Week 8 - Additional Challenges

Monday, June 30, 2008

The day off. Both ankles are very sore from the weekend. I had hoped I was through with the soreness stuff but obviously the muscles used for walking and running are either different or, more likely, are used differently (more intensely?). Anyway, I'm taking advantage of the day off...


Tuesday, July 1 through Thurday, July 3, 2008

I break the 27-minute mark on all three days with times of 26:38, 26: 36, and 26:39, respectively for a 10-mile ride. I'm conscious of reminding myself regularly to pedal faster and it's paying off. I've run into a glitch with Stargate SG-1 season 10 with an apparent bad disc. Since SG-1 has many mini-arcs (i.e., several shows that are related with plots that carry over shows) I can't simply skip the four shows on this disc and go to the next one as I most likely will miss a lot of references made within the shows I do see. Not good... The 3rd season of Saturday Night Live stands in for now.


Friday, July 4, 2008

Another day off. I'm pretty happy that my ankle soreness has worked itself out. We grill out and enjoy the holiday.


Saturday, July 5, 2008

Back to jogging. I complete the mile in 12 minutes again while listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. My ankles are hurting a lot. After the run, I spent time visualizing how I ran. When I ran track, I ran on my toes. In returning to running, I don't have the conditioning yet to do this so I'm tending to run flat-footed. My strong suspicion is that this is leading me to bruise my heels. Tomorrow, I may have to walk if it hurts too much to run. If I am able to run, I need to focus on running more on my toes (if I can).


Sunday, July 6, 2008

I completed today's run in 11 minutes while again listening to Dark Side of the Moon. I spent about 20 minutes prior to the run focused on stretching out my calves. During the run, I was in some pain but it lessened as the run continued. Afterwards, I stretched again. However, I'm still very sore (maybe even more than prior to the run) and I'm having trouble walking down stairs (which I remember from my pre-season track days).

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to my off-day tomorrow.


Mental Skills Used for the Week: The usual suspects: commitment, motivation, & persistence. I'm using dissociative thinking to ignore routine pain.

Associative thinking is becoming more important in that I'm trying to examine my running technique in order to minimize the ankle pain. I'm also actively using imagery for the first time to enhance the information from the associative thinking and to try to "see" myself using the correct running technique. This, hopefully, will allow me to make appropriate adjustments.

Until next week...