Go Dawgs!

Another weekend, another race. Last Saturday I ran the 2014 Dawg Dash NYC 5k, a fundraiser for the University of Washington Alumni Association. It was a simple loop around Roosevelt Island (I just love events that don't require any traveling whatsoever) but due to the construction south of the Queensboro Bridge the first three quarter mile was going around the tram station and sport center twice before we head off north towards the lighthouse (mental note, create a blog entry that documents a loop around Roosevelt Island in photos), then back down south on the East side of the island and across the finish line close to the sprinklers. It was nice and easy.

Is that coffee?

I never attended UW but my wife did (I did apply once as international student for a year but was rejected). She mentioned this race many weeks ago and a team member of the NY Flyers posted on our Facebook page about it as well. I couldn't resist to register for it and my wife volunteered at the registration table. This was the third time that she was around when I crossed a finish line. The first time was at my very first race, the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge in 2013, last year's Staten Island half-marathon, and this one. While I never want to impose myself and have kids and wife wake up early just to accompany me to some early morning race in one of NYC's corners, it is a nice change of things if they actually do. I guess my chances would improve when I decided to run a destination marathon (or half). Do Yonkers or Philadelphia count?

We lucked out with the weather. At first I thought
they brought over some Seattle rain.

It was a very laid back race with around 150 participants but, as always, some of the runners (including me) meant business and they ran their hearts out. Others took it a lot more leisurely and jogged or walked the distance, because after all, this is also about creating an atmosphere to socialize and network. The last 5k race I ran was the day before the NYC Marathon and I did pretty okay - any sub-7 mile is definitely okay with me - but this time I wasn't sure what to expect. I have been training and running longer races and runs and didn't focus at all on the 5000m distance. I would just wing it and go as fast as I can. As Bill Rodger wrote in his book, Marathon Man, running a 5k is about running as fast as you can and hang in there as long as you can. There is not much strategy involved. I sure didn't have anything planned in how to run it but I think I did okay (unfortunately, not "pretty" okay.) I was in the front line when the horn sounded and I tried my best to stay with the fastest runners for as long as I could. Unfortunately, I am no match for runners who can run sub-6 minute miles and when the adrenalin faded I was delegated to the back of the front group, as always in such small races. Elle, the NY Flyer member I mentioned above, kept running right behind me until around 2.5 miles into when she took off and left me in the dust. I tried to keep up with her, but then there is a reason why she ran two Boston Marathons in the past and I get injured from running a half-marathon, so I just picked up in speed what I could, which wasn't too much, but could not reach her anymore. She crossed the finish line eight seconds ahead of me. I finished in 13th position (out of 145 finishers) with a time of 22:10 minutes and a pace of 7:08 minutes per mile. This is a far cry from the 6:44 minutes/mile I was able to run last summer but it sure is not hopeless. With my treatments for my knee coming to an end I should be able to get out there and train harder again.

After the run there was a after-party at Feile, some Irish Pub in midtown, where us runners could have gotten a free beer (yay for the Irish, the Germans, and the Huskies - three races that offered beer afterwards) but getting into the train instead of just walking home with my wife was not too attractive at that point. Maybe next time.

Next up: the NYRR Japan Run 4M in Central Park on Mother's Day (and after that brunch with my family at Max Brenner for some chocolatey breakfast.)

Keep on running!

Needles in your knee

Yup. That pretty much visualizes it.

Today I got my second round of injections into my knee and I am still alive to talk about it. It's actually not that bad, I must say. It's almost like going to the dentist but a lot shorter and a lot more comfortable. Let me start with summarizing what treatment I am getting.

As explained last time I was diagnosed with grade 1-2 arthritis in my right knee, i.e. the cartilage is worn down and too thin to provide enough cushioning between the bones and the knee cap. That can cause all kinds of uncomfortable pain in my knee after running, prolonged bending of my knees, etc. Luckily, there is that stuff called Euflexxa on the market that provides artificial lubrication for cases like mine. There are a few downsides to it, though. 1) It is quite expensive, almost $2,500 per treatment (which is covered 100% by my insurance - lucky me), 2) one treatment consists of one doctor visit, i.e. injection, per week for three consecutive weeks, 3) it needs to be injected via needle into my knees, and 4) it only lasts for six months after which the whole process needs to be repeated. The time between treatments can be extended if I decided to become less active but while I want to keep running it is suggested to follow the recommended treatment schedule.

