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I started running more seriously over the winter (indoors, treadmill). I finished my first sprint triathlon, which was also my first 5K , last month and have since signed up for both Tough Mudder and the Ragnar relay race this summer. Should be fun. I went from not being able to run .5mi to running 3-4mi a day 5 times a week without much issue.
I started running more seriously over the winter (indoors, treadmill). I finished my first sprint triathlon, which was also my first 5K , last month and have since signed up for both Tough Mudder and the Ragnar relay race this summer. Should be fun. I went from not being able to run .5mi to running 3-4mi a day 5 times a week without much issue.
Funny coincidence; when I started running again after my second broken leg back in 2013, I worked my way up from a quarter of a mile in March of that year to roughly eight miles per day by August. I was thrilled.
In early September of that year I got a cryptically worded E-Mail from a co-worker which said something along the lines, "My son's 36 mile relay team needs a sixth for a relay this weekend; we're desperate!" At that point I had never heard of either Ragnar or Reach The Beach and said, "Hey, I can run six miles, I'll join."
When the team stopped by my office the next morning to pick me up I had two rather rude awakenings:
I was the oldest on the team by more than 25 years; my team-mates were all Dartmouth PHD candidates.
I found out it wasn't a 36 mile relay I'd signed up for, it was a 205 mile relay of which each member runs roughly 36 miles (they took pity on me, my leg set was only 33 miles but it had over 2,000' of climbing).
In the end, I survived, had an absolute ball, and I was NOT the slowest.
Good luck in your Ragnar, are you doing one of the trail ones or one of the long road events?
Go find a PT that knows how to work with runners. Trying to figure out what to do on your own via Dr Google is a waste of time. Find the right help, get better faster, and know what to do.
Originally Posted by imj0257
Anyone ever had a hamstring injury?
I got one during a soccer game last Friday. During the middle of the game it felt a little uneasy, but having never pulled anything, I thought it wasn't that bad and kept playing. The next time I kicked the ball it really hurt and I limped out of the game.
I watched it over the next few days.. put ice on it a few times. But I never had any swelling or bruising. Initially it hurt to walk, but now, 4 days later, I can walk fine (although I can still feel it; definitely not healed).
So I assume it is a mild pull. But I feel so lazy, I need to get out there and run.. even just going for a very easy jog. Any idea how long I should wait? It sucks not being able to run.
Funny coincidence; when I started running again after my second broken leg back in 2013, I worked my way up from a quarter of a mile in March of that year to roughly eight miles per day by August. I was thrilled.
In early September of that year I got a cryptically worded E-Mail from a co-worker which said something along the lines, "My son's 36 mile relay team needs a sixth for a relay this weekend; we're desperate!" At that point I had never heard of either Ragnar or Reach The Beach and said, "Hey, I can run six miles, I'll join."
When the team stopped by my office the next morning to pick me up I had two rather rude awakenings:
I was the oldest on the team by more than 25 years; my team-mates were all Dartmouth PHD candidates.
I found out it wasn't a 36 mile relay I'd signed up for, it was a 205 mile relay of which each member runs roughly 36 miles (they took pity on me, my leg set was only 33 miles but it had over 2,000' of climbing).
In the end, I survived, had an absolute ball, and I was NOT the slowest.
Good luck in your Ragnar, are you doing one of the trail ones or one of the long road events?
I'm doing the long road event. It goes from St. Paul MN to Duluth MN which is ~210 miles or so. I'm doing a team of 12 so my total distance is 10-14 miles or something like that. I'm excited to do it, I figure it will either be a ton of fun and I'll love it or I'll hate my life and have a cool story to tell. Win win either way.
I'm doing the long road event. It goes from St. Paul MN to Duluth MN which is ~210 miles or so. I'm doing a team of 12 so my total distance is 10-14 miles or something like that. I'm excited to do it, I figure it will either be a ton of fun and I'll love it or I'll hate my life and have a cool story to tell. Win win either way.
