Category Archive for ‘fitness’ at spacekadet blog

Archive for the 'fitness' Category

Ankle Update: Not Giving Up

Published on December 1, 2009 in fitness and running. 0 Comments

It’s time for another ankle update (read the background if you’re unfamiliar). A bit more optimistic than usual…

Before I moved from London, I’d been seeing an NHS physiotherapist who prescribed some stretches and strength exercises to help my ankle. It’s been over a year since I started seeing him and there’s been no improvement. In fact, things have gotten worse, with my ankle causing me almost constant dull pain, particularly on the outside above my ankle bone and on top of my foot, even if I’m not walking or running, and shaper pain if I twist my ankle the wrong way.

I registered with a GP here in Oaksey, who said I’d have to wait 6 weeks for him to get my paperwork from London and decide where to go from there. I was sick of working the system, free as it may be.

Thinking back over the last 5 years of ankle bullsh!t, I would happily have paid thousands of pounds to have a pain-free ankle again. I hate to sound like an old fart, but those were the last 5 years of my 20’s, and I’ll never have them back!

So, as my mind toiled over private healthcare, the stars seemed to be aligning in this direction. I was talking about my ankle with a friend at a party, when a women introduced herself who turned out to be an NHS physiotherapist. She kindly listened to my saga, and when I said “I haven’t run in years because of this” she passionately exclaimed “Don’t give up! You must never give up! See as many people as it takes!”

Maybe she was just doing her bit to bring her physio friends more business, but even so, she got to me. The next day I found a physio in my area and made an appointment for that week. I saw this physio twice, but he didn’t really “feel right.” So I posted a message in the Runners World forum asking for physio recommendations in my area. Someone came back with PhysioPlus in Chippenham.

I had my first appointment with “Andrew” yesterday and I’ve gotta say: he could be the one. The guy basically gave me a once over - had me run and walk on a treadmill, felt all my muscles from my legs up to my neck (and asked, unprompted, “do you get headaches?” which I do, horrible ones, about 2-3 times per week, “cuz you should - you’re hard as a rock up here”), he looked at my feet, tested my flexibility, and so on. He discovered a few things:

My back muscles are extremely tense, which could be causing pinched nerves sending pain down my legs
My left arch is slightly dropped, which is causing more pinching on the tendons in my ankle
My left hip is extremely tight, possibly due to my legs being slightly uneven in length
When I walk, I don’t spend very much time coming off my left toe

So he did this thing where he basically twisted and stretched my back, then massaged my hip, and I instantly felt relief in the outer part of my ankle and calve. He prescribed me some stretches to do and I’m to try retraining myself in “how to walk”, making sure I follow through on my left foot, rather than hopping quickly off the toe (not sure if this makes sense to you, but I get it).

Until this point, I thought that the source of all of my ankle problems were in the ankle itself. But now I see that my entire body is at play here, and I need to work on my hips, butt and back as much as I do my ankle. Amazing how the body works together to build (and break) itself with every move.

My next appointment is in a week, where he’s going to do more work on my back and neck. I can’t wait, especially if this can solve my headaches, too. He’s also referred me to a podiatrist in the NHS who can look at my feet and determine if I need insoles.

What’s really exciting is that the physio thinks in three weeks or so I might be able to start running again. THAT would make VERY happy. I think one of the reasons that SmarterFitter has moved from a fitness blog to a food blog is because I feel sort of crippled from doing the “fit” stuff I want to do. I want to run, but I can’t, so I get down about it, and bake a cake. Now if I could both run AND bake cake, now that would be the life.

The “Smarter” Side of SmarterFitter

Published on March 19, 2009 in Freelance Writing, Personal, SmarterFitter, fitness and nutrition. 1 Comment

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Things have been a little quiet around here. I just started a part-time gig teaching at the Open University, the UK’s distance learning government-supported university. My students just submitted their first assignment and, for the first time since grad school, I’m inundated with papers to grade. I don’t mind, though. The class has been going well, I like my students, and I actually enjoy the “feedback” part of the grading process. This is a far cry from the differential equations (aka “Diffy Q” aka “Diffy Screw”) class I TA’d at University of Texas. It makes a huge difference teaching a.) to a smaller class (20 vs 200) and 2.) to “grown-ups” rather than undergrads.

