Long Run Mini-Epic

Sheridan Summers and I went out for a long run on Saturday. Due to an unfortunate series of events, mostly me forgetting to pick up his snowshoes, we ended up having to resort to plan B then plan C as we kept getting denied on various routes that we had initially planned on. We ended up running an unknown snowmobile road in what we thought was the right direction. We lucked out, even though we both got a bit nervous, and ended up coming out to the road a few miles from where we had left the car. All in all it was a great run, tough because of the snow, but I good time none the less. Here is my first video of the year:

Shotgun to a Knife Fight

Dreaming of Dirt

The title to this post may be a little misleading. I have not actually been taking a firearm to a fight of any kind, but that is the approach that I taken for bringing this achilles injury into its final healing process. Given that I am highly motivated to get this injury healed and I am very interested in medicine I have recently done nearly every treatment that has been shown to be effective in treating achilles tendonitis. This week I have continued to use the nitro patches on my achilles every night, I have had graston technique performed, deep tissue massage, provoke B12 and procaine injections in the tissues around the tendon, and weighted eccentric calf raises until the cows come home. After hitting the injury with this shotgun of treatment I feel like I finally have had some good progress this week and the achilles is finally feeling healed. I will start ramping up the running this week and see how it holds up and I am very optimistic that I can finally put this behind me.

I am planning on racing the Red Hot 50k this February as my first race of the year and I am really stoked to get out on dirt this early in the year. There have been a lot of big things happening in trail and ultra running this last year and I am committed to step up my intensity in training and racing in order to keep being competitive as things heat up. I was once again offered a spot on the La Sportiva Mountain Running Team and on the Nuun Ultrarunning Team, I am very excited to have this wonderful companies backing me again this year as well as the La Sportiva associate sponsors: Ultimate Direction, First Endurance, Petzl, Green Layer Apparel, Julbo, Headsweets and Defeet. With great sponsors and renewed motivation I think it is going to be a wonderful year. Look for some upcoming posts on a tentative race schedule, nominations for Ultrarunners's wife of the year, and some winter running techniques that I am currently working on.

First Post of 2010

Well it has clearly been quite a while since I posted, I think mostly it was because I have been dealing with an injury that has kept me from running until last week. After the 40 on Dusty's birthday I noticed a lump on my achilles, I had had this lump before right after the Bear 100. I decided to take it seriously, take some time off and really get it healed so I can start 2010 strong. Well it turns out this has been a very difficult injury to get taken care of. I have tried lots of stretching, eccentric calf raises, and then added some Graston technique treatments from a good friend that is a trainer at the local university. At this point the lump was completely painless but still there. I tried running on it last week and no pain but the lump got a little larger, that is when I decided to see the local sports med doc. At the doc we did an ultrasound to check the integrity of the achilles, it showed a very small partial tear and some discongruent fibers. The doc has seen a lot of athletes and feels comfortable with me to continuing running, we also decided to try using low dose nitro patches on the achilles at night to help promote healing, there is a lot of good research about nitro patches for tendinopathies and other than the headaches it seems to be helping.

Granted injuries are part of this sport but this has been particularly difficult to deal with. I would be interested to hear what the couple of you that read my blog what you do to cope with an injury. Please post below.

Also I thought I should put up a summary of 2009: total mileage: 2015.9 miles, total hours: 281, total elevation ascent: 348, 353. Pretty good year for me, considering that in the past I have never ran more than 600 miles in a year.