After my first Ragar (then called Reach the Beach), my wife said, "You idiot, you're going to get yourself hurt." Of course I had so much fun my enthusiasm became infectious and she ended up doing it with me for the next two years (on a 10-person team and then a 12-person team).
Major accomplishment today; I ran more than two miles for the first time since last August; 12:48 first mile, 12:15 second mile, 12:02 third mile. Ended up doing 3.15 miles in 38:40 for a 12:17 average pace; not to shabby for a fat old man.
Major accomplishment today; I ran more than two miles for the first time since last August; 12:48 first mile, 12:15 second mile, 12:02 third mile. Ended up doing 3.15 miles in 38:40 for a 12:17 average pace; not to shabby for a fat old man.
Congratulations, I've done Ragnar Reach the Beach (New Hampshire White Mountains down to Hampton Beach) four times, twice in 6-Member Team Ultra mode. Lots of fun!
Yes it's fun and no you don't sleep much lol. I think I got 3hrs of decent sleep in the back of a van. My night run wrapped at ~12:15am and our van had to be back out on the course at 5:45am. Between driving to the next checkpoint and winding down, it didn't amount to much sleep.
Originally Posted by horseshoez
Congratulations, I've done Ragnar Reach the Beach (New Hampshire White Mountains down to Hampton Beach) four times, twice in 6-Member Team Ultra mode. Lots of fun!
I don't think I'll ever be down for doing the ultra ones, that just sounds nuts. I'm already signed up for next year lol.
Yes it's fun and no you don't sleep much lol. I think I got 3hrs of decent sleep in the back of a van. My night run wrapped at ~12:15am and our van had to be back out on the course at 5:45am. Between driving to the next checkpoint and winding down, it didn't amount to much sleep.
I don't think I'll ever be down for doing the ultra ones, that just sounds nuts. I'm already signed up for next year lol.
LOL, I was 59 the last time I ran with an Ultra team for Reach the Beach; I was the oldest on the team by over 25 years, and yet, I was pretty much a middle of the pack (for our team that is) 8:30 pace guy. Our team leader needed to run seven of the legs as one of the other "kids" on the team couldn't do his fifth leg; in the end, our team leader ran 42 miles at a 6:20 average pace. Yikes!
Long story short, there's still plenty of time for you to do an Ultra.
Lol, we'll see. I need to get a lot better before I can run that much in a day. This year I did one of the shorter set of legs, next year I want to do more.
42 miles at a 6:20 pace is insanity, I doubt I can even do 2 miles at that pace lol.
Our next one is likely to be the Napa Valley road race, should be a good time!
I get to run a BQ marathon at the end of September in Jim Thorpe PA. It is one of the extremely few bq marathons being run. I would like to get under 3:20 but i don't think it will happen. I will be happy with 3:30. I have lost a good amount of speed in the last two years. I am happy to be running though. My iron levels have come back up with taking iron twice a day . Running anemia is a thing and it saps all of your endurance.
Oh yeah! I had really low iron last year and they couldn't figure out why. I had a colonoscopy, scope, and cat scan. No cancer, no bleeding, no anything. Everything looked good but they couldn't figure out why it was low and thought i was loosing blood somehow. I now take iron twice a day and that brought up my iron levels.
There is a such thing as helolytic anemia from footstrikes. You are killing red blood cells from running. Read about it, it's nuts and you wouldn't even think it. https://runnerclick.com/hemolytic-an...Em4UVE_kUY_tWA
I ran my first half marathon in early July. I finished in 2:15. It was hot AF, painful, and mentally draining. The last bit is because I did it all on my own one morning.
I ran my first half marathon in early July. I finished in 2:15. It was hot AF, painful, and mentally draining. The last bit is because I did it all on my own one morning.
I ran a 3:25 and felt decent the entire time. Now i get to run #11 in a couple weeks. Hopefully this one will be faster. I had a hilly 18 miler and felt real strong and fast.
Working on nearly a there year absence from this thread. Despite my enjoyment of trail running I did get tired of only having the option of going up or down (solely as a result of where I live). I broke down and bought a treadmill in July. While I do enjoy running outdoors more, it has been pretty awesome.