But I didn’t start this post to wax nostalgic, so let me get to the point.

One of the BIG HUGE benefits of teaching at Open University is that every year I’m eligible for a fee waiver of up to £1,190 for any course of my course. This is a pretty major benefit and I don’t want to pass it up. The thing is, I’m totally stumped as to what to take. My goals are kind of … varied.

This is the question I posted to Directgov’s career advice forum:

I’m a freelance writer in the health and fitness space, with a bent towards nutrition and vegetarian cooking. I write for several publications, including my own blog. I’m really looking to become an authority in this space and I’m wondering what kind of coursework or degree would get me there. I already possess and MSc in Applied Maths and Computer Science. What can I add to increase my credibility and an expert in health, fitness and nutrition?

Yep, I’m just a few months away from 30 and I still don’t know what to do with my life.

Current course candidates are (and the list keeps growing):

Bikely for Bike Routes

Published on October 18, 2008 in London, cycling, fitness and photos. 0 Comments

Bicycle Path - Stoke Newington Hampstead Heath circuit at Bikely.com.jpg

Yesterday was a GORGEOUS day here in London - cloudless blue skies, cool autumn air, a mild breeze, PERFECT weather for a bike ride.

London may not seem like a great place for a leisurely bike ride, and for day-to-day practicalities, that’s pretty much true. London roads are riddled with traffic, pollution, potholes and a surprising lack of good views. Fortunately, there are plenty of great parks scattered about, including Hampstead Heath, London’s largest (791 acre) parkland. I decided that “the Heath” seemed like a great destination, but I wanted to to enjoy the journey, too. So I Googled for “Stoke Newington Hampstead Heath Bike Route” and that is how I discovered Bikely.com.

Bikely is basically a place for cyclists to share their bike routes. Anyone can create a route on a Google map, then tag that route with helpful terms like “hills”, “scenic”, “commute”, “offroad”, etc. You can also search for routes near a specific city.

What makes Bikely WORK is that a lot of people from all over the world actually seem to use it so there’s plenty to choose from.

The route I found was the Stoke Newington Hampstead Heath circuit, a 15mi loop tagged as “training”, “steep” and “scenic”. Steep and scenic it was. I had no idea such hills existed in London! But I’ve gotta give props to “happyhenry”, the route’s author - most of the ride was on VERY quiet streets and it took me to places in London I never new existed, such as Queen’s Wood, a 21-hectare patch of ancient oak-hornbeam woodland just a few miles from my house. How could I have missed that?

Hampstead Heath rocked my world - trees everywhere, leaves falling, ducks, ponds, woods, grassland. And glorious sunshine! As it was a Friday afternoon, it was very quiet except for a few rich people and their dogs, a small film crew, and a very happy runner taking a load off in the sun. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of juice so I couldn’t take any pictures. But by that point I was pretty pooped from the ride, and I still had to cycle back home. The whole trip took about 2.5 hours (an hour more than I estimated, no wonder I was so hungry when I got home).

I love cycling and shouldn’t let London limit my horizons. I’ll definitely be using Bikely again. There were a few longer loops from Stoke Newington that go beyond London and into the country. I can’t think of a cheaper, greener, or higher energy way to escape the big bad city!

I leave you with one of the few photos I took before the camera batteries died. This was taken atop of a hill in Crouch End. Behold the blue sky!

Bikely

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Dear Diary, I’m through counting calories

Published on October 6, 2008 in fitness, food and nutrition. 0 Comments

stock.xchng - Red notebook (stock photo by biewoef).png Most of us already know that keeping a food or workout diary is an incredibly effective way to increase fitness. There is plenty of research and anecdotal evidence to support this. Just last July, a Kaiser Permente study showed that people who kept a daily food diary dropped more than twice the amount of weight as those who didn’t record their food. And just check out the huge popularity of websites like SparkPeople, Gyminee and The Daily Plate.

