I was running with my friend
Wyatt on Sunday and he raised a point that struck home with me: Is it possible I am still not recovered from my
Leadville 100 last August? After the race was over, I made a firm commitment not to run another 100 in 2013. I wasn't exactly sure why at the time, but my logic focused namely on how hard I trained and not wanting to put my family through it again. Wyatt was suggesting something else -- it is possible you don't recover from a 100 in only one calendar year. After I thought about it, it made a ton of sense to me. I have been running at a pretty high level (by recreational standards) for three years now, including several years of 2500 miles or more. It wasn't until the week of my Leadville 100 that I started struggling with injury so consistently.
Since it is my favorite thing to do, I reviewed my training data to explore this idea. The one thing that stood out right away was the significant difference in vertical gain. By July of 2012, I had run more vertical feet than
all of 2011, good enough for a year-over-year increase of 71% (through July). That's right, I nearly double the amount of vertical gain. In addition, I ran 11% more miles year-over-year through July of 2012. And, one final point, I ran several significant races and training runs as well. Until 2011, I had never run a 50-miler. In 2012, I ran two of them as training runs for LT100. And, both of them had monster vertical gain (10K and 13K) and extreme conditions (
one was 100+ degrees,
one was run primarily above 12K in altitude). I did another event that was
7K of vertical in just over 20 miles. For good measure, I ran four more training runs of more than 30 miles, a dozen or so back-to-backs, and set a
marathon PR. (I ran 20 miles the NEXT weekend.)
One week before Leadville, I began
dealing with "runner's knee". It took me eight weeks to recover and then I
fell on a training run, injuring the same knee. And, lately I have been struggling
with ITB issues, causing pain in the same knee. I hate being the "injured runner", always talking and posting about how I am feeling. Making matters worse, I have been doing tons of good cross training since September of 2012; I am literally doing all the right things.
So yeah, I think it is possible that 2012 is the year I just pushed myself to the limits and beyond. Perhaps I should have expected 2013 to be a bit of a letdown after such a huge push. The idea that I over-reached -- or even over-trained -- is a very realistic idea that would explain my injuries and my general lack of motivation to run hard right now. Perhaps 2013 is just the year to recover? It is something to consider for sure.
