(EDITOR’S note: This is the third in a series.)
Sometimes your body rebels. While training for the Wisconsin Senior Olympics, several months back I yanked my hamstring. It’s a searing injury, with the hamstring being so importantly connected to other leg muscles that you must be delicate in rehabilitation.
As a 63-year-old training for the 800 and shot put, I felt pretty good the first few months, slowing upping my reps in training for the shot put, and slowly increasing my speed for the 800. Bit by bit. Pick it up in small increments. Sometimes being careful isn’t enough.
One of the interesting things to navigate as you get older and train for events such as this is the injury factor. Your spirit tells you to push yourself. Your rational mind tells you to be careful because you can hurt yourself.
When you’re younger, you can blast all-out when you run. Not the case now. You can slowly build up your speed circling the track, gauging which muscles are twinging and holding back just a bit because you know how easily that muscle-pull can occur.
Most of my training has been on the trails running with our dogs or in the gym, circling a shortened basketball court. All it took was heading to the outdoor track for my right hamstring to go bad.
It was late spring and we were down seeing two of our kids, and the track was just outside our hotel room. I had to get out there. I knew it was time to test what it was like to run two laps around the track. But I never made it.
The first lap went well. At the start of the second, I felt good. “Hmmm, maybe I can stretch my pace,” I thought to myself.
Not a good idea. Near the end of the 100-yard straight-away, I felt the hamstring tug and tighten, sending that unpleasant stabbing pain to my brain cells. I pulled up. Tried to shake and stretch it out. Tried to jog again, no dice.
The injury was not major. At the same time, healing at this stage of the game needed to come quickly. I stopped running for three weeks, continuing to stretch out. Then, slowly I reintroduced jogging to the training regime, followed by a slow picking up of the pace, all the while wondering if the hammy was going south again.
It could at any point. I’ve been told that in these senior sprinting events, runners coming up lame and not finishing the race is a regular occurrence. So, with my first goal of getting to the 800 and shot put uninjured, my second goal is to finish both those events without a major injury.
I’m okay with coming out of the competition sore in ways not considered beforehand. That’s to be expected.
But running hard, pushing my body to a limit without causing injury during the competition requires a certain knowledge and fortitude to “not run as hard as you can.” It’s only natural to want to haul off and sprint. I know that is not good.
The brain and the spirit have to battle now. Monitoring your body and knowing what it can do are critical to being ready to start the race, and capable of finishing it.
(Stay tuned for next week’s final pre-race installment.)
Sometimes your body rebels. While training for the Wisconsin Senior Olympics, several months back I yanked my hamstring. It’s a searing injury, with the hamstring being so importantly connected to other leg muscles that you must be delicate in rehabilitation.
As a 63-year-old training for the 800 and shot put, I felt pretty good the first few months, slowing upping my reps in training for the shot put, and slowly increasing my speed for the 800. Bit by bit. Pick it up in small increments. Sometimes being careful isn’t enough.
One of the interesting things to navigate as you get older and train for events such as this is the injury factor. Your spirit tells you to push yourself. Your rational mind tells you to be careful because you can hurt yourself.
When you’re younger, you can blast all-out when you run. Not the case now. You can slowly build up your speed circling the track, gauging which muscles are twinging and holding back just a bit because you know how easily that muscle-pull can occur.
Most of my training has been on the trails running with our dogs or in the gym, circling a shortened basketball court. All it took was heading to the outdoor track for my right hamstring to go bad.
It was late spring and we were down seeing two of our kids, and the track was just outside our hotel room. I had to get out there. I knew it was time to test what it was like to run two laps around the track. But I never made it.
The first lap went well. At the start of the second, I felt good. “Hmmm, maybe I can stretch my pace,” I thought to myself.
Not a good idea. Near the end of the 100-yard straight-away, I felt the hamstring tug and tighten, sending that unpleasant stabbing pain to my brain cells. I pulled up. Tried to shake and stretch it out. Tried to jog again, no dice.
The injury was not major. At the same time, healing at this stage of the game needed to come quickly. I stopped running for three weeks, continuing to stretch out. Then, slowly I reintroduced jogging to the training regime, followed by a slow picking up of the pace, all the while wondering if the hammy was going south again.
It could at any point. I’ve been told that in these senior sprinting events, runners coming up lame and not finishing the race is a regular occurrence. So, with my first goal of getting to the 800 and shot put uninjured, my second goal is to finish both those events without a major injury.
I’m okay with coming out of the competition sore in ways not considered beforehand. That’s to be expected.
But running hard, pushing my body to a limit without causing injury during the competition requires a certain knowledge and fortitude to “not run as hard as you can.” It’s only natural to want to haul off and sprint. I know that is not good.
The brain and the spirit have to battle now. Monitoring your body and knowing what it can do are critical to being ready to start the race, and capable of finishing it.
(Stay tuned for next week’s final pre-race installment.)