After Burning River 100, it was time to rest, but that's not always easy, especially when you have a busy race calendar
Burning River 100 was my PR for the 100 miler and gained me WSER lottery entry for the year (yes, I'm already in the process of figuring out what my 2023 qualifiers might be). However, my doing this race and especially how I felt afterwards left me in a bit of a bind. When I planned out my year, I had originally planned on 3 "A" races. Bighorn 100, Barkley Fall Classic, and the Twin Cities marathon. There were only a couple problems with that plan. First, if I DNF'd at Bighorn (which I did, read about that here). Second, there is just about no time between BFC and twin cities.
Resting after Burning River
Sean told me that someone at Bighorn gave him the advice that you should rest one day for every 10 miles of a race. So, after finishing Bighorn, I rested a week and started up with some easy trail runs after that. Since I'd basically decided that I was going to run Burning River by that week, I knew that I had very little time to cool my jets before I had to get back into training big time. Of course, I then came down with Covid after putting in two weeks of pretty heavy runs, so I completely missed one week of training (more about coming back after covid below). That meant that I was on pretty shaky ground with both wanting to get in quality runs and wanting to taper leading up to Burning River. I think I hit the right balance since I did end up finishing and PR'ing.
Greek Mythology Probs
Then I ran BR100 and as I describe in the race report here, the last ten miles were a real battle with my achilles aching like I've never felt it. I knew I had blisters, but those I don't worry about. A sore achilles is another thing entirely. As I drove back from Ohio on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday (I was taking my time and going the long route), I had distinct pain and swelling in my right achilles. Since I hadn't yet rested the 10 days, I wasn't too worried. However, I did have flashbacks of my thinking that the pain in my knee after a marathon was "normal" so I didn't end up going to a doctor about it for 8 months. I didn't want to repeat that error, so I was monitoring it closely. I didn't run, and I didn't even walk that much. I did start riding my bike to work again and on the weekend of August 6th, I volunteered at a race in Lafayette Louisiana which meant that I was on my feet for 14 hours and that wasn't probably the best for it (though it did keep me from running, which was the plan).
As Sunday rolled into Monday, we were now over a week after the race and I was still noticing some swelling and pain. I had a work meeting canceled on Tuesday morning, so I took advantage of the time windfall to go see the PA at the clinic on campus. He checked it out and didn't seem too worried, but he did get me a referral to an orthopedist who specializes in foot/ankle issues. That appointment was for a week later, 17 days after the race, but more importantly it was now only 5 weeks until BFC. I'm again worried about getting in my training.
Things start looking up again
The crazy thing is, as soon as I get that referral my achilles seems to be less of an issue. I still notice some swelling, but the pain just isn't there. I decided to try to job a half mile at the indoor track on campus and it was fine. I noticed the achilles a bit later (at my age, there is pain, and then there is just the pain of being old, so I "notice" a lot of little niggles--another aside, I use that word a lot, but I'd never looked it up until now. It is, in fact, a word.) ANNNYWAY, the next day I decided to test it by doing a super easy 3 mile loop in the neighborhood and no problems. Yay! Two days later, I try a 4 miler and then same. Two days after that an 8 miler on the Longleaf Trace (local hike and bike paved rails to trails). So I feel like I'm good.
"I tend to think about runners like heroin addicts. You're not going to tell a heroin addict to stop doing heroin, it means too much to them."
That was Sunday and I still had the appointment with the ortho on Tuesday. I decide not to cancel out of an abundance of caution, figuring that the time and money would at least be worth getting a pro to look at it. I ran again that morning, and everything seemed fine. When the foot doc looked at it, he asked lots of questions but didn't seem worried. One of the best things to come out of it was some stretches that he recommended for preventing it from happening again and also the following characterization. He said: "I tend to think about runners like heroin addicts. You're not going to tell a heroin addict to stop doing heroin, it means too much to them. They're addicted. Instead, you try to find something safer that hits the same neural pathways so that they do not take the stuff that's bad for them. Runners are the same. I'm not going to tell you to stop running, but if it comes to it, we may need to look at alternatives that give you similar benefits.
Sean handles his covid diagnosis
In general, I thik we runners are pretty bad at handling health set backs. I decided to be extra cautious when I got covid because of my multiple lung issues made me not want to rush back and risk prolonging my recovery. Sean took things a little different. Sean had noticed covid symptoms on Friday 8/12 after his wife and son had it earlier in the week. Here's a depiction of our text conversation on Sunday 8/14.
Sean: Did you run at all when you had covid?
Ward: Nope. I took a week off. After 5 days my symptoms had cleared up (no fever) but then I took the 6th day off and then ran the 7th.
[Two hours later...]
Sean. Just finished a 7 miler.
I was following a lot of people in facebook groups and on twitter that were talking about covid affecting their running. So many people said how it affected them for weeks and sometimes months. I was really lucky where it really was just an upper respiratory issue with some fever. Sean complained about feeling really "fuzzy" in his head but not really fever or weakness, so it's not surprising that he got out there so quickly.
The rest of the fall
Right now, I have two major races in the next 6 weeks and those are my total focus. I have a 6 hour race later in October, but I don't have much that I'm going to be training that hard for until Loup Garou in December. I'm not sure how well I do with these sorts of layoffs. The 6 weeks or so between the 6 hour race (hoping for a 50k) and Loup Garou isn't that bad, but I've noticed that the last few years, I've tried to run some sort of race of a minimum distance of a half at least every month. This year (so far) I've run at least a 50k every month but May (and it will be August). I don't think I handle a blank race calendar well, so I tend to fill them up quickly. I'm concerned about overuse, but I also know that I'd like to get in the running for as long as my body can handle it.
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