The only free time to run was in the morning or late at night, so on Tuesday morning I set my alarm for 5 and got up.  I was supposed to run with one of the male chaperones, but he was up really late and opted to sleep in!  It was so quiet and peaceful.  I was a little concerned at first that some animal might attack me, but once I got over that I enjoyed one of the best runs I’ve had in a long time.  Just me and the serene early morning quiet.  Due to the conditions I just did an out and back on the Wolf Ridge dirt driveway, which ended up being 5 miles and a little hilly.  The actual campus sits atop a “mountain” at about 1,400 feet above sea level.  I gained about 400 feet in elevation over the last mile, which was a lot steeper and longer than any of the hills I’ve run this year.  I managed to keep running and finished without having to walk!  Like I said it felt really good.  I did some stretching, etc and then commenced the day of skiing, hiking, etc.  I was exhausted by the end of the day!

I felt fine on Weds to finish up the trip and we rode all the way home on the bus and only felt a little sore.  On Thursday I woke up early for a running analysis at a new physical therapy center and learned that I really do pronate a lot.  I still have a lot of weakness even after all the therapy I’ve been doing.  He wants me to try wearing insoles while I run, stretch the upper calf more (gastrocnemius muscle), and try to focus more on being a mid-sole striker instead of a ball of my feet striker.  My right leg was a little tight but nothing serious.

I decided not to run on Friday because I planned on running Saturday and Sunday with the guys, at least for a little bit.  I noticed that when I squatted my quad hurt on the outside part near my knee.  Odd, but I thought it was still residual pain from the hill work.  So you can imagine my surprise when I woke up at 4am with a lot of pain in my leg.  I took some ibuprofen and went back to sleep. When I finally woke up my knee was a little swollen and it hurt to stretch out my leg.  Even with icing, popping pills, and elevating it my knee cap was almost missing due to the swelling.

When I woke up on Sunday it was feeling better, though still stiff and swollen.  Christy was going to the gym so I decided to join her and swam 300 meters in the pool before sitting in the hot tub for a bit.  It is hard to swim without bending your knee, so I got a pretty good upper body workout out of it!  It really sucks because it was in the mid-50’s on Sunday and would have been a great day to break out the bike from its winter slumber. Oh well, there will be plenty of time for that.

How was your week?

One Post this week combines cookies and race strategy.  Enjoy!

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• Curing Plantar Fasciitis (teamcrossworld.com)

The Penn Ice Cycle Loppet is a big draw for us.  It is fun to watch cyclists trying to keep their bikes upright on ice. Race criterium style it was divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced men, followed by an all levels women’s race.  Videos are below in respective order.

Skijoring is fun to watch, partly because of the variety of dogs used.

Led by a Viking and some high school teams, kids 12 and under went for a 1 or 2k loop in the Minne-Loppet.

Our friends dog was enjoying the snow and ice.

You can check out my Flickr stream for photos of the day.

On Tuesday morning I woke up with the alarm and felt very awake so I jumped out of bed and got a 5k loop in.  It felt pretty good.  I need to be setting my alarm earlier, because it is hard to get even a 3 mile run in as well as the PT and stretching that I need to be doing.  I was very happy to run in the morning!

I didn’t run again until Thursday.  I knew that if I wanted to get the run in I would just have to do it right after work, but also knew that I still wouldn’t have a lot of time.  So I ran home from work.  It ended up being farther than I remembered but was a good 4 mile run.  It took a little while to get warmed up and relaxed (maybe hampered by the fact I was running with my wallet, cell phone, and keys).  It was 39 degrees so I opted to run home in shorts! A little cold on my knees but it felt great.

My third run was the Sunday morning 6.5 with the guys around the Get in Gear loop.  We split into two groups about a mile or so into it and I opted to stay with the back group and we had a nice and relaxed run.  It was overcast but still 36 so another great morning to be out on the trails.

Overall it was a pretty long week. Several late nights and long days made for a pretty exhausted guy come Friday night.  Though we enjoyed watching Invictus,  which brought back memories of my time in South Africa.

As the title says, I’m ready to start increasing my mileage.  I’m going to do this by adding a 4th day of running, though probably not this week.  I’m going on a 2 night, 3 day field trip with 104 7th graders to Wolf Ridge.  Should be a lot of fun, but don’t know if I’ll have the time to sneak in a run.  There will also still be significant snow on the ground there too.   I need to pick a race to train for so that I have that extra motivation to get out there.