So, when I come into my doctor's office I am asked to lie down with a wedge under my legs that keep my knees bent in a more or less 90 degree angle. Wait, not true. I have to sign a consent form first that relieves the doctor from all kinds of responsibilities for certain problems such procedure can cause - business as usual. The first thing the doctor will do is to sterilize the surface of my knee and then apply cold to numb the skin around the injection site. Then he will inject lidocaine to block the nerves on the side of the knee. This is probably the most uncomfortable part of the entire procedure and, not unlike at the dentist, you will feel a tiny bit of pain and some burning sensation when the drug goes in. In my case, most of the "drama" plays in my head (my dad used to call this "Kopfkino") and I am always lying there, waiting (instead of going to my "happy place") for any kind of pain to surprise me and make me jump up, swearing like a sailor. It never happens, though. All the nervousness for absolutely nothing. Once the knee is numb, which is a matter of seconds and feels absolutely nothing like lidocaine in your mouth, i.e. it doesn't feel weird or anything worthwhile to report, he takes a second syringe, the one with the Euflexxa, and injects it in that same area. I kind of looked when this happened the very first time and seeing a syringe sticking out of your knee does look a bit amusing. The doctor told me that there are certain spots on the knee that are perfect for this kind of injection because there are no tendons or muscles to puncture through, and I agree with this, because I have felt very little soreness afterwards. Since I am getting this done for both knees the same happens for the second knee as well. Last but not least he bends my knees up and down for a while to redistribute the gunk he just put in there and you can actually hear it move around. It's hard to describe what kind of sound it makes but with the sensation of what's going on inside the knee it made it sound like somebody is popping bubble wrap very quietly. The whole thing takes less then 30 minutes and I am out of there quickly.

It is probably too soon to tell if it actually does anything good, but I must say that my knees do feel quite a bit better than before. The 4.5 miles I ran two days after my first injection felt really good. No pain in the beginning, during, or after the run. It was pure bliss. At this point I want to credit the physical therapy and the injections for that.

I will get my third and last round of injections at the end of next week and I will report back over the next few weeks or months what difference it made. Stay tuned.

Next race up: The Dawg Dash 5k on Saturday. My wife will be doing registration, handing out bibs, and refreshments.

Keep on running!

The Scots are coming but let's talk about the Irish first

A Beautiful Day

So much has happened in the last few weeks that deserves mentioning on this blog but before I do so I want to give you a recap of a race that I ran on September 14th, 2013. For some reason I never found the right words to put my experience on paper and kept postponing it until now. That one day in September has been the pinnacle in my very short race career. I ran the fastest ever. It was the Great Irish Fair 5k, an NYCRUNS 5k race on the boardwalk of Coney Island and I finished it in 20:52 minutes, a pace of 6:44 minutes per mile. I placed 10th out of a field of 176 finishers but awards were only given to the top three male and female winners. That's fine because we all got free food and beer at the Irish festival afterwards. From that race on things went pretty much downhill pace- and injury-wise because I started to run longer distances without training for it correctly.

Just as you would expect it from an Irish event it started rather late, at 11am, which gave me enough time that day to get down to Coney Island without waking up in the wee-hours. The race was a good one. It started on the Coney Island boardwalk right under the Parachute Jump and led us West for a bit, back East all the way to the Aquarium, and once more West to where we started. The board walk itself wasn't the safest ground to run on because of broken wood and the occasional nail poking out but as long as you stayed on the planks that are parallel to your running direction you were fine. To this day I am proud of what I achieved that day and I hope that I will be able to get back into even better shape. I don't think I reached my best, yet. After the race I helped myself to a cup of beer and a hot dog, and did one of the things I always wanted to do after a race: I took off my shoes and socks and walked in the Atlantic Ocean. It was perfect (with the exception of having sand all over and getting wet quite a bit) and I will sign up again once registration for the Great Irish Fair 5k opens up for 2014.

We all know what has happened after that and how I have been plagued with injuries in my knees and feet for the last few months. After the last half-marathon I developed an unpleasant clicking in my right knee that just didn't want to go away and I eventually decided to see a doctor and have it checked out. When ice and rest doesn't do much you better get professional advice. The doctor figured runner's knee but sent me off for an MRI which agreed with his preliminary diagnosis. In my case I am suffering from chondromalacia patella, degradation of the cartilage under my knee cap, that causes my bones touch each other, bruise slightly, and keep the tissue surrounding them inflamed. For the medically inclined among my hardly existing readership here is the official diagnosis:

• Focal degenerative complex along the posterior portion of the lateral tibial plateau, with full-thickness cartilage defect, and subcortical reactive marrow edema.
• Focal grade 1-2 chondromalacia of the medial facet of the patella, with accompanying focal marked synovitis in the adjacent medial joint capsule. There may be an underlying medial patellar plica at the site, but this is difficult to visualize.
• Mild to moderate "iliotibial band syndrome."
• Evidence of old Osgood-Schaltter disease with superimposed acute component in the distal patellar tendon, and in the superficial and deep infrapatellar bursae.
• Small joint effusion.
• Study negative for meniscal tear or knee derangement.

