Got Your Mojo WORKIN'! group - CLOSED (Page 60)

JEFF -

I've been digging around about your injury, and don't have anything conclusive. Much of it would suggest Achilles, but the swelling on top hints at something different.

The best I can come up with for now is from a book titled "Sure Footing" (ain't that ironic, given how your injury happened?), by Perry H. Julien. In the chapter pertaining to ankle sprains he has a couple of anatomical drawings, one of which shows the anterior talofibular ligament and the calcaneofibular ligament. A first-degree ankle sprain involves stretching of the a.t.l., while in a second-degree spain there may be partial tearing of both a.t.l. and c.l. From the drawing it looks like the a.t.l is at the front (where the foot turns into the leg) and the c.l. is at the back, maybe just behind the ankle bone.

Try to google those, and maybe also the book and/or author. It is an old book, from '98, and I don't know if it has been republished. It is also from an in-house "company" -- the Atlanta Foot and Ankle Center!

And just to back up what you say at the end of the post, I too think that early opinions like this one CAN be valuable, especially when getting to a doctor is neither timely nor easy. But all I'm doing is throwing out a guesstimate, and again I will say that what you are "presenting" by way of symtoms doesn't leap out at me as something obvious. And if it is an ankle sprain, you want good professional help as soon as possible.

Keep me posted, okay?

LORI once more -

Add to my my list of abject babying running on ice and snow. Now, i'm not quite yet at that point, but my ankle/achilles problem form last Tuesday may have had its origin in running in recent runs with questionable footing. I haven't run since then, keep waiting for it to resolve....but not yet. Bah.

Will do Steve. I am so grateful the internet is mostly a text medium, I would hate to pronounce all those anatomical terms out loud. As the day passes my anxiety about it's severity goes down. I suspect it will be very stiff and painful next morning then improve as I move around on it. I think I will be back at work tomorrow as well-maybe I'll get a chance to see my Doc.

KASIA -

You know all about my running shoe fetish, so you can imagine how it tugged at my heartstrings to see that mound of abandoned shoes. The poor babies!

KASIA again --

I think it's perfectly normal to have soreness in weird places after an event like this. Those things are custom-made for a statement such as "you'll hurt in places you never knew you had". I dare say there's not a single Tough Mudderer who's not walking normally again until several days after the event!

Heal well, baby yourself...............and if you need an "excuse note" for your work, juts ask -- it's another of those services I provide as a Full Service Mentor!

-------------------------------------------- GOAL-SETTING ----------------------------------------

Last night I posted to Alex about goal-setting, and took liberally from Joe Friel, author of "The Triathlete's Training Bible" and many other highly useful tri-related books. This post is on page 71 here, but I will abbreviate it some to include his four principles of setting seasonal goals:

1.) Your goal must be measurable.

2.) Your goal must be under your control.

3.) Your goal must stretch you.

4.) Your goal must be stated in the positive.


If anyone wants, I will provide examples for each of those; please just ask!

Apropos the above, a few of you (John, Daniel, Adam) have chimed in with your own goals, and I mentioned some of mine is a subsequent post to Alex. It might be useful for all of us to do this, just to clarify your own thoughts and to let the group have a better idea of where your season is headed. This is NOT a required assignment .................but even if you decide to not go public with your goals, it is highly beneficial to have one, or two, or even more (I usually have 3-5 of them every season).

Onwards!

DAVID -

So you think your "hill skillz" are weak, eh? I might be able to help!

I am a big advocate of "Spinning Small Circles", as they help me hugely in my own hill work. This is really a concept, a perception, although it involves some actual mechanics on your part. Here goes.

The spinning part of SSC will require that you are in one of your easiest gearings, with the absolute easiest being small ring in front, largest cog in back. If you have an 11-23 in back, your three largest cogs (23, 23, 19) will allow you to SSC, with the 23 being the easiest of them.

When you are on a tough ascent in your easier gearings, you will want to "even out" your pedal stroke as much as possible while keeping as high a cadence as you can manage. The latter part -- high cadence -- will be where the spinning comes from. The former part -- an even pedal stroke -- is the foundation of the small circles.

