I think I need to go back and write reports for Weeks 14-16; not necessarily because I think anyone wants to read them (other than Mom and Dad who seem to read everyone one of my blog posts) but because I don’t want to forget what I did and how I did it. Although I have been keeping track of all my training in my training log, I realize now that the “color commentary” of the blog post is somewhat more useful than just the raw stats… Why you ask? Well, for example, in the context of my newly self-diagnosed “early” case of plantar fasciitis, I believe that if I had a closer detail of my training over the last month, I may be able to learn from my mistakes and not repeat the activity that lead to this injury again.
The good news is that this week was a “recovery week” and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I had a big Y-Guides camp out this weekend, which meant not having time for long rides or runs, and as I’ve just mentioned my foot has been starting to feel a little funny so I wanted to take some down time from running and aggressive cycling hill climbs and the like. I think the rest has served me well, although I am not back 100% on my feet, in fact, I am certain now of my injury and I am sure that taking it easy on the running for a couple weeks will be a good idea.
Unfortunately I wasn’t doing a good job of keeping this “subjective” record of what I was doing and how I was feeling doing it, and now I’m left to my memory to piece together more detail about what might have caused what I believe is an early case of the dreaded plantar fasciitis.
My self diagnosis has been confirmed (supported?) by my fellow Y-Guide Dad, Dr. P. (igloo builder extraordinaire), who apparently worked his way through med school (to become an infectious disease doctor) as a technician at a podiatrist office. I described the sensation (I’m not calling it pain) in my feet and he ask a couple questions, poked at my feet a couple times and made the following observations:
- The sensations I was describing weren’t necessarily classic symptoms of plantar fasciitis, but that the areas of my feet I was complaining about are definitley the fibrous band plantar fascia that stretch from the toes to the heel
- In his opinion I have high arches and those are clearly susceptible to stretching and flattening, and that those actions in particular can inflame and irritate the plantar fascia.
- He observed that my plantar fascia seemed “particularly tight” and that that would certainly cause the sensation I described and more importantly that it would (if not dealt with) lead to a more serious cause of plantar fasciitis.
- He agreed that the fact that I didn’t have pain on lateral compression and the fact that I am familiar with the pain of a calcaneus stress fracture and that I didn’t believe that was what I had, that I shouldn’t be concerned about a stress fracture.
Upon retelling my history, which he and the other dad’s had heard before when they got to watch me hobble around in the boot and on crutches, he sternly reminded me that my orthotics “are not just for padding” and they are equally important for cycling as they are for running. Hmmm… the physical therapist hadn’t really made this point clear to me. But after listening to Dr. P’s free advice (he reminded me you get what you pay for) it makes sense that I need to wear my orthotics in my cycling shoes too.
Here’s why… the main job of the orthotics is to keep my arch from flattening which causes my foot to stretch and become deformed. There are all kinds of side effects of this flattening: the increased shock on my heal when running; the deformation of my outer toes which lead to my tailor bunion; and also apparently a stressing of the plantar fascia which can lead to all kinds of other problems most notably plantar fasciitis.
One more nail in my proverbial diagnostic coffin is my tight calf muscles. Damn it… wasn’t I supposed to be stretching for injury prevention!!!!
The good news: well, if there can ever be good news about injury, it usually takes the form of “you caught it early, so you can heal faster!”… hmmm…. let’s see. I don’t have many of the classic symptoms of plantar fasciitis, most noteably which is PAIN and lots off it.
I have scheduled an appointment with the PT that made my orthotics, but after doing a little more research, I suspect this visit will be a little perfunctory. And that the outcome will be a prescription of: rest, ice, stretching, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication (Ibuprofen).
I’ve been concerned about taking Ibuprofen because I had heard that there were some studies that showed that NSAIDs can lead to bone weakness. Dr. P was skeptical and said that his read of the studies showed correlation without causality. If all the people in the studies who had fractures and other bone related injuries were all athletes who often were in pain, and often took NSAIDs, then it may just be that athletes get injured and athletes take pain meds and anti-inflammatory meds, but they aren’t related other than athletes have/use both.
As I write this, it is more and more clear to me that stretching is my root problem… and that if I could go through my unwritten weekly training reports I would see that I’ve been skimping on stretching, and that I’ve been adding more time and intensity in both running and hard cycling efforts. These cycling efforts have been exacerbated by not wearing good orthotics while cycling, and rarely doing good stretches after cycling efforts.
Hopefully, I’ve caught this early after all, I still have 20 weeks before my Ironman, so I’ve got plenty of time to recover and ramp up again and still achieve my goals. Plus, by taking a few corrective steps now, I should still be able to have solid cycling training, and then focus the rest of my triathlon training on my swimming (I should do this anyway), and get back into the running more seriously once my feet have recovered.
