Long Beach Marathon this Sunday.
The potential Boston Qualifier, right? Except that the pain in the heel has prevented Basta from doing proper marathon training, so he's not ready.
So.
He ran 13 in Cancun pain-free. He was slow and miserable, but he was pain-free. That's important. I think we've truly figured out this problem (sciatica) and how to solve it (yoga).
But not soon enough. He needs a lot more long-distance runs on his body before he can hope to do a marathon in BQ time. Cross-training is lovely for keeping the cardiovascular system primed, but you need sport-specific workouts to perform well in a certain sport.
Or does he? He surprises me with his physical abilities at times. His ability to just keep going and going when a normal person would stop. Maybe he could manage to do this marathon after all.
To find out, I sent him on a 16-mile long run. If he did ok on that, maybe he could go ahead and try the marathon.
Off he went. When he returned, the verdict was clear. No marathon for him.
It wasn't his foot. It started to feel a little twinge towards the end of the run but wasn't painful during and disappeared again after the next yoga session. No, his foot is ok. It was his ankles. His calves. His back. His shoulders, even. He hurt all over.
He didn't plan his route very well and ended up running over 17 miles. His body just isn't ready for this kind of running distance. He hasn't done the time. Hasn't built up the endurance his muscles and ligaments need. He's not too far off. Maybe even 5 more weeks of training could have gotten him a lot closer. But that's 5 weeks we don't have.
The next day he awoke to a swollen lower back. Right around the base of his spine was a pad of fluid. Seriously not good. That convinced me, if there was any doubt, that he shouldn't be doing this marathon. It dissipated throughout the next two days and he is now fine there. The rest of his body has recovered, too.
I have convinced him that doing this marathon is dumb. He has no prayer of doing a BQ time. But more importantly, he risks getting hurt, setting back his training, and maybe making him come to hate the long-distance running. There's no need for that. Train properly and really do the event, don't just suffer through it.
So he's going to do the Half. Shoot for a PR, maybe. He did an 8 mile long run today, the final long before the event. He did ok and felt fine.
We'll set our sights on the backup marathon, the Surf City Marathon, the first weekend in February. We have time to train for that. Both of us, since I'm doing it too.
Me putting my fascination with human physiology, nutrition, and sports science to use helping my husband, who couldn't care less about these things, achieve his triathlon goals.
2 comments:
My personal opinion - just to put some sticks on the fire - is that a normal person needs time between events. So to do a marathon now on top of the tough Cancun experience is not adviseable. You need time to have mental power as well ...Even a half needs prep time. If the PR is not reached - which is the impact? I would advise to concentrate on a marathon as mentioned in Feb. The body signals you mentioned tell that the body is in stress. Go back to slow training and increase gradually. Isn't the aim a full tri? Not to do a better time on a halfmarathon? There is a risk that overdoing things - you risk all. The Cancun took a lof of energy....../Crister
Yes, we are in agreement, Crister. He's not going to do the full. He is trained up and ready to do the half, though. He says he may try to set a PR, but that's just talk on his part. He may just as likely run it with a friend and not worry about time. I am trying to impress on him that injury is very bad, running in pain is bad because it makes you not like running, and there's always Surf City. He doesn't always listen to me so well, though.
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