Where the perception enters into is that you will be aiming to "draw" small circles with each pedal revolution. If your pedal stroke is choppy, then you might imagine that you aren't drawing circles, but rather ill-shaped ellipses*. Those ellipses that come from a choppy pedal stoke are not very efficient, as they reflect both dead spots and places where you are putting more oomph into each revolution than is necessary; so, it is both inefficient and an energy-sapper.

When you succeed at spinning small circles, it will seem as if you are in a "zone" -- you will feel as if your overall effort is diminished, but that you are moving steadily up the grade. It is really cool! In races, I pass most people going up hills, so I get a chance to see a lot of people whose pedal strokes are very erratic, or who are up and down in their saddles. Now, there is definitely a time for getting out of the saddle....but we'll save that for another post.

For now, try spinning small circles. And if it doesn't seem to work for you right away, keep plugging away as it is a hugely beneficial skill to have. Try it on shorter and/or less steep grades to begin, and it actually wouldn't hurt to find a fairly straightforward hill and just keep going up and down it, maybe 8-12 times, focusing on those small circles each ascent.

Please let me know if you need more clarification of any of the above. I'm not sure I've explained it as well as I can.......although it seems to be about as good as I can do right now! (Tomorrow might be a better day for it, however! )


* One of the big benefits of using a CompuTrainer is the "Spin Scan" readings, and the whole goal of those is to let you see where the strong parts and weak parts are in a pedal stroke. The ellipses I mentioned above are very real, and to spin in perfect small circles is exceedingly hard to do -- especially consistently. Google CompuTrainer and prowl around until you find SpinScan, and look at the examples. The vertical bar graph ones won't help with the visualization of circles and ellipses, but the ones that are created as a kind of "rose diagram" are the ones that might help you get an image in mind of what you are aiming for.

(Note: It is always kind of humbling for me to see my own SpinScan, which in the heat of the moment (or any moment?) is NOT a perfect circle at all!)

x2 on spinning small circles. Very useful concept to understand. I am a big high cadence advocate anyway from my road racing days.

thanks for the cyclocross idea...however, i want to be lower to the ground in slippery conditions. I'll check out those websites ! 

yeah, i reluctantly mentioned it to my husband tonight...LOL. I said that our son could use the bike eventually...
I'd really like a tri bike too..
this sport gets expensive or we just wind up doing without other stuff  

Kasia...LOVE the pics! Great shots of you before ...then during the mayhem.
And that pile of shoes is priceless. LOL 

On the SSC concept, STEVE - if I understand what you're saying simply put - for going up hills you generally gear to your easier gear, stay seated and spin like crazy? I know what you're talking about making elliptical circles instead of perfect small circles for I can feel when that's happening. I've always wondered if it's faster to get out of the saddle and power up the hills or do as you say. Since you're always passing people going up hill it seems your way is best.

Thanks for sharing about Peyton, CATHY. Yay that she's cancer free now! You mention about pictures in an album.....here on BT? I looked under your profile, but don't see anything that would take me to an album. I bet Peyton is beautiful.

All I ride is a rode bike, SARAH, so no snow riding for me. My brother in law is big into mountain biking and took me out once. I fell hard within the first quarter mile so I got whimpish and said no thanks to that adventure. My kids have mountain bikes but I wouldn't think of riding them on our roads here in winter - we've got some crazy drivers that I don't trust.

Your muddy pictures made me smile, KASIA. Thanks for sharing.

What's your long run this week, JOHANNA?

JEFF - glad you were able to pick up your trailer cheap. Do you have a target race/camping trip you're hoping to have it completed by?

I'm going to mull over my goals, ALEX. Good question and good comments, STEVE. If I think back on past goals I underestimate what I can do so that I'm sure to accomplish my goal and feel good, if that makes sense. So #3 to make my goals stretch me makes me think.

