Back Injury

September 2, 2017September 2, 20172 Comments

Injuries are an unavoidable part of being an aging athlete. Generally, they are minor twists, scrapes and contusions, but some are more serious. Over the past 8 years, I have worked through a whole assortment of injuries

Rib Stress Fractures (cured by rest)
Osteo-arthritis in my knees (treated with cortizone shots and improved with arthroscopic surgery)
Sciatica (improved by using seat pad on the erg and better seat in the boat)
pinched nerve in my high back (trained through)

Now I am working out how to manage an injury to my lower back. I hurt it in an open water session a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t notice it at the time, but by that evening, I had trouble standing up. It was a very localized pain right at the top of my left buttock, between my spine and my hip. If I stood straight up, I could lean slowly forward at my hips and it would hurt at a very specific angle, around 60 degrees from vertical.

After that, I would stretch and maybe take a day or two off from rowing and then return. The back pain was there, but manageable and I thought it was improving. Then on 22 August, I did a sprint workout, a Pyramid session (250/500/750/1K/750/500/250) in my single. I felt fine immediately afterward, but by the end of the workday, it was very painful to stand up from a sitting position and the pain made it difficult to sleep in any position but flat on my back. I took two days off of rowing and then eased back in with some lighter pressure endurance sessions. It still hurt when I woke up in the morning, but felt pretty good through the day and at night.

On 29 August I rowed out on Lake Quinsigamond with my friend Joe. We did a 2 min on / 1 min off session. This was a bit moretame than a pure sprint session, with stroke rates around 26-28 for most of the on sessions. But the same pattern occurred. Felt fine right after, but by the end of the day, I was in serious pain. Again, I could only sleep on my back. The pain in the morning made it a challenge to bend over to put on my underwear and pants. Working out was out of the question. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do since then.

I even went to the unimpeachable fount of information, facebook, and posed the question to the master rowers group. To my surprise, I’ve gotten over 120 replies so far and a lot of good advice. Here’s a synopsis of what I’ve gleaned and the framework of my plan.

Make immediate changes to try to improve my spinal hygiene. This includes getting a lumbar support brace to remind me to sit up straight. Sit on an exercise ball. Stand more (I’m going to ask for a standing desk at work)
Take anti-inflammatories (Ibuprofen for now) as needed
Stop rowing until I get cleared up
Seek a genuine medical diagnosis so I understand what is going on in there (I’ll get a referral from the guy who did my knee)
Learn all I can about back injuries and how to manage them (Many people recommended this book “The Back Mechanic” by Stuart McGill. Other folks pointed me to this online presentation by Fiona Wilson)
Once I have a diagnosis and treatment plan, find a physical therapist who does a lot of work with rowers to help me figure out a plan to strengthen my core and improve my injury resistance (If anyone knows a good physio in the Boston area, please let me know)
Multiple people commented on my posture in my facebook profile picture which shows me with an unusual amount of layback. They recommended that I get some immediate coaching. I think that is actually really good advice. Once I can get back into a boat, I will try to find a good online (or local) coach. I have higher hopes for online coaching since my training schedule is so constrained and variable.

Who knows how this will go or how long it will take to get better, but my priority is to get healthy and fix whatever elements of my rowing style (and lifestyle) contributed to injury before resuming hard training. My most important objective is to be able to row until I am very, very old. I don’t want to do something now that will jeopardize that.

So, for now, it will be cross training. Walks, jogs, maybe some biking if I am pain free. I won’t scratch from the HOCR yet, but I’ll make a decision about that in a month or so.

By the way, today, I went for a nice 4km walk around the island. About 40 minutes or so.

Walk around Lt Island

90 minute bike ride

August 13, 2017Leave a comment

I was planning on a L3 open water session, but when I woke up this morning, I saw my daughter’s fiancee dressed up in his bike riding gear. I asked how far he was going to ride. 20 miles. I asked if he wouldn’t mind some company. He didn’t. So off we went.

We live about 2 and a half miles off of the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The first mile is loose sand, sharp gravel and washboard dirt road. After that, you cross the salt marsh, cross a rickety wooden bridge and then you’re on a real road.

This video gives you an idea of what it’s like

It was grey out again this morning, but the forecast called for it to clear up. That did eventually happen, but before that we had mist, drizzle, and light rain.

The Rail Trail is beautiful. Wide, smooth and flat. Originally, we were just planning to ride until we hit 10 miles, and then turn and come home, but about 6 miles in, I remembered that the ride to Rock Harbor in Orleans was about 20 miles round trip, so now we had a real destination.