A few years ago, after several hits and misses in the fitness department, I started tracking my food calories. I kept it up for a few months and it worked like a charm - the food diary taught me portion control and helped “kick start” the “healthier habits” I have today. But there was a downside.

Counting calories, while a great way to lose weight, is also a great way to become obsessed with numbers and ridden with mixed priorities. I stopped counting calories over two years ago but I’m still getting over the irrational worry that an extra walnut here or splash of cream there is going to instantly undo all of my progress. Cranky Fitness has an excellent post that really sums up the problem with this “data-driven” approach:

You may have all kinds of healthy nutritional goals–eating more whole foods, less processed crap, avoiding transfats or whatever. But it’s hard to track a bunch of different goals, and what most people end up paying attention to at the end of the day is a number. How Many?

When I was counting calories I used to allow myself one free day a week a la Bill Philips’ “Body for Life” advice. This day was usually a Friday and involved lots and lots of beer. Then on Saturday, I was supposed to return to my “diet”, which unfortunately precluded me from indulging in the ultimate hangover cure: a mushroom, onion and cheese omelet with buttered toast, orange juice and coffee. What a dilemma. Fine, I was losing weight, but was I really any healthier? My Friday night beer binges suggest otherwise. And the way I felt on Saturday, both in mind and body, certainly didn’t feel very healthy.

There must be a better way

I’ve since stopped tracking calories, but I haven’t stopped tracking my food. I seem to have replaced my numeric obsessions with an overall obsession with eating (whether this is a good thing is open for debate). My recent food diary efforts have traded numeric trends for other patterns, such as

Recipes - noting little tweaks and changes, an extra pinch of thyme here, a dash of vinegar there, that sort of thing
Seasonal trends - it’s fun watching the cabbage and kale of winter slowly replace the cool salads of summer
Various body patterns - sleep, cycles and all that other fun stuff stuff I should probably keep to myself
Time of day - Okay, this is a number, but since I’ve been doing yoga in the morning I’ve noticed that my performance is effected by the time I ate dinner the night before. It seems like an early, light dinner is good for yoga in the morning. But if I’m going swimming, I have a much better swim if I pack it in at dinner time.
Taste changes - Earlier this year, my diet seemed to follow variations on the theme of of bean mush - lentil soup, Indian dal, a pile of puy lentils, veggie chili. I guess we got sick of eating with a spoon all the time and now we’ve been experimenting with more stir fries, pasta dishes and other forkable foods. But the dal will never die!

Since I quit counting calories, I’m enjoying food more than ever, and I love to cook. Taking pictures is part of the process; if I’ve created something in the kitchen, I feel compelled to capture it permanently in a photo. I was chuffed to read about the research that suggested photo diaries may be more effective that traditional journals for helping people lose weight. Sure, the photos are a great way to reinforce ideas of portion control and nutritional balance, but my photos aren’t about weight loss. I simply enjoy the nostalgia of looking back on all the food I’ve eaten and I’m fascinated by the way my tastes evolve over time.

In addition to photos, I’ve also been keeping a very lazy written journal that simply lists meals and exercise. The trouble with both the diary and the photos is that I’m horribly inconsistent. Keeping a food diary is a pain in the ass! Photos can be annoying too, especially when I’ve taken ten pictures of the same salad and impose on myself the necessity to choose one of basically identical photos to upload to Flickr. And Flickr, though great for sharing photos, isn’t as good for taking notes or tracking days of the week.

I am inspired by people like jenna, an AFPA-certified nutritionst and blogger at Eat, Live, Run, who religiously photograph and post every bit of food and drink she consumes, from cocoa to quiche. I love Jenna’s approach to this whole calorie business:

I do not set a certain number of calories for myself per day. I find that too restricting for my active lifestyle. A trend in my life/diet has shown that I intake about 1800 calories or so a day and that’s fine with me. It just seems to usually be within that amount without me regulating it…it just comes naturally I guess–that’s what my body wants.