After taking the kids to school this morn I'm heading to the grocery store to buy stuff for TACOs which is our traditional Super Bowl meal. Anyone else have any Super Bowl Sunday traditions?

Our household will be rooting for the PACKERS!!

BRENDA -

I cannot quantify this for you in terms of percent grade of different hills, but for me there comes a point at which being out of the saddle is no longer productive, or isn't as productive as spinning small circles. I can, of course, continue being out of the saddle, but my power gets dissipated by my pedal stroke becoming choppy -- those dead spots I mentioned to David. I find that the dead spots become even greater when out of the saddle, as opposed to seated and trying to spin, just by virtue of being upright and in the perfect position to really drive hard on the downstroke, but then not being in the best position to be steady and smooth and still forceful on the upstroke.

On any given hill I will begin by attacking it, kind of reading it from as far away as I can see it, and then coming at it fast and aggressively. I will be in my big ring in front and one of my smallest cogs, just hammering very hard. As the hill continues I will shift accordingly cog by cog by cog. Eventually, one of two things will happen -- I will either get out of the saddle along about the time I run out of effective cogs and need to shift to my small ring and finish the hill that way, or I will do what I just said......but eventually have to sit back down and spin small circles.

Of course, powering up a hill is ideal, just because it feels as if I am in complete control and not having to "submit" to the thing. But when submission happens, I handle that well by SSC. It's also maybe worth noting that I do not live it a hilly area at all, and that a good 95% of my outside riding is without significant hills at all -- rollers and short climbs are all that is within 60 miles of me, literally. So, it's not as if I have learned to do hills well out of necessity, but rather just through working at a technique that bears incredibly satisfying results when mastered.

ANYHOW, I hope from the preceding two paragraphs that you can see that it is not just one way for me, and thsat in my perfect worlsd I will choose to power up hills rather than spinning small circles. But even when I'm doing that ideal powering, I am focusing on the eveness of my stroke; when it begins to get choppy or sloppy, I shift.

I would like to say that most races I do don't require me to SSC, but out of last year's roster of 11 of them, only three (and maybe just two) allowed me to avoid spinning small circles. None of them were like IMLP, or even North Country Tri in upstate NY where the signature ascent involves SSC for about 10+ minutes straight, but at Columbia, I had to resort to it about 6-8 times, and the other seven races saw it used just once to a more common 3 or 4 times. Like most people, i don't especially enjoy suffering on hills, but it is a great situation for me to make up time lost in the swim! ........

BRENDA again -

Intriguing developments in my USAT ranking in the past couple of days........and maybe that can be some further impetus to bring that topic up here -- FINALLY!

BRENDA once more -

Nothing special for the Super Bowl here. Lynn has no interest in football, so it's just a sort of Isolation Chamber exercise for me. I will eat whatever I feel like, I suppose.

I too am going for the Packers. It comes down to two things: (1) as a Browns fan, I can't go to far with the Steelers without feeling impure, and (2) Aaron Rogers is a exemplary human being, it appears, whereas Big Ben has behaved very, very poorly at times.

I hate cheese, though, and that's always a drawback when rooting for the Packers -- all those oversized cheese wedges on the fans' heads! It all make me feel bilious at best, downright queasy at worst. Urp.

Steve I totally agree with you on the SSC, on the profile of the ride from last summer that last section of climbing alone is about 5 miles. That's a long time to be standing up peddling. I find for me I'm a lot more efficient in the saddle. I don't have to use energy in my legs to hold my weight I can use that to spin the cranks and rest my weight on the saddle and try and relax everything else as much as possible.

This made me laugh.

Thanks for your further explanation of SSC, STEVE. You explained it well and I understand what you're saying. Thanks, CRAIG, for your insight as well.

Can't wait ti hear about your ranking, STEVE. My guess is you're somewhere right close to the top.

Hopefully it will be at least sleep able and registered, if not finished,  by Mar 26

Well my first race of the year is tonight.





Pinewood derby. I haven't built one of these in 40 years.





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Well good luck in your Pinewood Derby then, CRAIG!