New Challenges (Good Ones)

Last month, I had hoped to improve my sleep habits and even set up a little challenge to get myself there. Well, I outright failed that challenge, not only not improving my own sleep habits but also failing to help out the others who signed on to this with me (some of them did just fine without me--good for them!--and I apologize for being so little help).

This month will be different. I've set up some new challenges...and I hope not to fail at them.

1. The first challenge: to run again....for real....outside....before midnight on July 1. I believe I'm close. My back has been feeling (dare I say it?) good. I haven't had a pain-free day yet, but the pain I have has been much less. The Pilates exercises that I learned last week are the first that consistently make my back feel better immediately after I do them, and this effect seems to linger. I'm still VERY stiff when I wake up in the morning, but I'm trying to mitigate that with some yoga poses (child's pose and cat/cow) before I even climb out of bed. I've also eliminated the glute exercise that seemed to make things worse (the standing side leg swing) and am trying to hit only the ones that do no harm.

So fingers crossed!

2. The second challenge I signed up for is a formal one. Amanda at Run to the Finish has been leading a healthy challenge every month this year. I haven't been able to do the exercise-specific ones, but June's Green Smoothie Challenge is right up my alley.

Five days into June, I've found this surprisingly painless given how disorganized with eating I usually am. I acquired some greens-enhanced protein powder, a bag of pre-washed spinach, some bananas, some almond milk.....and that's all I've needed. The protein powder I'm using is called Vega One, and it's working for me because it tastes good and has all the needed nutrients but contains no artificial sweeteners. I tried a different brand on the first day and felt terrible; I discovered later that it contained both maltitol and xylitol, which work like laxatives. Sugar alcohols are the reason I can't drink Nuun before or during runs (it has another sugar alcohol, sorbitol).

This is a helpful challenge to me because I start off the day ahead of the game on getting enough vegetables into my diet. Throw in a glass of low-sodium V8 and/or a salad for lunch, and I'm truly good to go. For an indifferent cook (sometimes you could say I'm even hostile to cooking!), it's a lifesaver.

Tomorrow is National Running Day and I'm planning to celebrate with 30 minutes on the Alter-G, hopefully at 90% body weight. I'm glad to be able to celebrate at all! What are your plans for National Running Day?

The Latest from Alter-G and Recumbent Bike Land

My time crunch continued on Thursday, which is one of the days I'm home with the kids. My Alter-G appointment was at 5:15 p.m., but Dan didn't want to leave work early again (I don't blame him).

So, being a flexible mom of twins, I assembled a Boredom Bag (crayons, paper, books and some graham crackers)--and took Will and Ruthie with me. I figured, how bad could it be? It's only 30 minutes.

Happily, they were so fascinated with the Alter-G that they barely cracked the Boredom Bag (they did eat all the graham crackers; I mean, these are MY children). And fortunately Patty, the physiologist, proved good with kids. She joked with them. She let them circle the machine and put their hands inside the bag when I was finished. Will made a drawing of a train for her. Turns out her son went to the same preschool that Will and Ruth attend. He's now 17, but apparently the director and the cook are the same people who were working there when he was there.

I don't expect this to work every time. Familiarity breeds contempt with little kids. But I got it done, and much more easily than I had on Monday. My kids, it turns out, are more forgiving than my job.

The session itself went well. I got closer to 3 miles for the total (sweet-talking Patty into letting me cut the cool-down short) and stayed no lower than 85% body weight the whole time.

Yesterday I took it easy, with a 30-minute walk (featuring some good break-up music--thanks to everyone for your excellent suggestions) and PT exercises. Then this morning I went to the gym and knocked out a 1-hour bike session with 55 minutes of intervals, followed by a 30-minute hill walk on the treadmill and then more PT exercises.

I'm not going to lie to you. My back is still unhappy. It's definitely not where I need it to be to start really running again. I've been trying to track when it bugs me the most, and it appears to be the leg raises on the stability ball and the glute exercises that irritate it. This doesn't surprise me, because attempts to do core work (and doing it poorly, I guess) are what sent me into PT in the first place. It IS frustrating that this still happens after nearly three months of work. It's also frustrating that most mornings getting out of bed I am still painfully stiff. Sometimes I want to run because, well, why not suffer AND run instead of....just suffer?

