Return of the Yassos

One month before the Berlin Marathon I did a full set of Yasso 800s. For Eugene, my plan was to do the Yassos on at least two occasions. Today, with just over nine weeks until the race, it was time to get one in the books.

There was some chintzy Portland-style rain most of the morning and into the early afternoon, while I worked. Around 3:30 I was ready to head out. It was raining, but I noticed on the radar that we were just a half-hour or so from lightening skies. So I waited a bit and then jogged the two miles over to the Grant Park track. I was surprised to find a gaggle of high schoolers doing repeats, and decided to jog around the outside lanes while they finished up. That gave me two more miles, adding up to an extravagant four-mile warm-up.

By then, there was a bit of sun, low on the horizon, sneaking around the clouds and through the trees onto the track. The air was perfect, a cool 50 and calm, just a soft breath of a breeze from the south.

So here's the data, comparing my pre-Berlin workout with today's:

Aug 09 / Feb 10
3:00 / 2:58 -2
2:50 / 2:59 +9
2:56 / 2:53 -3
2:57 / 2:53 -4
2:56 / 2:52 -4
2:57 / 2:54 -3
2:55 / 2:52 -3
2:55 / 2:54 -1
2:56 / 2:54 -2
2:57 / 2:53 -4

That workout last August was a killer, especially the sixth through tenth reps. Today's workout, while far from easy, felt considerably less challenging. Part of it was that I was a bit cautious; I'm sure I could have gone a couple of seconds faster all the way through without dying. Yet I was still consistently faster today than last summer. That's a confidence booster. The data—and this is just an educated guess—tells me my marathon fitness is around 3:03. That's cool. I've got five or six weeks of hard work to get faster.

INJURY REPORT: Earlier posts talked about a wonky ankle/heel/Achilles. This Tuesday I hit Glendoveer for 15, going eight easy, four hard (tempo) and three easy. Felt pretty darn strong and better yet, as the run went on—and particularly during the hard four miles—there was zero pain. Zero! Then yesterday I did 30 miles on the bike trainer and again felt good. Heading out for today's track workout, I was a bit worried about running on harder surfaces (particularly to and from the track). Mostly it turned out fine. The injury tightened up a bit around the ninth rep. I iced it afterward and am going to be sure to do some Trigger Point massage before hitting the sack in a few minutes. Interestingly, these last two workouts have helped me to better define the injury: it's definitely not the Achilles. It's more the heel. The tightness is centered in the heel. The worse it gets, the more it spreads toward the outside the ankle and up the Achilles, but the problem is in the heel. This is good to know—helps guide my massage a little more precisely.

Spiridon Didn't Do This

The bike trainer isn't so bad for an hour, hour and a half. It's especially not so bad outside in the sunshine instead of downstairs in the basement gloom.*

But I'd rather be running.

I've backed off on the running the past 10 days. Since Feb. 11, I've run just twice, the 10-miler in San Luis Obispo and then a 10-miler on the soft chip trail of Glendoveer this past Wednesday. I almost convinced myself, after the Glendoveer run, that I could barge through this injury, if you want to call it that, without reducing my mileage. I'm still almost convinced. Almost.

What ails me is a little mysterious. In many ways it's the same thing I experienced in the fall and early winter of 2008: pain on the outside of my left ankle, just in back of the knobby ankle bone and spreading down into the heel and up into the Achilles tendon. Back then, two different doctors offered vague non-diagnoses, agreeing only that my Achilles appeared healthy. Since then, I've learned about trigger points and it's abundantly clear to me I have some issues in my left calf. When I work the trigger point in there the ankle/heel/Achilles loosens up beautifully.

So I've been doing a lot of trigger-point work and the run at Glendoveer was, like, 80 percent trouble free. I ran it pretty hard at points, too, with several miles at or under 7:00/mile on a very soft, slow track. That's what had me almost convinced. But the evening after the run the tightness and slight aggravation when getting up after sitting down was still evident. It made me afraid, and I haven't run since.

With 10 weeks to go until Eugene, I figure now is the time to be cautious. I figure—well, I hope—that a few days of extra rest here will allow me to put in some serious training weeks in March, crunch-time for a May 2 marathon.

The bike trainer is my salvation when I can't, or won't, run. I can work up a sweat, work the legs. Sure it's an entirely different sort of exercise and not even close to being an adequate replacement for running. You don't become a better runner by riding a bike trainer. However, you might not become too much of a worse runner by riding a bike trainer.

Next week I'm getting back to running, to see where I stand. A stretch of hard/easy/hard/easy all on soft surfaces. (In fact, I may not do another Eugene training mile on concrete or asphalt. It was a 16-miler on that shit that caused this flare-up.)

*On a sunny, 58-degree afternoon, why not go for an actual bike ride? Welcome to the life of the single dad. Plus, in an hour on the bike I can give myself a much better workout than an hour on the streets. I did some killer short intervals and a period of hard steady spinning. It was great.

Sunday Run

There's been a possibly profound development in this bid to dismantle Spiridon's legacy, but I'm not talking about it, apparently because I harbor the hope that it will blow away, like a cigarette-pack wrapper on the wind (got hit with one of those while walking the other day). So I'll just say that I ran about 10 miles Sunday in San Luis Obispo, which felt at once foreign and familiar. What was I doing there? It was a quick trip down to California for a family function. Flew to San Jose, then piloted Dad's Lexus, mis padres in tow, down U.S. 101, through the southern end of the Santa Clara Valley, then the Salinas Valley and onward past Paso over Cuesta Grade and into San Luis Obispo. A gazillion relatives of mine went to Poly, including three siblings. And my eldest brother, who damn well knows how to smoke a turkey, and his family live in nearby Templeton, but it'd been maybe a quarter century since I'd spent any time right there in SLO town proper.

So I took off on my run without much idea of where I was going. It was 8 a.m. on Sunday and the burg was still pretty quiet. The sun was bright and the wind was howling from the northwest, but it wasn't cold. It was gorgeous. The Development That Shall Not Be Named faded from my mind. I went up Monterey Street. I wound my way to the other side of 101 to a preserve. Two people—I was going to say "homeless people" but who knows?—slept right on the path entering the parking lot. The path became a trail and quickly turned up the hill. You can't miss this hill as you drive south through SLO; there's a big M on it, for Madonna. (No, not for the singer; for this.)

The trail was steep and like the trails I mountain-biked in Riverside wayback when, it was ravaged by the cycles of months and months of dry interrupted by big rain: cracks and crevices galore. The ground was hard, though wet and muddy in low spots. The grasses covering the hillsides were green but thin and low. It wouldn't take very many weeks of sunshine to turn them brown. The Brown State. Not as inspiring as Golden State. I powered my way up the grade, passing dogs and their walkers. There was a split in the trail, left heading up to the hill—perhaps another 1,000 feet in elevation gain?—and right skirting fairly level around the base. I so wanted to go higher and almost did but then gave due respect to what horror the downhill might inflict on my ankle/Achilles problem. Oh, shit, I gave it away.

Anyway, I hit nearby Lake Laguna for a mile or two and then headed back to the motel. When I said San Luis felt foreign and familiar I was talking about the sunshine, the light, the texture of the earth, the generosity of the breeze. When I said it felt foreign and familiar I meant that it wasn't Portland at all but was California.