Buzzing, banging and recovering

This won't hurt a bit

My longstanding soreness has taken a turn for the better lately. For a while, the pain accompanied me on every step I took. I felt stiff and unbalanced when I walked, especially after my 90 minute commutes to my office. When I did try to run, I'd feel acute pain in my hamstring. I haven't run since I tripped and nearly fell a couple of weeks ago. Extended rest has always led to healing for me and that may be true in this case.

I started my day with an MRI. With all this progress toward recovery, I questioned whether I needed it. That thinking was quickly corrected while I changed for the scan, I twisted my leg slightly in the process and felt a surprisingly sharp pain. I'm not out of the woods by any means.

I've been through a couple of MRI's and knew what to expect. Although I had to stay completely still for 45 minutes while a large white appliance buzzed and banged inches from my face, it wasn't too bad. It may have have been the noise, but I developed a sizable headache by the end. I took care of that with ibuprofen, but I remained a little dizzy and tired throughout the day.

Tomorrow I plan to join the Runsketeers in progress as they take on five or six miles along the Bethpage trail. On the advice of my doctor, I'm limiting my distance to about three miles and will try to avoid hills. It's impossible to miss them on this trail so I'll do what I can. It's been months since we've all got together and that's the important thing about this workout. I won't be able to keep up with  my friends on the path, but I'll match them cup for cup at Starbucks later on.

A good run to start but then came the pressure

Cold-triggered annoyance

Today's run (street): 3.4 miles

This day started great, with a nice early run in conditions that were close to yesterday's. I've been running hard lately, so I backed off in terms of intensity. I had a deadline to meet, so I knew I couldn't go out too slowly. Just before I hit mile three, I saw that my time was out of acceptable range. I decided to turn up the jets and ran the last half mile like I was finishing a race.

Things got a little tough after that. We did a family activity at the Cradle of Aviation museum and the building temperature must have been set to the mid-50's. This triggered one of my pressure headaches and, in the course of about 90 minutes, I went from feeling great to needing to lie down. I got home and took a decongestant before settling into a recovery nap.

Sleep minimized my headache but it was still there in the background. That made for a very long afternoon of work. Spending so much time in front of my laptop didn't help the situation and my headache, though better, is still there. I hope a good night's sleep will help knock it out completely. I have a tough trail run planned for tomorrow afternoon and I want to be at my best for it.

Running, despite the pressure

Today's run (treadmill): 4.1 miles

Last night I began to notice the signs of impending headache: pressure from the back of my head to my ear, accompanied by the roar of tinnitus. These headaches have some of the traits of a migraine, but they seem to correlate more to changes in the weather. And on Long Island, the weather is always changing. I resisted taking a decongestant before bed in hopes that I might be able to sleep it off. But it the morning it was there, in full force.

I had no issues taking pseudoephedrine at that point. A look out the window revealed rain and wind. The news was reporting the temperature to be 51°. I figured I'd do an indoor workout. The decongestant did a good job minimizing the pain, but the pressure was still there. I decided to return to bed for a short nap. That worked out well, and I woke up 20 minutes later with enough energy to get on the treadmill.

Today's workout was about putting in the miles. I kept the speed moderate to keep my heart rate in check. I was concerned that moving too far into zone 3 would create more pressure and worsen my headache. The room felt cool when I started, so I didn't turn on the floor fan. I regretted that by the end. I was glad I'd done the workout but worried that I'd worn myself out for the day.

As it turned out, my run helped my headache, at least for a while. I needed to take more medicine later in the day, but I'm optimistic that I'll be recovered by tomorrow. If not, at least I might be able  get outside for a run.

Shakeout run postponed

One of my favorite types of runs is the "Day after race shakeout", when I go out easy and rid my muscles of built-up lactic acid. Weather conditions were better this morning than they were yesterday, and I looked forward to a few recovery miles. I had a rough night's sleep and woke up with sinus headache this morning. These headaches are annoying, because they make me feel draggy and tired. I considered downgrading my neighborhood run to an easy treadmill run, then realized that skipping my workout was the best choice of all.

I've never liked taking medication, but when these headaches come the only thing that helps is the "Sudafed" cure. That's 60 mg of pseudoephedrine, along with a dose of ibuprofen. When the cure takes, it's a night and day improvement. It took a second dose later in the day to eradicate the pounding and dizziness and I'm feeling much better now.

I read recently that runners should take a day off after a race for every mile they ran. That seems extreme, but one day's rest after a race makes good sense. I've just preferred to do my easy runs instead. Now that I have no time pressure to make my train in the morning, I can go on longer runs during the week. I will hopefully sleep better tonight and make up some mileage on Monday.  

