Q from Kati:

My question is about stretching. I am coming back to tris after a year off from surgery. I am finding that I lost so much flexibility that it is really affecting my ability to regain my run, bike, and swim. I have flopped around from some yoga to general stretching. What I would love to hear is about your ‘must do’ stretches and how often you do them.

My answer:

Great question, Kati. I will preface my answer by saying that most people look at me like I am nuts when I answer this question, but here goes . . .

I actually don’t stretch. I haven’t really stretched in years. On one hand, this is a bummer, because I actually love yoga. When I am retired from racing professionally, I will probably go back to it at least a couple of times per week.

However, if you’ve been reading here for awhile you probably know that much of the way I train and race today was shaped by my experiences training under Brett Sutton. When I joined his squad in the fall of 2005, I was practicing yoga for about 5-6 hours per week on top of my swim-bike-run training. But it turned out that one of the many things that I enjoyed which he did not permit—in addition to eating bread and hydrating during swim practice—was stretching. Anyone he even saw stretching would get yelled at.

Training under Brett was an “all-or-nothing” thing. He outlawed stretching, so I didn’t stretch. And—touch wood—I essentially never got injured (I had a hip fracture before my time with Sutto), and got faster. So I have stuck with it.

Am I flexible?

No.

But I have done okay, and I don’t think flexibility is the limiter between me and what I have yet to accomplish. Plus, the way that Sutto always explained why we should not stretch made sense to me. What he said was that for my little short-strided ironman shuffle, pedaling a bike, and swimming freestyle the way we do, we “didn’t need range of motion.” I can still see him now, standing there, doing a furious bike-pedaling/ shuffling/ swimming simulation, saying, “Do you think you need range of motion to do this, or this?!?”

He argued that people often turn niggles into injuries or exacerbate existing injuries by stretching the heck out of them, which seems to be people’s natural instinct. So his point was that the potential gain in stretching was just not worth the risk.

There are a couple of things that I do which I think make my body feel better before and after hard training and racing in much the same way that stretching did. These are:

• Massage: I try to get deep-tissue sports massage once per week. We have an amazing therapist here in Tucson, Bill Kruse, who works exclusively with a few professional athletes and the University of Arizona Track & Field and Cross Country teams. He is an expert in dealing with beat-up bodies like ours!
• Chiropractic Work: We also have an awesome chiropractor here in Tucson, Dr. Eric Vindiola, at The Joint. This is a walk-in clinic, so Monday through Friday we can drop in anytime and Dr. Eric will put us back together. His services are affordable and efficient; if you are training in Tucson and every need an adjustment, you can drop in most anytime Monday through Friday!
• Recovery Pump: I have talked frequently here about how these recovery boots work for my recovery after training each day. You can check out a full blog on it here. Also, I see people searching often for my Recovery Pump affiliate code, so here it is again: A11021 . This gets you free ground shipping and $25 off.
• Foam rolling: If you don’t have a foam roller, get one! This is a super-cheap and quick feel-good option. Just last Tuesday I had a pair of very tight, beat-up legs that honestly didn’t even loosen up during my whole first run of the day. I knew I had to smash out some speedwork on the track, so I made myself spend a whopping 3-4 minutes with the foam roller beforehand, the legs loosened up, and I had one of my best track sessions yet.

I am very pleased to report that my body is feeling pretty decent today after yesterday’s run effort. I was able to test it swimming, biking, and running today and it held up alright. Again, I am thankful for Coach Joel’s training for being able to run that pace for 13+++ miles and not be at least somewhat dysfunctional today. As annoyed as I was about the race course distance and all, I am appreciating the fact that my run confirmed that we are indeed on the right track here and the work is working!

Speaking of which: yesterday morning while I was having my little half marathon smashfest workout here in Arizona, one of my star athletes was having her own in Austin.

I told you about Ms. Jennifer and her 26th-birthday smashfest party a couple of weeks ago. Well yesterday she had her first progress-check of the season at the Austin Livestrong Half Marathon. I actually told Jen ahead of time that I wished we were in the same city and could run the same race because I was pretty darn sure that she would be chasing me down. And indeed she would have been! Nothing like having speedy athletes to keep a coach on her toes–I love this!

