Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 172)

I got the same email today.  My qualification was for my race at Cedar Point, my last race of the season.  I am not sure I can do it myself but someday I would like to experience the USAT nationals.  I hope I can make it every year and then when we have a few extra bucks to make the trip I would make a stab at it.  However, I know I too would be going to get my tail end handed to me and rise to the BOP against the animals at a race of this type.

Make sure you keep us posted on whether you decided to go for sure.  I would want to provide a little moral support for sure!

I would agree with this.  During my long run training on both marathon occasions I would experience more muscle fatigue at various distances than I might have at others as I progressed through the training.  Sometimes I would push through and my legs would adapt fine over a couple of weeks.  Other times I would have to hold a distance for a couple of weeks before adding mileage.  When this would occur I simply took a recovery week and was able to jump back into a normal upward progression.

For muscle balance I would like to have more information.  Do you "see" a muscular difference or is something you can experience when lifting?  I ask because, if you would like to check some of my pics on FB you would see a fairly large amount of total mass difference from my right leg to the left.  After I had my ACL reconstruction years ago The left leg was allowed to atrophy and I lost A LOT of mass.  Fast forward to today and my left leg is a little stronger but there isn't as much mass.

Something else is occurring to me too.  It's possible that the minor muscle groups are the ones needing strengthened rather than the major ones.  Doing hip adductor work could help in this case as well as some work on balancing exercises.  you could try doing the balancing work on a small trampoline to develop these muscles.

I'm excited for you.  This is going to do wonders for your fitness, even across all 3 disciplines in triathlon you will see a boost come Spring.

Dirk,

You're spot on.  It is mostly my minor muscles on my right leg/side that ar weaker.  I can see a slight difference in mass, but it's not a lot.  My massage therapist said he can tell my left leg does more work.  I am already doing hip exercises.  My physical therapist for my PF issues back in 2010-2011 (holy crapper that was a long time ago) identified my right side as being weaker in the hip area as well.  I'm commiting to those exercises now with hopes that they will actually work.  We will see.

I'll get a couple shorter runs in and then do about 8 on Monday and see how that feels.  I don't have a deadline or an actual race to run, so I can be smart about this for sure.

Why is it that I'm having such a hard time getting two workouts a day in?  I just can't drive myself to do it right now.  I'm okay with it...sort of.

Jonathan, your online training log says your last run was on 12/2.  It looks like your training plan consists of 1 run to the death each weekend!

I know that you know that you can't train the run this way.

You have got to find time in your schedule to run each day.  Even if it's just 2 miles after you get off the bike...save 20 minutes of time even if you have to cut the ride short.  But I recommend that you carve out new time in your weekdays.  I know you are a newlywed and at that point in life that there is so much to adjust to that it's hard.  I wasn't an active athlete during that stage of my life so I'm not judging you on this, just encouraging you to do what I think will make you happier in the end....

Get your butt out of bed 30 minutes earlier each day and stumble out for an easy 3 miles or skip lunches and sneak a run in on lunch breaks from work.

And as long as your leg is acting this way, cut back on the long runs.  Let's say you are running 6 or 7 days per week and you don't go over 7 miles on the weekend run...if you are adding in another 15+ miles from weekday runs you will still do fine in your half marathon and without hurting yourself.  It's not optimal, but what you are doing now is far less optimal than that!

Now as for your leg strength issue, it sounds like it's a long term thing since you mention the skiing and weight lifting.  It sounds like something you've always had.  It's unusual that the legs are this imbalanced because every day life uses the legs so much in walking and daily movements that it's really unusual for the legs to get unbalanced unless it's through injury.  So I'm expecting that at some point in your life you had an injury severe enough to leave that leg slightly debilitated.  It can also come from nerve damage or nerve impingement that can be all the way up in the lower back.  Ever experience low back pain or pain in the glute or radiating down that leg?

You know what.....I'm going to do the same, except I'm going to take Friday's off.  It will be more like 85 runs in 100 days.

