Shin Issues, Overtraining? Devil's Staircase!

So a while back when I twisted my ankle running backwards... (smooth move) it has caused some referral issues in my calf and shin. Basically I can't stretch my shin properly, because I can't move my foot to the full extension. Annoying. Monday Night we ran 7.5 miles, last night I added 3.3 at a decent but slower pace, and my shin starting hurting like MAD. Thankfully I think if I continue to roll it out on a foam roller, I'll be able to minimize the pain and speed up the recovery!

Another thing it could be is just too much running! I've run basically every other day this month! I definitely don't want to do the Dirty Dash with lingering pain or injury. I want to have FUN! Too much training, too much use is NOT a good idea. Rest is GOOD!

I was finally able to watch the Midwest Finals of American Ninja Warrior! They had a Curtain slide thing instead of devil's steps/devil's staircase - but I still want to find a good place like in this video to practice them!

Over 7 Mile Run, Vacation is DONE

Very Sad.

Also sad I missed watching American Ninja Warrior tonight. I found the midwest prelims online, hopefully I'll be able to see the finals sometime. I definitely love the types of movements they have to do for that! Gets me excited for the tough mudder!

Tonight (I guess last night, ANW keeping me up this late!) for our Memorial Day run, I ran 19.5 miles! Okay not really, but that's what my runkeeper GPS program said at first. After removing the weird points that gave us such distance (and 30 second miles!) we ended up at 7.3 miles. Probably a bit more than that, because it missed a few of the canyons, but GPS devices aren't perfect yet! GREAT run, my wife did awesome!

She is amazing and continuously improving! Go Kakes!

Just above Elephant Rock

Oh yeah - check out those Paintball Bruises!

 

I tripped right after this... doh!

So Saturday is the Dirty Dash - I guess people are wanting to meet every day this week for running - should be interesting to see how we hold up!
Maybe I can get some help to finally cement my pull up bar posts in... Yeah!

Post RWE and Vacation

Up next is the Dirty Dash - only 6 days away!

We had a fantastic vacation. Unfortunately now that it's been so long since the excitement of the last post... it's hard to want to update this blog right now! Not sure why I'm so bad about updating it if it is beyond a certain date.

Anyway - Last year's Running with Ed event was fun, but it felt like something was a bit off... At least as a running participant that wasn't closely associated with the 'cause' that being Park City's Education system.

This year was MUCH worse. My team this year included my beautiful wife, a younger brother, my only sister, and her husband. My older brother who was in charge of it last year and put it together again for us this year because of his work Charitable Donation fund thing - had a separate team with some coworkers and his awesome daughter Eva. It was great because our two teams were pretty similar (we were faster overall) and we could stick near each other for most of the race (I was the same leg as my brother - it was fantastic to run with him)

Team Clan McRagnar - Great Pre-Ragnar experience!

Our start time was 9:45, I thought that was a bit late when I heard about it, and that would prove to be correct. It was too late. After I started my first leg, we were running down the mountain about halfway through when a guy on a bike rode up to us exclaiming, "Well, you guys are the last ones!" We thought "Who is this guy and what the heck is he talking about?" Turns out this guy (Bill, great guy) was the sweeper for the course, he rides his bike along at the end of the pack informing volunteers along the way that the last runners are gone, that way they know they can be done. I guess the first year he sat at his volunteer station for 2 hours before figuring out the race was over... From this time forward the race exchanges were less and less manned to the point that when I ran into the exchange after my 2nd run - all the cones for the exchange point had been put away and they were informing everybody to get out, they were turning on the alarms at the school!

Bill was great!

The last straw for me (although really I haven't done anything for it yet... so I guess it wasn't REALLY the last straw...) was at the finish line. We ran across to a big crowd of people... all looking at somebody on a stage announcing the winners of the fundraising. Not a single cheer for the 2nd to last team crossing the finish line (although NOT 2nd to last by actual race-time) - nobody to give us our medals (we had to grab 'em ourselves off a hanger) - and nobody to take our official time (7 hours 5 minutes - which is pretty awesome considering we had my sister who has never run an official race in her life and is pretty slow right now (we'll keep improving her!)). A bit frustrating.