Jennifer busted out a 3-minute half marathon PR and ran a 1:29. Check out her report here. And you might want to watch that blog as I think this is just the beginning of what is going to be a great season, with many more to come!

Well I have good news and bad news about today’s half marathon. As I shared here, I went into this race looking to get rid of my old half marathon PR, which had stood for 7 years–since 2005! I knew it was a 1:28-something so I just looked it up: 1:28.57.

The good news: I hit 13.1 miles (21.1 kilometers) at 1:26.30.
The bad news: The finishline was not there. I still had to run 1 minute and 42 more seconds to cross the line. My garmin read 21.53 kilometers and 1:28.12 at the finishline.

So I’m a little bummed as I don’t get a lot of chances to better my time at this distance, and I don’t like having an asterisk by my PR! Now of course I really want to figure out a way to do another half marathon in the next few months …

Rationally, though, I have to say that I am pleased with how my running has progressed in just a few months of work with Coach Joel. We have been doing a lot of training, and focusing on the bike of late, but I can see my run coming along as well.

For me to be able to run the pace I did today and have it feel controlled (not trying to say I was holding back–I wasn’t, and could not have run faster than I did today) is a big step forward. I went for it from the start as I thought I would need to force the speed a bit up front because it still does not come naturally for me; just on Thursday, my legs were so full of lead that I literally could not run one minute at half marathon pace!

But apparently my first easy day in about two months—yesterday—worked some magic because my first miles were 6:12 and 6:17 and I actually did not feel like I was sprinting woohoo! I did get slower from there as my first half (the 10.55km half, that is) was 42:20 and my 21.1 km time was 1:26.30, but I never felt bad—just a gradual tightening of the legs and I got to the point where I just couldn’t turn them over any faster than I was doing.

All in all, I am pleased with my run, but just annoyed with this race, as I didn’t need to travel all the way to the other side of Phoenix to run a slow course!

Someone else had a big day today too . . .

It’s a rough life when you’re a puppy!

As promised, another installment of wedding pics for Valentine’s week while the GCM and I are having part two of our Valentine’s date: an overnight in Scottsdale before a half marathon smashfest in the morning!

A night in Scottsdale means dinner at True Food Kitchen and shopping at lululemon . . . Race=new run outfit, right?!

That’s what I thought.

Now back to the wedding . . . Here’s the fam getting the son/ brother/ German cat they always wanted–also known as the day I officially became the third-favorite child.

Little Callie and Zoey were the official puppy-escorts.

I think they and Missy Moo were all very pleased to be involved!

It’s time for some pre-smashfest sleep here, but believe it or not, I will actually have a few more of our real-deal wedding pics to share in the next few days. Hey it only happens once, right?!

But first hopefully I will have a PR report for you!

Thanks to some very generous wedding gifts, the GCM and I are finally in the process of furnishing our second guest bedroom (more Tucson training camps yay) / office. The acquisition of a desk and need to make space for a daybed mean that I have to go through boxes of notebooks, cards, and other papers. I am kind of a hoarder so I never know what I will find in there.

Before the days of the internet, I was an obsessive letter-writer (similar to my surgical attachment to my crackberry at present, now that I think about it). Actually, when I was in college, the internet was in fact in full swing, but I was a late adopter. Instead I wrote several (literally) letters per day to my friends who were away at school and to my Nana. I committed to myself to sending her one letter per day and I am pretty sure I stuck with that. Anyhow, my point was about hoarding . . . I saved pretty much all the letters I received and now have boxes of letters to sort through.

Just the other night a new, non-triathlete friend was asking me, in more polite terms, how I became nuts—or who influenced me to want to smash myself for a living, and for fun.

“Are your parents . . .” she paused, trying to think of another way to say “crazy, too?” I think.

“Nope. They think I am nuts.”

My standard answer.

Then the next day, amidst my stacks of papers, I found a note that I received when I was seven, apparently, and with it, part of my answer to this question:

Grandpa.

And bribery.

In finding this letter, I  also found an excuse for my hoarding. Grandpa was one of the biggest supporters of my athletic career, often getting up at 4AM to drive me to swim practice well into his 80s. He has been gone for over 10 years now and I sure am glad that I still have this note.