How pounding headaches lead to base building

There's something about daylong meetings spent in airless conference rooms that causes me to experience pounding headaches. Tuesday's meeting was intense. I lead an industry group that focuses on some fairly technical subject matter. After the sixth hour of intense debates and discussions, it became exhausting. A different meeting followed on Wednesday, and by 10:00 AM I knew I'd be in for a rough day.

I went to bed last night hoping I'd wake up feeling better. I set my running clothes up for a morning workout,  but the need for additional rest and the slight presence of a headache dissuaded me from getting on the treadmill. I think it was a good decision. This is the second or third week in a row where I took Thursday as an additional rest day, but in every case I felt the rest was justified.

The difference between running five days a week versus six isn't great, but it does put me a little behind against my weekly mileage target. So far, I've managed to make up for the loss of weekday miles on weekends. In a way, it has motivated me to extend my weekend long runs a little further than normal. I've been looking to build my base back up and that's a way to do it. I just wish the process to get there this week wasn't so painful.

Staying healthy by not running

Last night I was concerned that the headache and dizziness I suffered from last week was returning. I readied my gear for today's run but prepared to abandon my workout if I wasn't feeling 100% by morning. Last week's strategy to run despite feeling run-down turned out to be a bad gamble. I wasn't going to repeat that today if conditions were the same.

I resisted taking pseudoephedrine when I went to bed because I don't like taking medicine unless I'm really hurting. I figured that if I woke up in the middle of the night feeling awful, I'd reconsider. It turned out that the headache never came, but I still felt weak when I got up. I decided to forgo my run and take the extra time to relax. I think it was the right choice. It's hard to give up a workout, but skipping a run can sometimes be the healthier option.

Debating "You'll never regret a run"

Today's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

I often quote the line, "You'll never regret a run" to make the point that the effort to exercise is always worth it despite how you might feel. Just this morning my wife said the same thing to me about her workout. Ironically enough, I may have found the exception to the rule today, having completed a treadmill run and suffering the consequences of that decision.

It's hard to differentiate between feeling tired because you've just woken up and feeling fatigued for other reasons. This morning I went through my routine of preparing for the treadmill (30° outside temps made that an easy decision). Though I felt groggy, I expected that feeling to pass once I got going. That happened, but soon after I'd cooled down I was ready to return to bed for more sleep.

Since my schedule is tight on weekday mornings, I had to ignore the dizziness and feeling of weakness. I left for the train, hoping that I could get a decent seat and take a nap. The LIRR is running less trains due to Sandy-related issues and the cars get very crowded, but I managed to secure a good spot and slept for 20 minutes.

I'd hoped that would solve the problem but my fatigue continues. Despite some strong coffee and analgesics I'm still hurting. I don't know if running on the treadmill was best thing for me this morning. Had I not done that, I could have taken an extra 30 minutes to rest and avoided the physical impact of running. If I skipped my run, I'm wondering whether I'd be feeling any better. Or would I feel worse due to the guilt of missing a workout? I'm taking solace in the thought that while I may regret today's run, I would definitely have regretted skipping it.

Well timed rest day

I don't think I could have picked a better day to schedule a rest from running. I developed an intense headache last night that was probably triggered by an afternoon of working to recover data from one of our laptops. I had hoped that a good night's sleep would bring some relief, but that hasn't been the case. Just to top off my misery, I went for a company-provided flu shot this morning. I had a slight reaction to it last year and I'm concerned that it may cause me some problems today.

If my existing and anticipated ailments clear by tomorrow morning I'll be back on the road for a run. I've always found sleep to be the best medicine. But right now, it's hard to believe that I'll have the energy to do anything as strenuous as running.

Saved again by Sudafed

The little red miracle

Tuesday's run (treadmill): 25 minutes
Wednesday's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

Hi, remember me? It's been a tough couple of days and I have not had the chance to post since Monday. I was in all day industry meetings over the past few days where I presented to various groups. I needed to prepare for those presentations on the train, so I wasn't able to write my posts.

Due to the rain, I was confined to the treadmill on Tuesday and Wednesday. Yesterday morning, I used Virtually Active throughout the entire workout. The package I bought ($7.99) was of the Pacific Northwest and the video showed a combination of trail, mountain and city running. I liked certain things about it, but I wished I could raise the position of the iPad. The placement was lower than the view I would have during an actual run.

