konichiwa's mentor group - Are we having fun yet? - FULL (Page 2)

Hey Bryan, sorry to hear about the knee.  That's a bummer. 

I've never had any serious knee injury and I am certainly not a doctor, but a couple things come to mind.  Did you go to PT after your surgery?  Did they give you any specific leg/knee strengthening exercies to do?  I have some minor left knee issues from time to time and I find if I can be diciplined enough to do my strength training for the joint 3-4x/wk the discomfort is almost nill.  Of course I am frequently neglecting the exercises and playing catch up.  You think I'd have learned my lesson by now.

Another thing to consider is your shoes.  What kind of mileage are on the pair you ran in?  Is it possible that you pronate a bit more now after the surgery?  Maybe you are in a neutral shoe and you should be in a support or stability shoe.  This is a complete guess...one would think that if this were the cause you wouldn't see pain so early in a run.

Hopefully Laura will chime in.  She's battle some severe knee pain on/off for the last cpl of years.

-Tim

Hi Bryan,

In addition to what Tim said, you may want to check out ART therapy. Here is a link with some background information:
http://www.pamf.org/pt/art.html

I have a small tear in my meniscus on my left knee and a partial tear of the popliteal tendon on my right knee. I have found that ART therapy initially got me back to running after 11 months of constant knee pain every time I tried to run. Never got more than 0.5 miles to 1 mile before I had to stop. ART therapy fleshed out all of the issues I was having. It took a solid 3 weeks of ART before I tried to run, and I weaned myself back into the mileage. Now, I keep on top of stretching and using the Trigger Point Massage set (http://www.tptherapy.com/) every night. I have found that this keeps the pain to a minimum and lately I haven't felt any pain at all while running.

Another thing is that I have found it helpful to ice every night, regardless of if I have run or not. A simple 20 minutes once a night is all I do, but it helps!

Good luck!

Welcome Charlie!
I am a Mom of 5 and turn 40 TODAY

I have a swim question - I am new to swimming and am unsure what a swim workout should look like.  This is what my swim looked like today:

100 breaststroke (warm up), 100 kickboard, 100 sidestroke, 100 sidekick - it is more of a resting sidestroke only using feet with one outstretched arm, 100 with flippers - this was my first time using flippers and I wasn't fond, 100 freestyle, 100 kickboard, 100 side stroke, 100 sidekick.  I planned to do another 100 of freestyle but got distracted chatting with fellow triathlete.  So 900 yars in all which is 1/2 mile and I did it in under 30 minutes though I forgot to check my watch so I am unsure of the time.
I am wondering if I shouldn't spend more time in freestyle but it really wears me out.  Please keep in mind I've only been swimming for 2 months.

Very open to suggestions.  Since I could barely swim a 25 on March 15 I know I'm making progress but not sure I am doing the right things to get the most of my time/energy.

Happy birthday Keri!!!

Regarding swim advice, I would start with a short warm up, same as you did incorporating some kick or drills, and then aim to swim freestyle. Start with short sets: even if its 25 yards to start. You can always build to 50 and 100 yards once you are comfortable swimming sets of 25, and then you can progress to longer sets from there.

Happy Birthday Keri!  Did you do anything fun/special yesterday?

Welcome to the group.  Post a bio when you get a chance.

-Tim

Just a quick recap of who we have in the group;

Here is detail on my swimming (I didn't record the time for a couple of swims):

Date                      Comments

Sun 12/7/2008     Swam.

Sat 1/10/2009      Swam (60 minutes).

Sat 1/24/2009      Swam (60 minutes).

Sat 1/31/2009      Swam (60 minutes).

Sat 2/7/2009        Swam

Sun 2/22/2009     Swam (60 minutes).

Wed 3/4/2009     Swam (30 minutes).

Sat 3/7/2009        Swam (75 minutes).

Sat 3/14/2009      Swam (60 minutes).

Sat 3/21/2009      Swam (60 minutes).

Sun 3/29/2009     Swam (60 minutes).

Tues 4/7/2009     Swam (60 minutes).

Fri 4/10/2009       Swam (30 minutes).

Fri 4/17/2009       Swam (60 minutes).

Thurs 4/23/2009  Swam (75 minutes).

Mon 4/27/2009    Swam (30 minutes).

Fri 5/1/2009        Swam (60 minutes).

Mon 5/4/2009     Swam (60 minutes).

Thurs 5/7/2009   Swam (60 minutes).

Tues 5/12/2009   Swam (60 minutes).

Fri 5/15/2009      Swam (60 minutes).

