Wednesday Training

First off I'm tired of the cold and the rain. Is it summer yet?? The weather is calling for possible snow or freezing rain Saturday. Yuck. I like snow but I HATE the cold.

Today I made room reservations in Nashville for the Country Music Marathon on April 26th. Annette and I both are planning to run the full along with several of the Cruisers. I signed up for a free online training program they have and yesterday was the first official training day they had listed. Well, zero for me yesterday.

Tonight's workout called for cross training so thats what I did. I jumped on my bike and rode the trainer for a solid hour. I really like the bike trainer. It's not as boring as most have said. I get my ipod going and watch TV at the same time. I had a pretty good workout and my heart rate monitor said I burnt 618 calories. My average was about 75% of my maximum heart rate and I was sweating! I normally do a 5 minute warm up in a small gear, then move up to the big ring and start working hard for 3-5 minutes at a time, then dropping down a couple gears to recover. I'll alternate this several times along with working each leg seperatly and moving to different positions on my bars. Thats the nice thing about using your own bike and not a trainer, I actually can get used to my triathlon bars a little more. Varying the hand position also works different muscles in the legs so I'll time different positions. On a long bike ride you have to move around on the bars and the more positions you have the better.

After the trainer I did some abs, push ups and some stretching. I may attempt a run tomorrow night. I was tempted to do a brick tonight but I didn't want to push it. My leg doesn't hurt and I only feel it with certain ranges of motion. After almost four weeks of not running, I have about come to the conclusion that I need to run now to get things back to normal. Irregardless, if I do it will be very easy and very short. The ticker has started so its time to get back to training!

Back to the Track

It was back to the track tonight with the Tuesday Night Flyers. We normally run in Magness Creek but tonight we were at the High School track. I didn't actually run any but I did walk 1.2 miles. That was the furthest I have walked since the marathon a little over 2 weeks ago. It may even be the most combined walking I have done since then. It was nice being out with the group again even though I wasn't running the work out with them. Coach Dennis assured me that I was being very smart and doing the right thing by not running too soon. He explained how my muscles will come back stronger than before by letting them rest more. I have been concerned about losing my level of fitness but he told me that after the first week running I'd be back at full speed and maybe then some.

The walking felt pretty good and I did try to walk at a pretty fast pace. It was so hard not to run though. I could sense the speed of the track just walking on it. I just kept telling myself that I was doing speed walk training for my next marathon. The down side to walking is you don't stay as warm. And it felt pretty cold out tonight. The best part was getting to talk to all my running buds. I will probably go back to the track on some week nights and get some more walking in or when the time is right, run a few laps. Soon. Soon we will run again.

CPR

Tuesday night is my "busy" night most weeks. I not only do the running clinic, but it is also our regular training night for my fire department. Since this week I couldn't run I opted to get to FD training on time. After sitting in on a quick Fire Fighters Association meeting, we were given two options for training for the night. 1) Go to station two and give the rookies some pump training on the engines or 2) stay and take a CPR class. Since my CPR card had just recently expired and I really didn't feel like crawling around on the engines and playing in the water I elected to stay and do the CPR class.

I can't even count the number of times I have been CPR certified over the years. It seems like every couple years they change the standards and this year was no different. We were doing the American Heart Association Health Care Provider course and one of our MEMS medics was giving the class. It was pretty much old school to me, after almost 15 years in the fire service, I already knew what to do, though CPR is not something that is done everyday, I have done it on real people though. Most of the people in the class haven't even did a manikin yet. It was still good to brush up on it.

One major change, now its pretty much thirty compressions and two breaths weather its one person or two person CPR. The thing now is that studies have found that compressions help circulate the oxygen that is left in the lungs so this is the most important part. I can remember when it was 5/1 and 15/2 so 30/2 is easier. They also changed hand placement. Now it is directly between the nipples. Bottom line is this, ANY CPR is better than no CPR. If you ever have to do it your not going to get in trouble for not counting right or having your hand a millimeter out of place. Also, it is against most health care providers policies to do mouth to mouth so unless its a close relative you are taking a big chance on getting something you can't get rid of. The class is pretty boring stuff and it's one of those things you never want to have to use, but everyone should know it.

Oh yeah, I also got my training certificate's for School Inspections and Basic Arson Detection last night. I took these classes back in August and October. Arson Investigation is really cool stuff to study. It's CSI for fire. I have attended many classes on Arson and they are always interesting and informative. Since we are a volunteer department we do not conduct full blown arson investigations. We try to determine a cause and if there is sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation we turn it over to the State Fire Marshall. They get paid to be in court and we don't. Heck, we don't get paid period! So support your local professional volunteers, we need it.

Sports Massage

Well today I got my first ever sports massage. Annette had been for her first the week before the marathon. She loved it and pretty much all the local runners here told me that I had to go see "Christy" after the marathon. With the shape that my legs were in for the first few days I figured that nothing short of an MRI, casts and lots of pain pills would help. Luckily things did get better through the end of last week and Annette scheduled me an appointment for today. All I can say is WOW. It was AWESOME. I did not realize that muscles had so many knots in them. I could feel the knots rolling out as she massaged my legs. She said I was still a little tense but I think that was because I wasn't sure how hard she would be massaging my sore spots. We discussed these up front and I told her where all my aches and pains were. She massaged all of them pretty hard at times but none of it was painful. Afterwards she basically said that my legs were trashed. They are very tight and the tendons in my calves are all stressed. She recommended taking it easy for a while to let things heal up with icing and finger massages to help too. No heat. Even though she is not a doctor, I felt much better after hearing what she was telling me. So, I have pretty much ordered myself to two weeks of rest and no running. Not sure if I can make it that long but I'm not going to run any until my leg feels normal again. Then I'll start back slow and easy. I'll probably go back for another massage in a couple weeks. I really didn't want to leave today, it was that good, very relaxing and it did help a lot. Massage will now be a regular part of training and racing for me.