How was your week? What is your next race?

This Week’s One Post is a short preview of the Human Race 8k that I wrote in 2008 when I signed up for it.  Back in January, I thought I might be in shape to run it this year, though it isn’t looking good on that front.  Probably not a good idea to run the 5k either.

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• Curing Plantar Fasciitis (teamcrossworld.com)

February was a better month for running.  While generally I struggle with the motivation to get up and run, especially in the morning, I doubled my monthly mileage from January.  February saw 35.4 miles added to my shoes.  I hit double digits for weekly mileage at 11.9.  March should be a good month to continue ramping up the mileage.  My longest run was 6.5 miles with the guys on a sunny, Sunday morning.  February also marked the one-year anniversary of having Plantar Fasciitis, check out my 18 steps to try to get rid of it.

I’ve set a few random goals for the year:

Run Around All Named Bodies of Water in Minneapolis

I didn’t add any new bodies of water, though I did run the Get in Gear loop two times which takes out a section of the Mississippi River.

Read the Entire Bible in a Year

This was tough this month.  Partly because February only has 28 days, but also because this month included reading the entire books of Exodus and Leviticus. Luckily, the legalism of the Old Testament is balanced with reading from Matthew and the grace found in Jesus.

Read a Book a Month

I failed on this one.  I picked a small book called Enjoying Prayer. It is only 140 pages long, but the format and topic made it a little hard to finish.  Its setup to read a chapter at a time with thought provoking questions, not like a novel. I should finish it soon and get a book for March.

Blog Regularly

I only posted 4 times at my personal blog, oops.  I posted regularly on here and that’s more important for you!  I did make some updates to my blog theme.  What do you think? I continue to do well on my Project 365 (taking and posting 1 picture a day).

Other things of note… February was a busy month all around.  It seemed like there was something going on almost every night.  I’m on the board of the Young Non-Profit Network for the Twin Cities (YNPN-TC) and we had a busy month welcoming new board members.

One Post this week is about Running Groups, I really enjoy the group I run with.

The most popular post in February was Treatments of Plantar Fasciitis, again!

After a year suffering through the dreaded Plantar Fasciitis I can say that there is only two certain ways to get rid of it.

1) Never walk on it, i.e. don’t leave your bed.

2) Cut off the ailing foot.

I looked through my running log and it was a year ago today that I first mentioned foot pain and took a day off. I have tried a lot of things in the past year, all to no avail.  I’ve done physical therapy and spent a lot of time at the doctor’s office listening in as the doctor and therapists share with the residents about Plantar Fasciitis.

I’ve broken this post into three segments – immediate actions, intermediate actions, and last ditch/extreme measures.

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED

1) Stop running.  Take a few days (weeks) off immediately to give your foot a chance to heal. I recommend swimming to keep the cardio strong.  Everyone says it is ok to bike, but I’d be really cautious.

2) Stop walking around barefoot.  Nothing is nicer than kicking off your shoes and letting the old dogs relax.  However, walking around barefoot can exacerbate Plantar Fasciitis.  I’d recommend some nice Crocs or slippers with about an inch of padding to protect your heel.

3) Take ibuprofen.  I’m not a doctor.  My doctor recommended taking 800mg (4 tablets) 3x’s a day with food for 2 weeks.  This will help take down the inflammation.  The consistency builds up the amount of medicine in the body which helps it work faster.

4) Check & Change Shoes.  All of them.  Even if they are brand new I would recommend buying new running shoes, maybe switching brands or styles.  Go to a running specialty store and have them analyze your running (after resting for a few days).  Then check all of your other shoes for wear.  If they show a little excessive wear – get rid of them.  I know its expensive but it is better to be healed or buy new shoes?

5) Roll out the foot.  I used a can of soup for a long time before buying a more advanced roller. In a fluid motion roll the jar under your foot from heel to the ball back and forth for a minute or so. Really dig into the heel. Do this two times a day.  One of the times you should soak the foot in warm water first.

6) Stretch the arch.  Place your foot on the opposite knee.  Taking the 5 toes bend them towards the same knee.  This will stretch the fascia. Hold for 30 seconds.

7) Ice. At the minimum put ice on the heel. The best option is to take a frozen dixie cup of ice and massage the affected area.  I just rub an ice cube into it until it melts.  Another option which combines step 5 and 7 is to roll out your foot with a frozen water bottle.