Anyway - at least the running and the company was great! I enjoyed it. It's more thinking about it afterwards that makes me annoyed.

One of the fun things I did was Mayurasana at EVERY exchange. Yeah probably a bit much, the pictures of the race make it look more like I was doing yoga instead of running! But hey, I had fun doing it! A few (not all ten!) of those pictures are below.

My first leg I ran 3.9 miles up and over a mountain from the Utah Olympic Park to the Canyons Parking lot. My wife ran the leg before and we stopped to see her on the way up a mean street-hill, so she got up there while I was still in the bathroom! Whoops!

Top of the mountain above Utah Olympic Park - during my first run.

With the Ragnar Van!

Woo! Eka Pada Koundayinasana II instead of Peacock!

My second run was a fun 6 miles -  around Park City High School, up through a neighborhood and on some nice but desert-ish trails. Again it was awesome to run that leg with my brother. Bill said "Man, You guys are a lot harder to catch up to!" We kept a decent pace, but not as good as I could have been!

Running with my elder Bro - look at that matching gait!

Finish line! Yeah, it was about that empty when we ran through those doors too...

Me and my honey! She's awesome!

He chucked his shoes (which he carried the whole way!) just before the finish. Great pic!

 After the race we went and got our kids, took 'em back to our Condo/Timeshare and had a fantastic rest of the week swimming, hiking, playing, and watching American Ninja Warrior on TV. I need to find some good stairs to do some of the 'Devil's Staircase' exercise. Our condo had a couple I could do it on... I was inspired:

Wednesday we came down into the valley for my son's puppet show and so I could go play paintball for a work-team building activity! Still have bruises on my leg woot! The 2nd game I took out almost everybody (6 out of 7 ain't bad) on the other team, and then I was shot by a team mate ha!

Thursday I ran a couple miles from our condo - WOW. Starting at 7k feet, that is some killer altitude. My lungs were burning!

Fantastic week. This next Saturday, like I mentioned before, is the Dirty Dash! I'm excited!

Only a few days until VACATION and the first RACE!

I am definitely looking forward to a week off. Since we'll be up in Park City I'm hoping I'll get in some runs on  the trails up there, especially since we'll be seeing more of them in one month!

Running with Ed is on Saturday, final lineup will most likely be my younger brother first, then my sister, then my amazing and beautiful wife, then me, then my brother-in-law bringing it home. I'm excited to get up there and run!

So last Monday I ran with my younger brother up Davis Creek - just under 3 miles of tough trails! That's where my new header picture came from. Fantastic weather.

Tuesday the in-laws came for a visit so I showed them our tires in the back yard and did a bunch of box jumps.

Thursday had BJJ again - Learned some good techniques on passing guard... against guys that are 70-80 pounds heavier than me... it doesn't work. I need to put on some weight FAST! Really I need to work on the technique. One guy came from outside with experience, and he was about my size, but he didn't have any issues with the bigger newbies. So gotta work that technique! Friday woke up QUITE sore and bruised from the drilling we did! Fantastic! Thursday night I ran up Baer canyon with by brother in law, had a weird allergic reaction to something on the way up but it cleared out as we turned around. Felt like I could have gone significantly longer, but it was pretty late so we had to get back and eat dinner and get kids to bed!

Friday was crossfit - pretty quick and brutal class:
Warmup - 10 KB clean and jerks, 10 KB Goblet Squats, 10 Pushups - repeat that set 3 times
Workout:
Round 1: 50 KB Snatches, 1/4 mile run
Round 2: 50 Air Squats, 1/4 mile run
Round 3: 50 KB Snatches, 1/4 mile run
Round 4: 50 Air Squats, 1/4 mile run
Round 5: 50 KB Snatches, 1/4 mile run
Total of 150 Snatches, 100 squats, and 1.25 mile run.

Saturday I was SORE in my shoulders and back. Thanks Crossfit!
Still I ran with my wife and my dad 3.78 miles up in the mountains. Nice little run, and it helped loosen up some of that soreness!

