Days until the race: 38
Miles logged today: 3 (hills)
Number of times I listened to "Zombie" by the Cranberries on my iPod, pretending I was the lead singer, during those miles: 3
So until a few days ago I was wondering whether I could realistically go from marathon to Tahoe Triple training with almost no down time in between. And I was wondering this because ever since the SF marathon (read the blistering reviews, including mine on page 14) I'd been dragging. My stride had turned into a shuffle. My legs felt tugged downward by imaginary 10-pound weights. My pace was glacial going on sedentary.
Mostly this was my fault, not my thighs' fault. Probably it wasn't wise, a few days after the marathon, to spend a week dog-sitting a pouty golden retriever in Marin who capitalized on my guilt for leaving him alone during the day by taking me for punishing walks up and down brutal hills twice a day. Probably it was even less wise for me to agree to these death marches while wearing platform flip-flops.
I figured some of this was fixable. So I closeted the flip-flops, put new insoles in my running shoes, and encouraged the dog to explore the yard. That helped. I said 'no' a few times at work, which also helped because I'd been logging insane hours on projects that were, in the mental sense, marching me up and down some epic hills of their own. But I was still dragging. So I started thinking I needed some help, and beyond that some information. I started thinking: "sports massage." My friend Chris recommended I go to Psoas Massage & Bodywork. I got an appointment.
The guy who did my massage, Scott Schwartz, considers himself a "muscle detective" of sorts. I for one am ready to hand him a badge. Or a Nobel prize. Or maybe just a really nice fruit basket. With elbows and hands and some seriously skilled pressure, he turns up hidden things that I thought no one would ever know about my body but me, and a ton that I'd never know unless he told me. And he's a New Yorker, so he gives it to you real straight. The good news for me was that I'm much better off than I feared. Despite the fact that I do nothing to encourage my own flexibility or build anything resembling upper body strength, I've got more of both than I thought. That was a pleasant surprise. It also turns out that my leg muscles had not petrified as I'd suspected; they're more or less perfectly healthy, and, like the golden retriever, were pretty much just pouting (and I don't blame them). The less good news is that one of the muscles in the V of right calf is weaker than it should be, and might become the scene of some heretofore unfelt cramping, and that the real danger for me isn't overtraining but sitting too long at my desk; my neck and shoulders are a complete mess.
Massages that go this deep, turns out, are not without their painful moments. Scott did everything short of stun-gun my hip muscles to get them to relax; if my calves could express themselves, they would have been spitting with outrage. But I left Psoas feeling as if a giant reset button had been hit, erasing weeks of strain and sending me back to feeling like I did before the SF marathon. Onward it is....
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