Jonathon, I don't want to JINX myself but since I have been running every day (even in the cold rain), my legs are feeling better than ever...listen to Jeff.  The 1st couple of weeks i questioned it but kept doing it, now I feel bad if I don't run.

Wish i could get that feeling about swimming..lol

Samantha, great on the 100 challenge.  I might sign up for that one too.

Make it official!  I have now hit the panic button!  I am beginning to run starting today.  I will be doing small runs and as long as my foot tolerates it I will build more quickly than I would ever advise anyone to do.  Sometime today or tomorrow I am planning on putting my running plan to paper, so to speak, so that I can see what I need to do to get to my destination.......Boston.  I will continue to get the ART treatments and other work to try to deal correctly with what's going on but I am at such a crucial point that I have to do something.

Today will be a make it or don't 2 mile very easy run.  If I can make it through this run with o issues I will plan to run 2 miles tomorrow.  After that I will take it on feel and go with some type of plan.

Dirk good luck and I am in this with you. Just back from the doc (just the GP) to discuss my various issues - back, tendon in my foot and now shoulder. She says I'm ok to try running again so I will start today but only 1 mile for me. I'm starting an oral steroid pack to try to calm these various inflammations.

Fingers crossed.......

Dirk, good luck, we are all pulling for you.  Pleae let us know how it goes.

Dina, congrats on getting better, hope the meds help!

We all need to take a break from triathlon talk for the next two minutes and say a prayer for those families in CT.  What a horrible horrible situation.

http://gma.yahoo.com/breaking-conn-school-district-locked-down-shooting-report-151955384--abc-news-topstories.html

Jonathan I just saw this and could not agree more. I am at a total loss for words.

praying

Dirk good luck with the training for Boston and I like everyone else is hoping that it is very uneventful and goes well for you. Dina hoping the same for you too, let's hope you guys can both get back to running without further issue.

I know.  I will get up earlier and run.  Fine.  There, I said it.  Thanks Dad.

As far as the glutes...yup, I've had piriformis syndrome really bad in that leg for a while now.  Maybe that's it?  Who knows.  All I know is that I need to get my butt out there and run.  Period.  I'll set my clothes out, get up and get out the door in the 25 degree weather and do it.  I know you're right.  Just start texting me to keep me in line. :-)

Wish I would have worked out early this morning.

I really feel too awful to do anything now.

Like it even matters on a day like this.

What the hell is wrong with people????  These were just babies!!!

Yep, my husband is the school Superintendent and my son is in first grade.

You know I worry every time my husband is home later than expected. He thinks I'm nagging or mad when I call to see what is up but I'm really just too embarrassed to say "Just checking to make sure you didn't get shot today". I know it's irrational but I worry.

I was thinking the same and was pretty relieved when my 16 year old son got home from school today. Now I am actually worried since my wife went out to the mall with him and my older daugther tonight. After what's happened this week I'm thinking is any place safe? and worse yet what's next?

The tragedy in Connecticut is such senselessness and there is no one that will ever be able to make sense of any of it.  Oh there will be experts with the opinions and "facts" to back it up, yet not many will offer up anything other than what I feel are the real reasons.  All of the people killed in Newtown are individual tragedies.  Stories of lives that were meaningful, even if only to the few people in their circle of influence.  The kids are what strike so much emotion into our hearts because we cannot reason or rationalize why anyone could willingly take the life of someone so young and innocent.  Someone who had entirely NOTHING to do with the mental problems, the relational problems that this killer had coursing through his veins and central systems.

I will never be able to bring any of this to terms within myself.  Sadly however these things are becoming the norm in our society anymore.  We will become desensitized to these things as more and more of them happen.  We'll hear of another one and another one and another one until finally it's just another day in our society.  It's a tragic "plane crash" that takes the lives of some people "over there."  Until we are the ones directly touched by one of these horrors, we will begin to turn an uncaring eye to things like this. 