I took the lead on the way down. I don’t ride much, and I hardly even ride with another person, so I’m not really sure what the etiquette is in terms of pace. I would keep an eye out, an if I saw that I was dropping him, I’d slow down, and if I saw him up close, I’d pop it up a gear and speed up a bit. Then we swapped and he led on the way home.

Despite the rain, it was a really nice ride.

Tomorrow: I was supposed to do an L3 today. I’ll do it tomorrow.

Mulching, rowing and wimping out

May 8, 2017Leave a comment

Saturday: In the driveway was a pile of 5 cubic yards of dark pine mulch. It was raining and about 60F. I procrastinated until about 11am, and then I finally got my ass outside to spread it. The process is simple and labor intensive.

Use an edger to clean up the edge of the bed
dig out the dirt and mulch that has settled into the edges
Get all the weeds out of the bed
Spread mulch

It sounds simple, but I spent from 11am to 3pm, and then from 3:30 to 7:00pm doing it and I didn’t quite finish. By the time I was done, I could barely lift my arms, and getting up from a sitting position was a struggle. I’d call that 7 and a half hours of strength/endurance training.

Sunday: I was tired and sore when I woke up, but I really wanted to go rowing with my friends out in Worcester. The morning was grey, around 50F, and windy. The wind was blowing from the SSW between 10 and 15 mph. It felt like the gusts were higher than that.

We had 6 of us rowing, two people wanted to take singles, so I doubled up with Bob in our “new” wintech double. I was eager to give it a real tryout.

I didn’t have much of a plan for the workout, so we just rowed down to the south end of the lake, into the wind. We had a lot of starts and stops at the beginning as I tried to get the speedcoach working and Bob got his Garmin Fenix running right, but after the first 1000m or so, we got into a rythym. It was slow going into the wind, but the boat felt good. I was enjoying myself a lot.

When we turned around at the south end of the lake, I asked Bob if he would be OK doing some rate ladders. I ended up messing with some of the durations as we went, but it was good to row with specific rate targets. I think we got better synchronized as the row went on.

After we got the north end of the lake, we noticed that the wind had picked up even more. The row back to the boathouse was very slow and heavy going. I was glad that I was in a double. It would have been a bit hair raising in my single with that much wind and chop.

I tried to reconstruct the ladders as best I could.

Workout Summary - media/20170508-150701-SpdCoach 2182533 20170507 0744amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10759|55:03.0|02:33.5|000.0|23.0|154.3|176.0|08.5
W-|10500|52:03.0|02:28.7|000.0|23.0|155.2|176.0|08.8
R-|00268|03:00.0|05:35.9|000.0|20.1|119.5|176.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00004|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|09.5|086.0|86.0|00.0
01|00682|03:15.0|02:23.0|000.0|22.3|141.1|149.0|09.4
02|01967|09:45.0|02:28.7|000.0|23.8|152.7|166.0|08.5
03|00651|03:00.0|02:18.2|000.0|20.7|142.9|153.0|10.5
04|00432|02:00.0|02:19.0|000.0|21.6|156.1|158.0|10.0
05|00218|01:00.0|02:17.8|000.0|23.0|159.1|161.0|09.5
06|00228|01:00.0|02:11.4|000.0|24.9|161.7|162.0|09.2
07|00860|04:00.0|02:19.6|000.0|22.8|163.0|169.0|09.4
08|00643|03:00.0|02:19.9|000.0|22.2|159.4|161.0|09.6
09|00438|02:00.0|02:17.1|000.0|24.7|163.9|167.0|08.8
10|00229|01:00.0|02:11.2|000.0|26.1|168.5|170.0|08.8
11|00812|04:00.0|02:27.8|000.0|21.1|161.7|169.0|09.6
12|00421|02:00.0|02:22.4|000.0|22.8|160.8|163.0|09.3
13|00702|03:15.0|02:18.8|000.0|27.0|168.2|176.0|08.0
14|01751|10:00.0|02:51.3|000.0|22.1|148.9|159.0|07.9
15|00462|02:48.2|03:02.0|000.0|24.1|157.4|167.0|06.9

It was hard work, but a pretty short session.

It was great to see my friends and I really like the wintech double.

After I got home, I spent another couple hours finishing up the mulching. Not nearly as strenuous as Saturday’s labors but still.

Monday: I felt awful last night. I thought I might be coming down with something. Or maybe I was just worn out from my busy weekend. I felt like I might be getting a fever. Nevertheless, I set out my stuff to go rowing this morning, and I was out the door before 5:30 to get to the river.