Patty, to whom I told all this, still seems to think I'm doing well. She's a runner herself, a Pilates instructor and has had SI issues. She said the move she recommends for glutes is more subtle than some of the ones I'm doing. It involves (when sitting, though she says you can try it walking or running, too) contracting the muscles that you imagine could bring your sit bones closer together. She says this brings not only the glutes but also the pelvic floor muscles into play for back support. I've been trying this any time I'm sitting down (and under her watchful eye also on the Alter-G), and I will say that while I'm concentrating on it, it does immediately reduce my back pain. The problem is.....it's hard to concentrate that hard all the time.

My next plan of action will be to get permission from Cathy, my physical therapist, to make a Pilates consultation appointment with Patty. I'm not due to see Cathy again until the middle of June, so I'm going to call and ask. It may not happen right away, as Patty has a vacation planned too. But I like Patty and I feel like she will be careful, so if I can get in and get a new exercise routine from her this week, I'll feel like I'm still making progress while not ignoring the plain sad fact that I still have too much back pain.

Juggling

One great thing of many great things about finally being allowed to run outside again will be no longer being in thrall to my gym's schedule and the uncertainty of how many others will want to use the recumbent bike there. And now that the Alter-G is in the mix, my training schedule (if that's not too lofty a phrase for it) has gotten even more ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong: I am NOT complaining about having access to the Alter-G. But after this crazy morning, I do feel compelled to complain about SCHEDULING the Alter-G. See, it's not like I can just march in there, pull on the crazy shorts and get myself going any time I want. I have to have a physiologist on hand to help me get into the thing, and to track my progress and monitor my pain while I'm on it. There are three physiologists I can work with. And their working hours....pretty much correspond with my working hours, or the hours I'm with my kids. They don't have 5 a.m. kids-aren't-up-yet work's-not-open-yet appointments, or 8 p.m. kids-are-in-bed I'm-off-work appointments, or weekend husband-home-with-kids hours.

This leads to days like today. Here's how it went:

4:30 a.m.--I wake up, dress, sneak through the creaky-floored house and drive to the gym.

5 a.m.--The gym opens. I find a recumbent bike (had I arrived an hour later, this could have been a problem) and get my 45-minute interval/hill workout done. The sessions on the Alter-G just aren't long or hard enough for me to start scaling back the bike yet.

5:50 a.m.--After changing out of my sweat-soaked pants, I stretch my pissed-off piriformis and foam roll.

6:05 a.m.--I head home.

6:15 a.m.--Arriving home, I gather up the milk delivery and the newspapers and go inside. My son Will bursts out of his room about a millisecond after I open the front door. Dan and our daughter Ruthie are both still asleep.

6:30 a.m.--Will and I eat breakfast. Dan gets up. Ruthie is still asleep.

6:45 a.m.--I take my shower. At 7, Dan wakes Ruthie up.

7:10 a.m.--Dan and Ruthie eat breakfast. I start some tea for the road.

7:25 a.m.--I leave for Boulder, clutching tea, backpack, water bottle, and purse.

8 a.m.--Traffic was bad, but I arrive at my library when I wanted to. On Mondays, I'm the opening reference librarian, which means I get the reference desk ready for the day by changing out the newspapers, starting up our circulation and catalog software, printing the desk schedule for the day (damn!, I said on seeing today's schedule--I'm due on at 10 a.m.!) and noting any phone messages. I do this an hour earlier today than I usually do, because I couldn't get an earlier Alter-G session.

8:45 a.m.--I head over to Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. My appointment isn't until 9:15 a.m., but I'm hoping to get on earlier. Double damn! My physiologist is with an earlier client when I get there, so no early start for me.

9:15 a.m.--Jaclyn comes to get me. I change into the Alter-G shorts as quickly as possible, and we get the machine going. My tailbone feels a bit uncomfortable, but I'm happy to be at 80% body weight this time (up from 75% last Thursday). I also jack the incline up a little, settling at 3%. But with that 10 a.m. reference desk shift looming, I have time for only 20 minutes. I cut my warm-up short and do some "intervals" at 8 minutes-per-mile to get more for my money. Thanks to this, I'm able to get my heart rate over 150 by the time my limited session is over.

9:45 a.m.--I climb off the Alter-G, get out of the shorts and shower quickly. I throw on my work clothing, forgetting to put on my earrings.

10 a.m.--Lucky thing BCSM and the library are close to each other. I just have time to dump my stuff in my cubicle in the office and grab another cup of tea and some crackers as the morning's first library patrons climb the stairs and approach the reference desk. My first shift there is two hours. Thanks goodness for those crackers.

