Thursday’s it! Just 4 more days till I’m back on the road after (what will be) 29 days sans running.  I’m being rebellious as all get-out by resuming one day earlier than planned because:

A) my park interludes are now brisk 5+ mile walks.  Pfitzinger’s “return after stress fracture plan” says you first need to be able to walk briskly pain-free for an hour which I’ve been doing, and more, for a week (and I didn’t even have a stress fracture).

B) seeing as how that MRI report two weeks ago said my femur was normal, starting one day earlier ain’t gonna kill me.

My doctor allotted me 25% of my previous mileage for the first week back, which means 22.5 miles.  I’m not sure I’ll do that much, I have a soft plan in mind that ends up being more like 17 the first week but it’s nice to know I can do more if I feel good.

I was looking at Jack Daniels’ plan for getting back after a layoff which is too aggressive for me, but interesting.  He has you come back in the same amount of time you were off.  For a 29-day layoff, he splits it into thirds; the first 9 days would be 33% of your previous load, then the next 10 days would be 50%, then the last 10 days 75%, et Voila! 29 days and you’re back to full volume.

What I’m going to do is simply add 10% of volume per week like my doctor suggested which means 8 weeks will get me to 86mi.  That’ll put me in the 2nd week of January; with racing season around here starting in March, that’s perfect.  Of course, at that point the weather might suck sufficiently that I won’t want to go that high anyway, but I’m itching to try.

Meanwhile, I don’t have any follow-up doctor appointments or PT in store – even the muscle adhesions I mentioned (which feel to me like massaging an exceptionally durable Nestle’s Crunch or Kit Kat bar) seem to have been worked out.   So in a few days, I can consider this whole thing done.

I am so incredibly excited to get back to pain-free, worryless running.  I checked back in my log and the first mention of this was on Sept. 12 (though by then, it’d been about a week from the first sign).  I wrote “Not liking my quad.”  What a harbinger of crap to come.

SFX in 3D – A cool link
As you know, I spent many hours reading about stress fractures, stress reactions, MRIs, personal accounts of sfx patients, medical studies, etc.  Through all that, I acquired a good collection of cool links on the subject.

One of my favorites is this page. If you scroll down, you’ll see some excellent 3D models of fractured bone along with their matching MRIs – the 3D models illustrate what stress fractures look like better than any words or medical tests can describe.  Even if you ignore the MRI images, I think it’s good to understand this stuff and see what it actually is, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else.

Spring Destination Race!
Thursday, my friend Jackie from San Diego called (recall, she and Louis were my wonderful hosts for last January’s Carlsbad Half) to tell me the Carlsbad 5000 would be on sale the next day for $19 and would I like to come and do that race? I thought about it for a 10th of a nanosecond and said Hell Yes!  Not only do I savor any chance to hang with my beloved SoCal friends, but this particular race has been on my radar for a while.

The Carlsbad 5000 is billed as the “fastest 5k in the world” though not for the course (which isn’t as flat as the website would have you believe, Carlsbad rollers and all) but for the competition.  It’s a major event!

The deal is, it’s not a single race; it’s a morning’s worth of 5ks starting with the Male Masters, then the Female Masters, then Wheelchair, then separate Male and Female 30-39, a walk, mixed Open and finally at 12:15, separate Men’s and Women’s Elites.  So you’re only racing against your peers! How cool is that?!

Doubly cool is that once I decided to do this race, my Spring season emerged. I’m going to skip doing a Half and really focus on 5ks – finally take a proper stab at sub 20.  I’ll likely also fit in a 10k, maybe a 5-miler and probably the Broad St. Run (10-miler).  Then next Fall will be for something longer.

This is cool because I get to resume where I left off pre-injury, experimenting with a heavy race season with the added benefit of having more time to get into it.  Also, taking what I learned from this past year’s base-building, I’ll add strides and fartlek earlier so speed will be closer when the dedicated workouts start.

I learned so much this year, from taking that 2-week burnout break, to running without workouts which lifted the mental pressure which led to the mileage build and now I’ve got doubles to explore…  It’s like being at an amusement park with a roll of free tickets but without the inbred carnys.  Tons of fun ahead!

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