Tue 5/19/2009    Swam (90 minutes).

I would say after my 5th swimming session I could swim an entire hour with short rests every 20 minutes or so.  Having said that, this morning I woke up with a muscle spasm in my back.  I almost stayed home from work but decided to pop two ibuprofen and gut it out today.  Needless to say, I won't be working out today!  Perhaps my 90 minute swim two days ago was overdoing it ...

The point I want to make to Keri is not to get discouraged.   

I saw that feature in the training log.  My quandry is that everytime I run, I warm-up for 5 minutes at a slower pace, and after the run I cool-down at a slower pace.  I want to include the warm-up and cool-down in my total mileage (see the attached spreadsheet example that I use).

For the training log purposes on the web site, should I not bother to record the warm-up and cool-down?

Keri -

I would focus more on freestyle.  My typical swim looks something like;

The most important thing for a new swimmer with freestyle is body position.  Your body should be horizontal in the water.  It's very common to have "sinking hips" which causes you to work so much harder b/c of the extra drag.  If this seems to be an issue for you then you can try taking one thing and focus on it while swimming.  Maybe you do a 100 focusing on leaning on your chest.  The more you lean on your chest, the more your hips will come up.  Then the next 100 you focus on keeping a neutral neck with your eyes looking straight down.  Then the next 100 you focus on breathing to the side and body rotation.

For your warm-up, I would do 100 mostly freestyle and then 200-300 drills.

For the main set, I would focus on doing repeats at a distance you are comfortable with. Maybe you start with 10x50 with 20s rest in between.  Or you can do 5x100 with 30s rest in between.  Focus on form and don't worry about time/pace.  Just try to keep the efforts consistent for the repeats....i.e. don't have your last 50 being 10s slower than your first.

Then cool down with 100 of your stroke of choice.

Swimming takes time.  When I started ~5yrs ago, I would be dead after swimming 25m.   If it fits into your schedule, try to swim 3x/week even if the swims are short.  AT this point 3 shorter swims are probably more benficial than 2 longer swims.  The repition will help create the muscle memory and give you that good "feel" in the water.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if anything isn't clear or if you have any other questions.

-Tim

Charlie -

I found it best to log your whole run in the logs.  Then I would just make a note in the comments section detailing it out;

wu: 5' @ 4.5mph

main: 20' @ 6mph

cd: 5'

The only time I stray from this is when I walk for part of the cool down.  I don't include it in the totals, but I usually will just add some text that says "10min walking after cd"

-Tim

Hey thanks for letting me join...here's my bio...

NAME: Andrew (wkwl2714) age 21

STORY: Played sports all throughout my life and since I have gotten into school I have only been able to play intramurals.  I love playing sports and being active.  I haven't been able to do as much since I had a killer course load this semester in college and am looking for a fun new way to get in shape.  All my friends are doing marathons and I get bored running so I figured a triathlon would be great for me because I love swimming and biking. 

CURRENT TRAINING: I am starting training June 1st for an Olympic Tri.  I am still looking for a good training plan so if you have suggetions feel free to point me in the right direction.  I am going to be doing a Sprint length in late August so I figured with my Olmpic training program I would be in good enough shape to do the Sprint and figure out what changes I need to make.  I guess that's a bit about me.

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is I followed your guys advice and went for distance rather than speed today.  I went slower and felt GREAT for the first 2 miles and didn't start feeling miserable until 3 miles, where it's usually 2 miles.  I ran 4 miles in 43:59.  I know I'm slow but I'm still pretty happy that I made it 4 miles.  My first mile was 12 minutes and I tried to pick it up just a little bit with each mile.  I still had enough in my tank to finish the last .25 mile pretty fast.

The bad news is my right neck/shoulder is killing me!  I pulled a muslce in my neck about 2 weeks ago it was really bad at first (short range of motion, very uncomfortable etc.) but but it seemed to get a little better every day.  I think swimming yesterday did it.  I wish I knew what I was doing wrong so I don't do this to myself again, it was bad last night.  My husband gave me a massage with arnica cream last night but it never really got any better.  Today it is still bothering me and even uncomfortable sitting here.  I could feel it on the run.  I planned to swim tomorrow but I might rest until Sunday when I have a OWS planned.

Happy Birthday Keri,

Congrats on the run.  As for the neck I would say to try and find a Therapeutic Massage Therapist (not relaxation) in your area.  This type of therapist is more for pain relief than relaxation.  If I lived closer I would take a look since I have 7 months until I am a practicing MT.