As I was driving there, it started to rain. And I notice that the temperature was only around 42F. I made an executive decision. I decided to blow of “real” rowing and just go do a quick erg session at work before my first meeting at 9am. I had some prep to do and I felt my stress level go down as soon as I decided.

I didn’t have any shoes, so I rowed in socks. I don’t much like that since my heels tend to slip out, but it would do for the short session I had in mind.

I just did a easy 10K push. I started with a target of 2:09, and sped up by a second for every 1000m. This was easy to keep track of because the pace was the same as the leading digit of the distance to go. 9xxx –> 2:09, 8xxx –> 2:08, 7xxx –> 2:07, etc.

It was also really easy rowing at the beginning and only started to feel tougher with about 3000m to go.

I enjoyed that session too.

Tomorrow: I will try to get back on the marathon plan. I haven’y yet done any of these workouts on the water. So tomorrow will be.

4 x 15′ / 4′

6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP

92.5%

(172)

Now, I don’t really know exactly how to pace this, so I will try to row it to power. So that would make my targets 225 to 240 for 5KP and 180 to 195 for MP. I’m interested to see how it works.

The other challenge that I have is river length. I can just about squeeze in 15 minutes, but the longer intervals in the plan will require me to spin to get them done.

Tuesday: 30′ run

May 3, 2017Leave a comment

I’m out in San Francisco for a User Conference. I snuck out for a quick run in the afternoon. It was a beautiful afternoon. Sunny with a bit of a breeze, and the hotel is right on the water near the airport. I could watch the planes taxiing, taking off and landing while I ran.

The run itself was very hard work. I guess I’m just in pretty bad shape.

At least I did something.

Back to Boston on the Red eye tonight. Erg session tomorrow. 4 x 20′ endurance.

Long, slow burn in the fitness center

April 26, 2017Leave a comment

Still in Seoul. At the JW Marriott (the fitness center with the mechanical horsey, but no rower)

I had time to kill this morning. I woke up around 5:30AM, and I didn’t need to leave for the airport until 10:30. So, I did some email, did a crossword, surfed the web, and around 7, I decided to head to the gym.

The plan for today

4 x 20′ endurance
20 minutes max incline treadmill
20 minutes flat incline treadmill jog
20 minutes elliptical (intervals, level 15)
20 minutes stationary bike (rolling hills, level 8)

Holy hell it was boring.

Now I’m at the airport waiting to get on my flight. I’m connecting through Hong Kong and getting back to Boston around 10:30PM. Ugh.

I just sync’ed up StravastiX. I’m certainly not putting a challenging load on myself these days. I think I need to ramp up the volume AND the intensity if I want to make much progress. It says that my fitness is improving, but I think it is deceived by the fact that I only started logging after my return from my knee operation. It had my fitness starting from zero, but it was actually pretty good prior to my layoff. I bet that I would be hovering versus slowing improving if that was the case. I think I need to get a good 6 months of activity recorded before I really trust the trends.

It’s almost time to restart the marathon plan. Except this time on the water!

A fitness center sprint Tri…3×15′

April 25, 2017April 25, 20171 Comment

I landed in Korea about 9:30 last night and I was in bed by 11:30pm. I didn’t sleep much on the flight over, maybe 2 hours between Boston and Tokyo and another hour or so between Tokyo and Seoul.

I got bored sitting around Narita, so I went for a walk. I walked the whole terminal, it took about 40 minutes and it was a much better way to waste time than surfing the web.

So, from a training perspective:

Monday: 40 minute walk (with rollerboard suitcase dragging behind)

Tuesday: I woke up at 6am. My legs were sore from Sunday’s run, and I was feel jetlagged and tired. But I suited up and headed down to the gym. I was getting picked up at 8am, so I had a little bit less than an hour.

My plan:

15 minutes, stationary bike, easy, rolling hills
15 minutes, max incline treadmill, 15% grade, speed set to stay in UT1 zone
15 minutes, elliptical, short intervals (1’15” on/1’15” off), around the top of the UT1 zone.
enough time to clean equipment between 15′ pieces.

Well that worked out just fine. The bike was hard. My thighs and legs were complaining loudly, but my HR was not going up. I guess that’s from the run.

Tomorrow morning, I have more time. I will probably do a 3 x 20′ and some strength training.

Then I head out to the airport for a 1:35 departure for home.

My favorite L3 and a morning run

April 23, 2017Leave a comment

Saturday: I briefly debated going rowing on Saturday morning, but between a forecast for rain, and the need for sleep, I decided against it. It was a good decision. I slept 10 hours and woke up feeling good! My wife and I had some errands to do, and we had a late lunch. By the time I had digested lunch and finished some grocery shopping, it was around 7pm before I got around to working out.

