This past Monday, I decided to restart my speedwork again as it groweth closer to Cowtown time again. None of my speed workouts for my marathon training were pickups, so I had not done any for several months. I thought it would be a good time to run some (not so) gentle pickups again. And, as usual, I would run mine with my trusty Garmin and heart rate monitor.
Now, if you’ve read my original post on doing pickups by heart rate, you know that I set a heart rate alarm on the Garmin that is slightly under my max heart rate. My max heart rate had been running about 180-182. When I first started running with the Garmin, I calculated my max HR (220 – 50; my age) at 170, but I measured my heart rate going to 180 when running flat out. For a couple years, I’ve been using an alarm setting of 172. When my HR gets to 172, I hear the beeps and run out the pickup for as long as I can hold, then slow down.
As long as I have run, that formula has worked just fine. Until last Monday when I took off on my first pickup and kept going and going and going. No beeps. No alarms. I look down and the Garmin says, “162.” Ok, so slow down, jog a while and try it again. My HR drops back to 130 and I start off again. Maybe I didn’t run the pickup out fast enough? You’re only supposed to reach about 80% of top speed. Maybe I am just out of practice. So, I’ll make this one faster.
I’m waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the beep. None comes. I’m going all out now and I look down, “164.” What’s wrong? Why won’t my HR go up? I run the rest of my pickups by feel and just monitor the heart rate. It never exceeded 167, and that was on the last one. What has happened? I know I’m fit. Has something change?
Of course it has. I’ve dropped 30 pounds! And, I’m slightly older now. OK, so my age only drops the max HR by 2 bpm, but when you go in with the idea that I’m now back to my calculated HR (220 – age), which is now 168, almost 167, you see the difference. My extra weight artificially raised my max HR because of the extra stress. Now, I need to figure out a new HR limit for pickups and try it again.
Of course, now, I’m not sure when that will be. Tuesday evening I went for my regular swim. Every time I tried to fully kick in the freestyle stroke, my left foot hurt. I eased up on my kicking and could keep the pain under slight control, but at least once every lap, one strong kick would make me wince.
Just when I crossed 800 yds., it got worse. Now it was throbbing and moving up the leg. I stopped and made it back to the shallow end to see what was going on. I could feel a large knot on top of my foot near the ankle. It wasn’t hard and after a while, the know moved when pressing on it. The pain was increasing. My friend stopped to see how it was and I told him I was done for the night.
I hobbled home and put some ice on it. I took some ibuprofen and wrapped it for the night. It remained quite painful all night, but when I got up, the pain when down, the swelling went down, and I could walk. I went two days at work with no real problems at all. No problem walking. I jogged a little coming home and didn’t feel anything either. However, I got up this morning and could see a small bruise down near my toes. That was odd. I didn’t have any pain down there.
I thought I’d try spinning and see if that would be a problem. For 52 minutes, it wasn’t. Then it started again. I got off and checked. Sure enough, the swelling was back and the bruise had gotten larger. Well, that bites.
Now, I am going to have to stick to my plan to do no workouts until Monday at least. I can’t find any medical conditions exactly like it on the Internet. The only one that is close sounds really bad. I don’t think I’ve ripped a ligament or tendon. That pain would remain…I think.
Well it happens. You can’t get everything right. I’ve gone a considerable length of time without an injury. I guess you might say I’m overdue. It’s just not a good time with a race coming up. I’m going to be patient and wait until Monday. Then, I’ll have to reassess whether this needs a doc or not. I sure hope not. They tend to go overboard when there is an injury. And, my experience with a lot of docs is they aren’t all great diagnosticians. But, we’ll just have to see. Be careful and have fun running.
