In the meantime, I had a speed session today, same as last week (8 x .25mi w/1mi recoveries) which was by design, since last week’s paces were all over the place and I wanted a basis for comparison.  Plus, it takes me a week or two to get used to faster running and this workout is a “no big deal” way to do that.

My splits, while not perfectly consistent, were eons better than last time:
1:37,1:35,1:39,1:35,1:37,1:38,1:38,1:38 (avg pace 6:28)

Three things helped:

1. The temperature was a lovely 60 degrees.  Interesting factoid: when it’s warm (last week was 75) my heart rate caps out low though the effort feels much harder.  Weird that, since you’d think the HR would be higher.

2. I did strides beforehand.  I know I should do this before every quality session, it gets your HR up and your body prepared for running faster. I will from now on, it really made a difference.

3. Confidence.  Last week, for all the crappy pacing and even though it was only 400s, that last fast one gave me an inkling that speed is indeed returning.  I needed that like nectar to a hummingbird.

Next two weeks I’ll do 6 x 800 w/ 90sec rec’s. and then my Half cycle begins!  Nice to be priming the pump before the heavy-duty work starts.  Though I must say, I’m pretty much doing what I’d do in a regular cycle anyway but it seems so casual and fun now, almost vacation-like.  Maybe it’s the weather.

Pill Popping
I’m not a huge pill-popper by nature, though I’ve been taking glucosamine and MSM since the IT band crap last summer.  This week I cut my glucosamine by half, so one pill instead of two.  So far, I’m not noticing anything different.  As for my MSM capsule, I’ll continue to take that daily but am open to seeing what’s what without these things.

I don’t think I mentioned that I started taking an Iron supplement a couple months ago.  I had my ferritin levels checked back in August which came out normal, but my mileage hadn’t reached the level it’s at now.  Also, I was still living with Nick at the time and ate red meat quite often.  I love red meat, so don’t think I’ve gone all veggie on you, but I’ve probably had it 3 times in the last 6 months.  I do eat a lot of fresh spinach but surprisingly, if you eat a whole bag of the stuff, it’s still only 30% of your daily requirement.  So anyway, I take an 18mg capsule daily.

Calcium is my other supplement – Viactiv chews, twice daily.  I wrote a whole blog piece two years ago on the different types of calcium and how this type (calcium carbonate) used to stop me up.  But now I eat so much more fiber and drink more liquids, I’m a great pooper.

Core Work Continued
I was doing those Runners World exercises for a couple weeks which are great, but I’ve started switching it up with one of my favorite exercise DVDs: Mari Winsor’s 20-minute Slimming Pilates.  It’s basically a fast-paced core workout that I love because she doesn’t chatter on, it goes boom boom boom, from one exercise to the next.

Group Thoughts
Today was a slow day on my running path, I only waved to about 7 people I knew.  Seriously.  I love my park because there are probably 35-40 regulars with whom I wave and exchange a couple words.  When we see each other in races or on the street, it’s a fun shot of recognition.

I was thinking about the whole “running with others” thing and while I enjoyed the outing, I’ll always be a lone runner at heart.  I’ll try to make the hill workout this Thursday because I like the idea of sharing a hard workout, but I guess I wanted to explain that while I’m out there on my own day-to-day, I’m surrounded by camaraderie every time I run.  So we’ll see how much running club action I get.  Maybe I need to work on my bar-hopping skills instead.

As recap, during this period I couldn’t go more than 2 runs to where I’d feel it.  Long runs (limited to 11 milers) always required stretching stops and because one annoyance isn’t enough, my ankle bursitis from last year reappeared as an underlying bass note for the beginning of most runs during these two months.

Because I’m a 7-day runner, I did take a few days off (5 total), but from reading of how people would take 2 weeks off and return to the road only to find they were right back where they started, I didn’t even consider taking a clump of days off, figuring I could manage the injury as it made a slow exit.

My mileage didn’t suffer too much – June was a lower month, but I was able to average 53 mpw between June and July.  I just made sure to stop and stretch if it hurt on the run, foam roll the shit out of it in the evenings and often took 3 ibuprofen after “long” runs to keep it in check for the next day’s run.

I’d like to say I did my leg exercises regularly, but I lasted about 1.5 weeks till I conveniently forgot to do them (I hated leg lifts when I was a pudgy young thing, I don’t like them any better now).  I’ve been pretty regular with stretching, but was never sure if I was overdoing it, so I tended to go from stretching too much to not enough, and always suspected I wasn’t doing it quite right.

This seemed to work ok, it had diminished greatly, but was still there like a bad cold that never leaves, culminating in a horrible 13 miler last Sunday, my longest run in months, and one requiring numerous stops, mainly because I was wearing an IT band strap that was backfiring on me and causing calf discomfort, but still, I was most certainly not “cured”.  So I took this Monday off.

Now, a few days prior, July 9th to be exact, I’d started the glucosamine/chondroitan/msm combo pills.  After taking that rest day on Monday, I ran like usual from Tuesday on, except suddenly “usual” had a whole new meaning.  There was no ankle bursitis, no IT band shadowing, absolutely no weakness in my legs at all.  At. All.  This was 6 days after taking that first pill.

