April 20, 2008
Off Season into Base Training: Like Pulling My Legs Out of Sludge
Well I'm finally on the edge of being completely out of off season and about mid-way through my base training. The reason I say I'm not completely out of off season is because of some injury which has forced a reversal back to pre-base to allow for healing.
My off season this year was the longest yet. It was about 3 months total before beginning the base training ramp. And wow that extra month made a huge difference in a negative way.
Since I only have one major race this year, IM Florida, and it's way late in the year on Nov. 1, I thought I would give my body some extra rest and healing before ramping again this year. I think the extra rest and healing did happen but it also had some detrimental effects.
I do not have an athlete's base. I never did athletics when younger and so my body is still trying to adapt to the stresses of being an Iroman athlete. So I react differently than other more conditioned athletes in that I may get injured when others don't, or I need more rest than others in the same situation. Or at least I reach some higher conditioned state.
The extra month of off season seemed to have pulled my fitness so far back that when I tried to ramp, albeit gently, I still got injured on both feet, right foot having a plantar fascia issue which caused the ball of my foot to swell, and my left ankle's tendons getting strained. I think this would have not happened with other more conditioned athletes.
This caused me to interrupt my run bulid and finally just stop running altogether to let it heal completely, as running in between just aggravated both and never let the pain go away. I stopped for 3 weeks of running, but I was able to build swimming and cycling.
As for cycling, this was also interesting. Throughout off season, I used my Powercranks to do strength workouts on my bike and gained a lot. But extending that strength into my core Computrainer workouts has been tough; I had to take the strategy of doing a workout 2-3 times in succession, starting with conservative wattage and increasing it on the same interval workout. My wattage seems to have increased a bit, but it feels that I did not gain as much as I would have liked. Still, it's early and I have not done long outdoor bikes yet.
That extra month of off season really made it tough to come back, more so than in previous years of only two months of off season. It's been like pulling my legs out of sludge; it feels SOOOOOO slow to build back the strength and endurance that I had last year. At last, as I come up on May, I feel I am almost there. Another 2 weeks of gentle run building with the addition of fartleks to prepare for track workouts and speed, and I hope to be ready to get on the build to Ironman Florida this November.
Next year, only 2 months of off season and that's it! And after watching online my buddies race at a murderously hot/humid Ironman China yesterday, I'm psyched to get into some serious training...
Posted by dshen at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2005
Bikram Yoga in the Off Season
These last few weeks I've been trying out Bikram Yoga.
Previously I had never been a big fan of yoga. This is because I'm not very flexible and yoga deals heavily in what I would call "flexible strength".
Flexible strength means that you apply power when your muscles are in a stretched position. Many people who are more flexible than me can do this relatively easily, or at least do it in a way that the muscles can stand it. In the past, I've been so inflexible that when I put my muscles in a stretched state and then attempt to flex them, I inevitably pull the muscle due to the strain.
This really sucked and I stopped after trying yoga many years ago.
However, after much training this year, and with the help of my physical therapist's suggestions on stretches and exercises, and couple that with ART, I have found that I can actually survive yoga poses and build my ability to execute them without pulling muscles.
Unfortunately, I think that Bikram will require many months, if not years of training to get to some level of proficiency. My race season training is about to start and I think that given time constraints, and the added stress training puts on my muscles, that I won't be able to continue this once real training begins early next year.
It's too bad. My coach thinks it is great heat acclimatizing training since you do it in a room that is heated to 100+ degrees.
Posted by dshen at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2005
Off Season Aches and Pains
I'm heavy into the off season now, and not doing much training at all. It's a great time for recovery, for recharging my body and brain from all the stress I've put on it over the past year.
But one thing has been confounding me.
Why is it when I am doing practically nothing, that I feel all these sharp aches and pains in my legs? And they feel as bad as when I REALLY have tweaked them during heavy training?
I asked my physical therapist about it. He says it's because during the normal, heavy training season, you've got your body flooded with nice pain-killing endorphins. They're there to kill as much pain as possible and keep you functioning despite all the damage your muscles are receiving (which is required for growth and improvement).
However, during the off-season when your training has backed off - guess what - so have your endorphin levels. So now you have nowhere near as many endorphins in your system and thus, small aches and pains which you may not have felt at all during the training/racing season are now brought to the forefront, and in greater pain levels than you would think. Small tweaks during the race season aren't even felt and drop below the noise level created by the endorphins!
Then, I asked my physical therapist about the knots that have formed in my muscles. How could they form, when I rarely put my muscles in a stressed, contracted state as I normally see during race season training? I can feel them clearly as I roll my hands/fingers across my thighs and IT band.
He said that during periods of high activity, the muscles constantly move against each other, and there is a natural effect of breaking down these knots and adhesions as muscle fibers glide against each other. Once you remove that, there is a tendency for these muscle adhesions to form because there is less muscle activity to clear the small adhesions out.
All this just makes me itch to get back into race training - guess that's what the off-season break is all about...!
Posted by dshen at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