Now, it's my lunch break...and I'm s-l-e-e-p-y. I'm also g-r-u-m-p-y. Things I normally take in stride on the desk, like the incessant ringing of the phone, made me want to kill someone today.

Yes, I am very lucky to have access to the Alter-G, and yes I will continue to jump through hoops to use it. But yes, yes, yes.....I'm really looking forward to those mornings (they will come, won't they?) when I merely open my door, step out into the morning's cool and start putting one foot in front of the other.

Alter-G Part 2 & Other Updates

Yesterday was my second rehab session on the Alter-G anti-gravity treadmill.

I felt very lucky to be there at all, as 24 hours earlier I had been in the throes of a freak virus that sent my temperature up to 102.9 and made my head feel like some alien was trying to break through my skull. The sickness came on me at work Wednesday in the form of violent shivering and nausea. I managed to haul myself home and collapse in bed. At that point I thought there was no way I could make my 5:15 running date the next day.

But in the morning, after 14 hours of sleep interrupted only by a trip to the bathroom around midnight, I woke up with NO fever and only a slight headache that faded to nothing by noon. It was the briefest illness I think I remember having, if also one of the more intense. I took it easy in the morning, did a few of my physical therapy exercises in the afternoon, took Will and Ruth to the annual Art Show at their preschool and then Dan took over so I could make my appointment.

Fever aside, I was curious about how the session would go this time. My calves were SCREAMING on Tuesday and Wednesday after the first session. I think this was mostly a "Whoa, what is this running thing all about?" reaction (after all, they haven't had that kind of intensity asked of them for over two months), but my new Pure Flow shoes probably contributed too. I actually looked over old racing pictures of myself to make sure that, yes, I generally do have a mid- to forefoot strike. And I think I really do--even in the finish line pic of me in Houston last January (see the right-hand column), where I was doing what passes for sprinting for me at the end of a marathon, shows me landing neatly in the right place on my foot.

Yesterday's Alter-G session was apparently just what the doctor ordered for the calves. I wore the Pure Flows again, and while there's still some calf tightness, it's quite run-of-the-mill now, and fading--whereas on Tuesday and Wednesday they felt like I had just run a marathon on them.

And what about the back? My sacro-iliac support belt got in the way of the machine's calibration yesterday, so I did the run without it. My back's left side definitely bothered me more this time, but it wasn't alarming. In the end, I managed another good two miles of running, this time at 75% body weight (yay for the increase!). The exercise physiologist in charge this time was Patty, who will also likely be the person I'll go see about Pilates once Cathy (my physical therapist) thinks I'm strong enough for that. At the end, she loaded me up with a giant bag of ice for the back and on my way I went.

My back definitely hurt this morning, so I've been wearing the belt a lot today. But I did get my recumbent bike session in (I'll keep doing those until I can run a lot more than I'm allowed to right now), and I did a few stretches and some PT exercises afterwards. Things are definitely feeling more normal now.

My next Alter-G run is on Monday morning. This time I'm going to bring my Garmin to see how my heart rate looks at the various paces and percent body weights, and how that compares to what I'm used to seeing on the bike at this point.

Sleep Update: So this month was supposed to be the month where I got in the habit of getting eight hours a night on a regular basis. I even enlisted a handful of others to go along with me on it. Well, for me, it hasn't happened. The month's only half over, so I'm not giving up, but my bad habits in this area have proven much more deeply ingrained than I thought. I love sleep! So why is it so hard for me to get myself in bed when I should? Life's just too interesting, I guess.

Weight/Eating Update: At least I'm still doing well on this front! My weight this morning was 128.4, and I'm still going strong (stronger every day, in fact!) on having no processed sugar of any kind any day but Sunday. I've found not only am I no longer craving sugar during the week or wanting to graze from treat trays brought into work, but that when I do have my Sunday treat, I appreciate and enjoy it much more. Last Sunday, I rode my bike over to the Dairy Queen on Main Street and picked up a chocolate dip cone for myself and a plain vanilla one for Dan, then rode home where we enjoyed our little treat together. That cone tasted awesome! That might be what I have to do this Sunday too.....

Could I still eat better? Definitely! I've found myself dipping into the tortilla chips I buy for our Friday night taco dinners much more often than I should. I don't eat regular potato chips at all--but corn chips....they've got my number. So I feel like they might be the next thing I eliminate, or at least bracket into just one day of the week.

