Ironman Hawaii, Chicago Marathon and a 50th Birthday

Hard to believe all that happened this past weekend!

I'll talk about the good stuff first, as there's some bad stuff, too.

Ironman Hawaii
My man Normann won. He set a new bike course record (4:18.23, I believe), and held off Chris McCormack for the win. I read on Slowtwitch.com that Normann later commented (as did Faris Al-Sutan) that he thought McCormack cheated. I do not know the whole story, but it does make me think that if 2 really good bikers think someone cheated, there might be something to it.

In the women's race, my prediction did not come to pass. Natascha only managed 10th place. I have to assume she had some troubles, because her time was slow. But if you look at the top 10 women's time, my God, those ladies are FAST! Conditions had to be good for 10th place woman to go 9:38!

Congratulations are in order for Michellie Jones. She is one heckuva athlete. I got a laugh while listening to the Internet coverage when either Paul Huddle or Bob Babbitt called her "an Australian giraffe." She IS tall. I do love all her *PINKNESS*.

Now for the peeps I know, who all did quite well:
Jennifer Harrison (local girl): 11:29.18
Jerome Harrison (Jennifer's husband): 10:39.06
Debi Bernardes (met her once--she's a coach and great athlete): 11:44.43
Ron Dornecker (local guy): 10:14.10
Bob Scott (local guy and extreme gentleman): 15:51.09 (the man is 76!)
Jean-Paul Lanaux (blogger): 12:55.42

Congratulations to all of them!

Chicago Marathon
It was televised here, and I watched it until the lead men finished. It was sad to see the winner, Robert K. Cheruiyot, fall right on the finish line, due to slipping on wetness, and he was hospitalized with head trauma. But a good day and a good result, but no world record--2:07.35--still smokin'.

In the women's race, Constantina Tomescu-Dita was in the lead for a long, long time, but the commentators kept remarking that she appeared to be running too hard too early on (in fact she was near the lead pack of men for quite awhile). Bad, bad girl. ALWAYS start out slowly and build! She slowed significantly near the end, and ended up coming in 5th place at 2:24.25 (at least I can run a HALF marathon faster than that!). The winning woman was Berhane Adere at 2:20.42. And yes, I can run a HALF marathon faster than that!

During the telecast, there was a commercial featuring a guy I met way back when I first started running in 1999 who has done EVERY Chicago marathon--Ron Williams! It was great to see that he's still running at the age of 67, and he finished in a time of 5:54:05. He looks great!

Now, for friends' results:
Denise Allman, awesome runner, BQ'ed again at 3:15.40
Dan Brown, wise-ass and great runner: 3:48.29
Lora Mantelman (blogger and great lady): 5:14.49
Ino Navarrete (friend, missed BQ, but still way faster than I'll ever be): 3:33.56
Maria Carrington (wife of friend): 3:51.56

So there were some great race results for people I know this weekend.

Now for the bad stuff. Friday evening, I was doing a strength workout, after having swam in the morning (some of my fastest swimming in about a year!), and ran in the early afternoon (also a very fast run where I felt like I was in a flow state). I was almost done, and was doing a side dumbbell row when I felt a strong pull in my back. It should have been in my lats, but I couldn't tell. It didn't feel good, and was something I had never experienced. I stopped the exercise that I was doing, and decided to see if I could finish up my abs. I did, and had no troubles, and then I stretched out quite well and hoped for the best.

I had trouble sleeping on Friday as my lower back became very stiff and it was uncomfortable to turn over in bed and get up. Yikes! When I awoke on Saturday, I was concerned, and was trying to figure out if I needed to see a doctor right away. I called a nurse hotline that my insurance covers, and she suggested icing, NSAID's (I was already taking some), and based on my assessment, get into a regular doctor ASAP to determine if seeing a chiropractor would even be a good idea. I was worried I might have slipped a disk (seeing as how I had a herniated one diagnosed about 1.5 years ago).

As I was awake and moving around, my back seemed to loosen up a bit, but in the interest of rest (yuk), I decided to take the day off from training, even though I was scheduled for a long ride. I did get on my bike (it's now firmly ensconced on the trainer), and it felt like I could ride, but I didn't think I should. So, I iced my back about every 4 hours, took more NSAID's, and managed to do some raking and other yard work. My back didn't bother me much at all, and it was not like I was in excruciating pain, so I figured a day of rest was probably a good thing.

Saturday afternoon, after I had done yard work and went grocery shopping (I figured I should do as much as I can before the proverbial other shoe dropped), I spent some time researching what I might have done based on where I was experiencing pain. IF this is just muscular in nature, then the likely candidates which developed acute trigger points are the quadratus lumborum, multifidus, erector spinae, iliopsoas, latissimus dorsi and rectus abdominus. It feels like my back is "catching" just above the sacrum. All those muscles mentioned generate referred pain across the low back and a bit vertically down the middle of the glutes. So during my afternoon stretching/bodywork session, I did what I could to explore around those muscles.