I’m also trying to listen to what my body wants rather than spend pointless minutes scouring the food database for how many calories are in a prune. I know calorie-counting works for some and it certainly worked for me in some ways, but these days I want something different.

So how do I motivate myself to keep better track of my foods? I took a picture of my breakfast this morning. Will I remember to take a photo at lunch? Will I write any of this down in my journal? I haven’t yet… and I didn’t yesterday. Do I need more motivation or do I just need to let go and give up on all this OCD diary malarky?

What do you think?

How do you feel about food and exercise diaries? Hate em’? Love em’? Do you journal in words or pictures? What would be your ideal way to track all of this stuff? What would you want to measure?

As I mentioned earlier, Crabby’s post, But I don’t Wanna Write it Down, is a pretty good summation of what sucks about food diaries.

Jenna’s blog, Eat, Live, Run, is fantastic inspiration for any of us who want to to be a food-photo fiend.

Diet Blog has a few good pointers on keeping a food diaries, plus some pretty good reasons to do so that aren’t related to calories.

Want to become a better food photographer? Then check out this recent post from VeganYumYum, Food Photography for Bloggers, which covers everything from plates to lighting.

Sharing means caring

For other Flickr users out there, I’ve created a Flickr group called SmarterFitter. I’m posting my food diary there along with other SmarterFitter-related photos. Feel free to share your own by adding your photos to the group pool!

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Overtrained and Underbrained

Published on September 15, 2008 in fitness. 0 Comments

Tim and I have recently put the kibosh on our daily 7km walks. He has his sore ankle to blame, while I’ve been experiencing an odd pain in my shin that I can’t seem to figure out.

Right below me knee, the upper portion of my tibia feels bruised to the touch, but there’s no swelling or black-and-blue. Oddly, the only thing that really aggravates it is kicking my legs while swimming freestyle or backstroke. I thought swimming was a fairly no-risk sport but in this case it seems to be worse than walking. How annoying. But then I wonder, maybe it really IS the walking that’s screwing the pooch and the freestyle is just accentuating the pain? Who knows.

I’ve got an appointment with my doc in a week. In the meantime, I’ve subbed walking and freestyle swimming for more breast stroke, and I bought a “pull buoy” so I can swim freestyle without kicking my legs. Things seemed to be getting worse until I decided that this injury was a really good excuse to start doing yoga again. For the past few mornings, I’ve started the day with about 20 minutes of easy yoga. Remarkably, the shin has been slowly improving ever since.

So what’s going on here? I’ve done my share of obsessive-google searching for “shin pain” this week and the only thing I could find was information on shin splints. What I couldn’t understand was that the pain felt like it was on the bone, freaking me out that I might have a stress fracture or something (can that even happen from walking and swimming?). But then I posted a message on the PhysioForum and someone (a physiologist presumably, but who the hell knows - this is the internet, after all) came back with the following:

the area you refer to is the attachment site for your hamstrings and some other muscles…

…and to answer anyone who might ask, on a dissection project last year, we saw the tendon and thickened fascia extend nearly 10cm down the tiba in a broad sheet, not like a finger tendon on a point insertion.

I too have had this pain when running too much.

Often it is a result of poor biomechanics. The majority of my patients have poor dynamic hip stability. The usual suspects tend to be Glut Med and other deep hip rotators. but also Iliacus and glut Max and min are also important in their roles.

It’s remarkable - for all the time I spend working out my body, I don’t really know as much as I thought about the body itself. Silly! If I’m putting this time into my muscles, I should really learn what these muscles are all about, eh’? Time for a lesson in hamstrings.

Indeed, there is a tendon that connects right to the spot where I’ve been feeling this pain. Now, I’m rubbish when I come to stretching, and I’ve had a hunch for a while now that my hams and calves are extremely tight. I suspect that this is what led to my shin pain, and now that I’m doing some yoga, those down dogs are helping me stretch out my hamstrings and ease the tension in those poor tendons.