This has been a long and very trying period for me; when I was 59 I thought I was all set up to take a bunch of podium finishes when I turned 60 given I was burning through half-marathons in just over an hour and a half and managed my two highest mileage months of my life (350 for October and 325 for November) near the end of that year. Yeah about that:
About two weeks before I turned 60 I was working some huge hours and not getting enough sleep and ended up with a horrible respiratory infection which turned into walking pneumonia; scratch that year of racing.
The following spring, just after I turned 61 I was finally dialing my mileage up and at about the 5-mile mark of a fast 7-mile trail run I didn't see the tip of what turned out to be a large boulder which had been exposed over the winter; I ended up kicking this immoveable object directly with the big toe of my left foot, crushing the toe (literally pulverizing the bone). Scratch my racing year at 61.
As part of my rehab from the broken toe, I severely abused the elliptical machines in our company gym, and due to the slightly different motion compared to real running, started developing plantar fasciitis in my left arch; just as I was starting to mix in some running, which allowed the PF to gradually abate, one of our horses got loose one morning and decided it would be great fun to run down to the main highway a quarter mile away. At one point he tried dodging me and headed into a small gap between some hedges and a fence line; I realized he'd need to cut left and figured I'd beat him to the punch, and cut left first, and "Pop" went the tendon in my left arch. Yeah, no racing when I was 62.
I figured 63 had to be my year, I was starting to build my mileage up to some very slow and tentative 5-mile runs with no ill effects; then one very cold day I was taking the horses out after having been cooped up in the barn for three days due to sub-zero cold, and as I was leading out this one excitable Arabian, he tossed his head in typical manner to tell me how happy he was, and lost his balance on the ice; as he was catching his balance he knocked me over on to some very jagged frozen hoof prints in what had been slush the previous week and "Snap" went my left fibula (yikes, my poor left leg). Yup, you guessed it, no racing at 63.
Any bets on when I was 64 (this year)? I managed a few nice and slow three to four mile runs this last January and then managed to get "The Covid" well before there were even any publicly available tests (this was confirmed by the American Red Cross from a blood donation). While my symptoms were never terribly severe (sinus and painful lungs), my knees became hugely painful, I assume due to the systemic swelling from COVID-19. This year I've tried walking, hiking, jog/hike combinations; all ended in knees so painful I could barely stand up, and so painful at night I could barely sleep. I finally gave up pretty much all physical activity at the beginning of October hoping to give my knees a rest and maybe a little recovery. In early December I went for a half mile super-slow jog, and "Hey, a little painful, but not too bad..." Yeah, I got cocky and pushed it a bit more each day and once I hit the three mile mark, bang, right back where I started. Thinking back to when I was recovering from a horribly broken leg back in the mid-2000s, I let things heal up and started an every-other day routine. Today was my fifth very slow run in the two to three mile range over the last nine days, all on smooth dirt trails, and I am very encouraged; yeah, a little pain in the knees, but nothing at all severe.
So now I'm looking at racing at 65; I rather doubt I'll get back to the 21 minute 5Ks I was doing in my late fifties, but hey, at this point anything under a half hour would please me. With this in mind, I'm going to stay on the every-other day schedule throughout the winter, all on either dirt or groomed snowmobile trails, and hopefully by spring, I'll be able to start regularly turning in five to six mile training runs.
Unsaid in all of the above, is I've probably gained at least 40 pounds since I was 59, so I'm also hoping some regular running will help me shed these unwanted pounds as well.
Yesterday was day seven in the last fourteen days, and still hanging in there. I did manage a very slow 4.2 miles on Saturday, and figure that was a bit too far, but yesterday's 2.2 miles felt pretty good.
I'll update now and then and let y'all know my progress.
One final thought, given the lack of responses here, I am encouraged nobody else here has gotten "The Rona"; stay safe out there folks, hunker down until you get the vaccine.
