Recovery: Rest is Just Part of the Story

I recently wrote on the need for rest as I have been dealing with a few nagging issues that finally

forced me to just stop and desist – take a rest.  The conclusion was that we all need to rest before we are broke but I had not heeded my own thoughts so now I am on the way back after two weeks of no running.  The point I want to focus on, and the reason for the article title, is that it is not enough just to rest but coming back from an injury also takes as much patience, maybe even more, than the rest itself.  Thus the recovery that follows a rest period needs to be as purposeful as the rest was.

I initially thought I was getting Plantar Fasciitis but after two weeks off and coming back for a short run it is pretty clear I have Achilles Tendonitis as the soreness is at the base of my heel.  I am also struggling with a sciatic issue, seems to be Piriformis Syndrome, that can give intermittent and sporadic shooting pains that are, well, a “PAIN.”  The sciatic issue is just something I have had for some time and not directly related to running but does at times affect it and I need to work at dealing with it via a number of methods.

This first day back I figured I would take an easy run/walk with the dog to see how things felt and while the run went OK afterwards my heel was a little sore, but not as it was before.  The message was clear; that I needed to take it easy and not rush back.  When I was younger and had an injury, and I had quite a few, I could come back pretty quick and jump right back into things.  However, with age comes the need for caution and patience two things I have never been really good at but need to lean now as I get older or things will not move forward as they should.

While I truly believe we can do way more with our bodies than most people realize as we age we do have limits and those limits increase, or at the least become more evident, as we get older.  With the recovery phase of rest and returning to running the wise approach is to come back slow and carefully.  Also, the recovery phase is a great time to evaluate how you got to where you are.  With me it is a realization that the lack of mobility and strength I have had for much of my running career, but was able to overcome with youth, can no longer be overlooked.  The truth is that as we age we all lose mobility and strength and while some loose it more slowly in the end we all loose it.  The good news is while it is clear we all loose mobility, flexibility and strength we can do something about it but it takes time and in taking time it takes a purposefulness.

Part of this purposefulness is setting time aside for the extra work it will take to be injury free.  If you are like me, with only so much time in a day and week, you will need to trade running time for all the other important things.  Now you can do as I have had a habit of and put it off telling myself I need the miles, or time on my feet, but being honest with myself if I factor in my injury time I would have just as many miles, probably more, due to the extra non-running work having the result of being injury free if I traded some miles for extra side work.

For me this means my recovery phase is going to be slower than I have had in the past.  First, because achilles issues take a lot of care to come back from and second because I do not have a race I am aiming for till March, Land Between the Lakes 50 Miler, so I have no need to push things.  Thus, my MAF).  If for some reason things do not feel right I can trade a run for a ride on the bike trainer if need be.  I still have a possible 30K I will only do in mid November as a training run if all the pain is gone since not worth the possibility of making things worse but it is more than likely I will pass on it.
plan is to only run every other day to start and on the off days do some strength and mobility work.  On the running days I will start at 2 -5 miles of running, and walking if necessary, with a focus on running easy within my usual aerobic heart rate number (

The other thing I have started, and will write on when I am done, is taking part in The Balanced Runner Online Camp.  In my look at a number of running programs such as Chi Running and the modules at the Natural Running Center I came across The Balanced Runner.  What drew me to The Balanced Runner, a program that uses the Feldenkrais Method applied to running, is that rather than focusing on form and how to run focuses on make more natural connections between ones body and mind so you can feel more than do.  For me this will be tough as I am a “just tell me what to do” kind of person and Feldenkrais looks more to one sensing how one moves.  In the end I think that this will all connect and many of the principles of Natural running and Chi Runner will show themselves.  The difference is that starting with the method can end up causing its own issues but starting with ones movement and sensing changes can get one to a more ‘natural” running form with little chance of injury.  More to come on this later but it looks to me to be integral to coming back stronger and more resilient than before.

I share all of this as I am sure there are others like me that when we are finally forced to rest we then want to come back as fast as possible fearful that we will lose our fitness.  Yes, with multiple weeks off you will lose something but I think you will find that you lose less than you think and if you come back too fast and have to rest more you will lose even more fitness than if you had come back slowly.  So, I will still be keeping my miles lower than I would have done in the past with a focus on easing back into things.  I also have some trips to the Chiropractor in store to have some adjustments done and also to undergo some Active Release Technique (ART) treatments, which I have found to be very beneficial.  With the first race I am aiming for being in early March I do not need to start upping my miles till mid November to early December so still have time to rest and even then I will make sure that I keep up the extra strength and mobility work. 

If you take anything away from this let it be:  “Rest is only Part of Recovery”

When Will I Learn – Take a Break Before You’re Broke

You would think after 45 years I would have learned my lesson but no, I keep repeating the same thing I am always telling other not to do.  So often I get a nagging injury and I take a day or two off thinking if I just rest a few days I can get back into it and not miss much.  But all too often I do this cycle over and over and the injury is still there till finally I have to take two plus weeks off.   To add insult to “injury”, pun intended, since my reason for trying to keep running usually is an up coming event so what tends to happen is the that I finally have to take time off right at the events date and miss the run as it is.  Now taking the two weeks off at the start, or just avoiding the injury all together but more on that in a moment, may or may not have solved the issue but it invariably would have been a better choice and leave me with a better opportunity to race later.

