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Dave Dammer's Micro Thread

Dave DammerDave Dammer
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Hi 

I've been nursing a calf / upper Achilles strain for a little over a week.  Running makes it much worse.  So I've switched Rehoboth to the Half-Marathon in hopes I'll be good by 12/3.  Any suggestions other than to gently stretch and no do things that aggravate it?

Thanks,

Dave

Comments

  • Coach PatrickCoach Patrick
    Dave -

    So sorry to hear about that! Tweaking your Achilles is no fun because he feel it all the time.

    Can you clarify for me how do you strained it? Was it some kind of sudden trauma or is this an overuse injury? Or did you recently change footwear?

    First things first we need to let it heal. This is a combination of several things:

    1. stop running... Note any daily activities that exacerbated such as wearing dress shoes or whatever else. If it's possible, attempt to modify those.

    2. get the inflammation down. This is the combination of anti-inflammatories, such as Advil, and icing twice a day for 20 minutes.

    3. stay fit... Transition to a bike focused out season where you ride on Tuesday, Thursday, And Saturday as planned– No brick runs. Add another 60 to 90 minutes steady ride on Sunday to keep the engine burning. Use your Monday Wednesday and Friday as opportunities to work on calf and hamstring flexibility.

    4. strengthen it... One are the best ways to work on Achilles strain is an exercise known as eccentric heel drop. You can see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3XDjjKofk

    Let me know about the onset and we'll go from there!!!

    ~ Coach P
  • Dave DammerDave Dammer
    Coach Patrick,
    I was 3.5 miles into a run, and all of a sudden I felt the pain and tightness. The challenging part is that it was my first of two 20-mile runs training for the Rehoboth Marathon coming up on Dec. 3rd. I've since switched it to the half, and hope to be able to do that. Will see how the healing progresses. I think it's more calf than achilles.

    I think general lack of flexibility/strength combined with fall weight gain are the culprits. No new shoes.
  • Coach PatrickCoach Patrick
    Got it. That still sucks...well, I think that you are on the right (conservative) plan to the 13.1. In the meantime, here's a great video on calf mobilization that should help with the self care: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl23kKc317E

    Please keep me posted!

    ~ Coach P
  • Dave DammerDave Dammer

    Did my running time trial tonight.... work ate my day AND night yesterday.

    Was able to hold pace in the 7:40's per the treadmill, but my Garmin on indoor mode tracked it much differently.  Avg. HR was 152, which makes me wonder about the bike test.  Should I re-do the bike test, or just take a look at my HR on harder portions of my next rides?

    Undergoing some further medical tests to rule out bad stuff but optimistic that it's not bad stuff.

     

  • Coach PatrickCoach Patrick
    That's great news on the run test Dave!!! Nice work! There's often a delta between bike and run, and it's exacerbated when one discipline has had a layoff...so don't give up hope yet on those numbers...I say modify slightly with an eye towards understanding they'll move on their own with consistency!

    ~ Coach P
  • Dave DammerDave Dammer
    Hi - When would it make sense to re-do my bike test? I now have a Wahoo Kickr so can use power rather than heart rate.
  • Dave DammerDave Dammer
    Well, I sort of re-did it today, by choosing the IM Crab group ride on Zwift. Let it rip for about 45 minutes, got heart rate into the 140's.
  • Coach PatrickCoach Patrick
    Dave, most of the time we tell folks to redo their bike test on Tuesday in place of the Tuesday ride. This would give you a chance to recoverFrom your Sunday sessions with a day off on Monday and then test on Tuesday. If you're confident in those numbers and feel good about them, let's use them. Because is the winter and it's a low-pressure time, we can easily manually adjust the zones up or down a few watts to target them precisely. When we get closer to your race, will want more accurate video world data as a tool to guide us on your proper zones. So it's low stakes time, go for it. Your guidance is that you want some numbers that are stretch targets for you but not so hard that you can't repeat them 2 or 3 times in intervals.

    So 3 x 12 minutes should look like this: 200, 198, 202 and it should not look like this: 200, 175, 155 (Crying).

    Make sense?
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