Sounds like a plan right?
April 29th, 2007
So, I’ve have some sort of a developing injury in my foot… no worries, it gives me a good reason to focus on my swimming. No more excuses. So I’ve been thinking more about my slow (albeit easy) swim stroke, and a couple of concepts have been bouncing around in my head lately… so I’ve been doing some experimenting… and I think I might have found something out about my swim stroke.
Is it possible that I’m cheating myself? Is it possible that my slow speed is the result of something small that would be simple to change? Hmmm….
I was chatting with Brooke, co-owner of Speedy Reedy — my favorite local triathlon shop — a couple months ago. I was complaining about how slow I was. She had lots of suggestions… join a masters swim program, practice practice practice, get a coach, etc. She also reassured me that a 1:27 Ironman swim split isn’t anything to be ashamed of… but she understands that I want to improve, and she agrees that I could trim 10-20minutes off of my time.
By the way, this reminds me about one of my excuses for not focusing on my swim time. I’ve used the excuse that since the worlds best are swimming in the 0:50 range and the top age-groupers are in the 0:57-1:07 range, that improving on my 1:27 would only give me 20minutes more on the field. I’ve always told myself that my relaxed easy 100bpm swim at 1:27 prepares me to gain much more than 20minutes on the bulk of the field in my bike and run. But here’s the problem with this logic… what if I could swim a 1:07 swim split and still make up that 20 minutes on the rest of the field on the bike and run? Well… that means I could be cheating myself out of 20 minutes… that’s a huge waste.
Ok, so there is a good reason to work on my swim…. what can I do about it?
Here’s the thing, a have received a lot of “compliments” on my “good form”. Just today after my swim a swimmer in the lane next to me asked me about TI (I was wearing a TI swim cap)… he said “You have really good form, I was watching you, you look so effortless, you’re gliding through the water, you’re perfectly vertical”. Hmmm, that does sound good, I wish I could see that… so why am I so slow?
Well, Brooke asked me something a couple months ago, and it’s been swimming around in my noggin. And Karl also mentioned something on his blog that along with Brooke’s question has got me wondering if there isn’t at least one place in my swim stroke where I may be cheating myself. Specifically - stroke count per breath.
Ok, so a little background. If you are struggling in the water, then you have to breath a lot more than if you are relaxed. That makes sense of course. And since Total Immersion is all about not-struggling in the water, about the idea of having an effortless swim, then someone who is swimming the TI technique well should not need to breath as frequently. Or put another way you should have far more strokes per breath. And, as I’ve said in the past I have a pretty effortless stroke. I am very relaxed in the water, and I really don’t feel as though I am putting much effort into my stroke. In much of the TI literature there are reports of typical stroke/breath rates of 7-9 strokes per breath.
But I am still swimming along at 3 strokes per breath. Now mind you, that’s not bad pe se. I mean, I do effortlessly swim breathing bi-laterally (every other breath on every other side of my body), which is a sign of good form. Bi-lateral breathing has many advantages. First of all, if you are easily able to breath bi-laterally then it means that you are “comfortable” on either side of you body… a good thing. Also, bi-lateral breathing means that you are evenly distributing the effort of “breathing” to each side of your body… what? I mean, that the extra energy (although let’s hope it’s not too much extra energy) of lifting your arm and lifting your head “out of the water” is distributed to both sides of your body. This reduces fatigue, and allows you to swim comfortably longer.
Bi-lateral breathing, also means you’re probably not rushing your stroke, and therefore you’re conserving energy by staying in a clean rhythm. But one other significant benefit of being a comfortable bi-lateral breather, is that if times are tough (huh?) then you can choose to be a uni-lateral swimmer on either side. What? Yeah. Let’s say you are swimming in the ocean, along the shore, and you have swell or waves breaking on one side of you — the uni-lateral swimmer who is only comfortable breathing on one side of their body might find themselves in a frustrating, demoralizing, or possibly dangerous situation.
The point is, I am a comfortable bi-lateral breather… but at only 3 strokes per breath. So what’s wrong with that? Well, a couple things. Breathing does slow you down. Even when you do it in a clean effortless TI manner, you are still pausing when you roll to breath, and you are losing your propulsion. The more strokes you take per breath the fewer pauses over total distance.
Another problem (at least for me) is that although I am a bi-lateral breather, I am not 100% symetrical in my breathing. I take just a little bit longer on one side than the other… I don’t even know which one… in fact it may change throughout the swim… but the point is that some of my pauses are a little longer on one side than the other. So what, you ask? Well, a little longer pause means a little extra or a little less drift to one side or the other… which means I don’t swim very straight. In the pool (especially a 17 yard per lap pool) you’d never notice… but in the open water… uh… yeah… you notice.
