Injury #1 plus last week's workout schedule

Well, hells bells! I have officially racked up injury #1 for the season. My left knee! And it came after the 50 mile bike ride this weekend. More on that in Saturday's section below. But first a recap of my workout week:

Monday - Off

Ahhhh, president's day. A day off of work & a day off from working out. It is normally a boot camp day + a run day, but today's boot camp was moved to Friday, and I decided to do today's run on Tuesday.

Tuesday - 30 min run & 35 min bike

I got up before work & ran a 30 min loop around N. Berkeley. It was the coolest run I've done so far. It started near the Marin Circle & looped down by the Safeway on Rose, back up by the North Berkeley library, up Marin & back to the Circle. Really nice, flat run. I felt strong & fast during & after the run. And I am loving my playlist on my iPod! :) It helps like you would've believe! Oh, and I ate a banana before the run. It was perfect.

Then after work, I went to the Y and put in 35 mins on the bike. I ended up riding 9.5 miles and burning 250 calories. Given that I've been riding for HOURS on my bike on the weekends, 35 mins in the gym was over before I knew it.

Wednesday - Boot camp

Boot camp today was at Seabreeze market near the Marina. I always know when we work out here, there will be more running than other locations. Today was no different. It's because the area we do our strength training is further away from where we park than the other two locations. But it was a good boot camp. Nothing special or unusual to note here. Just that I was there & did it!

Thursday - 30 min run

After work today (and after eating a bean burrito once I got home so I wasn't running on an empty stomach), I headed out for yet another 30 min run around North Berkeley. As I mentioned before, I'm trying to run every single road in N. Berkeley this season as part of my training (and to help keep things from getting monotonous!), so I mapped out yet another different run route for this run on streets I had never run on before. Right before I left work, I quickly mapped out a run I thought would take me 30 mins, then I jotted the directions on a piece of paper, and that's what I carried with me on my run. (See picture on the left.) I do this on every run to make sure I know where I'm going. It's not so I don't get lost because I know the area well ... it's so I make sure I'm not overlapping on some roads I may have ran on before. I know, I know, it may seem crazy, but it works for me.

Anyway, it had been raining on & off all day long, but when I started my run, the sky looked pretty clear, and I thought (I thought) that it would stay clear for 30 mins. Wrong-O! About 20 mins into the run, it started raining. And hard! I was soaked! I had to put my ipod in my pocket for the rest of the run so it didn't get wet, but I kept on chugging. The only time I stopped was when I was running past this house on Sonoma, and this super friendly cat came charging out into the street for me to pet him! That's all he wanted. It was adorable. And a nice little break for me. Other than the rain (and it really wasn't that big a deal), it was a good run. And as usual, I did my stretching & breathing afterwards to cool down...in the rain! :)

Friday - Off

Boot camp was today. I didn't go! I woke up at 3am & could not for the life of me go back to sleep. I stayed up for about an hour and a half, just laying in bed. Then I finally get back to sleep, and the alarm rings at 5:20! I was like, "No way am I getting up! I need more sleep!" So back in bed I went, and no boot camp for me today. Normally Fridays are my days off anyway, so I didn't feel so bad. I'm trying to have a guilt free season this year (i.e. not feeling guilty when I don't work out as planned). Sometimes it's working, sometimes it's not. Today, it was working! :)

Saturday - 50 mile bike ride

We had the BEST bike ride today!! We rode 50 miles from Benicia to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield and back. A fun, fairly flat ride, and except for the rain, it was awesome!!

Kassidie met me at Target in Berkeley, we put her bike on the rack, and we headed out to Benicia. I had already eaten a banana, a boiled egg, and drank some OJ & coffee, and I took with me some oatmeal to eat on the way. With me on my camelbak, I took a Luna Bar, a Gu, some Jelly Belly sports beans we got at Boot Camp, and another granola bar. If you remember from last week, Kass bonked big time on our bike ride on Sunday because she had been up most of the night before with a friend & had eaten a half a banana before the ride. Well, the girl learned her lesson!! When she got in the car, she had a bag full of food to eat on the way! I laughed when I saw it, and I was so proud of her for finally taking her workout & nutrition seriously. She had string cheese, fruit cups, yogurt, ensure drinks...the works! And she had brought lots of stuff to also eat on the ride. I was very proud of her.