At the same time, I still feel like I’m treading in modern jackass territory, and I look forward to hearing what the doc thinks.

In the meantime, like Tim, I’m happy I can still continue exercising while recovering from this injury. Still, let our little aches and pains be a lesson to us all:

Overuse injuries happen. Especially when you suddenly increase the intensity of your workouts. Even something as simple as walking can be a stress on the body. We were doing 7kms a day, every day. But even with walking, rest days are important. It’s easy to think “if I take a rest day, then that’s one more day between me and my fitness goals.” But remember, rest days are when all the good stuff happens: the body rebuilds and strengthens itself. You get stronger when you rest.

While you’re resting, why not take the time to get to know these muscles you’re working so hard to build? I’m thinking about ordering one of these posters from the “Anatomical Shop”:

They also sell a Illustrated Pocket Anatomy Muscular and Skeletal Systems Study Guide.

And how cool are these muscle socks??

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Four Days Without Caffeine

Published on August 20, 2008 in Personal, fitness and food. 0 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday, I gave up caffeine last Saturday and have been entirely caffeine free for all of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (today!). Why? I’ve been feeling fatigued lately and my sleep’s been rubbish. I wake up lots during the night. It’s annoying. So when Tim put me up to the caffeine-free challenge on Saturday afternoon (after my third cup of tea), I couldn’t resist.

So far, the experiment has been interesting. I can’t say it’s been terribly hard the way quitting smoking is. But I was surprised that I was enough of a caffeine addict to experience withdrawal symptoms: headaches, tightness in the neck and head, and noticeable irritability (sorry, Tim).

Today was different though. Despite another restless night’s sleep, today I felt fairly energetic. My morning swim was one of the best (and longest) I’ve had in months. And this evening I did 54 push-ups which burned like hell but mentally, I was up for the challenge (rather than being too tired to care). I’ve had no headaches and just a little muscle tension in my neck (but that could have been the swim kicking in). I probably can’t speak for my irritability but I think I’ve been pretty ace!

One of the coolest things I noticed is that I didn’t suffer the usual 3-p.m. “ack I need a caffeine break” crash that I’d become accustomed too. Bonus!

So now I’m past the headaches. And the cravings. I’m hoping my sleep will catch up with the trend and start showing similar improvement.

Addendum: I also just noticed that I’ve been more productive these past few evenings. Maybe this is purely the spirit of “change” shining through, but I’ve had a lot more mental energy to get on with writing and other “useful” things post-dinner. For a while there I was getting sucked into DVDs and books and dessert. Yummy, yes. Productive, not so much.

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Grown-up Talk about Budgets and Food

Published on May 20, 2008 in fitness, food and nutrition. 0 Comments

I’m trying a new budgeting system. My goal is to spend no more than £50/week on groceries and eating out. The critical part of the plan is that I take out my weekly £50 on Saturday morning, then do my weekly grocery shopping, which usually leaves me about £30 to last me through Friday for any incidental items and the occasional meal at a restaurant.

Did I really just spend this much on a suit?

The idea here is that I’ll be motivated not to spend anything throughout the week because I know I’ll want some cash leftover for Friday. So far it’s been working pretty well and has helped me avoid blowing precious pounds on stupid things like diet pop and deliciously cold pints of beer. In that way, the money budget also keeps me on top of my eating budget, which these days involves lots of beans and lentils (£50 doesn’t go very far in London).

Dumb Little Man has a post about a different kind of budget: a fast food budget (I’m glad I don’t have a problem with that one). He uses this as a strategy for kicking fast food. First, save your receipts for a week then add it all up….

Round that up to the nearest $10 and cut it in half. That’s how much you’ll spend a week from now on … Take that money and put it in a ziplock bag that you keep in your car. All your fast food will be paid for out of this fund, and when it dries up, that’s it until next week. This will force you to ration and make choices.