In fact, I think my Ironman swim last year was probably 2.7 miles considering how many times and how far off course I swam. At one point in the race I drafted off another swimmer, not for the free glide but simply for the benefit of having someone else steering. I wanted a guide not a glide. But after about 10 minutes, he wanted to switch places and draft off of me… I didn’t mind, and I took the lead, but he quickly realized that it was a bad idea to follow me because I was going WAY off course.
Ok, so what is the breakthrough you ask? Well, like I said, don’t call it a breakthrough yet… but I decided to try to take more strokes per breath. Why don’t I up it to 5 or 7? So this week, in all my swimming sessions I’m trying to focus on swimming with more stroke per breath. Now, I don’t mean swimming hypoxic… which is a different training technique. No, I simply mean swimming comfortably, but not breathing so often… can I do it?
The first couple times I did this, my brain was screaming out at me that I was going hypoxic. But then I realized something rather simple (and a little silly). In an effort to “breath out under water”, which is of course what every swim coach will tell you to do… I was breathing out alot of my breath within the first two strokes. So what if I just held my breath more? Huh, it turns out I can swim 5 or 7 strokes easily. Go figure. But if I hold my breath the whole way, and only breath out at the 6th stroke, then I started to feel a little over carbonated. 
The next thing I tried was to hold my breath much longer than on my 3 strokes, but actually breath out a tiny stream of bubbles on strokes 2 and 4, and 6 if I was going to 7… and then of course a big breath out on my last stroke. What I found was that this technique was actually much easier, and almost as effortless as my 3 strokes per breath. Now that is a big deal.
In fact, it was a big enough deal that on a couple of my lengths of the pool it only took me 8 or 9 strokes total to complete the length… my typical stroke count (for this short pool) is 11 strokes. Assuming those stroke counts weren’t flukes, and that if I reduce my breath count to one per 7 vs. one per 3… then I could see a 20% improvement in my stroke length. That’s huge!
At this point in the game, I’m not timing myself. In fact, I was making a point of trying to concentrate on form, not speed. But I am hopeful that this new found higher stroke/breath rate will result in swim speed improvements.
April 26th, 2007
The good news is that this is a recovery week, so I’m taking advantage of it and focusing on activities which should be low impact: swimming, strength training, and low-effort cycling… uh… me, low effort cycling?!
Now the question is, what is going on with my foot?
What I’m experiencing is a slight tickle in my heal. Now normally, you might say, “Dude?! a tickle? What’s the big deal?” Well, I will admit, it doesn’t hurt, I have a pretty high pain threshold, I am an Ironman after all! But I am also paranoid about re-injuring my feet, so I am very sensitive to any unusual sensation in my feet.
When I first had this sensation (a couple days ago) I thought that it may be a reaggravation of my stress fracture, I figured that a little extra rest would be the best course of action. Sticking with swimming, and cycling… no running this week, maybe no long run next week… seems like a good idea. But in the back of my mind I am skeptical that it is a stress fracture because I don’t have any pain with lateral compression.
Then I noticed that even riding my bike that my foot was a little tingly. I decided to ice it tonight. Now I’m wondering if this might be Plantar Fasciitis. Hmmm… I do have high arches, and high arches and poor foot dynamics are common contributors to plantar fasciitis. Tight calves can also contribute… hmm, don’t I recall the physical therapist saying my calves were tight?
The good news is that catching this soon, hopefully means a little down time now will help me get back into full swing for my Ironman training.
I think it’s time to visit the doctor for a professional opinion.
April 25th, 2007
I think I need to go back and write reports for Weeks 14-16; not necessarily because I think anyone wants to read them (other than Mom and Dad who seem to read everyone one of my blog posts) but because I don’t want to forget what I did and how I did it. Although I have been keeping track of all my training in my training log, I realize now that the “color commentary” of the blog post is somewhat more useful than just the raw stats… Why you ask? Well, for example, in the context of my newly self-diagnosed “early” case of plantar fasciitis, I believe that if I had a closer detail of my training over the last month, I may be able to learn from my mistakes and not repeat the activity that lead to this injury again.
Here are a couple videos I put together that demonstrate how to put on and remove your shoes while you are riding your bike. I apologize for the lame video quality… my excuse is: I used a really old cheap camera, I had terrible lighting, Tyler was holding the camera and decided it was more artistic to rotate the camera 90 degrees - which meant more video processing and lower quality, and finally, I still haven’t completely figured out how to get YouTube to not recompress the heck out of the video.