Sunday, February 15, 2009

Almost Back

Friday I managed to get in some upper body lifting in spite of the hand.  Not the easiest thing in the world for sure.  Wide grip pull ups, incline bench presses, shoulder presses, and lat pull downs are tough when you can't make a fist to grip things solidly.  But hey, the doctor says I need to work hard to rehab the hand so I considered it a rehab assignment.  

Each set sort of went like this:  do my best to grab the bar - start exercise w/ some pain in the hand - after about rep #3 the pain would subside - finish set - almost pry hand off the bar - wave of pain feeling like someone lit the hand on fire - after about 90-seconds, the pain would fade away.  Then repeat.  Ah the joys of being stubborn and insane.  

In the afternoon I got in a nice 6-mile run.

Saturday I got in my "long run" for the week - only 9.5 miles, but it's the only run over 8-miles I've done since December 28th.  (this was due to me cutting the weekly long run down to 8-miles 3-weeks out from the winter track season)

One thing I noticed going over the log book however, was that not only have I been out due to the hand injury, but I also took several days off right after I strained the hamstring which happened on January 20th.  Meaning that since 1/20 - I haven't done a helluva lot of running.  This 9.5 miler (I gave myself the option of doing 9 or 10 and I split the difference) was a decent test to see how far behind my fitness was.  And really it wasn't too bad:  9.5 miles at an average pace of 6:49 (starting at about 7:10 and ramping down to 6:22)  

Not exactly where I was in early January where I could do 11-12 miles at that pace w/ slightly less effort, but the good news here is that 9.5 miles at about 6:50 pace is where this build is starting.  Hopefully, in about 2-weeks I'm back to where I was at the peak, at least as far as general fitness is concerned.

Our weather has been pretty awful lately - slick muddy trails w/ driving rain and high winds is certainly making life difficult, but I'd much rather run in that than resort to the treadmill!

Training:

Fri, 2/13:  AM  General upper body lifting + a few sets of leg presses.  stretching, rolling
PM  6-miles @ 6:57 pace

Sat, 2/14:  9.5 miles @ 6:49  pace (weather was awful)

Sun, 2/15:  4.5 miles @ 6:52 pace (weather was worse)



1 comment:

Ewen said...

I'd only say 'slightly' insane Mike, but I'm a distance runner who doesn't do much more than push-ups and pilates.

Looks like you're not too far away at all aerobically after that 9.5 miler. Nice negative split.