My New Priorities

For the past 6 months, my number one training priority has been preparing for a successful race at Florida IM 70.3. As you know, I accomplished this!

In my post race period, I have three new top priorities. I will list them and describe them here, in decreasing order of importance:

1) Rehabilitate my tight inner thigh and painful medial knee.

I have had a tightness in my inner thigh and a slight pain around my medial knee for about 6 weeks. For the thigh, the muscle is tight and sore from around mid-thigh down to the knee, with pain focused around the sartorius, gracilis, and at the Pes Anserine.
The picture shows the sartorius muscle. The insertion of the conjoined tendons of three muscles (sartorius, gracilis, and semitendinosus) is the pes anserinus. I feel a pain and tightness along this whole group.

In researching this condition, I have found two possible diagnoses:
a) Pes Anserinus Bursitus
b) Plica Syndrome

I am going into the chiropractor, podiatrist, and orthopedist next week to get some more information.

My intuition tells me that a solid 6-8 weeks of glute activation and strengthening, posterior chain strengthening, single leg strength work, compound exercises (such as squats and RDL's), flexibility work, and soft-tissue work will bring my lower body strength, mobility, and flexibility back into balance.

2) Lose some weight

This is a delicate one for my to talk about for a few reasons. First, I believe too many endurance athletes place WAY too much of a priority on weight loss, for reasons that aren't always healthy. Second, In my past, I have suffered from significant health complications that have caused considerable weight-loss, so I am very thankful for every pound I have. Finally, I am far from being over weight, and, for someone my weight, I have a remarkably low body-fat percentage. See the picture below to admire my beautiful body...

Notice the apple sticker on my left booby. However, I think losing some weight could help my long term joint health. Pounding the pavement with the amount of muscle I am carrying, and blasting the bike with my thickly muscled frame undoubtedly contributed to the thigh/knee pain I am suffering now and the Achilles Tendonitis I battled over the winter.

It's easier for my to lose weight when I am not training. When training, I tend to be all over the food, as I can feel a direct connection between the quality of my diet and quality of my training. When not training, I tend to unconsciously eat less than I need, so the weight tends to fade away naturally. We're not talking major dieting here... just a few pounds during the rehab to help ease the pressure on the joints come next training cycle.

3) Train for Steelhead 70.3

I have Steelhead 70.3 on my race schedule for early August. Assuming the knee returns to healthy condition fairly soon, I will put down some focused training on this race.

Even if the knee comes back quickly, I am still going to train for Steelhead with much less volume than I trained for Florida 70.3. I am planning on using Steelhead as a little experiment in this way. I suspect that the base fitness I built over the winter and spring will last through the summer, assuming I keep training lightly but consistently. I have a feeling training lightly, building some gym strength, and adding occasional high-intensity sessions will allow my body to rest, accumulate the months of high-volume training, and grow significantly stronger. Steelhead will test if the low-volume, high-rest experiment works.

Keep yourself tuned to the blog to see how these new training goals work out.

p.s. Dedicated fans know that I always advocate measurable goals. Notice that my three priorities are all easily measurable. 1) Reduction of pain 2) Down on the scale and 3) A fast, fun race.

p.p.s. One last part of my plan is to FINALLY do yoga. Ideally, this will benefit all three priorities. I'll keep you all updated on this one. I may start this as soon as tomorrow (5/25). I am going to try Keith Fox's Colony Yoga.