I'm not sure if the video had anything to do with it, but I felt dizziness throughout the morning and this turned into an intense headache by noon. I had just finished my talk when I realized that I probably had a sinus infection and needed to take Sudafed with pseudoephedrine. I caught the next train home, took my red pill and went to bed.

Pseudoephedrine is a bit of a miracle drug, at least it is for me. I felt good this morning but I had some residual dizziness and decided to forgo my run today. I think that was a good decision. I'm considering a lunchtime run in Central Park tomorrow and I'll see how I feel at the end of the day. With the rain behind us and sunny conditions ahead, I'm hoping I'll be up to it.

No power leads to unexpected power

Note to Sports Authority: sale items are supposed to cost less

Today's run (street): 3.2 miles

I worked from home this morning which allowed me to sleep in a little later. Sort of. At around 4:00 AM our house alarm started bleeping, indicating a loss of battery power. I noticed that the digital clocks had no display and that we were having a power outage. I went back to sleep for an hour, but when I got up for good, I was suffering a bad headache. The power had come back on, so I had a couple of strong cups of coffee and headed out for a neighborhood run .

The humidity was low at 6:30 and the temperatures were in the 60's, so my run was pleasant. I started slowly because my headache was sapping some energy. I picked up the pace and covered a little more than 5K. I was moving steadily but it didn't feel especially fast. I lamented the fact that I hardly ever manage paces faster than mid-9:00 these days and I expected today's to be even slower.

I finished my run and was surprised to see that I almost hit 9:00 overall. It may be that I'd had about an hour between getting up and running or that the weather helped me. Probably a little of both. Either way it was nice to break out of my normal metric and show some better performance.

I had much to do between 11:00 and 5:00 and, throughout the day, I had periods where my headache made me want to lie down and take a nap. Ibuprofen helped a little but, once again, it was Sudafed that did the trick. Pseudoephedrine is wonderful thing. I take it sparingly and I'm always happy when I do.

At one point this afternoon, we stopped into Sports Authority to get my son a new pair of water shoes. I'm very disappointed in their decision to drop brands in favor expanding their floor space for more Nike and Under Armor clothing. I guess people like that, but I don't. My son and I were amused to see this great deal on Adidas running shoes in the kid's section (above). I think their marketing people need to rethink both their merchandise lines and their pricing

Way off base

Today's run (street): 5 miles

I had great intentions for this weekend's training but things didn't quite work out. A slow start and an early Saturday schedule forced me to put off my run until later. Unfortunately the day became very busy and by late afternoon I was feeling unusually tired. I considered a run before dinner but was concerned I'd be doing more harm than good, especially since I'd planned a long base run for Sunday at Bethpage. I ended up resting instead and, by evening, I was feeling exhausted.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a sinus headache and hoped that I could sleep it off. I went back to bed but I felt even worse by morning. My usual response to these headaches is coffee and Sudafed along with either ibuprofen or aspirin. That generally does the trick but by 8:00 AM I was still hurting and I knew a long run at Bethpage was out. I couldn't conceive of going an entire weekend without a run but I wasn't in any shape to get outside. I went one more step and used a decongestant nasal spray followed by a return to bed for a forty minute nap. Happily, when I woke up my headache was gone so I put on my running clothes and headed outside.

I knew I wouldn't cover my planned 8 miles but I did want to have something to show for the weekend. Owing to my tenuous recovery, I started at an easy pace and followed a route that took me though some streets that I haven't covered in some time. I felt great for the first two miles but by the third I was beginning to waver. I decided to concentrate on my form and my mid-foot landing and hoped for a "second wind" that would allow me to cover a couple of more miles before I finished. I did recover and by the end I was running a decent, if relaxed, pace. I felt almost as strong at mile 5 as I did after the first mile. So far, my headache has not returned and though I fell far short of my planned 12 mile weekend, I am happy with the way things worked out.

The end of a long strange week

Today's workout (elliptical): 25 minutes

This has been a strange, long week. I felt ill on Wednesday morning but managed to power through a run. That may have been a mistake. Wednesday was an all day industry meeting that I co-facilitated. From the beginning of the day to the end I suffered a pounding headache and by the time I got home I was ready for bed. Thursday morning I felt just as bad so I stayed home. No workout yesterday, just a lot of sleep.

This morning was far more pleasant and while I still woke up with a slight headache I felt much better overall. I thought a run, even an easy one, might be too much too soon so I settled in with the elliptical for a lower impact workout. That was a great decision that put me back into workout mode and built a good sweat. I finished up strong and energized. The temperatures have risen through this week and should continue to rise throughout the day. I'm wondering if I'll even be able to hit the trails over the weekend. That would be a great end to a difficult week.