In fact, there are quite a few bloggers out there writing about the food/finance duality: Get Fit Slowly, No Calories Needed, and Finance and Fat just to name a few.

The idea is, loads of people have figured out how to get out of debt and manage their finances, and now they’re trying to use the same techniques to get their health under control and become as frugal with their food as they are with their money. Get Fit Slowly has an excellent post on this:

One reason people struggle with debt is that they haven’t learned the value of frugality. Instead, they allow themselves to fritter away their earnings dollar by dollar, buying knitting needles, comic books, hunting equipment, or whatever. They do not understand the power of frugality.

Again, the same is true with food. People gain weight (a form of corporeal debt) because they haven’t grasped the consequences of small decisions. A soda with lunch, an extra helping of mashed potatoes, a handful of Hot Tamales from a candy machine — these small indulgences combine to produce a greater effect. When a person fails to practice “food frugality”, it doesn’t manifest itself as financial debt — it’s reflected as fat.

I’m sort of doing this in reverse: I’ve (mostly) managed to become a frugal eater; now I’m trying to do the same with my money. This easy at the moment; I’m out of a regular job so the more money I don’t spend, the longer I can devote to becoming an amazingly successful freelance writer (hire me!). And by spending in cash rather than with a debit card, I can see the consequences of, say, spending £5 on two half pints of expensive Belgian wheat bear: that’s £5 now missing from my wallet.

When it comes to frugality with food, well, the effects aren’t so visible. That’s why I love blogs like Get Fit Slowly: it serves as a reminder that the daily decisions we make with food and with money both add up in the long term. That’s right: £5 saved today means a larger bankroll and a much smaller beer gut many tomorrows from now. Now, enough with all this adult talk about budgets and money. I’m off to daydream about Friday beer.

Blowing my burrito budget (in the car no less)

On Becoming a Frugal Eater [Get Fit Slowly]
How to Kill Your Additions to Junk Food and Soda Pop [Dumb Little Man]

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Bicycle Fitting for the Ladies

Published on May 14, 2008 in cycling and fitness. 1 Comment

You see it all the time: people cycling around town with the seat to short looking like their squatted over the toilet seat. Bicycle fit is complicated enough, but it’s even harder for women. Many women end up riding men’s bikes, which are designed for men’s wider shoulders and taller statures. Furthermore, seats can be especially uncomfortable for women who have comparatively wider pelvic areas (though now that I think about it, I hear more men complaining about their bike seats than women). Anyone riding a poorly fit bike will experience pains after cycling for a couple hours. And as Merry says on Cranky Fitness, this is the time of year when you want to go out for a long cycle ride:

If I sound preachy it’s because I think it’s really, really cool to go for a long bicycle ride out in the country where there aren’t a lot of cars but there is a lot of nature. You get to see things you never when you’re driving a car, plus it’s easy on your knees and you can get a workout while sitting down!

Amen sister.

In her post, Merry covers the often ignored subject of bicycle fit, making welcome mention of some chick-specific factoids we girlies should consider when sizing up our bicycles.

It’s true there’s a vas deferens between men and women. (That joke never gets old, at least not to me.) To quote the WOMBATS website (Women’s Mountainbike And Tea Society), women often have shorter torsos and longer legs than a man of the same height. Just because you and your boyfriend are the same height doesn’t mean you’ll be comfortable riding his bicycle.

Bicycling Sizing is COMPLICATED, at least for my feeble brain which relied on the very capable folks at Austin’s University Cyclery to size my bike. But if you’re more patient than I am, or you don’t have access to a bike shop with a kick-ass mechanic, then check out these excellent resources for bike fitting:

Bike Sizing For All

Sheldon Brown’s Revisionist Theory of Bike Sizing
Colorado Cyclist’s Article on Bicycle Fitting
Edward Zimmerman’s Frame Fitting Site with Online Calculations

Bike Sizing For Girls

Bike Fit a la WOMBAT
Myra and Simon’s Bicycle Fitting for Small Women
Women’s Saddles and Bicycle Fit by Pamela Blalock
Myra & Simon’s Buying a bike that fits a woman