^^^ Damn. That is quite the list of unfortunate injuries you had. I hope this year is a better one; I don't know if you will be able to get back to your 59 year old self, but in time I know you will get back up to speed.
Luckily for me, the only real injury I've had in the past few years was a pulled hammy, but I was able to recover within a month or so.
I've been averaging about 130 miles a month for the past year. With the covid thing going on, it certainly helps me even more than usual physically and mentally to go out and run since I am couped up at home all day.
Thanks I'm thinking the almost daily hikes I was taking early last year as I was trying to shake off the effects of the broken leg are what got me through my bout with COVID. Not only did the hiking help keep my mind focused, but I believe it helped me keep my lungs working, albeit painfully, so I didn't develop any more severe lung issues. Now that I'm able to kinda-sorta run every other day, I feel my lungs become more effective almost every time I go out.
Planning to drag my fatass back to the gym tonight for some light weight work and then hit the track. I stopped running last March when I went on a cruise, the week before lockdown started. Things just got too hectic and my workouts went to zero. I've packed on the Covid 19 pounds and need to get back to moving. I find that my primary motivator to actually putting in miles and getting quicker is from running local races... which have been non-existent for obvious reasons. Hopefully things will turn around and might be able to pick up some races in the second half of the year.
I am not looking forward to feeling like I fell down a flight of stairs tomorrow morning though... 10 months of sedentary living is a bitch to work off.
A quick analysis of what I've accomplished since I started this plan 23 days ago:
12 very slow runs
34.5 miles (used to be a "bad" week for me)
A dramatic reduction in the COVID related inflammation in both knees; so much so my ego is tempting me to try running daily (fortunately my rational side says, "ain't gonna happen any time soon")
My breathing is improving but still has a long way to go; I think I ended up with a fair amount of lung damage as I had COVID symptoms for over three months, and between then and now had done very little activity strenuous enough to challenge my respiratory system (thank you to my knees). I know this is kind of gross, but after a couple of my recent runs, I coughed up some, ummm, old stuff, and today's run, even though it was the longest in literally years at 5.3 miles, didn't cause me any lung or other breathing pain.
I wonder if slow jogging might end up being a way to fast-track recovery from COVID for others; sure seems to be helping me out.
Last edited by horseshoez; 01-14-2021 at 02:08 PM.
^ - I'm also tempted by ego when building up / coming off an injury or break from running. It is sometimes hard to reconcile the mind's belief that more will be no problem with the mind's other rationale that is probably will not be worth it.
Unrelated - but holy hell did demand spike for the discontinued Garmin foot pods. I bought a used replacement off ebay for well more than what it cost new. The "upgraded" Garmin dynamic run pod does not appeal to me as a replacement.
Unrelated - but holy hell did demand spike for the discontinued Garmin foot pods. I bought a used replacement off ebay for well more than what it cost new. The "upgraded" Garmin dynamic run pod does not appeal to me as a replacement.
Hmmm, never heard of foot pods, kind of a cool idea. I rely on an old Fitbit Ionic as my main analytical tool.
A quick update on my progress recovering from the busted leg and COVID; as I wrote above, I started a very tentative every-other-day running thing back on 23-December, and only two to three miles at that. I am happy to report my lungs and knees have responded very well to the gradual ramp up of distance, to date I've 20 runs totaling 75 miles, with this week and today being the high water mark of 25 miles since last Sunday and 8 miles today. Funny thing, my lungs and knees feel better after today's run than the puny 2 mile runs I started with just before Christmas. The one thing I've been keeping my eye on is my pace, I've been trying to force myself to keep the pace between a 12 and 13 minute per mile pace, and every time I started feeling frisky, instead of speeding up, I just added a mile or two. I've long been an advocate of LSD (Long Slow Distance); even coaching it for a number of years, and once again, it seems to be paying off.
I always recommend slowing down the pace and reducing miles with recovery. Keep at it and add mileage as you feel comfortable. You don't always have to adhere to the 10% rule.