Saturday night I slept much better and had little discomfort in moving around in bed. Sunday morning, I felt much better, but wasn't sure I could work out. But then while watching the Chicago Marathon on TV, I thought I should at least try getting on my bike, as I didn't think that would aggravate things. So at about 11:45 AM I got on, and nothing hurt either sitting up or in the aerobars, so away I went on my workout. I could have done only 2:30, but then I thought, hey, it's my birthday, so let's see if I can go 3 hours (which would easily be 50 miles, although I don't have a speed pickup on my rear wheel so I don't know how far I go indoors, but I don't really care!). Before I started, I thought it would be prudent to try to run and swim afterwards at the Y, just to see if I could. There would be no point in getting up at 5AM on Monday if I'd get to the pool and not be able to swim!

So I had my running gear and swim gear ready to go for when I finished the bike workout. I felt fine on the bike, and I was able to work hard (I do need to switch out to my new trainer, though; the current one doesn't give me quite enough resistance for my high wattages--isn't that a nice problem to have?), and with about 1/2 hour to go I started thinking about how much to run.

Since I'd be missing a long run for the week, but I'm 3 weeks out from a 1/2 IM (which I HOPE TO GOD I'M ABLE TO DO), I thought, hey, why not 50 minutes in honor of my 50th birthday? That way, it's a helluva brick, more like a 1/2 IM race rehearsal. I finished the ride and headed to the Y with a ton of crap in order to run and swim.

My legs felt GREAT as I started to run. I mean AWESOME. Like I should have done a 1/2 IM race right then! I suppose that's the idea--I should be peaking quite soon, and my run legs have just been really great for several weeks. But I thought I should hold back on the intensity just a bit. I had the usual "I want to puke" feelings, which are about par for having biked hard (duh--when do I NOT bike hard?), and I was in 100% observation mode to see how my back felt. I didn't feel like I was favoring anything and I was channeling Peter Reid's running form quite well. I did settle into my hoped-for 1/2 IM run pace and it felt good. Actually, the faster I went, the better I felt. I thought I had wimped out a bit on the run, but then again, I remembered that I was going to swim, too, so I decided to add 5 minutes on at the end, and ended up running 55 minutes instead of 50. Oh well, no worries!

OK, now, let's see if I can swim. I was concerned that rotating would generate pain. I had decided to do 50 laps, or 1,250 yards, if I could swim. I didn't need to swim at all, but again, I wanted to "test the waters" to figure out if Monday morning swimming would be in order. The water felt good, and I peeled off a decent 500 swim, 500 pull, and 250 swim. I was even swimming at a decent pace! The only pain I noticed was the right side of my neck, but I think that was more from biking than anything else. So all systems go!

So I managed to pull out a respectable 50th birthday workout of 50 miles biking, 50 (really 55) minutes running, and 50 laps. Not your gonzo-mega-ginormous-crazy workout like some people do on their birthdays, but pretty good considering it was done with a less than 100% back.

When I got home, I iced my back, made dinner, did laundry, stretched some more, and thought happy thoughts. I received the most gorgeous floral arrangement from Cindy, and I pondered it and all this age nonsense. I allowed myself to wallow a little bit in self-pity. How is it that I, in awesome physical condition, am experiencing back troubles? It sucks, but all I can think is how much worse I'd be doing right now if I wasn't already strong and highly flexible. Sure, something hurts, but I can keep doing things until there's a strong reason that I can't. The last thing I need to do is stop moving around and let everything tighten up. I have a doctor appointment scheduled for later today--all I'm looking for at this point is perhaps a prescription for a muscle relaxant (yikes) and a determination of whether I should get X-rays and/or see a chiropractor or orthopedic guy. I haven't been to a chiropractor in quite a long time, and I don't want to go if there's a reason to not get adjusted, although truthfully, I'd like to get that done to see if it would help. I am hoping and praying I don't have a fractured vertebra or badly herniated disk, and that all it is is a weird muscle strain that will go away.

I slept fine last night and felt a bit stiff this morning, so I stretched for 10 minutes and then headed to the pool, where I swam just fine. My low back didn't feel great when I would hit the wall, but I don't feel any worse than yesterday, considering what I did. I plan to run for an hour over lunch, and then we will see what the doctor says. How much do you want to bet I hear, "Stop running?" Gosh, I hope not. But I'm ready to face whatever this is and get better, even if it means I don't race in 3 weeks. Think happy thoughts!