Plyo Workout

Hello Camp Folks.

At long last, here is the Plyo Tutorial.  There are of course more exercises than these that you can add in or do as part of a bodyweight strength workout, and there are all sorts of different variations you can do on the exercises listed.  If you contact me, I'll get you a print out with a 'menu' of possible exercises.
The basic instructions, as identified in the video, are to go 1 minute on, 10 seconds off.  If you need to, work into it though.  Build up from 45 secs on, 15 secs off, to 50 secs on, 10 secs off, then up to 1 minute on, 10 secs off.  In any event, if you did the Plyo workout at camp, this will come back quickly to you.

Remember, you can't just run to get faster.  You need to be a total athlete to run FAST.

Surgery!

So the day prior to heading up to Concord Retreat for Gotta Run Running Camp, I went in to see a specialist about my ankle.  It just wasn't making any progress, even with consistent physical therapy. 

So the Doctor took one look at my MRI, and told me unequivocally that it was going to need to be surgically repaired.  If not, without my calcaneofibular and anterior talofibular ligaments, my foot/ankle bone structure basically was just sloshing around and clattering bone on bone, and would eventually wear through the cartilege and fuse together.  Plus there was a buildup of scar tissue on my anterior inferior talofibular ligament, which was getting pinched on my talus (bone directly under the tibial shin bone) and constricting my peroneal nerve, and causing my shin and lower leg to go numb as I ran.  Not fun.

So today, I went in for surgery to get all this repaired.  After I came out of anesthesia, the doctor told me, "It was a mess in there," and that besides all those ligaments flapping in the breeze, and the scar tissue, and some damage to the cartilege already, there was also a loose chunk of ligament just floating around in there.

In any event, its all done now, and wrapped up in this cast for the next 10 days, then I go into a walking cast for 4 weeks, then a boot (of the plastic, removable variety) for an additional 6 weeks.  Then I get to start returning to running with a Walk-Jog plan.  Awesome.

Ah well!  My ankle is repaired, now we hope it's fixed.

Active Isolated Stretching Video

Hello Capon Ridgers!

Embedded here you will find an unedited video of the normal stretching circuit that we used for warmup prior to running.  Over the next few days, I'll be putting up edited versions of the same stretching routine, the plyo workout, and the core exercises, as well as a list of other resources, and my instruction documents for each of these.  While I'd love to put everything up at once, I hope you will make sure you are stretching in the meantime!  Active Isolated Flexibility work will keep you healthy and help you recover faster. And don't forget, even if your team uses static stretching (or no stretching) at practice, you can add AIS flexibility into your evening routine - take 10-12 minutes before you go to bed and fast-track your recovery and flexibility gains.

(Also enjoy the background commentary as the Coaches and counselors get completely distracted and fixated on a tick, and what sort of viscous fluid they should use to remove it. Gross. Just ignore that, and pay attention to the stretching....)

Capon Ridge Running Camp 2012

Just arrived back from another great year of Capon Ridge Running Camp, sponsored by Nike. Lots of great kids and great teams came up this year, and we grew by about 20 campers, which is always fun.  In honor of the Olympics, our camp activities and games had an Olympic theme, complete with flags, and my forcing the counselors to sing the Olympic anthem again and again, which was hilarious to me, at least.  Nike also generously supported us again, bring us some awesome samples and information about the Flywire and Flyknit shoes and spikes that they are unveiling at the Olympics in London.  Really cool stuff.

I pretty much failed to take pictures this year, partially because I was working with campers on stretching most of the time, or yelling at Larry, and partially because I forgot my camera.  As I come across photos and video, I will see about posting them, but below are the photos of the actors who played certain roles, with their namesakes:

The Mikes. note the tattoos, belts as stand-ins for HR monitors, and various therapy equipment as apparel.  Mac (to my left) managed to look so creepily like me that my wife was somewhat bothered by it.

The Larrys, including Ransom's interpretation of Larry as an evil wizard with a cape.

Foley and his double, who put his goldfish tattoo in a more appropriate spot than Foley himself did.

 I am already looking forward to next year, and hope everyone returns for another year of running in the ridiculously steep hills of Yellow Springs, WV.


 

Broken again

So I have taken some time off running, as a result of the head injury suffered in Mexico back in December that had some unexpected consequences (head hurt for 2 months anytime I did anything strenuous, couldn't seem to concentrate either...), an increase in my workload, and a need to make running something that was adding enjoyment, and not stress, to my life.

