Modifying Workouts Due to Injury and Jammin’ at the Zoo

Date: August 25, 2016

Author: astottler

Hi friends!

Before I go any further, I am some exciting news to share! I’ve been featured by Blogtrepreneur as one of the Top 25 Fitness Blogs That Get Your Game On! This list features blogs that motivate others to fall in love and stick with, and go further with a fit lifestyle! This is quite the honor—check out the full list of amazing bloggers here.

I really do appreciate you guys coming to my blog, and I really do try to put out content that is both relatable, motivating, useful, and honest. I pride myself in putting out scientifically correct content that you guys can use, as well as pieces for entertainment.

So what do you say we hit a little bit of both today?

You could say it’s been a bit of a rough week, I suppose. I got locked out and climbed through a window Tuesday, and then today. I was SUPER excited for tonight’s Crossfit WOD. It has toes to bar and pull ups, my new tricks! I wasn’t going to do anything like run this morning, because I didn’t want to tire myself out or get dehydrated (like I did Wednesday at work). But then I naturally woke up an hour early. So I thought, “well maybe just a little run to get my blood flowing.” So I set out for a short 1.5 miles. And, in the words of my sorority little, I wiped out spectacularly. The sidewalks here are very uneven. And of course, it was right in front of the ONE house with people on the front porch.

So I’m pretty beaten up. My left hand, and strangely, my left thigh, took the brunt of it. Which was good for the sake of my knee, with just a minor scratch there. Seriously, how does one land on her thigh?

I’ll spare you the hand picture because it is ROUGH, but imagine an equal force concentrated into a smaller area. There is no skin on the base of my palm. And it’s fairly deep. OUCH.

I had to buy bigger band aids on the way to work, and have been in quite a bit of pain on and off all day, because my hand is stinging. I spend about half or more of my day doing computer stuff, and using the keyboard on those computers KILLS me.

Anyways, back to the point of this all. I wanted a good workout. I was sad to miss Crossfit, but I told myself I would save the workout and do it another day at Open Gym. And I figured, hey, I’ve had to modify my workouts for every injury under the sun this past year (dislocated shoulder, stress fracture), so why can’t I figure something out?

I went to the gym and got a killer workout in without killing my hand, and was in and out in 45 minutes. I did: single leg squats (back leg on a bench) while holding a 30# dumbbell in my good hand for both legs. 5 sets of 8. I supersetted that with 8 pistols each, onto a bench. Then, I did 4 sets of 6 each single leg RDLs at 45#. I finished with some quick abs on the BOSU. Note: my hand was ok to hold dumbbells for the RDLs, surprisingly.

I truly believe that when you’re down, you don’t have to be out. Work with what you have (and don’t be stupid about what you can’t do.)

Since we’re still sharing frustrations, I HATE iTUNES. I’ve had tons of issues lately with iTunes deleting songs from my spin playlists (which is why I have a playlists tab on my blog now! It’s already been a lifesaver), but today it told me I had to reinstall iTunes due to some error. Which might erase my songs. Guys, my backup is 2000 miles away, and I have to make a new playlist for this Saturday! AHHH. THANKFULLY, I reinstalled and all appears ok.

Do you want something happier? Let’s go happier.

Yesterday I got in an awesome 3.1 mile run in. My foot felt 100% normal, for the first time! We can ignore the fact that I flat out missed my very first turn and ran half a mile the wrong way without realizing it….

I was in the mood for chocolate when I got back, so I made one of my flapjacked muffins. The key: slightly undercook it (no eggs!) and it tastes like lava cake <3

It was really, really hot and humid at work yesterday. (And today, but I handled it better.)

I was feeling pretty icky when I got off, and had more plans outdoors that evening. I took my spare hour to grab a massive Subway salad with Baked Lays because I was also severely under fueled and needed carbs. And I drinks TONS of water.

Then, it was time for Jammin’ at the Zoo! This was a super cool event that I went to with some of the other interns. It was a beer/wine tasting with vendors set up around the zoo, and a live band! It was a great deal–$10 to enter covered all the sampling!

Of course we rode the merry-go-round.

Penguins and sparkling rose.

It was a lot of fun! Apparently there is wine country pretty close to St. Louis. Who knew?

And to close out this post, here are some adorable tasmanian devil pictures.

How do you modify your workouts when injured?

Back into Back to Back Running

Date: October 28, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy midway-through-the-week! How are you all doing? I’m not doing so great. I feel like someone lunched me in the stomach after that last baseball game….Let’s hope we can rally for game 7! The worst part is I have a midterm right through the end of the game…I’m going to be a mess.

There’s a topic I’m thinking about writing, but that’s for another day. I thought I’d go over some workouts as of late! Let’s take it back about a week, shall we?

Wednesday: 5 mile run. Supposed to be 6 but I was running late! Whoops.

Thursday: 45 minute Soul Cycle class. It kills me that I have no way of going to spin regularly. Once the World Series is over, I should be able to fit more spinning in, at least on my own.

Friday: Track workout! It has been months and months and months since my last one. I started out with my favorite-10x400m. I didn’t kill myself on the pace or anything, but I have a lot of work to do! I followed that up with 200 sit ups because I never do abs. Whoops.