Phew. That was just as hard to type as it is to read. Well, my cartilage in my knee is thinning, things are inflamed, there are some leftovers from a condition that I unknowingly had when I was a child, but the tendons in my knee are in good condition. I assume the fact that my right foot is not parallel to my knee is not helping my condition especially when pounding the pavement during a run for a prolonged time. Nevertheless, it is not bad enough to require that I give up running but if we don't do anything about the current condition I may end up with knee replacement down the road. So, for now I will get an injection into each knee. Two injections per knee once a week for three weeks, to be precise. Sounds bad? Yeah, I am not looking forward to it but it is not supposed to be as bad as it sounds. What's going to happen is that the medication that will be injected will act as a lubricant to keep the bones from doing damage to each other. It is supposed to reduce the pain I would get from too much running and prevent further degradation of the cartilage. The bad thing: that medication is extremely expensive (almost $2,500 for one full treatment of both knees - 10% of which will have to come out of my pocket, health insurance will luckily cover the rest) and it needs to be re-applied every six months. I will definitely do a progress report over the next few months and talk about how things improve, if at all.

The other thing that I was prescribed was physical therapy to make sure other muscles in my legs take off as much load from my knees as possible. The first evaluation showed that my glutes did less work than they are supposed to, especially in my right leg. So we are focusing at the moment on getting my glutes stronger and make myself more conscious about the bio-mechanics so that I activate my butt and hips more when climbing stairs or running or walking. I must say that I do feel a lot better after my first five sessions and the only thing that is left is the clicking (which only shows when climbing up stairs and may not go away ever again) and a bit of ITBS left over from my last race. We are working on it. Today I got a gait analysis and I was told that my running technique is almost flawless. I just need to work a bit on my hip extensions - I tend to turn out my legs a bit too much when running.

This has been quite a long blog entry already but there is more! Because of my injury I wasn't able to run the Spring Fling 10k but since NYCRUNS has an awesome volunteering program I helped out with the race doing course marshaling and I got credit for the missed race that I will apply to a future race. Volunteer for a race and get $25 race credit and whatever swag they handed out to runners, including the food. You cannot beat that!

Long sleeves wasn't the best
idea. Photo by Marathonfoto

And then the NYRR Scotland Run 2014 came along. I paid for it, I would get a point for guaranteed entry into the 2015 NYC Marathon, plus my knee didn't feel that much off, so... I ran it. I even finished it and not in last position. It was hard, though, but not unsurprisingly because I haven't run for almost four weeks now and jumping right into a 10k took a lot of effort. The fact that I was able to finish it and was still able to maintain a better than 7:30 minutes per mile pace still shows that my fitness level hasn't degraded too much, yet. It is far off from the 7:10 or so I did in a 10k last year but I am confident that I will be able to get back into it. I mean, I was in the middle of a 10k training program when my knee acted up.

The race was one complete loop of Central Park. We started on the West side at around 63rd Street, went all the way up north, back down on the East side, all the way down south, back north and a little bit further than the start line. The weather was great and the atmosphere awesome. Thousands of runners getting together is always an awesome experience - especially when you are one of them. Thanks to my performance in the Dash to the Finish Line from last year I earned my lowest bib number ever and I started in the second start coral from the front. In the beginning of the race I was able to keep up just nicely but when the rolling hills started up in Harlem I lost a lot of time. I think I have to run a lot more often in Central Park. The hills, no matter how small they are, really got to me very quickly. The mile that had the most hills was my slowest mile. I recovered in the end a bit but I spent my very last dose of energy that I had. It was hard. I crossed the finish line in 1,229th place out of 8,067 finishers, 126th out of 571 finishers in my age group (40-44), and 19th place (out of 87 participants) for my running team. I am proud that I was still able to stay in the top-20% of the entire field. My net time was 46:18 minutes which equals to an average pace of 7:28 minutes per mile.

Today is Friday and I am planning on getting back into a much more relaxed 10k training plan tomorrow. It is supposed to be a gorgeous Saturday outside and I really need to get back out there and run my heart out. I will officially be training for a 10k in July but will run multiple 5-10ks during that journey. No more half-marathons until fall, i.e. the Yonkers or Philadelphia Marathons may be downgraded to halves for me this year. I am in no rush, am I?

I want to finish with what's coming up next. The next race will be the Dawg Dash, a 5k on Roosevelt Island, organized by the University of Washington Alumni Association. Then May's schedule has volunteering three times and racing twice. Considering the condition of my knee I may have to postpone my first marathon to 2015 and focus on half-marathons only for this fall. I think I really have to take it slow and get a lot more miles under my belt before I do anything crazy.

Keep on running!