I've since been building up again for the past month, nothing crazy, just trying to get out and run, even while in Queretaro, and my fitness was coming back nicely, and I was enjoying being out for hour runs or so.  Then, on the morning of June 26th, on the Mesa trail in Chataqua park, which I have run maybe 1000 times, I was coming down a hill on a morning run and BAM! my right ankle just went sideways.  It's a rocky trail, and I haven't the slightest clue exactly what I hit/stepped on, but I have never heard a joint crack like that before. It was terrible.  At the moment it happened, I was a solid 2 miles out from my car, and I couldn't put any weight on it.  I ended up hoping tree to tree back to the parking lot, which got pretty amusing as hikers started coming in on the trail, wondering what the hell I was doing. 

In any event, following Gibby logic ("Ankle injuries aren't real injuries."), I took a day off, then started running again.  Which led to it not just not improving, but getting exponentially worse.  Not good.  So I went in to the Doctor, where they x-rayed it, only to tell me that my ankle looked arthritic and like I was an 80 year old man, but it wasn't broken.  And they put me on crutches for two weeks. 

unfortunately, even the crutches didn't exactly help, and a week later, I had to go in to get an MRI, which revealed a full tear of the calcaneofibular ligament, and anterior talofibular ligament, but the posterior talofibular and ant. inferior talofibular were intact, as were all the tendons.  So at the moment, the prognosis is PT, and up to 8 weeks recovery time.  Boo.

Capon Ridge Running Camp starts in two days, and this will be the first time in 9 years of attending I won't be able to run at camp. Even post knee surgery I found a way to make it work.  I am bummed.

This fun bruising has lasted for a good couple of weeks....

Fire!

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy, as two big fires have been dominating the news and our air quality out here.  The High Park fire west of Ft. Collins and the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs have been greatly affecting our air (as seen below), but we also just had a fire break out on the western side of the ridge here in Boulder.  At one point, the flames actually jumped to the east side of the ridge, which is scary.  This is what happens when it is super dry, we get no snow, and there is entirely too many dead trees from Pine beetle kill.

It's crazy stuff, and I'm worried to see what the long term damage for these areas will be.

Smoke from the Flagstaff fire rising above Bear Peak and Shadow Canyon.  The fire is currently burning right on one of my favorite trails, that you access by running up the canyon in the center of the picture between the peaks.

Another of the smoke above Shadow Canyon and Bear Peak.

Here you can see the plumes of smoke from where the flames actually jumped to the east side of the ridge, and the trees right under Bear Peak were burning.

This was on the 4th of July, and may look like nothing, but you should be able to see for miles, and all the way up towards Summit County.  Because of the wind patterns, the smoke from Colorado Springs a 2 hour drive south) was so thick it was limiting visibility to about 2 miles.  Needless to say, fireworks were canceled.

This is a hawk I saw on a bike ride.  No connection, but I liked this bird.

Backcountry Skiing in RMNP

Got out on the 30th with Arena and Nally for some backcountry skiing in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Conditions are crazy advanced - more like it should be in early May.  Not much snow this season, which might mean some trouble down the road, as little snowmelt means a dry summer.  We shall see.  Anywhoo - pictures below.

We hit up the Dead Elk couloir, which is to the left of the sharp pointy ridge in the photos.  The trek in was itself pretty spectacular, and as is often the case with backcountry, it took several hours to skin-in to the base of the couloir, an additional hour to hike up it (Nally and Arena were considerably faster on the snow climb then my slow, overly-cautious self), and then about 20 minutes to ski down.  It was a great ski, though the late spring conditions were a bit of a shock and the snow was so choppy I took a bit of a spill at one point.  Other than that, great day out.  On the way back, we even had some extra time to play around with jumping off a drop.

Pictures are below, all taken by Arena.

Looking up at our route.  Dead Elk is obscured to the left of the central, pointy peak, Dragontail is to the right.

Rabbit we saw on the way in.

Taking the climbing skins off my skis before we started the snow climb up.

Looking down the couloir.  You can see me in the distance, falling behind.  Oops. Pretty great view though, right?  Hard to beat this at a lift-served resort.

Arriving at the top of the route....

Anthony's boots, with Dan and I getting ourselves situated prior to the descent.

About to head down.  You can somewhat make out via the shadows the choppy texture of the snow.

...and heading down.