Since we’re talking about bike fitting, I have to make special mention of my Jamis Nova, pictured above. You might notice that that front tire is smaller than the rear tire. Why? It all boils down to my being vertically challenged. The bike has a really small frame, and as a result a bigger tire would result in my toe hitting the wheel wheel whenever I made a turn (this is called “toe overlap”). I think it’s cool that Jamis makes a small bike for shorties like me who like to tour, and I’m extra happy that I was able to meet a mechanic who was able to recommend it (a fellow female shorty at the aforementioned Cyclery - it was the last bike shop I visited when bike shopping in Austin, and by far the best and most capable). Terry, the “first and last name in women’s cycling”, uses the same technique. Myra & Simon get into this in more detail on their site.

And in case you can’t tell, I’m ga-ga for my Jamis Nova, who even carry a whole line of bikes designed for women. I’ve taken my Jamis across France and Wisconsin, up and down Texas‘ Hill Country, and a countless number of times through London and Austin. I’ve never experienced achy knees or a sore bum, just miles of good times and sunshine, with the odd goat and rain storm thrown in for good measure.

Who Says Size Doesn’t Matter? [Cranky Fitness]

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

Walk-Running: Jeff Galloway would be proud

Published on March 29, 2008 in Personal, books, fitness and running. 0 Comments

Last Sunday, I went on my first run since the injection. I’m taking it slow: about 2.5 km and 20 minutes of running. My ankle was fine, my knees were mildly creaky, and my pride was only mildly offended by my absurdly slow pace. I wish I could say I was thrilled to be running again, but really I felt paranoid. “Am I hurting myself?” I wondered with every step. At the same time, I missed the care-free days of 5 milers down Town Lake on sunny Austin Sundays. But things change.

Today I went for run #2. This time, I alternated running with walking for 5km and about 40 minutes. The run-walk was, without a doubt, the way forward. I was able to cover more distance while keeping my heart rate up, plus it alleviated most of my paranoia around injury. I also felt great. Gone were the creaky legs and stiff joints of last weekend. I could almost recall what it feels like to run. If you’ve done much running, you know what I mean - it’s that feeling of lightness, where the run feels completely natural, the legs are fluid, and it’s easy to breath - to me, that’s running.

But for now, run-walking will do. Though he hesitates to admit it, Jeff Galloway agrees. From his Book on Running:

Our bodies weren’t designed to run continuously for long distances… Sure we can adapt, but there is a better way to increase endurance than by running continously. By alternating walking and running, from the start, there’s virtually no limit to the distance you can cover… Once we find the ideal ratio for a given distance, walk breaks allow us to feel strong to the end and recover fast, while building up the same levels of stamina and conditioning that we would have reached if we had run continuously.

Link to Jeff Galloway’s website
Link to Galloway’s Book on Running 2 Ed

What is Sinus Tarsi Syndrome?

Published on March 6, 2008 in Personal, fitness and running. 2 Comments

The sinus tarsi is “the eye of the foot”, an opening on the outside of the foot between the ankle and heel bone. This canal contains ligaments which can become inflamed if put under undo stress such as high-impact running, jumping, or simply running with bad form. The pain associated with this is called “sinus tarsi syndrome”.

I know all this because I went to have my left ankle looked at by my GP who diagnosed me with sinus tarsi syndrome, apparently very common among sporty people (like me? hah!). Last night he injected some steroids into my sinus tarsal to calm down the inflammation. The procedure was painless, until he said “I’m very deep in the sinus cavity now”, at which point I became a little nauseous. I recovered quickly after a short rest on the couch and a large glass of red wine.

If all goes well I should be able to run again in 10 days time. Here’s to hoping…

Link to Sinus Tarsi Syndrome on Orthoteers

Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com

spacekadet blog

Archive for the 'fitness' Category

Ankle Update: Not Giving Up

The “Smarter” Side of SmarterFitter

Bikely for Bike Routes