That's it for now! I'm thinking of my friends Cynthia and Kathy, both of whom have big races this weekend!

The Best Day in a While

Really, I don't have a lot of bad days...but today was damn good.

Wanna know why?

Well, it started out as Mondays usually do: a 5 a.m. alarm, some 50 minutes on the recumbent bike and some glute exercises. When I got home, I got the kids their breakfast and took them to school.

But after that, things were different. I went straight from preschool to.....

This wasn't my first experience on the Alter-G. It wasn't my fastest. But it was much more meaningful. I warmed up walking at 100% body weight for five minutes. Then my exercise physiologist, Jaclyn, ratcheted me down to 70% body weight (the 50% prescription Cathy had suggested apparently isn't a good idea). And then I ratcheted the speed up until I was running. Yes, running!

How was it? The first few steps were, as my daughter says, "Ouchie." I felt them instantly in my tailbone. But as I got accustomed to the motion and warmed up to the speed, the pain disappeared (this took about 20 seconds). Soon I was able to increase the speed. In the end, I ran for 20 minutes, starting at 12 minute miles, working up to 10 minute miles and doing the last five minutes at 8:27 minute miles. At no time was I out of breath (thank you recumbent bike!) and though I had some tightness in my right hamstring and hips by the end, I felt no pain apart from those first few steps. At the end, I walked another five minutes at 100% body weight.

I estimate I ran a grand total of two miles (total miles with the walking amounted to 2.52). This brings my sad little annual grand total for 2012 up to 252 miles (it's been sitting at 250 since March 6). They weren't real miles, in a way, because of the anti-gravity boost. But trotting along at the end of them I felt that old joy, the old pull at my sternum to try to go faster and harder. I can't tell you the bliss of being able to push that speed button higher at last. Tonight my back is definitely stiff. I've given it a good foam rolling (along with that hamstring) and a good icing. I'm going to take it easy tomorrow, doing only my PT exercises and a short walk. My next date with the Alter-G is Thursday and I'm feeling optimistic.

Another fun thing: I debuted some new shoes with this little return to running.

The Pure Flows in my favorite color! The shirt was a gift from Kathy late last year. I wore it today for my modest return.

I decided that since I can't run very far anyway, I'd use the chance to get used to some lower-profile shoes. After trying a whole bunch on over the last few weeks (wishful running retailing!), I settled on the Brooks Pure Flows. It took me a while to find a place that had my size in stock (we had a little overnight with Kathy and her family on Friday, and a Saturday trip to one of her running stores finally resulted in a purchase--thank you, Kathy!). They just feel good--not too narrow for my bunion-y feet, cushioning in the right place under my forefoot, light as a feather. And on today's run they and I agreed nicely with each other (at least at 70% body weight).

My fun day wasn't over yet, though. After showering and running some errands, I drove down to Denver and met up with Jill and Kathleen for lunch. These two ladies--both of whom are seriously generous people and admirable runners, with one being a road goddess and the other a trail goddess--had run together down in the south suburbs but kindly drove a ways north afterwards to hook up with me.

Jill, Kathleen and me.

Between my night hanging out with Kathy over the weekend and this lunch today (and thanks to a comp day off work that allowed me to do all of these things!), I had a really nice Mothers' Day weekend "girl talk about running" fix, something that's too rare for me.

Am I "back"? I can't really say that yet. I need to have pain-free running, and have it with full gravity pulling on that tailbone of mine. But it's a step in the right direction. Two miles of steps, in fact.

Taper Interlude: The Alter-G

Giant steps are what you take/Walking on the moon/I hope my legs don't break/Walking on the moon/We could walk forever/Walking on the moon....

--The Police "Walking on the Moon"

On Tuesday I took a break from taper angst (so no more pity parties this training cycle, I promise!) and took a little ride on....the Alter-G! Dan came with me and took pictures.

Does this giant bag filled with air make my butt look big?

I won a session on the anti-gravity treadmill because I "like" Boulder Center for Sports Medicine (also home to my amazing doctor) on Facebook. About a month ago they acquired one of these devices, which allow you to run at less than your body weight, good for both training and rehabilitation from injuries, and they are trying to get the word out that it's there. For $65 an hour (the amount of time I won!), you too can ride the Alter-G.