As I pen these words I know how calloused they sound and how wrong the thoughts of these words may appear to be uncaring and insensitive, believe me, they are neither.  As I look back on 25 years of adulthood, I have seen the changes that have transpired and I don't like many of them.  We have taken the good things of our world and begun to make them  bad and the bad things are very quickly becoming the good things.  And if the bad things aren't yet the good things, they are mostly a neutral things now (people don't care much).

Examples:

• Teen pregnancy - When our parents were teenagers this was something the almost never happened and when it did parents wouldn't want a secret of that sort to get out to the public.  When I was a teenager teen pregnancy was frowned upon greatly but it was reduced to a grievous mistake and we would whisper about "those girls" behind their backs.  Today, well, oops I guess she made she/they should have used a condom.........."Can I get another cup of coffee?"
• Drug use - My parents age - Only fools would involve themselves in this behavior and they get what's coming to them if something bad happens.  My age - It was what happened in high school and maybe some in college.  It wasn't something that productive people did when they matured enough to move on, get a job and have kids.  Today's society - Colorado in November.  I really shouldn't have to say anything more there.
• General violence - Parents - school violence was close to never more than fists and the kids involved were corporeally punished in the schools and THEN when they got home was when the real punishment began.  You would get thoroughly thrashed by your father, work your tail off to make amends for the error of your ways and so on.  My teens - Guys would threaten to bring a knife occasionally but I never saw one.  And guns, NEVER!  We would come to terms with people still with our fists but I saw more of it than my parents saw for certain.  Today - Well, there isn't much to say is there?  Kids are kiling kids by any means they feel is necessary;  Guns, knives, sticks, bats and whatever they lay their hands on.

The list of examples could go on and on.  Just take some time to reflect back on what your parents told of their childhood years, then look at yours and now today.  Today there is no fear of reprisal from any source of authority.  Kids and adults spit in the face of our police forces and the officers are expected to take the abuse.  Principal and teachers in school cannot even use red pens to grade papers because it might hurt a child's precious little ego's......................

........And we wonder where all of this senselessness comes from.  It comes from us.  We are too afraid to tell our kids that wrong is wrong and right is right.  "If you do something wrong, there will be a price to pay" is a message that our society does not receive any longer.  If you go to prison you receive satellite TV, weights to lift, top notch medical care (including organ transplants) and all the creature comforts of home.  The days of "make little ones out of big ones" (stones out of boulders) has been replaced with "give them every right that a productive member of society has" but no thought is given to the victims who had their rights taken away by that same individual who has all the rights in the world now.

Until we decide enough is enough and turn many things back to a clearer moral code we are going to continue to stand in the road staring at the bus about to run us over without moving out of our own way.

And, for clarification purposes, we do NOT need to go back to the days of racial segregation, put up with physical abuse or become medieval in terms of imprisonment.

This has been a very long rant and may draw a few people to become angry with my opinions, which is unintentional, but it is how I see the world and the direction we seem to be heading.  My prayer is that we can turn things around as a nation but it has to start in each house in the country and NOT in Washington DC, the governors mansions or the city halls..............It starts in my heart and yours.  We can change our path, but it is a choice and the choice is ours.

Edit:

Resources are listed below.  Disclaimer;  I don't agree with all of the points made in each of the reports listed

Teen pregnancy: UNLV study

Drug use: Substance Abuse and mental health Admin study

I cannot readily find easier reading stats for general violence.

Dirk I agree with a lot of what you say. I'm not offended in the least.

I just had a talk with my kids last night - choices is a big theme at our house. What kind of person/brother/sister do you want to be. My kids are wound with excitement about Christmas, I don't know why this turns into poor behavior but it does. They were fighting over trains last night. Finally I told them look, I have taught you by now how to share, how to get along, now the choice to do it is yours. What kind of person do YOU want to be - someone who tattles and fights or someone who is generous and kind? No one ever said sharing, giving, etc was the easy thing to do.

I'm rambling I know.

And what you said about being desensitized, I don't watch or read the news much. I don't want to know, I can't fix it. This tragedy I could not ignore though. Maybe it is our wake up call.