You guys…I ran 15 miles today.  15 miles without one single peep, shadow, twinge or anything.  15 miles like it was a mid-long run, not the farthest I’d gone since a 16-miler on April 12th (April 12!).  I even stuck a couple faster miles (7:20s) in there ala Hudson.  Average for the whole run, 8:18.

So these pills really are a miracle, because I know for sure that while the injury was sneaking out the backdoor, it was going so very slowly that if left on its normal course, would have continued the wave of 2 days good, 1 day bad, eventually moving to 3 days good, 1 day bad, etc, and all the while with those stupid stretching stops.  Instead, I’ve had 6 days of 59.5 miles with perfect legs the entire time.

I’ve been thinking more about these magic pills and while I know that MSM is still the main hero at the moment till the glucosamine eventually kicks in, I think the glucosamine could eventually benefit ITBS too, even though it’s for  joints and not soft tissue – because glucosamine not only adds cartilage, it increases lubrication as well.  The whole reason ITBS is so painful is that it rubs against the femur, becoming inflamed.  If the joint has more lubrication, it makes sense that your IT band would slide easier against that joint. But that’s just supposition and a moot point anyway, since whatever is working  is working now!

I have suddenly gone from hiding marathon training into the farthest back corner of my brain to pure, unadulterated excitement for getting started again and seeing what this training cycle brings.  As they’d say back in my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, “YEE–HAW!!”   (they’d also say “Pig Sooie, Razorbacks!!” because they’re weird like that, but I digress…)

Hope is restored, fun is restored, I am back on the road for real.

I’m not a big pill-popper to begin with and avoid it when I can.  My eating is pretty clean so I don’t take a multi-vitamin, though I do take calcium daily (ladies, you know I’ve mentioned it before, but check into your requirements and make sure you’re getting enough…anything to help avoid stress fractures is our BFF).

Last week, I mentioned that I started taking a glucosamine/ chondroitin/msm combo daily.  It’s purpose is to help your joints by increasing cartilage and adding lubrication.  I’ve been reading hundreds of accounts over the last week of people basically saying “I could never live without glucosamine again, I swear by it”.  These comments come from arthritis sufferers to heavy-lifting bodybuilders to runners.

When I started on it, I was thinking “maybe it’ll help my IT Band somehow”, though glucosamine isn’t for soft tissue.  Even so, I’d read a bunch of user reviews from people finding success with it for certain tendon issues.  Runners knee is also a common reason people take it.

The thing that got me to buy a bottle though, was watching a sports injury video from a doctor at Stanford University saying that it was worth taking since it acts as an anti-inflammatory but without the side effects.  I figured that’s got to help since tendon crap is all about inflammation.

As far as joint pain goes, I hadn’t thought about it before taking this stuff, but I do have joint tweaks, I  just don’t pay much attention to it because I figure it’s part of getting older, like sometimes my fingers hurt after opening a jar or my elbow might hurt when stuffing a pillow into a pillow case, etc.  And while I’m not a hurty girl in general (these tweaks are fleeting), it’s fun to think there’s something that might remove even these little ouchies from my life (not to mention do good stuff for running).

So on Sunday I had that IT strap episode that had my calf feeling weird, then on Tuesday, a really good 9-miler, Wednesday an 11-miler that was the first double-digit run in weeks where I was completely tweakless (no stretching stops at all) and then today, another perfect run, an 8-miler with some fartlek.  The thing I noticed on all three runs (besides a beautiful lack of IT trouble) was that my ankle bursitis, which has been hanging about these past few weeks and is always slightly noticeable at the start of a run, though not really painful, just “there”, was gone.  Nada.  Nothing.

It can’t be the glucosamine yet because that takes 4-6 weeks to kick in, but MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane, the third ingredient in my new magic pills) starts working in only a few days.   What’s it good for?  So many things, you’d be tempted to call it snake oil.

Among the items it helps are: tendonitis and bursitis (bing bing bing!), but also allergies (specifically rhinitis, which I have in abundance) as well as improving skin, nails and hair (actually speeds hair growth, of all things).  There’s even been a study on it saying it improved snoring, which sounds ridiculous, but if it helps allergies, I could see how that might carry over.

Now, quicker than you can say “Placebo”, glucosamine and MSM are commonly given to dogs, cats and horses with great success, in fact many people start using them because their doggies returned to frolicking puppydom after taking the stuff.   Since animals don’t know placebos or act from wishful thinking, that’s pretty solid proof of efficacy.

I’m not going to say “my IT band is cured!” because we know where that’s gotten me (though this is the most I’ve run in 3 consecutive days without feeling a thing since the crap began), but my ankle…I was resigned to thinking it would be a lifelong annoyance, waxing and waning whenever it felt like it.  It never occurred to me that I could take something for it that might make it actually go away.

It should be noted that the brand I’m currently using, Triple Flex from Nature Made, is not the latest version of the product because my local Rite Aid sucks, so it doesn’t contain hyaluronic acid, which all the new formulas have.  Hyaluronic acid does indeed work on soft tissue (tendons, ligaments), so I already ordered a vat of Triple Strength Advanced Osteo Bi-flex for when this bottle’s done.

I also ordered a separate bottle of MSM to see if will lessen my allergies, since it’ll take a larger dose than the glucosamine mix provides.  I’ve put Nick on glucosamine, too, since he’s battled a rotator cuff issue for years and that’s the perfect malady for this stuff.

Better living through chemicals supplements.  Why not?