I understand why even experienced runners who can afford it have coaches because no matter how much you know there seems to be that element of “DO as I say NOT as I DO.”  When you coach others you can look at them from a perspective that often you cannot see about yourself and that loss of perspective can lead to decisions and directions that may end up being detrimental.  Now, even if you do not have a coach you can surround yourself with those that are not afraid to tell you to “take a break” which may also be able to help avoid the injury trap.  Now when I speak of injuries I am not talking about those that may come from other areas of life but those that crop up due most often to over-use or maybe just going to far too fast.  Whatever the reason it often takes a perspective that is detached from you to see the issue.  I do not say this to give myself an excuse but I have to admit I often from my perspective am not over doing it.  When I look back I can see that while I may not have been suddenly throwing in a 100 mile week after never running more than 40 but instead because I was feeling good I just kept going and did not take a break from training or racing as I should have.

The lesson I need to learn is that we need to take a break before we are broke – hey maybe I need to copywrite that but then again I am sure someone has said that before.  I was joking with my wife the other day that taking time off would be easy if I disliked running but then again I run because I enjoy it.  Thus, while I admit there are times I want a certain amount of miles or need to run a certain distance to make sure I can tick of my training box more often than not I cut my rest short just because I like to run.  That does not mean I enjoy every run but as a whole I just like to run.

So what of this latest issue?  While I do not have Plantar Fasciitis, yet, I do have a very sore heel where the achilles attaches.   If I look back the achilles issue did not come directly from too many miles but stems from calf issues that came about during a hard run after having quite a few miles.  The miles themselves were not necessarily high but looking back I can see I had not had a long enough period of rest when I needed it and not just wait till it is convenient.  Sad thing on my part was that I had this issue the year before and had talked about taking a break every 5 weeks or so but in the midst of travel and work and racing I just ended up not taking those needed days thus never taking a planned break.  Well my body said it is time for one and that is not the way I, we, should decide on when to take a break.

I had been struggling with calf issues and was trying to keep up the training as I had Hood to Coast coming up so tried to run through it and in many ways was able to but it was not always comfortable.  I had planned after Hood to Coast during a family vacation to take a week or two off.  Well my love for running and especially finding trials up mountains got in the way.  I had told myself that a 16 mile run up 3500ft would be no big deal and the previous 4 miler was just a shakeout run.  The issue is that what those runs did, while enjoyable with a little pain, was disrupt the rest so that while I may have only run three days during the week I did not get the consecutive days of rest my achilles needed.  To top this off we were driving back from Idaho across the county back home to KY and of course I had to run in Yellowstone as well as another run on a beautiful morning but the part I had not accounted for was how driving a few thousand miles would affect my Achilles especially when I would run in the AM then get in the car and drive – let me tell you that is a bad idea if you can avoid it do so.  I then took a week off of running once I got home before I had to go back out to CA for work and rode 3 days, telling myself that it was not running, but then I got to CA and was sore from flying and went for a short run – another bad idea and a stop to a week off from running before I actually got the week – do you see a trend here.  I then took one more day off and the heel felt a little better and I tried to run the next day and while sore it was not unbearable, that is until later that night and all the next day.  Man did it hurt the next day and it did not subside most of the day.

So that is where I am.  I wrote some time ago about having a long term perspective and that perspective is to run long term and while I do have “A” Races and Goals running for long into the future is at the top of my list.  When I see things from that perspective and put aside my pride in not running a race I had planned on it makes things easier, not easy but easier, to say whoa.  I am not one to enter lots of races and do not show up as I only enter races I plan on running but this year due to work and now injuries I have had to back out of a few races.  The reason I am going to shut it down for a month or so from racing and thus pass on The Bourbon Chase Relay in KY which I really wanted to run as well as the Colossal-Vail 50 Miler in AZ is that it is the wise thing to do.  I have some big plans for next year which include the Land Between the Lakes 50 miler in March 2018 and the Yamacraw 50K (this is a maybe as it is 30 days after LBL but may do it as a training run) in April then my first 100 miler at Tunnel Hill in 2018.  After that my current plan is to work to qualify for Boston at The Kentucky Derby Marathon in 2019 so I can run the 2020 Boston when I am 60.  I think taking the rest now and then training so that these events in the future can take place is what needs to be done.  There is a chance I may be able to run a 30K in mid November but only if I have no pain and also it will be a pretty much day of the race decision and it will be run in a manner that readies me for the future and not jeopardize it.

Also, when taking a look back at my last two years of trying I have had some very good weeks but I have a hard time making it to November as I had to DNS the Indy Marathon due to issues.  This tells me I am not taking the mid-season break that I need and will factor that in this coming year.  Also, in this coming year I need to work on more mobility and strength and not just say I will do it.  I just need to figure out how to make time even if it means running less.

Well that is a quick look at how things are ending for my year and I hope you can learn some Lessons from my mistakes.  I may not learn quickly but I hope you do.  Take to heart to that rest is much a part of training and the activity of training is and make sure you “Take a Break Before You Are Broke.”  Do not put off what needs to be done, rest, as your body will make you rest at some point and that point is usually more painful and often conflicts with what you avoided rest to try and do.  If you can afford a coach, and you may even find your company may even cover part of it like they do for some people with health clubs, do so and if not find people who will help you progress.  With this be careful not to surround yourself with people like you as often that means the advise will be “just gut it out”, or “work through it.”  It is OK to have those people but make sure you have those that will be honest with you and say take a break when you need it or will tell you to cut back when you are maybe getting a little over zealous.

Again -  “Take a Break Before You're Broke”

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