One of the arguments against intelligent design is how badly certain parts of our anatomy actually perform under stress. There are models of how humans, if developed by ergonomic experts, would have been designed and they certainly improve over the current version that we have inherited. My complaints against the structure that survived the evolutionary process are in how the lower L5-S1 vertebral structure ended up and the band of connective tissue across the bottom of the foot. Everything else seems sufficient to get me to the end of my days with everything failing at about the same time. But, my lower back and heels are a real bother!
These last three years, it has been the plantar fascia that has got me calling for a manufacturers recall. As soon as I get my mileage up to more than 50 km per week, my heels start screaming. Nothing has worked! Yes, I've tried yoga, orthodics, the Strasbourg Sock (which stretches the PF during the night), wearing shoes around the house, the old-man pills (Advil) and all the requisite stretches. Maybe this next week my podiatrist, Michael Schumacher, will be able to try extracorporeal shock wave therapy. But, for the meantime, I'm a bit worried about my training for the New York Marathon in November. Although my running times have been coming down, I have had to stop my workouts this week to let my damn heels recover. It just hurts to run and all of the advice that I have read says that you can't run through plantar fasciitis Arrggh.
The saving grace is that there is always cycling, which is totally aerobic, not pounding and everything feels great after hours in the saddle... like today.
Two hours after dawn I was on the train out of Grand Central Station with my bike and left the Beacon MTA station just after nine o'clock. The day was hot, going from 24 up to around 31 by the end of the ride.
Of all my train station to train station rides, this is my favorite and I've left Beacon, headed up to around Marble Town and back to Poughkeepsie dozens of times over the last five years. Several of my posts to this blog have featured pictures of my bike on this bridge in various seasons of the year.
So, the totals for the day were 100 km in 4:14 with 1285 meters of climbing. The lovely upside of the day was 3988 calories burned, which will help on my path downwards to 70 kilos by November. My focus, until my plantar fascia decided not to cooperate, had been on the November marathon and not on cycling. There is something about pounding up and down big hills on a bike that doesn't make for fast running legs. But, this week, after some less than satisfying sessions on elliptical trainers, I decided that I needed to get back out on the road and put in some long rides if my body wasn't liking the increase in running. Well, you have to listen to the aches and pains and admit that 55 is not 25 and there will not be another 2:48 marathon in this lifetime or even anything close.
My one "ace in the hole" is the yoga practice. For the last two months, I've been going two to four times per week for hour or hour and a half sessions. While it may be strange, I'm thinking that maybe my heel pain is part of the whole body transformation that takes place when one begins yoga. The stretching, realignment, new core strength and overall tone from yoga combined with the running may have exacerbated the heel pain. The downward facing dog puts an incredible amount of stress on the calves, heels and feet that, while eventually beneficial, might have weakened everything and made it vulnerable during the increased mileage on the road. So, for the next few weeks I'm going to get back out on the bike, see if Schumacher can figure out a solution and run sparingly. In the meantime, some nice bike rides and yoga can't hurt.
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