Originally Posted by horseshoez
A quick update on my progress recovering from the busted leg and COVID; as I wrote above, I started a very tentative every-other-day running thing back on 23-December, and only two to three miles at that. I am happy to report my lungs and knees have responded very well to the gradual ramp up of distance, to date I've 20 runs totaling 75 miles, with this week and today being the high water mark of 25 miles since last Sunday and 8 miles today. Funny thing, my lungs and knees feel better after today's run than the puny 2 mile runs I started with just before Christmas. The one thing I've been keeping my eye on is my pace, I've been trying to force myself to keep the pace between a 12 and 13 minute per mile pace, and every time I started feeling frisky, instead of speeding up, I just added a mile or two. I've long been an advocate of LSD (Long Slow Distance); even coaching it for a number of years, and once again, it seems to be paying off.
Today i took the gamble and lost. An innocent fart wasn't so innocent. This is a first in 12-13 years. Luckily i had boxers and shorts with a liner. Now i don't think i'll gamble in the future.
How do things feel compared to before covid? Are you experiencing any real breathing issues?
Originally Posted by imj0257
it happened during a run?
Originally Posted by horseshoez
A quick update on my progress recovering from the busted leg and COVID; as I wrote above, I started a very tentative every-other-day running thing back on 23-December, and only two to three miles at that. I am happy to report my lungs and knees have responded very well to the gradual ramp up of distance, to date I've 20 runs totaling 75 miles, with this week and today being the high water mark of 25 miles since last Sunday and 8 miles today. Funny thing, my lungs and knees feel better after today's run than the puny 2 mile runs I started with just before Christmas. The one thing I've been keeping my eye on is my pace, I've been trying to force myself to keep the pace between a 12 and 13 minute per mile pace, and every time I started feeling frisky, instead of speeding up, I just added a mile or two. I've long been an advocate of LSD (Long Slow Distance); even coaching it for a number of years, and once again, it seems to be paying off.
How do things feel compared to before covid? Are you experiencing any real breathing issues?
Well, yes and no. Prior to my series of unfortunate events (broken bones, a torn tendon, both non-running related, and then COVID) over a several year span, I was burning through a half marathon in just over 90-minutes; just this last Sunday I ran 8-miles in almost the exact same time. As I think I mentioned in my post a few weeks back, I didn't initially know I'd had COVID (identified from donating blood to the Red Cross), but last February, two weeks after getting sick with what I thought was a sinus infection, I was out for one of my usual lunch time hikes and my lungs felt like they were being stabbed by a thousand little knives; my brain was like, "Geez, have I gotten that far out of shape after only two weeks?" My COVID symptoms lasted from the last week of January 2020 through about May; I say "about" because they started gradually abating in early April, but I was still dealing with lots of unexplained congestion which in turn required several trips to my local pharmacy for Sudafed.
Given how painful my knees became during that time, I didn't try running again until a light went off in my head in the October-November timeframe, telling me my hiking was, if anything, making my knees worse. I took several weeks off, and then started running, like, a mile or so at a shot, every other day, just before Christmas, and once again, my lungs felt like they were on fire. That kind of brings me up to now; since 23-December, I've logged just over 120-miles, my longest two runs were right bang on about 8-miles, and both my lungs and knees feel like they are healing. They don't cause me pain per-se while on a run, but I am plenty sore later in the day and the day after. The very fact I am now able to go 6-miles per run pretty consistently, and have extended it to 8-miles twice now, indicate I am successfully shrugging off the effects of COVID, but I have a looooong way to go before I'm running a 25-minute 5K much less a 90-minute half marathon.
Have you had COVID? If so, what symptoms did you get saddled with?
Last edited by horseshoez; 02-10-2021 at 01:49 PM.
05-01-2019, 03:16 PM
, last month and have since signed up for both Tough Mudder and the Ragnar relay race this summer. Should be fun. I went from not being able to run .5mi to running 3-4mi a day 5 times a week without much issue.
That's awesome!
I always recommend slowing down the pace and reducing miles with recovery. Keep at it and add mileage as you feel comfortable. You don't always have to adhere to the 10% rule.
it happened during a run?