The Alter-G (also made famous in a story in Runner's World a while back that showed a pregnant Paul Radcliffe training on one in her house) works by sealing the runner's lower half in a giant bag. The treadmill then calibrates, taking in the runner's weight. When you start your workout, and tell it you want to go at, say, 85% of your weight, the bag then inflates with just enough air to lift you up and make it feel to your astonished lower body like you just lost that much flab.

Dan and I arrived and were greeted by Adam, a young-looking guy wearing bike shorts and a Western States 100 race shirt (typical of Boulder, and BCSM in particular!). We chatted about Houston as he led us back to the area where BCSM does bike fittings and some rehab activities. There in a corner stood the Alter-G.

My plan was to do the 40-minute easy run dictated by my training schedule and then come back next week for a 20-minute recovery run post-Houston Marathon. Adam asked me about my goals for the race, then told me my marathon pace of 8:34/mile was going to feel easy on the Alter-G. Exciting!

But first....the shorts. Ah, they were lovely, the special Alter-G shorts.

They're sort of like a reverse tutu. Putting them on was like putting a second pair of compression shorts over the first (they had told me to wear tight biking or yoga shorts; compression shorts were all I had, but they worked just fine).

Then I had to be zipped into the Alter-G.

That's Adam helping me zip in. Not sure I could do this on my own....

Once I was in, he showed me how to use the screen, which was a little far away for me (I'm 5'7") but fortunately very responsive. Buttons allowed me to adjust my speed up in increments of .1 mph or 1 mph. I could adjust the incline as well, though Adam warned me that steep inclines on the Alter-G can do funny things to your gait (I never set this above 1% during this session).

And of course the fun part: I could toggle my weight between 100% (that is, my actual weight) and as low as I wanted. I generally stuck at 85%, which is what they recommend for people using the Alter-G for training rather than rehab, but I did at one point go as low as 70%. The Alter-G didn't display what I weighed in at, but I know right now I'm around 128 pounds. So running at 85% made for an instant 19 pound weight loss, putting me at about 109 pounds. Seventy percent? That's 90 pounds. It's doubtful either of those weights is something I'll see unless I get very very sick. But it sure felt fun to float along like that!

Yes, that's me running a 6:31 pace! Easy at 109 pounds (but with my 128-pounder's muscles)!

For the entire 40 minutes I never ran slower than an 8:41 pace and spent most of my time at marathon pace. At Adam's suggestion, to make things more interesting, I alternated between my full weight and 85% for one-minute intervals for a good part of the run. And a couple of times I ratcheted it up to a 6-something minute-per-mile pace, just because it was so much fun.

I could have made it even more fun. They offered me a mask that would have furnished me with some oxygen-rich sea-level air, but I declined that. I wanted to save some advantages (however slight) for my actual race!

There were a couple of things to keep in mind: Adam warned me to avoid the loping moon-walker gait that's easy to slip into when you feel gravity losing its hold. So I tried to keep my stride short, my steps light and my knees low. I also think it's easy to get carried away--my quads were a little sore after the workout. It's probably not a good idea to push the pace (even in an anti-gravity environment) quite that much during taper week.

It was HOT inside that bag. My lovely Alter-G shorts were soaked when I finished and sweat was pouring down my calves.

 But I have to say...that may have been the fastest 40 minutes I've ever run, at least in the sense of how fast the time seemed to go. I had a big silly grin on my face the whole time, despite having no music and no TV (Adam said eventually there will be a TV there for entertainment). And I can see what a boon this machine could be to injured runners who need their fix but whose stress fractures or strained joints can't quite take full impact yet. I also thought a lot about how great this would be for pregnant women. Run at your pre-pregnancy weight...at eight months!

Blissed out!

I was also quite comfortable the whole time. You do have to hold your arms a little high to avoid hitting the bag with each stroke, and it felt weird having that apparatus around my hips at first (it was sort of like being Ursula the Sea Witch, with a large bag instead of tentacles in place of legs). But I quickly got used to it. The only time I felt out of control was at the end, when Adam demo'd the backwards running feature. I actually had to hang on to the front for a bit until he suggested I lengthen my stride. But even then I felt out of control.

Final verdict? I heartily recommend the Alter-G, especially if you're injured (insurance will cover it for some people, they tell me!) or pregnant and can afford a few hours here and there on it. And anyone who gets the chance should try it just for the fun of running so light. I'm glad I did.

Now....there's this little matter of a race on Sunday...I better go finish packing....:^)