Yesterday Yoga was great, it's interesting to have the old teacher lead the class... she doesn't do much different, but the way she goes about the poses makes even the more simple stuff more challenging. That's a good thing in my mind. I feel like I'm improving even doing simple things. She usually throws in at least one thing a bit more challenging for my sake, yesterday it was Eka Pada Koundayinasana II. The Yoga class started a bit later, so I actually did some weighted rows, pullups, and L-sit pullups before class. Shoulders are still tight from Friday's crossfit!
Last night I ran with the brother-in-law again - 3.6 miles up a fire road and down some motorcycle trails. Even jumped over a snake!

Luckily it was harmless, but still - kind of a rush to be running and "HOLY MOLY THAT'S A SNAKE!" *JUMP!* Ben was impressed with my jump. :)

Tonight I'm hoping to get in SOME sort of run - I might avoid the mountains and just run out on the parkway today - just to get a bit more flat distance since it has been a while. We'll see what happens!

Run, Run, Run, BJJ, Camp!

My last post was about last Monday's run. That was a nice run, the beginning of what would be a pretty crazy week!

I'm not sure what will happen with tonight's run as my sister and her husband are sick, but we still have 2 couples that can go... so we'll see! Sickness going around! No fun.

So Tuesday night we had the 2nd night of running so my sister (the same one) and hubby could have a run that week. We started up by a shooting range in the foothills, ran North along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail (BST) across a few streams and gullies, and then back down through the neighborhood to my sisters house. Great route!

Wednesday night I decided I needed to redo the run I'd done with my wife on Saturday - see how well I'd do on my own. Ended up adding a mile and a half to it by running farther on the BST and back to my car. 3.6 miles total with a vert of 1252. I took some pictures on this run, I climbed up on to the big rock up at the waterfall top, but they aren't on my phone anymore so I'll have to add them later if I remember.

Thursday I went to a Brazilian Jiujitsu class at work. Started with some Shrimping drills, knee-walking drills, Plank-type Sprawling drills, and then worked on some moves to get somebody who is in your guard with some sweeps, kimura, and standing. Cool class, although it is difficult to be the smallest person in the room! I was the fittest though as the warmup drills didn't get my breathing hard and everybody else was huffing and puffing. Looking forward to learning more!

Friday was Crossfit. Dave (the normal trainer) wasn't there so Ryan, a coworker who just opened his own Crossfit Box put together a workout for us.

Warmup:
10 Pushups, 10 V-ups, 10 Air Squats, 10 KB Swings Repeated 2 times
Workout:
1/4 mile run
15 KB Swings (I used a 40lb KB)
15 Toe to Bar
15 Sumo Deadlift High Pull (40 lb KB again)
15 AB Situps (feet together in cobbler-pose type with knees down, sit up and touch ground in front of toes)
15 Push Press (started with 80 lbs, then did 50 lbs, my shoulders hurt from BJJ!)
Repeat 4 times

I kept a fast pace for the 4 quarter-miles, pushing it up to 9 mph for the last round. Good workout, and my abs are still sore. None of the exercises were hard, my wife says I make those toe to bar moves look easy - but SIXTY of them is a lot!

After work on Friday I packed up the car and took the boys up campin' for a Fathers and Sons outing. It was cold in the night and I slept on a nice hard rock (not the same one I'm doing Mayurasana on below thankfully) and felt pretty dead the rest of the weekend because of it.

We did see some cool cars on our way home - the Ferraris and Lamborghini's and Corvettes seemed to have been a bit lost up here!

Pleasant Evening Run

My wife is hotter every single day! I am SO lucky!

Nice run this evening! We're doing another tomorrow!

Also... I'm an idiot! But I have fun being one...

Had a nice yoga class at work today... Really I'm coming to realize that while the classes are still beneficial - at least with the current teacher and co-learners, I'm not going to improve my yoga practice too much there. But hey - I'm going to start BJJ on Thursdays, so THAT will be great!