Mark - This will sound a lot like "if you have a hammer then everything looks like a nail", but maybe get yourself tested for your allergies? I also had a seemingly sudden appearance of respiratory allergies around 38/39 years old.

me -

I gave up waiting for the cough, nasal voice and sore throat to go away and restarted running. I predict my endurance will be shot, but I'll take one day after the other. Coughing while running is very annoying, but a man's gotta do what he's gotta do.

I've visited the pulmonologist doc on Thursday and he gave me some codeine pills for the cough, it seems to be improving day by day, very slowly.

He told me there's a third strain (other than covid and influenza) going around and shutting down people.

Anyway, I hope to clear this out of my system soon so I can get the allergy blood test done and hopefully whatever allergy vaccine I take works well.

Here's my week, it's HUGE!

Weekly for period: From: 01/02/2023 To 01/08/2023

Total distance: 6.30mi

 

Dave/Fishy Make my own? Interesting, not sure how. I remember seeing these devices you can kind of slip over your shoe for ice/snow, and that's what I thought you meant.

mmerkle - you’re thinking of YakTrax, which RP recommended. Here is a pic of what Fishy & I are talking about. An old pair of shoes plus some 1/4”-1/2” hex head sheet metal screws. The longer the screws, the better they’ll stay in, but of course more likely to poke through. I think I ended up with 3/8” and have had no problem. I don’t think there’s one right answer for the exact number and pattern, but his worked great for me.

A month out from the start of formal training, I feel like I’m in a pretty good place. Continuing to maintain a solid base, and starting to ease into some light speed work to get the legs turning over. It was a little ragged at the start, but got smoother and quicker as the workout progressed. By the last couple reps, I felt like I was really hauling ass.

Oh and I’ve officially registered for Eugene now. Price increase was coming up, so figured I might as well commit.

Weekly for period: From: 01/02/2023 To 01/08/2023

Total distance: 61.17mi

My week:

54 miles running, 3 hours pool-running, and 1000 yards swimming.

M: upper body weights/core and 90 minutes pool-running
T: 11.5 miles, with a track workout of 2000, 5x800, 2x200 in 9:00, 3:24, 3:21, 3:18, 3:15, 3:12, 48, and 48. 5:20 recovery after the 2K; recoveries of 2:4x-3:0x between the 800s; full recovery for the 200s. Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.
W: Streaming yoga and 9.5 miles very easy (9:19) plus drills/strides.
Th: 90 minutes pool-running and upper body weights/core.
F: 9 miles, including a 6400m track tempo in 27:44 (7:05/6:59/6:54/6:46). Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.
Sa: 9.5 miles very easy (9:20) plus drills/strides. Streaming yoga in afternoon.
Su: 14 miles progressive, split as first 5 miles averaging 9:18 pace, next 5 miles averaging 8:09 pace, next 4 miles averaging 7:34 pace, and then a half mile cooldown. Followed with injury prevention work.

Second to last week before Houston.  I usually taper with a 5K tempo on Friday and 12 miles aerobic on Sunday, but I am intentionally doing a bit more this time because it seems like my neuro issues get worse when I cut back too much.

I slept in on Friday and skipped the team workout so that I could do a tempo on the track after the sun rose.  And (unsurprisingly) it was substantially faster.  To this point, some tests at the neuro PT this week confirmed that my proprioception is absolutely awful - I'm just not getting any feedback from my feet about where my body is relative to the ground or in space (I think we all discussed this last year when discussing running in the dark).  So I've got a slew of new neuro PT exercises to do - none of which involve closing my eyes, interestingly enough.

[the big exercise is that I am supposed to build up to is balancing on one foot for 2 minutes at a time, while a) staring at a point on a wall several feet away and b) rotating my head from side to side (but keeping my eyes focused on the central point.]

I also have figured out that caffeine seems to make my neuro issues worse - I took a caffeinated gel in the middle of today's long run, and things went a little south after.  And looking back at my training log, the same has happened before.  So I think I'm going to change up my race nutrition plan and just use regular Maurtens and see how that goes.

darkwave - You have so many extra things you need to do in training, it's impressive how you get it all done.  Excited and hopeful about Houston.  Any ideas on goals or targets?

Honestly, it all depends on which set of legs shows up on race morning.  Like always, I'm going to run off of feel and give it my best and see what happens.

I think that sub-3:20 is reasonable and within my current fitness. Honestly, I think significantly faster than that is also possible.  The confounder is that the neuro issues really flare in certain situations, like running in crowds, and so I don't know how that is going to go.

Mmerkle, I don't mind you asking! I was lucky to get a full-time teaching position at my current uni, but it's not tenure-track, and that's my real goal. In the meantime I've applied for a few assistant professorships/post-docs (my PhD earning date is about to expire on those) so I am hopeful that if my position doesn't get renewed next year, I'll have another more research-oriented option, even if it may mean moving again.

RP, I am not a parent and have no idea if I'd be any good at it, but my best friend has a three year old who will not eat his food unless he is bribed with byte-size bits of some favorite show of his. After seeing everything my friend does for this kid to get him to eat before resorting to that, I sympathize more with parents who have their kids watching videos in restaurants, even if I will go over to ask them to lower the volume/use headphones.

Back to running, this looks like a solid first week of the year for everyone! Lots of miles. It's already obvious, but some of your off-season miles are higher than I ever get in training. This week was definitely not a good specimen, anyway. After 300+ days of not taking a day off running, I took off three this week, but that just kind of happened due to it being a pretty messy week in general. I already wrote about why I took off Monday. I took off Friday because there was just too much going on, and today same thing. I did manage to get a decent number of bike miles, so I'm happy about that.

I'm also happy about Thursday's workout. The plan actually called for intervals on Tuesday and tempo on Thursday, but I didn't feel ready to tackle the workout Tuesday and pushed it to Thursday. It went reasonably well. Ideal would have been closer to 7mpm, and it was more like 7:15mpm, but I didn't hurt, so that was the main thing. Saturday's long run went well too, which is no wonder considering the lighter week.

Weekly for period: From: 01/02/2023 To 01/08/2023

Total distance: 37.4mi; 35.1 bike miles

Edited to explain that Wednesday's run was accidentally not recorded until half-way through, but I just doubled the half to get the miles accurate.

Hoping that next week, with the start of the semester, comes a sustainable running routine. Adding a cycle commute and trying to see how to make one of the days a run commute... For others who do that (Fishy?), how do you get your stuff (like a laptop) to the office or back?

Hope you're feeling better, Mark and Flavio! 

RP - agreed.  Ice is BS.  And black ice is super BS.

 

Adding a cycle commute and trying to see how to make one of the days a run commute... For others who do that (Fishy?), how do you get your stuff (like a laptop) to the office or back?

 

 

I run commute sometimes and use this backpack.  It carries my laptop, change of clothes, and a small hyper absorbent towel, plus some other stuff.  (I leave my work shoes at the office).

Also, welcome to the club of ex-coffeeholics

Do any of the doctors have any clue as to the possible root cause of your issues ? Is it like degradation of neurons ?

Funny thing is, I don't drink coffee. My only consumption of caffeine is from gels.  So this is not a huge life-altering adjustment.

As for the neurons thing - neuron loss is one suspected cause.  However, I had a brain scan in late October that was normal - no loss of neurons could be seen.  So I now have a skin biopsy of all things scheduled for later this month - supposedly if you have certain neurological issues, they'll show in proteins in your skin.

But the fact that I respond well to the drug I'm taking now (something called carbidopa/levodopa) indicates that it is something related to dopamine levels in the brain.  The question is just - why are those levels screwed up?