An Old Nemesis, A New One, & Power Cranks?

I’m not even sure where to begin this entry or how it will flow, so I’ll just dive right in.  First off, however, I need to preface this entry with the fact that I did a 101 mile ride on Saturday and a 12.22 mile run on Sunday.

In my October 4^th entry, I let you in on the fact that my old nemesis, the “knee” pain flared up again and I went into ultra conservative mode.  A week later, and after a few smaller “frequency runs”, it seemed that everything was back to normal.  What I neglected to tell you was that I’ve been battling a pesky “groin” issue since the drive home from the Tiki swim on September 30^th.

It all started about two or three hours into the car ride home from Oceanside.  Both Kristi and teammate Nicole were both fast asleep when I started to experience some discomfort “down there” At first, I just figured that it was from sitting in the same position too long, but when I was constantly trying to adjust myself in the seat with no relief, I blamed it on having to go to the bathroom.  Since both of my female passengers were asleep, I wanted to use this time to put some gas to the engine and make good time without having to stop.  I figured that we would have to stop when they woke up anyway.  The pain wasn’t overbearing, but it was definitely uncomfortable and was getting worse.  Finally, once in Globe, AZ we stopped at a Mc Donald’s to use the bathroom.  Shortly after getting back on the road I realized that that wasn’t the problem.  It was something else.  Later that night, actually very early the next morning, I woke out of a deep sleep by the increased pain or pressure that I was experiencing and couldn’t get back to sleep.  The remainder of that day had me secretly trying to figure out what the heck was going on (I hadn’t mentioned anything to anyone just yet).  Monday night/Tuesday morning was more of the same restless tossing and turning because of the discomfort.  After 48 hours of discomfort and reflection of the weekend’s events, I came to the conclusion that I must have pulled a groin muscle jumping over the waves at the start of the race.  It was either that or some type of sports hernia (a regular hernia didn’t make sense since I didn’t do any heavy lifting or straining recently).  Armed with this self diagnosis, I called my good friend (and physical therapist) Tom Bratcher to see what he thought.  He told me to come in right away so that he could take a look.  Once at his office, he had me lie on a table and proceeded to perform various different resistance tests on my leg and lower abdomen.  He poked around in different areas as well.  Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that I didn’t have any type of strain, pull, or hernia.  He said that it’s possible that I have some kind of inflammation due to an infection and that I needed to see my primary care doc ASAP.  Keep in mind that the only reason for such urgency is that IM is about 5 weeks away and this needed immediate attention if I wanted to continue training properly.  Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment with the doc just an hour later.  I head over, check in, and get whisked to the back fairly quickly.  I download everything that happened in the last 72 hours and what Tom said it could be.  My doc did his own poking and evaluation before giving me his professional medical opinion….”I don’t know what it is”  Well, the good news, I guess, is that he knew what it WASN’T.  He concurred with Tom that it probably wasn’t a hernia or pull, but without any type of ultrasound, MRI, etc. he could be certain.  Even then, those tests could be inconclusive as well.  He also agreed that it could be an infection, so, he prescribed some antibiotics and told me to take Rx strength Ibuprofen as a pain killer and anti-inflammatory.  He was in agreement with me to throw what we could at it and see if it worked (again, in the interest of time and the proximity of IMAZ).

As I type this entry, I am about 9 days since I started the antibiotics and Rx Ibuprofen and the discomfort is still there.  It’s milder now, but it’s not completely gone.  I’ve been weaning myself off of the Ibuprofen slowly to get a gauge on the discomfort level to see if any progress is being made.  I’m down to just 800mg per day instead of 2400mg.

OK, let’s get back to that 101 mile ride last Saturday.  I was very skeptical as to whether I could complete the entire workout since I couldn’t go 100ft in the saddle just several days prior, but I couldn’t afford to lose out on this ride.  To make a long story short, I rode 2 hours solo before meeting up with James.  I rode the next 2hrs and 45min with him before splitting off to ride home (he still had almost 2 more hours to take care of).  I’d estimate that 85%-90% of my ride was either sitting up or standing up.  The discomfort became fairly bad when I dropped into the aero bars.  After the ride, however, there wasn’t any increased (or new) discomfort, which is good.

By the way, nutrition for the bike was 1100cal consisting of:

·         1 EFS Berry Power Shot (400cal)

·         3 Jet Blackberry 2x Caffeine Gu (300cal)

·         2 Scoops Lemon-Lime EFS in 28oz water (200cal)

·         2 Scoops Fruit Punch EFS in 28oz water (200cal)

On Sunday, I was supposed to do the following workout:

WU: 30 mins ez with strides and drills

MS: 3X20 @ 7:45 pace with 5 ez between

Remainder good form and quick feet.

Here are my notes to Carlos:

“As a result of recent knee/groin issues and lack of running, I ran this how I felt. Knee issue came back almost exactly 1hr 30min into the run. Had to walk on a few occasions so it wouldn't get too bad. 1 Gel and some water. Other than the knee, I felt "comfortable"”

My old arch nemesis had returned.  It didn’t return in the form of the knee locking, stop me in my tracks, have James pick me up, form that it did a year ago, but it was definitely creeping up.  Once again, I was going to have to sideline the running for a few days and add in some swimming.

It wasn’t until yesterday that Carlos came up with a brilliant idea.  We located some Power Cranks (thanks John Dean!) and will use them on a trainer (thanks James Bruce for the trainer and thanks John Dean for the bike attached to the cranks!) to help simulate running.  What are Power Cranks?  According to their website:

“Power Cranks are, simply, independent bicycle cranks that replace the regular cranks found on a typical bicycle or exercise machine. Independent means one leg cannot help the other in making the pedals go around and in order to pedal the bike one cannot simply relax on the back stroke but must actively raise the pedal using your hip flexor and hamstring muscles”

I particularly liked this part:

“Runners run faster without risking injury from needing to run more (runners frequently see running improvement starting in 2-3 weeks - yes they are used by pro runners and university track teams)”

Last night, I had the chance to use these torture devices for the first time.  When Carlos told me not to go more than 20min, I thought he was being way to conservative.  Wow, now I understand.  I wasn’t 2 minutes into my workout when I started to look at my Garmin!  What?  18 MORE minutes of this?!?  Yikes!!!  The independent nature of these cranks makes it so that you can’t hide on any part of the cycling motion.  When I was done, my legs were burning and, as Kristi put it, I was sweating more than from some of my 12 mile runs!  While it’s not OPTIMAL, it is most definitely a VIABLE solution right now.

The borrowed Power Cranks, trainer, and bike: