The Shortest Month

patience, Patience, PATIENCE, PATIENCE!!!

February was interesting, more than anything it has created a renewed focus on trying to grow my patience.

What hurts?

My butt, err I mean glute and my elbows.  

The elbows continue to improve and have been helped a lot from PT exercises suggested by a friend and now also a Theraband Intermediate Flexbar that was suggested by a coworker that has a lot more experience than I do.

To find out about my backside, keep reading or run away now :-)

Squats

In January, I played around with changing how I squat weights.  Instead of increasing the weights, I kept 185 on the bar for every set and worked at getting my depth as low as possible for me.  The experiment, plus a natural inclination to stand up lopsided led to a sore left glute, a literal, pain in the ass.  By the end of the month, I also started to have some mild kneecap pain.  The knee was no big thing, but it was new so when February started I set about re-reading everything I could find on squatting and went back to lifting heavy with a more natural depth for me.  I stopped worrying about "low as possible" and resolved to forget about squat depth and the "hip crease lower than knee" powerlifting standard once and for all.  Ultimately, an article that I can no longer find on compensations taught me about "butt wink".  The pain from the sore glute was starting to migrate into my lower back and the wink was certainly the reason ;-)  From then on I've set about squatting as deep as I can without starting to tilt my pelvis forward in a "butt wink".  My lower back pain has slowly gone away.  My hip improved significantly as well, but not just from this one thing...

Video 1 is Lopsided Lifting,
Video 2 is Butt Wink

     

Yoga

This continues to be the glue that holds everything together.  Without yoga there is no way that I'd be able to continue lifting heavier and heavier weights while also returning to running.  I do Yoga with Adriene (and Amanda) almost every morning, but then also supplement with more in the afternoon if the run or lifting session at the beginning of the day has left me feeling compromised.

I now feel better when I'm doing Yoga, but also when I'm not.  I've had a "Dad groan" for years whenever I get up off the couch, but it has started to slowly disappear.  I now often DON'T groan when I stand up.  I didn't see that one coming.

Running

This is where I've needed to be the most patient, I went the entire month not being able to make it farther than 6 miles in a run.  I got stopped by the 5 mile mark a bunch of times.  I'd often start a run feeling good enough, but would then have some tightness in my glute turn more towards the pain end of the spectrum.  I had to learn to shut it down, earlier and earlier in that tight-to-pain cycle.  Remember, patience.  Must be patient.  By pushing through less and less discomfort and a helping hand from Yoga with Adriene (and Amanda) eventually the hip started to feel better and better.  I did manage to increase my average weekly mileage from 19 to 25 miles per week.  For most of my friends, that is a single weekly long run, but for now, for me, I'm happy with being able to increase at all while still setting heavy lifting PRs.

Other stuff...

It was nice finding the Marathon Training for Beginners, Full & Half group on Facebook this month.  It reminds me of some of what I miss from the Runner's World Online Forums days.  The group is filled with excited, new people trying to learn as they begin their own journeys to completing 13.1 or 26.2 miles, whether in a race or on their own. 

It was also nice to fill in a gap on the road to my first BQ with the story of the 2013 Gettysburg Marathon - My First 26.2 FINISH.  Hopefully in March I'll get to finish the arc of my first 3 marathon attempts on the road to a shiny BQ time.

I think the biggest accomplishments for February are that even though my body is not 100% I do feel better than I did 4 weeks earlier, even though the amount of time that I've spent being active (Weights, Yoga, Running and a little Biking) increased about 35% compared to the January weeks.  

Must. Be. Patient.


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