I wanted to do a workout with a bit more intensity, so I opted for my favorite wolverine plan L3 workout.

15 x 3′ / 1′ rest
Target pace: 1:55

I have managed to do this workout sub-1:50 when I am in really good shape. I am not in really good shape. I am also not sure how well I do on faster workouts on the dynamic rower. Anyway, it was a target.

It started off OK, but by the time I got deep into the workout, I realized that I had started too fast. The wheels started to come off after the 10th interval and I just did the best I could the rest of the way. No handle downs, or form breaks, just slower and slower splits.

PM version of power

PM version of pace, considerably more generous than the interval summary below.

Workout Summary - media/20170423-0010230o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13682|60:00.0|02:11.6|192.1|25.1|163.4|181.0|09.1
W-|11661|45:00.0|01:55.8|227.4|24.9|163.2|180.0|10.4
R-|02040|15:00.0|03:40.6|068.5|26.1|164.3|180.0|02.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00795|03:00.0|01:53.2|233.2|23.6|140.4|155.0|11.2
01|00792|03:00.0|01:53.7|236.9|24.1|150.6|160.0|11.0
02|00790|03:00.0|01:53.9|235.3|24.0|154.2|164.0|11.0
03|00792|03:00.0|01:53.7|233.8|24.2|157.5|167.0|10.9
04|00788|03:00.0|01:54.2|237.2|24.5|160.6|170.0|10.7
05|00790|03:00.0|01:53.9|234.5|25.5|162.8|172.0|10.3
06|00788|03:00.0|01:54.2|232.4|24.9|164.5|172.0|10.6
07|00784|03:00.0|01:54.8|233.1|24.7|166.8|176.0|10.6
08|00784|03:00.0|01:54.9|233.6|25.3|168.8|178.0|10.3
09|00772|03:00.0|01:56.6|228.1|25.9|170.8|179.0|09.9
10|00766|03:00.0|01:57.5|221.1|25.5|170.5|180.0|10.0
11|00758|03:00.0|01:58.7|209.4|24.8|169.5|177.0|10.2
12|00749|03:00.0|02:00.2|207.6|24.4|169.3|177.0|10.2
13|00762|03:00.0|01:58.1|224.0|27.0|171.5|179.0|09.4
14|00752|03:00.0|01:59.6|210.2|24.8|170.2|180.0|10.1

That was really hard! Glad I did it though.

Sunday: Up around 8 after a good nights sleep. Felt a bit stiff and sore from the workout the evening before, but I wanted to get a quick workout in before I hopped a plane to go to Seoul. I wasn’t really in the mood for an erg workout, and it was a nice day out, so I decided to go for a run. Nothing fast or fancy.

I did a loop that was about 7km. It took about 37 minutes. It’s been a long time since I’ve run outside. It felt very awkward at first, but I settled in after a few minutes. My knees started to complain a bit after about 4km, and the irresistible lure of home home made me speed up a bit at the end. My legs are nice and sore now.

I don’t think my knees could hold up to running on a regular basis, but I think I should try to do it a couple times a month. I really enjoy it and it’s great cross training.

Now I’m over northern Canada somewhere, with 8 hours or so until I get to Tokyo. I change planes and continue to Seoul.

I get in at 10:30PM local time. I will try to grab a short workout before I leave the hotel at 8am on Tuesday morning.

Thursday: San Diego. Recovery Session

March 9, 2017Leave a comment

I’m here in San Diego, and one of the things I like about it is that there is nearly constant military air traffic in the area. I had lunch outside and we had trouble carrying on a conversation because F/A-18s were tearing up the sky above us. It’s a beautiful plane.

Back to training.

20 minutes elliptical (level 15, rolling hills)
20 minutes treadmill (15% grade, 3 mph)

I wanted something easy, and that’s what I got.

Saturday: 40 minutes at the Spoarts Club

February 25, 2017February 28, 2017Leave a comment

Not a typo.

I was staying in a hotel in Incheon called The Charis. It did not have a fitness center, but they had a deal with the sports club across the street to let their guest go work out there.

I headed over and there was a sign for the Spoarts Club on the door. Some clever indication that they focus on rowing…Sp..oar..ts? Afraid not. Not a rowing machine in sight, and the place was a bit shabby. They had a bunch of working tread mills and I managed to make one of the ellipticals to work, but I could not find a working stationary bike. So, I ended up doing 2 – 20 minute pieces.