IT Band Pain

It sucks to go from running a marathon one month ago, to not being able to jog an easy mile today. Even more frustating is missing a work out due to pain, yet feeling 100% fine until you start to run. To fix this, I'm following the instructions in this article: http://runningtime.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=6099

Day 0

I consider today my first real day back on the bike to prep for 2011. I did 37 miles with Jordan, and it was cold. I heard it was 18 degrees. I'm not sure it was actually that cold, but my bottles were completely frozen around mile 26.

My HR averaged 151 for the 2hrs 17min that we were out there. Last year at this time I wasn't seriously training, was overweight, and a lot of the things I accomplished in 2010 were not even within my perceived realm of possibility. I know that I'm light years ahead of where I was a year ago. With that said, todays ride still left me wiped out :-) and I had to take a nice 3 hour nap on the couch. I'll admit that two pints of Guinness with lunch may have had something to do with my afternoon slumber.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be back in the gym on a consistent basis. My priorities for the next few months are:

1. Flexibility - I'm going to be stretching/rolling out twice a day on days that I work out

2. Core training - This includes fixing strength imbalances in my right leg (source of my IT band trouble)

3. Nutrition - For the month of January, I'm going to break out the spreadsheet again and track what I eat, and the number of calories consumed/burned. Last year, this helped me develop healthy habits, and bake them into my life. Just like with everything else, if you don't plan your nutrition, you're planning to fail. This is actually a lot less of a PITA than it seems, as long as your prepare most of your own food and snacks for the day.

4. Consistency - It's been nice to skip out on early morning trips to the gym these past few weeks, but that ends today.

Jersey Shore Century: Garmin Battery Fail

My buddy Mike and I set out to ride 100 miles this Saturday, between Sandy Hook NJ and Barnegate Inlet. We got it done in about 7 hours, with a mileage of 101.2. Unfortunately, since my Garmin battery died at mile 77, I only have data for about 75% of the ride. I use a Forerunner 405 which features a claimed battery life of 8 hours in training mode. I'm sure that claim does not include the use of cycling accessories. Mine gets about 5 1/2 hours of life on long rides, which means I won't be using it at Leadville next year.

The ride went well. I didn't have any of the foot problems which I suffered from on previous long rides. I attribute that improvement to my marathon training. On the other hand, from mile 80 on, I had really bad IT band tightness in my right leg. We had to stop a few times to stretch. At mile 90, I literally could not pedal my bike until I sat on the sidewalk and stretched. After that, it loosened up a bit, and I finished pretty strong. Mike had been talking of a sprint finish, but I wasn't sure if he was serious. I moved into the big ring around mile 99 in preparation, but the sprint never materialized. Afterward, my legs felt surprisingly snappy. I attribute that to marathon training as well.

For the rest of December and January, the plan is to work on flexibility and core. I need to get rid of these IT band issues.