June 28, 2007
Running requires both lungs and legs
From the department of not-so-surprising-discoveries, it turns out you need both strong legs and strong lungs to run well. I reprise this obvious truth to mostly conclude my science experiment on what extended aqua-running does for your land running. Since this site (blog.lib.umn.edu) draws a lot of google hits my poor racing after extended aqua-running is presented as a public service and warning. It keeps you fit but you don't necessarily run your best afterwards.
All in all I was off dry land and aqua-running for nearly 7 weeks. That's a long time, and longer than most of the research that concludes that aqua-running maintains your racing fitness. This time coincided with the last few weeks of my dissertation writing, so I did unusually little walking. My daily routine was ride or drive to pool, ride or drive to work, write a lot, ride or drive home. I got a premonition that returning to running would be rough a week before I started back when a 3/4 of a mile walk left my legs quite tired.
Once I started back I had 5 weeks before the Bjorklund 1/2 marathon which was my goal race for the first half of the year. Having paid $65 to enter, and it's a great race, it was not one to abandon. The first 10 days of "terrestrial running" were not pretty (well, I'm never pretty running, but this is all relative), or at least felt not pretty. The first few days I was actually quite sore while running, mostly in the quads which do the shock absorbing, and more so on asphalt than on softer surfaces. Once I had some semblance of co-ordination back I hit the track for a mini-workout on the 12th day of my return to land running. A few laps of strides and then 2 x 1000m at marathon pace felt aerobically easy, but even on the forgiving surface of the track the legs tired quickly. My easy-paced runs, even the ones that felt sore and un-coordinated had not actually been too much slower than my normal training paces pre-injury. But it was pretty clear that my specific fitness for running at race pace without my legs tiring had diminished substantially. And I had just over two weeks to get it back, since the last week before the race would be mostly tapering.
Another predictable--and thus easily accepted--consequence of the pool running was that I was very aerobically fit but had no leg strength and thus everything was out of balance. If your legs and lungs are out of balance I think it is the worst combination when your lungs are stronger. It leads to even more leg problems since you unconsciously try to outrun your leg fitness. Suffice it to say that I had a host of minor niggles in the two weeks of crash-training where I had to get used to (a) running 6:low/miles again, (b) running for 80-90 minutes, and (c) combining a and b on a relatively unforgiving road surface. Again, I cannot speak too highly of active release therapy, and specifically put in a little free local advertising for Jenna Boren at Bridging Health in St. Paul.
If my goal had been a smooth transition to effective training, the adjustment back to land might have been a little smoother. I would have run more frequently, for shorter distances and at slower paces. But my goal was to try and do a somewhat decent race. So I focussed on two kinds of runs, longer runs to get my legs used to being on the road for a while, and tempo runs with some strides before and after. Since I'd done VO2 max type intervals in the pool I'd taken care of that side of my aerobic fitness, and they seemed to have the most potential for injury. On the days in between the land runs I was in the pool, jogging around for recovery. Again, my thanks to H2O Man and MPR for keeping me sane for up to 2.5 hours in the pool. Really, anything over 20 minutes of aqua jogging seems interminable without the mental focus of a workout or the distraction of the radio.
A week out from the race it was quite clear I was not going to have one of those miraculous injury followed by PR experiences. I had a host of niggling issues with the legs that I was working out with the foam roller, and I was worried that in my haste to get road-fit again I'd done just enough to tire myself out. Thus I set myself the modest goal of merely running marathon pace (1:24:30) for the half marathon. If I could do that I'd be happy.
Not achieving even a modest goal would normally be disappointing. But given the slow transition back to the roads I was more inclined to take the positive feedback from the race, and not worry about the shuffle to the finish. On the morning of the race I made the decision to check my time at the first mile and then run by feel, trying to hit the split button on the watch without looking at it. 6:27 at mile 1 was right on target. Although I got to see my time at mile 5 and 10km the feedback was good, I was knocking off the miles between 6:24 and 6:28 (goal being 6:26). Around 8.5 miles the quads began to protest that they were not used to this. It was not quite like hitting the wall in a marathon, since I gradually slowed from 6:26s to the shuffling 7:30 I ran for the last mile, but it was similar. If your legs aren't used to the road you aren't going to make it. The end result was a 1:28:47 that I figure to be 8-11 minutes slower than what I might have run without the 7 weeks off the road. But in the long view I'll take the positives -- my pace judgment was good and I ran 1/3 of a marathon at marathon pace. It could have been a lot worse.
The generalizable lesson is this: aqua jogging does keep you fit, but you've got to keep up some weight bearing exercise once you can walk on the injury, and the longer you're off the land the harder it will be to come back. While it's frustrating to have to wait for my legs to catch up with my lungs, being unfit in both is even harder to come back from.
I've always found recovering from injuries to be somewhat mentally refreshing. They force me to break from the plan, and to enjoy each day's running for what it is. My goal for the year is still to try and run a decent marathon in October in Auckland. As luck would have it this marathon does not fill months in advance, and I can decide as late as early October whether I'm really going to do it. To let the legs catch up with the lungs the next couple of months are mostly going to be easy runs to build up the mileage with one tempo run or race at Harriers each week. There are few better cities in the world for doing winter base building than Wellington. You have hills and trails, and if you need to hit the flats or the track they're available too. It should be fun.
In other non-surprising news, moving across the Pacific and starting a new job is kinda time consuming ...
Posted by eroberts at June 28, 2007 5:23 AM