We got to our meeting place near the Benicia marina at 8:30 am for a ride start at 9 am. The Luna Chix had mini bars & some donuts before the ride for us. I chowed down on one of the bars, but no donuts for me (or Kass). Seems we're always running behind, and after the safety briefing, we finally got started on the ride at 9:30. There were probably 25 women on the ride, plus along the way, I saw 2 men who I think belonged to a couple of the women. :) When we finally got out of Benicia and along the road beside the freeway, it was a fairly easy, gently rolling ride. I was able to use my aerodynamic bars a lot on this ride. They are the best things ever ... soooo incredibly comfortable. We stopped at mile 13 for a potty break at a gas station, and then our next stop was at the Jelly Belly factory at mile 20. Kass and I took took a few pictures while we were there. She couldn't believe the people lined up inside for plant tours! It was pretty crazy. It was only about 11:15, and it was dreary weather, so it's surprising so many people were there. Of course, we were all chowing down on food and going to the bathrooms while we were there. I'm sure we were a sight!

We headed out from the Jelly Belly factory, on our way to the next stop at a bike shop at mile 28, and that's when the rain started. There is a long stretch of road that winds along some wineries (which I'm sure would've been beautiful if the weather would've been better) that was just boring as shit, and add rain on top of it, and it wasn't the best part of the ride, to say the least. We got to the bike shop, took a restroom break, add some food, and headed back out. At this point, both Kass and I just wanted to get back to the car & out of the rain. But there were still 20 miles left!

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, just winding back the way we came & back to Benicia, trudging along for those 20 miles back to the start. I've been having serious issues with my hands going numb on rides longer than about 25 miles, and today was the worst ever. It got to the point where I couldn't even shift my gears because I couldn't feel my fingers. It got scary because it was even hard for me to break. So I stopped once more, at about mile 40, to give my hands a break & get some feeling back into them. Kass keeps telling me that gloves will help that, but I'm not convinced. I used to wear gloves, and the same thing would happen. I think it's because of my carpal tunnel stuff going on. I mean, my hands fall asleep at night, and I've had them start to go numb at the computer sometimes. I try to pay attention and keep my wrists straight when I type, but it's hard. So I'm pretty sure it's because of being on a computer all day long at work that my hands go numb on the bike. My wrists aren't straight when I ride, so I'm sure I'm putting pressure wherever it is that makes my hands go numb. Nonetheless, it's scary, and I need to figure out something to prevent the numbness from happening. I don't know if I should ride with a wrist brace or something like that. That probably would work & it makes sense. I'll keep you updated with what happens with that.

The only thing that bugged me about the ride today, other than the fact that we started 30 mins late, was that the sweep for the ride came in with one of the ride leaders!! That's not supposed to happen! The sweep's job is to stay behind the slowest person to make sure everyone comes in safely & no one gets lost. I came in ahead of Kass (and ahead of that one ride leader), thinking that the sweep was staying behind to guide everyone else back. But around the bend came the sweep with one of the ride leaders, and I'm like, "what the hell?" And no Kass yet. So I wait for another few minutes, and no Kass. I can't remember if she has the directions & map for the ride, so I'm getting a little nervous. Finally I ask the leader if someone else is sweeping, and she says no (NO?), but that there were about 4 or 5 people together back there and were coming in together. Well, that made me feel a little better, but still after a few more minutes, no Kass. FINALLY Kass comes around the corner with a couple of other people. Sure enough, she had gotten lost and had to wait for other people to catch up to her so she could find her way back. It unnerved me about the sweep not actually being a sweep. I guess really there is no sweep on these rides.

So I could feel a tiny bit of pain in my left knee while we were riding, probably starting on mile 30 or so, but it wasn't a big deal. My knee's been hurting, kind of this dull ache, for a couple of weeks, but the 50 mile bike ride this weekend did me in. Even though I could feel some pain, I kept on riding anyway, pushing myself up the hills & going pretty fast on the straightaways. There are so many theories on pain ... from immediately stopping to keeping going to help it work itself out. Well, I took the latter approach, and I'm still glad I did, although I should've backed off on the intensity of the ride. But that is SOOO hard for me to do. It was the first ride where I could test my speed with the aero bars, and I really wanted to push myself. Well, I paid for it! After the ride, it was fine, but once I settled down for the evening, I could hardly move it. I put a big giant bag of ice all around my knee & took 3 ibuprofen (advil). It helped a little, but I still had a fitful night. I couldn't roll over in the bed without my knee hurting & waking me up. I iced it on Sunday, too, and by then I could at least walk without it hurting. Anyway, we'll see how the injury does. I'm laying off of it for a few days. Knee injuries scare me.

Sunday - Off

Kellie & I were slated to run a 5K couple's relay today around Lake Merritt (we would each run a 5K loop around the lake, one after the other), but my knee pain/injury prevented us from running. We contemplated going to the start to get our goody bag of stuff (I loooooove the goody bags you get at races!), but instead we slept in. I'm glad we did. My knee feels better today. I iced it in the evening, and I slept fairly well.

So it was a four day workout week this week for a variety of reasons. That's ok. Shit happens. I'm taking it easy on my knee for a while. More to come next week. :)