Back to Back Pain

I should have been a headline writer!

Last Wednesday I thought I'd go for a run early on Thursday morning to see how my calf muscle would hold up. On Wednesday night I laid out my running gear on the sofa downstairs so I could get up (in the dark) and get changed with the minimum of fuss.

But in settling into bed on Wednesday night my lower back felt a bit 'awkward'. During the night it got worse to the point where I realised that I wasn't going to be running in the morning - so I switched my 6am alarm off.

My lower back has been extremely uncomfortable ever since (it's now Sunday morning). What did I do to it? On Wednesday evening it was junior rugby training for two of my boys. My gorgeous girl (age 4) likes to come along with us sometimes, and I spent a fair amount of time piggy-backing her around the sidelines as my boys got down and dirty. I don't remember doing anything particularly silly with her on my back (certainly nothing that I've not done before) but I must have tweaked something - and quite badly.

If you're wondering what 'extremely uncomfortable' means in terms of lower back pain:

• A lot of pain/discomfort rolling over in bed. Pain/discomfort gets progressively worse during the night (yes, I have a good mattress and an orthopedic pillow).
• Very slow to get out of bed in the morning. Sharp, intense lower back pain if I don't do it gently and slowly.
• Eases off during the course of the day, but not totally.

I'm no stranger to back pain, more's the pity. I've had it on and off since my late teens. I can go years in between bouts, where sometimes the trigger for another bout is obvious, sometimes less so. Sometimes the pain can be gone in a week or two, sometimes it takes months. One bout a few years ago was being caused by my bicycle saddle (when I was riding to work regularly) being set in the wrong position. I adjusted the position, and months of back pain was gone within a week. More recently I made the pretty obvious connection (doh!) between giving my young'uns a ride on my shoulders (or soldiers, as we like to call them) and back pain, so I begrudgingly stopped that, despite it being my right as a Dad.

Yesterday I tried out the local thai health & wellness massage parlour in an initial attempt to reset or relax my back. No, they didn't love me long time - it's all above board :-) But it did involve an asian lady walking on her knees up and down my back, and unintentionally ripping out body hair. Result? Hmmm, no change. Just as painful last night and this morning as the previous 3.

In a valiant attempt to keep my glass half full, this back pain is forcing me to rest my calf muscle for longer than I intended. But the clock is seriously ticking now. I feel - I am - woefully under-trained relative to where I need to be to run my first marathon in 12 weeks time.

If I'm lucky - if I can sort this back pain out in record time - I might be back into running training in a week or two.

30km is a long way - on a bike

Wow - where did the last two weeks go of not doing any running training, and not posting any blog updates?!

Really troubled by calf muscle. Or rather, the rest is doing it good, and I've had 3 physio sessions, a swim and a big bike session... but I can still slightly feel my troublesome calf muscle when I walk. Which almost certainly means it's not healed enough yet to start pounding the streets again. Which means that I'm now well behind on the training program schedule, and it's going to be unlikely that I'll be able to fully get back on track.

Unless anyone has any better ideas, I've just got to do (but not overdo) lots of other exercise instead - cycling and swimming being the most accessible for me. Perhaps some gym work too. Lots of cardio, lots of leg work. My podiatrist recommended striding up and down the pool instead of swimming - so a similar action to jogging but without the pounding, and with more resistance. Must try that.

So yesterday I jumped on my bike on a very chilly Melbourne Sunday morning (forgot to wear gloves - ouch!) and cycled down the very lovely cycle path (the Koonung Creek Trail) on the south side of the Eastern Freeway towards the city, then back up the (less continuous) trail on the north side. It reminded me that where we live in Blackburn, Victoria, it's quite elevated. Travel in almost any direction away from Blackburn and on average you're going down. And what goes down, must come up. This is easy and barely noticeable in a car, but much harder work and very noticeable running or on a bike - especially when you're already fatigued.

Clocked up 30km on my bike in about 1hr40m - and felt very knackered! Which makes running 42.195km in 4hr30m in 3 months time feel more than a little daunting.

Calf muscle blues

Damn and double damn!

My troublesome calf muscle has started causing problems again. Warmed up well, was 10 mins into my scheduled 50 minute run this morning, pace was good, and then my calf muscle started tightening up to the point where it became too risky to carry on. Walked home.

Earliest podiatrist/physio appointment: Friday.

The good news is that the muscle didn't suddenly (in one stride, like it did the first time) get very painful. It just felt very close to getting a lot worse. So I stopped at the right time.

The bad news is of course that any disruption like this to my training program is going to make it harder for me.

