Run, Cactrot!

I got tired of feeling like 20 minutes on the elliptical was "exercise," when I used to run 4 miles on a bad day. So I started pushing it. And so last week I did 50 minutes, including 2 miles running, and yesterday I did a full hour: 20 on the elliptical, going as hard as I could, 20 running at a good pace, and 20 back on the elliptical, pushing myself to the limit (HR=185, chest aching from breathing so hard, actually had to slow down). It's great! I've been waiting a long time to be able to stop because I was exhausted, and not because something hurt.

My hip didn't bother me at all during the running, though it's been aching a little today. Tomorrow I'll be back on the elliptical, at least. But running still feels good! Even after nearly a year of predominantly training on the elliptical, the elliptical still feels like endless, grueling, clock-watching work, and running feels like... me. It feels like just being.

The first couple of times I noticed a pronounced pigeon-toeing and a lot of joint and tendon pain in my knee. But I've been working to correct it, and I think I'm getting a better feeling than ever for what it feels like to run with a strong, stable gait. I'm not confident enough to try to do a running-only workout, but it's a really nice way to break things up, and it's the first positive sign I've gotten in a while.

I'm not that dude who ran a marathon after being told he'd never walk again (who is now more of an archetype than a dude, but here's one of him), but I'm feeling pretty good.

I ran about a mile and then did 21 minutes on the elliptical, getting back to my customary speed. This is the longest continuous episode of aerobic activity I've had since I declared my hip screwed back in July! I also did some miscellaneous weights, and the leg presses my physical therapist prescribed (3 sets of 20, followed by 3 sets of 20 at half-weight with each leg). Towards the end it was starting to hurt that hip flexor, so I skipped the last single-leg set. It was otherwise a satisfactory workout.

Why is it I can do 16 dumbbell curls with my right arm but only 12 with my left?

During my first physical therapy appointment with the current people, I got a really thorough shakedown. Kimberly stretched and twisted every muscle in my lower body. She'd also test the muscle's strength by pushing against it and having me hold it steady. On most muscles, even the ones that are often weak, she said I was doing great. But then she held my leg in the air -- a test of the gluteals -- and it flopped right down without even a push.

Today she started me working the glutes. It's very strange. She put me on the glute machine at the lowest possible weight setting, and I still had trouble. But not the shaking, painful, intensely straining kind of trouble I have when I'm challenging most of my muscles. Instead, it just didn't go. Wouldn't work. I managed to finish my sets, though.

I wonder what's up with these muscles. Furthermore, I wonder how I've managed to walk, run, jump, dance, squat, crawl, and climb stairs all these years, with one of my major muscle groups on the verge of total nonfunctionality!

Later in the day I went to the gym and did some upper-body work. I decided to eschew the epic compound exercises that I enjoy so much (pull-ups, push-ups, rows), and do the smaller exercises that individually isolate the biceps, triceps, deltoids, pecs, and latissimi. I can exhaust each of them individually, rather than being limited to the capacity of the weakest one. In other words, I expect to hurt tomorrow!

I ran 2.5 miles today on the treadmill. I'd suspected that my previous runs had taken longer than usual, and it turned out that I'm now running at about 5.5 mph, whereas previously 6 mph was the slowest I ever dropped. I pushed it to 6.3 for a while, and I was handling it okay, but my hip started to hurt so I toned it down until the end. I stretched and did a few other exercises as well. I had one or two moments of hip pain throughout the day, but in the evening I walked a couple of miles around town with mrrranda, and there was no problem there.

Tomorrow, more physical therapy. I've been going there twice a week, but I'm not counting that in the training blog.

I went out running around Broadway and Plymouth tonight, and I went three whole miles! It seems like three miles tonight was less tiring than two miles yesterday. But that's consistent with the way I've felt during any aerobic exercise lately... part of my body is jumping for joy and wants to keep going forever, and part is totally out of shape and wants to drop dead. It's kind of discouraging. But, I built up my mileage from nothing once before, and I can do it again! As long as I can keep my joints in shape, the fitness will come.

Let this be the re-inaugural post for runcactrot! I did go to the gym a few times after I stopped recording, but then I was traveling and when I returned the gyms were closed for break. I ran a mile here and there, and kept up with my abdominal exercises and push-ups, which are the only things I know how to do without any equipment and without using my finicky hip.

Yesterday I went to the gym and did some very hard upper-body sets, trying to really push myself. I've been experimenting with form and learned a lot. On the tricep press / dip / push-up, my tendency has always been to point my elbows out, but recently I tried pointing them straight back instead. This makes things a lot harder, but I can feel it working my triceps a lot more! I think the elbows-out motion relies on my pectorals as well, and that makes it all messier and less focused. Meanwhile, I'm switching back to doing my pull-ups on the machine. I'm using the more difficult grips and adding assistance. Overall it's the same amount of effort, but I don't put as much strain on my hands and wrists holding myself up. I've also noticed that the pull-up seems to work my biceps harder than anything else, which isn't what's supposed to happen... if I switch to the wide grip, I can feel it back in my shoulders instead.

I also ran two miles, without any pain in my hip! My knees are complaining some, but they seem to limber up after about a mile. The people at MedSport are wizards.

Building up a lot of strength with the pull-ups. Time to switch to overhand any day now. I still don't seem to be any good at isolating muscle groups, though. I especially seem to be getting my triceps and pecs mixed together when they're supposed to be working separately.

Man, I really hate it when those huge, muscley jock guys punctuate every set by crashing the barbells down (it's even worse when they crash the weight stack on a machine). Someone should tell them that lowering the weights slowly is the hardest and most macho part of the workout, and gives you the most impressive burn (as far as I know this is true).

Lifted more weights. This time I hurt my calves, but it's a good hurt. I'm doing high reps / low weight for the legs. Perhaps too much so, but I'm trying to build their endurance, not bulk them up.

Uneventful. Attempted bicep exercises that caused some persistent pain, and also began gingerly doing some lower-body work. It doesn't seem to aggravate my hip, as long as I'm careful not to put weight on the hip itself. I've started using the weird twisting-based weight machine to work my obliques, which are the muscles that I've most often aggravated my hip injuries in the attempt to exercise. It seem to work.

Gym today. I'm trying a new two-day split plan from exrx.net. It has you exercising lots of similar muscles on the same day -- one exercise for the anterior deltoids, one for the lateral deltoids, one for the pecs, etc. This totally doesn't work for me. They seem to be assuming you can isolate each of these perfectly, but my exercises work lots of muscles surrounding the target muscle, and as a result doing one exercise to exhaustion leaves me worthless for the next. Perhaps if I practice my form this will improve. I already found out that I've evidently been cheating, doing the bench press as a pec/triceps exercise instead of pure pecs. When I move to properly isolated form, the weight I can lift drops by half...

Learning to do more isolated exercises would be valuable for sure. I tend to like the dramatic compound exercises like pull-ups, rows, and push-ups, but the downside to those is that they're only as strong as the weakest muscle involved. Isolation training should be a worthwhile complement.

Afterwards I tried a variety of new lower-body stretches. But it seems like this turns into another weakest-link situation. In most stretches, I can't seem to get far enough to affect the target muscle. Instead, no matter how I bend my legs or adjust my hips, what I get is that bare, metallic pain in the backs of my knees. They just won't stretch far enough to let me stretch anything else...

In better news, I did five minutes on the elliptical, with fast pace and low resistance. It doesn't seem to have exacerbated my hip problem, although the weightlifting may have done so a little (and extensive walking still does too). I may try dropping by and doing a little elliptical at a time when I'm not weight training, just to get a clean test.