Night Splint. I’ve used both the Strassburg Sock (my review or Amazon) and the Dorsi-Wedge.  Obviously, neither worked.  I felt the Strassburg Sock was easier to wear.  My sports doc (who works at the University of MN) felt like the sock allowed too much room for “cheating”, etting the foot move around or not wearing it properly. Other night splints on Amazon.

9) Stretch. Obviously stretching the entire body is always an important part of the routine.  It is important to stretch out the calves, achilles, and hamstrings.  I’ve used both the foam roller and the stick to do this.

Optional:

10) Massage.  Especially the calves and foot. This actually feels really good, I should go get one again.

11) Hot Tub.  Sitting in the hot tub really can feel great and helps relax the muscles.  I need to do this again too!

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INTERMEDIATE ACTIONS

1) Physical Therapy. This encompasses a wide variety of tactics and exercises.  Most of mine focused on hip, core, and ankle strength.  It is important to have a strong core to help hold your body together and in proper alignment.  This Running Times article covers a lot of the hip work that I was doing.

2) Iontophoresis (wikipedia). Actually a part of physical therapy, but this takes a steroid like dexamethasone and electrically injects into the skin.  This works well for a lot of people, but loses effectiveness after 8 treatments.

3) Taping.  I had mixed success with taping my foot while running and walking around.   I used this method. The idea is that this helps reduce the load that your fascia is forced to carry.

4) Inserts/Orthodics. I’m not really sure where to put this. I’ve heard of people having success with it, but I haven’t with inserts.  Also, with orthodics you’ll become dependent on them.  It might “fix” the problem but not change the body issues creating the problem. Treating the symptoms, not the problem.

5) Active Release Technique. ART, as it is called, releases the fasciia and other “tight” areas the cause Plantar Fasciitis.  I’ve heard that it works well and the Ironman offers ART Certifications, but my sports doc wasn’t aware of this non-traditional treatment.  It is often offered by chiropractors.  More information can be found here. Locally, some of my friends recommend Dr. Folske.

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LAST RESORT/EXTREME MEASURES

I’m sure there are more than these 2 but I don’t know of them.

1) Cortisone shot. Or other steroid injection. This injects a steroid into the fascia which speeds healing.  This is not a long term fix and masks the pain – quite well I’ve heard.  It has at least 2 major drawbacks:  tearing the fascia and atrophying the fat pad in the heel.  My sports doc really doesn’t like to use this option.  She thinks the long-term risks often outweigh the short-term gains.

2) Surgery. Yuck, who wants to go under the knife.  Basically they cut the fascia and it heals itself and is stronger.  This is the ultimate last resort. My thought is that if I just put my foot in a cast for 6 weeks I’d probably get the same results.

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Have you had success with any other treatments?

Monday was President’s Day and a day off.  So I ran 3 miles on the Greenway, with about 3 inches of fresh snow on the ground.  It was a pretty fluffy snow.  For some reason (holiday?) the Greenway hadn’t been plowed, which is fairly unusual since it was 10am.  I thought running in the bike tracks would feel better, but it actually felt better to run on the fresh snow.  So that’s what I did.

Tuesday was my last appointment for Iontopherisis. While the treatments did help, my foot still isn’t healed.  This time she even did an ultrasound on it for awhile.  I was really hoping these treatments would work.

Yes, I didn’t run again until Friday morning. A lack of motivation to get up in the morning and a fairly busy evening schedule kept me off the roads.  I’ve also been real hesitant to go when it is dark, because of the ice and wanting/needing to protect my foot.  The sun is slowly peaking up earlier and earlier and on Friday morning I finally got the motivation to go for it.  6:30 am 3.1 miles on the Greenway.  We’ve been having warmer temps and sunny days so there is a lot of snow melting.  Obviously, it re-freezes at night so there were lots of frozen streams to navigate.  I wore my heart rate monitor for an average of 166.

A friend of mine hosted a meeting on Saturday about Team World Vision and then we went for a 5.5 mile run afterwards.  We ran from the Nokomis Community Center heading East toward the river.  He needed to run 5 and we were both feeling pretty good when I looked down at my watch and we were in the 2.8 range!  The Minnehaha Parkway trails also have a lot icy patches but are overall in pretty good shape.  It was a balmy 24 and very sunny.

Sunday was another beautiful day, but we stayed inside.

Did you have a good week?

One Post Defining Super Sets from a training program I used to use.