Saturday: Rest!

Sunday: 6 mile run. Longest run post-injury-induced running break! It was pretty uneventful, but my pace was a little bit better! I’m loving this fall weather too. I want to make 6 miles my standard distance for now. I found a perfect turnaround point, so I don’t have to always run with my watch, which is more relaxing.

Monday: 4 mile run. Nothing crazy, just the basic campus loop. This was a big deal though because this is the first time I’ve done back to back runs. It only worked because I took really good care of my feet on Sunday-ice and Advil, plus my night braces! Those things help so much!

Also-Crossfit. We worked on push press and pull ups for the strength portion. The WOD was a 20 minute AMRAP of the follow:

400m run (I wore my running shoes instead of Crossfit shoes and my feet thanked me)

20 wall balls

10 burpees

I finished 4 rounds plus a run, and my hips are feeling it today! One thing I will say though-as much as I hate burpees, all the workouts we’ve done lately have been…50 burpees. Straight. So 10 feels like a breeze!

Tuesday: Morning Crossfit. I love the morning classes but with the cold weather rapidly approaching, my morning days are numbered. I’m not about lifting weights in 29 degrees. Ugh.

For strength, we did power cleans. We did sets of 2, every minute on the minute for 10 minutes, and added 5# every minute. I started at 80 with the goal of working up to 120….yeah there’s definitely something wrong with my math there! I ended up failing fantastically on the second rep at 125# and totally wiping out. Fun fact-if you fall over backwards on your butt on an Olympic lifting platform with enough force, you slide pretty far. I felt ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure no one saw me totally fall.

The WOD was much less eventful!

5 rds:

350 m row(yeah, weird number)

6 thrusters

8 hang power cleans

10 burpees

I ended up using 75#. I tried to use 65, but was promptly told to add weight. Whoops.

And that just about wraps it up! Have a great Wednesday!

Reasons to Back Out of a Race

Date: October 8, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys!

Today’s post is going to be a bit different. Since I missed my race last weekend and am 100% happy with the decision, I thought I’d post on some of the reasons why it might make sense to back out of a race.

1. You are injured. This was the reason I backed out. While I MAY have been able to tough it out, it simply wasn’t worth it, and running has felt 100% better.

2. You risk serious injury. This can apply to a lot of things. I was worried that with my limpy gait, I was going to get a secondary injury, or even a stress fracture. This could even apply to poor running conditions. If your race is on a muddy trail during a rainstorm and you are prone to slipping, it might make sense to back out.

3. Extreme weather, especially if you aren’t trained in it. If you trained in 60 degree weather all season and then show up to 100 degree temps on race day, it might make sense to rethink whether or not the race would be safe.

4. You are sick. While sometimes you can push through an illness, a lot of times it isn’t worth it to tough out a miserable race, leaving you more ill than before.

5. Life gets in the way. Maybe it’s a family thing, maybe it’s a huge opportunity. While training for a race may be a big part of life, it isn’t all of life. Sometimes it needs to take a backseat.

Have you ever skipped a race? Why?

DNS

Date: September 19, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Did not start.

Those are words no runner wants to see. But, I’ve decided to not run my next race-Rock n Roll San Jose-on October 4. Ever since my half about 2 weeks ago, my plantar fasciitis has been flaring worse than ever. After the race, I couldn’t walk for 2 days. I can’t go through day to day life without pain, and my training runs since the race I’ve gutted out. With my plantar fasciitis in the past, running wasn’t too much of a problem, but now it’s become extremely painful. Even worse is that the outside of my bad foot/ankle has started hurting as well.

In top of that, on my long run I felt totally undertrained. I was going to go into the race undertrained and with bad feet-I can’t even imagine what the aftermath of this race would be like.

And then I realized-why? Why would I torture myself to run this race? It’s not the race I trained for all summer-that one is over. (And I’m grateful I was able to explore DC on foot in the process.) I’m not getting paid to do this. No one is forcing me-I’m not a pro-runner. I think as a blogger it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of racing and the seriousness of the process.

So I’m actually doing the smart thing and taking a DNS. I’m bummed about this, but I would be even more bummed by slogging through painful runs leading up to race day, and the pain that would follow, not to mention the risk of a more serious or permanent injury.

The fact that I’m having trouble dragging myself out to run now because I’m lazy (my normal reason) but because I can’t stand the thought of pain is a sign that I need to take a step back. This foot issue was something I could deal with before, but it’s worse than it’s ever been and it’s time for a break. Starting Saturday, I am going to take 2 complete weeks off from running. By forgoing the race, in the day I would have raced I may be able to run pain free again. Worth it.

So expect to see lots of rowing and spinning in the next couple of week! In addition, I will be doing lots of icing, stretching, and rolling. I have comfortable shoes and inserts of every walk of life now. I also got a night brace that I tried for the first time last night, and it seemed to help quite a bit! It basically just keeps my foot in a flexed position so that it is not so stiff when I wake up.

So, that’s where I am right now! Here’s to 2 weeks of rest!

Have you ever had to back out of a race? Do you have any tips for plantar fasciitis?