Making good choices

Every day we make numerous small choices that seem innocuous, but when combined, drastically affect our fitness.

I had a long run planned two weekends ago. I had been steadily progressing in training and was planning to go 65 minutes. The small choices I made that day led to a bit of achilles pain that I am only now recovered from. So what did I do? Nothing terrible, if you look at each by itself. But combined they formed a sort of "perfect storm" that took me out for a couple of weeks.

• Choice #1 - I decided to wear my Newton shoes for half of the long run. If you run in Newton's, you know they cause more of a mid- to forefoot landing, which stresses the calves/achilles more than normal. I had not been running much in my Newton's lately and have a history of achilles problems on the left side.
• Choice #2 - My wife was at work so I was watching our 6 month old baby. I decided to push him in the stroller during the run. Weather was warm but windy, and the stroller catches wind like a sail, increasing the effort required to run any given pace.
  
• Choice #3 - I ran by Phelps Grove Park and there were lots of people walking. I decided to run the loop several times and wanted to appear tough so I pushed the pace to 2 minutes faster than my normal long run pace for a couple of miles. Yes, with a stroller! Ugh.
  
• Choice #4 - As I returned to my starting point, I thought I would add on a little bit of time. So I ended up running 72 minutes.
  
• Choice #5 - At the completion of the run (we started and finished at my wife's office), I decided to wait for her to finish work. So I did not shower, self-massage, use my trigger point products, or eat anything for recovery. About the only thing I did well was drink some water and fall asleep on the floor next to her desk with our baby on my chest!

So it's pretty obvious that this combination of choices led to the tendinitis. Big picture: stick to the plan for that workout and do the little things right.

And finally, always finish your workout knowing it won't negatively affect tomorrow's workout. Consistent average-to-solid workouts will lead to much greater fitness gains than sporadic spectacular workouts.

Soft tissue injury

Eventually, most endurance athletes develop some sort of acute or chronic pain. How you treat it determines how quickly you are able to return to full activity.

Here are a couple of areas you might consider focusing on. Many of will do one or two of these well, but if you can really focus on several at once, I truly think there's a synergistic effect.

*Eat more natural anti-inflammatory foods - pineapple, leafy greens, and omega-3's, for example
*Massage/self-treatment - foam roller, "the stick", trigger point therapy products, light massage
*Sleep - make a concerted effort to get more than usual
*Hydration - again, go for more than usual
*Biomechanical Evaluation (especially for single-sided pain) - figure out if your pain is caused by something you can correct.
*Relaxation/Meditation
*Specific Strength Training - with a focus on rehabilitating the injured area. best to get input from a PT, certifed personal trainer, or other credentialed expert.

Today's workout

What is the ONE important goal you hope to accomplish today?

Don't have one? Then you're probably wasting your time.

The only athletes who improve from unplanned workouts are beginners. They get better from just about any type of workout (for a while).

Mental Toughness

How many times in a race have you hit a bad patch, thinking your race was over, and then somehow recovered to finish extremely strong?

This type of experience is very common in triathlon, particularly longer distance races. Both physiology and psychology play a part, but I'd argue the psychological aspect is just as, if not more important, than the physiology.

Since your day to day training is covering the physiological side of things, doesn't it make sense to work in some specific workouts that train your mind to adapt to challenging or unexpected situations? I think so.

The list of situations you can work into a training session are only limited to your own imagination, but here are a few examples:

• Long intervals where you only breathe on your "bad" side (yes, you should be able to breathe on either side) in case you have waves/glare on race day that prevent bilateral breathing or your favorite side.
• Practice swimming in a lane with 3-4 friends side by side. Take off your goggles half way to simulate losing them and being forced to keep your composure.
  
• Deliberately choose a very windy, cold, or hot day to do a race pace cycling or run workout. Wind is probably the most frustrating condition for most athletes; if you can deal with it well on race day, you'll have a big leg up on your competition.
  
• Stop half way through a race pace cycling workout to change a tube (yes, actually change it). Work on getting back into your rhythm after starting up again.
• Brick workouts, particularly including high-intensity cycling efforts. This will make you more likely to cramp when you start running, and if you haven't had to "run through" cramps in a a race yet, don't worry, your time is coming...

I'm always looking for good scenarios such as these to integrate into my athletes' training. Feel free to post any ideas you have.