If I have to walk the marathon, I will. One way or another, I'm going to do it.

Blood pressure - high normal

High-normal. I'm good.

We still have our own heart rate monitor from my wife's pregnancy days. Here's a photo from a self-test a few days ago. I'm in the "high normal" range currently, which is good. It'll be interesting to see how this changes over time.  A couple of years ago my cholesterol was bit on the high side too - just over 6, when it would be better below 5. Will get that tested again around marathon time.

Blaming my tool

 Not sure that my runtastic app is always recording/reporting accurately on two fronts:

1. I've enabled the option to "Auto Pause" activities when my GPS detects that I've stopped moving. Handy when you have to stop, e.g. to cross a busy road or tie a shoe lace. But even though the audio tells me that the activity has been auto-paused, I'm not convinced it is. This is because it auto-paused a couple of times, and in those particular 5 minute segments my pace was relatively bad (i.e. slow). Hmmm...
2. Another couple of times when my pace was particularly slow today it seemed to coincide with times when I doubled-back on myself (e.g. up a street, hit a dead-end, turned around). So perhaps the GPS doesn't "pulse" frequently enough.

Keen to research both of the above.

In other news...

Got the "wicking" shirt! Wife thinks I look like a Star
Trek crew member.

Week #1 of 16 in summary: Monday was 50 mins, Thursday was 60 mins, and today, Sunday was 90 mins. Hard core! Week #2 and onwards gets more serious: 4 runs per week. 

90 mins is possibly the longest time I've ever run continuously. No muscle pain until I hit the 1 hour mark, then my troublesome left calf muscle started complaining. Again. Really annoying! Once again I was on the edge stopping in order to protect it, or running on and hoping it was just fatigue. I decided to run on, cautiously, being really careful not to over extend it. Shortening the stride length helped too. I made it to 90 mins without it worsening significantly. Hopefully no lasting damage. Pace was good: 6:58mins/km, still nicely inside the target range of 6:30 and 7:10.

I assumed that the training program wouldn't ramp up quite so quickly. Wrong! I can't help feeling that the program is designed to scare the crap out of you in the first week. "Can't handle week #1? Quit now!". No deal!

23% towards my fund raising target. Awesome!

Just checked my donations page:

http://www.justgiving.com/Ross-Gerring

$762.60 raised so far towards a target total of $3,000. Awesome! Thanks so much everyone.

I've actually got a special announcement coming up to help "encourage" some more donations... Watch this space...

2 down, 60 to go.

1 hour pounding the not-very-mean streets of Melbourne this morning.

Training session #2 of 62 - so 60 (OMG!) to do. Not sure if that includes the BIG ONE itself.

Put a water bottle in my bum bag this time, but when I went to reach for it, it was wasn't there. Started to question whether in fact I'd imagined putting it in there at all. As luck would have it, the route I took today slightly overlapped on itself, and there was my water bottle lying on the pavement. Sweet!

Must tie up laces a little tighter in future.

Which aches and pains NOT to worry about? Fairly early on I felt a slight tightness in my left thigh muscle. I stopped a couple of times to stretch and rub it a bit. It didn't go away, but it didn't get any worse either. Again, I'm very paranoid about pulling a muscle and totally ruining my training schedule. Part of me wanted to stop and walk, just to be ultra-cautious. I carried on regardless.... and don't feel that I've done any damage. Fingers crossed.

Good news is that I improved my pace from 7:14min/km to 6:54min/km, so nicely within the 6:30-7:10 target pace.

Aching

My legs are still aching after run #1 of 62 last Monday! #2 is tomorrow, 1 hour. Looking forward to smashing it out and getting back within the target pace times. But I know that I can't let my guard down in terms of pre- and post-run warming up and stretching. One slip, and one pulled muscle, and this could seriously derail my training.

Game on!

At last the big day has arrived! Today is Day #1 of my 16 week marathon training program. I've been more than a little concerned about this in the lead up to it...

1. Would my previously injured calf muscle hold out?
2. Would I be able to face getting up at 6am in the dark, or would I just ignore my alarm and go back to sleep?
3. On the great advice of my podiatrist/physio I've got a stack of DIY bits of heel-raising materials in my running shoes for the purpose of protecting my pull-prone calf muscles. Would they swim all over the place, causing me to stop running every 5 mins to put them back in place?

Awesome news - it all went well. I needed to run for 50 mins non-stop at a pace of between 6.30min/km and 7.10min/km. My pace was slightly off (7.14), but I was being really over-cautious to protect my calf muscles, so could have definitely taken it up a notch.

1 training run down.... 61 to go!