the need for a walk break, you’ve already reduced your potential performance.
How fast should the walk break be?
When you walk fast for a minute, most runners will lose about 15 seconds over running at their regular pace. But if you walk slowly, you’ll have lost only about 20 seconds.
Once we find the ideal ratio for a given distance, walk breaks allow us to feel strong to the end and recover fast, while bestowing the same stamina and conditioning we would have received if we had run continuously.
Don’t get too rigidly locked into a specific ratio of walk breaks, adjust as needed.
Even if you run the same distance every day, you’ll find that you’ll need to vary the walk break frequency to adjust for speed, hills, heat, humidity, time off from training, etc. If you anticipate that your run will be more difficult or will produce a longer recovery, take more frequent walk breaks (or longer walks) and you may be surprised at how quickly you recover.
I agree w/Nadia about the walk breaks, always found them helpful in my former life as a runner.
So glad that things are back on track for you to at least try running. Cycling will be good, too. Is the weather nice enough yet where you live? My boss, his wife, and several of our patients are serious cyclists. They’ve been out a few times this month, but rain and cool temps lately are keeping them in this week.
[quote]mom-in-MD wrote:
funny you mentioned plantar fasciitis…thats what I was put on medical hold for while in the military. I think it’s flared up again. :mad:[/quote]
I’ve had only one bout with this as a long-time runner and it had nothing to do with my running. I’d bought a couple of pair of wedge flip-flops. They weren’t really high, only about 2.5 inches and I lived in them, until I realized they were killing my feet. Once I got rid of those, problem solved. It was kind of funny because I was analyzing if I needed orthotics, if my running days were over, blah, blah…
Congrats on your PR!
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very pleased about your good news.
print, thanks for the puppy. 
Joe, indeed I do plan on taking things slowly. I thought I was doing the running appropriately, but even more conservative is apparently the plan.
Snapper, thanks. MRIs are scary.
Nadia, that was a super-interesting link. When my chiro clears my feet/knee for my first run I was actually planning to mostly walk it with short easy runs. Cardio-wise, I don’t need to do this. But I really don’t want to aggravate any of my hot spots again. Being completely sidelined sucks so bad, that forced moderation isn’t such a bad alternative.
Veggie, cycling is probably at least a week away. The streets are much improved, but the weather is going to be cold and rainy for a bit. Usually my riding season starts in mid to late March and lasts through to November-early December.
Powerpuff, I’m pretty much in your situation. My feet issue arose when I hadn’t been running at all! So I’m pretty confident that once I’m back to normal (currently at about 95%) that running won’t be a problem. Fingers crossed.
CBear, thanks for stopping in.
alexus, me too! I’m hopeful that the rest of 2011 will be different than the first couple of months.
I’m curious. Did you identify a cause for your heel flare up? Was it a naughty pair of shoes?
[quote]Nadia Comeandeat wrote:
I’m curious. Did you identify a cause for your heel flare up? Was it a naughty pair of shoes?[/quote]
The heel flare up manifested itself the morning after getting out of the MRI machine. The best my chiro and I can do is that my feet flexors/extensors were weak in the first place and my tensing everything up (I was VERY TENSE in the MRI machine) for 30 minutes straight just was the last straw for that particular weakness.
Nothing else had changed: training, shoes etc. and I hadn’t run since the debacle the week before, and hadn’t run for three weeks prior to that. Its a mystery, and I don’t like this kind of mystery. I’ve got lots of foot strengthening exercises to do every night.
I’m seeing my chiro/ART this PM and we’ll see where she is on the feet situ. It feels about 95% good right now.
Today’s training was some squat volume (50 reps total, up to 85#) which felt GREAT on my knees and feet. Then some bench press. The light oly bar keeps me from claiming my 6 reps @ 85 lbs. as a PR but I was still happy about it.
I’m glad the knees and feet behaved. That’s always a huge plus. And nice benching!
High rep squats suck, nice work doing them anyway.