Shins, quads and coaches, Oh MY!

"Don't listen to a word I say

Hey!

The screams all sound the same."

Of Monsters and Men - "Little Talks"

So this was my first week with my new coach with the most, Heather Leiggi, you can read all about her here. Somedays I feel bad for her, having me as her athlete. 

Side note: How cool is it to be able to call yourself an athlete? That just makes me all giddy. Almost as giddy as when I get new gear.

This past week was NOT my best training week. It started off with shin splints, as you'll recall from my last training post. Those have largely been handled. Compression socks, lots of extra stretching, using the Range Roller (like The Stick, only Not The Stick), and rest have really sorted them out. My left shin is 100% as of yesterday's run. My right one, I'd say 85%. It still gets a little tight on me, but I can run on it. My run test was Wednesday, and I went easy. Coach agreed with me and told me to be smart about it. If it was going to be too painful, ease up and we'll reschedule it. I didn't crush the test, but I wasn't whimpering in pain during it.

The next day however sucked. So along with shin splints, I have a really strange problem with my left quad. My vastus medialis is not as developed/strong on my left quad as it is on my right quad. The picture below illustrates this muscle (check me out with the cool science picture huh?)

The vastus medialis. 

This can lead to severe inflammation of that muscle. Which basically, to me, feels like my knee is dividing by zero while little tiny midgets with sharp pickaxes play whack-a-mole to the tune of bagpipes. 

This lil piece of biology sidelined me for 2 months last year causing me to miss my first triathlon I was scheduled to do. So, when it started hurting on Thursday, I got smart.

Hello, Papa Johns?

I emailed Heather right away when I was sure it was that quad issue and told her what was going on and I thought it would be a good idea to rest it. She agreed. So I had a two day rest this week from training. I don't like extra rest days. I need to run/bike all the miles for all the minutes. 

Update: A few have asked me how I'm dealing with the quad issue, so let's share it with everyone. I'm rebuilding it slowly. Leg extensions, but only the last 5 inches or so, since that's where the weakness is in the quad like such:

Yes, my legs are blinding white. I know. Thanks for pointing that out

To top things off on Thursday, I got this great little email:

!@#$%$#@!

Now that's just a serious kick in the shorts. So I ate pizza. What else did you think I was going to do? 

So let's move along the song to Saturday. I had an endurance run scheduled, in which I was told to go outside and do. Heather must have brought back some magic Maui weather, because Saturday was beautiful! 60 degrees, sunny, a perfect day to go out and gobble some pavement. No need for cold weather tights, a hoodie, gloves, or heated undershorts. With Garmin on wrist I was off!

I decided not to go my normal route. Ok, I'll be honest. I had no route planned. I was suppose to run 35 minutes with 30 second pickups. So across the street up the block hang a right over the river and through the woods I went. I checked the GPS map after, and my route kind of looked like this:

Ok first I was..no..wait.. hey, is that Paris in there?

If you've been with me for all 7 of my posts, you'll know I'm a proud member of Team TreadMill Racing. Running outside is so way different. I had no pace, no cadence, sloppy form and somehow  a squirrel ended up riding on my shoulder. I put in my pickups after the warm up and learned something very interesting.

I run too fast. 

Sounds counter intuitive doesn't it? Not really. Look at my splits times (One lap is one mile):

"I'm given `er all she's got Cap'n!" - Mr. Scott

WAY to inconsistent. I need to settle down and find my pace. Thank you Heather for making me run outside. 

In other news, I got a new piece of gear this week. I needed a new gearbag and a new work bag. So I decided to get one that would suit both needs. Over to Trisports I went. Nice people, a bit slow on the shipping, but hey, it got to me. That's what counts. 

From xkcd.com

I come out of Friday's staff meeting to find a beautiful shiny brown box waiting for me in the geek pen. With Keys in hand, I tear open said box and VOILA! My bag had arrived. It's way bigger than I thought. I'm pretty sure that Jennifer from One Lovely Run could fit in this thing and be smuggled into Canada.

It really is that big.

The inside is cavernous. Pouches on the side for smelly socks and water bottles. Great padded straps to save the shoulders. Yes, I like this bag. The USAT logo is pretty cool too.

Yes, those are my snacks for the day. Eat all the food!

So tomorrow is an incline run day at the gym. This will be fun. I'm actually really liking runs. Well starting too. They may make me a runner yet.