hacking the race walk: shoes

Mastering a new sport is not easy. Race walking is really weird and kind of an unnatural way of walking. When I get frustrated with my lack of progress, I start to think I miss triathlon. Then I fall into the trap of looking too long at the closed door, and I get kind of depressed. It doesn't help that tri season is officially underway, most of my FB "friends" are triathletes, and every other status update is triathlon this, triathlon that. Oh please. I've thought of deactivating my account, opening up a new account with just "real" friends, or just doing some mass deletions.

I have to remind myself, this is the year of rehab. Even if I wanted to do triathlons, I have to let my body heal. So I might as well use this year to learn a new sport. Have a distraction. And have to remember that if I had the chance to learn how to swim from an expert back when I was a kid, and grew up with the proper technique, it would've made a big difference in my triathlon career. I asked Mr. Miyagi yesterday if it made a difference to learn race walking as an adult vs. a kid, and he said it didn't. (Phew.) You either get it, or you don't. Luckily I have demonstrated on multiple occasions that I am indeed trainable.

Luckily too for my psyche, I had a nice breakthrough this week, and triathlon can go on the backburner again. The key to my first year in the sport is to master the technique. It is EXTREMELY technique-heavy, and my worst fear is that I'll get DQ'ed for breaking one of the rules during a race. It's funny; there are two extremes: you can't go really fast with bad technique, but you can go TOO fast and get DQ'd if you have illegal technique. It all comes back to good technique.

My shins had been holding me back, and then they got a little better. I followed Mr. Miyagi's program and was able to progress to 10km training walks. But then my knees started bending too much on impact, and he said I had to go back to 5kms only. AUGH!!! Then I blurted out something about how maybe it's my stupid shoes that are holding me back??? Even though the Fastwitch'es are cool, with a low heel-to-toe drop, they aren't designed for race walking. Hell, most shoes aren't, unless you order a custom-made pair like Mr. Miyagi has.

So I continued my search for the perfect race walking shoe. Luckily minimalist shoes have become all the rage. You really want something that has a fairly thin sole with low stack height (the heel-to-toe drop) to keep you close to the ground, since you are heel striking and need to land with your toes sticking up. I think I've become a bit of a minimalist shoe whore. I've personally bought the following:

the Saucony Kinvara

and then the Saucony Fastwitch 5,

the Brooks PureFlow,

the Vibram FiveFingers Speed,

and this past week attained the New Balance 730's

and then the Saucony Grid Type A4.

(Full disclosure: 3 of those pairs were purchased before I even contemplated race walking. I do like the idea of a more minimal shoe for... everything.)

I am also a total running shoe nerd. My original plan in college was to become a running shoe designer with my kinesiology degree and focus on biomechanics. The NB 730's (and also the PureFlow) have a bit of a negative heel/rocker heel, like the custom race walk shoe, which actually helps with the race walk heelstrike. You're not having to "fight the shoe" and force the heel to compress. Turns out this was one of the contributing factors to why my shins were getting so sore and my knee was bending at heel strike. (It's all in the biomechanics.)

I also came to the realization that various factors that make me, me, are going to help me hack the sport of race walking. My biomechanics background. My access to an orthotics & prosthetics lab. My physical and mental training as a professional Ironman triathlete. My inherent geekiness with wanting to tinker things myself (the MacGyver complex). This post was going to be about hacking the sport, in general, but I got a bit carried away with the shoes.

Anyway, breakthrough. All last week my homework was to focus on keeping the knees straight at heelstrike. I looked much better with the new shoes (730's). I still got tired, but at least I was legal. Then we threw in some surges at the end, and Mr. Miyagi remarked that my form and technique actually look better than many elite race walkers. (*squeal!*) Now if I could only hold it for 90 minutes rather than 90 seconds...

Exciting nonetheless. The Saucony Type A4's were actually more comfortable, with a very thin sole, but the heel is not rounded. And this is the part of the story where having a MacGyver complex and access to an O&P lab (+ lab technicians) comes in. This is also the part of the story where it is 6 minutes past my "get ready for bed alarm" and so this shall be, as they say, to be continued...

Healing the Children 2011, Day 3 update!

Our third day of work and it's crazy! I've been waking up at 4:30am each morning to get in my training at the hotel gym, and then it's breakfast buffet (nom nom nom) and off on the bus to the military hospital.

Starting on Sunday, we've been crazy swamped with patients. I'm lucky that Derek, who is in school to be a technician, is also on this trip so I get my very own assistant! Only 3 days and we've seen and treated over 60 orthotic cases, just the two of us. Sunday and Monday we worked 12+ hour days, not getting back to the hotel until 8pm...yesterday I only had one bathroom break in 12 hours. Today was better in that we got home at 7pm...and I got TWO bathroom breaks.

But we are getting to help out tons of kids and really make a difference, so it's all worth it! I am totally using my MacGyver skills and absolutely loving it. The girl above got a shoe lift, just like the Travel Sponsor. And the smiles and hugs we get from these kids is just priceless!

More soon! I better go to bed so I can get in at least...5 hrs of sleep. Hmmm. Sleep is for the weak!

crash recovery update, week 2

Raise your hand if you went running today. Or this week. Or in the last two weeks. Heck, raise your hand if you biked outside or went swimming in the last two weeks. Now take a moment to appreciate your good health.

I am jealous.

I have done NONE of the aforementioned activities in the last two weeks and this second week has been testing. The first week after the crash went by quickly in a haze of "I'm alive!" euphoria, painkillers, jetlag, and the last-minute panic of getting myself to go back to a "normal" job for the first time in a few years.

Curious George band-aids!

Week #2 became a mental struggle towards the end, as I've never had my capacity to train for triathlon be so limited, but the worst is over soon. Of course I understand that it could've been much worse and know other pro triathletes who *have* had it worse ("it's part of the job description," an old teammate told me), but I've been pretty much injury-free since meeting Brett Sutton in fall of 2008. (I'm talking free from serious injuries that completely sideline you and that you can't train through.) I know people hear stories about Brett breaking his athletes, but when I met him, I actually had shin pain so bad that I was running in the pool my first few weeks in the Philippines. He totally changed my running form (I had been trying that stupid forefoot running technique) and I haven't been hurt since.

Even in the 7 or 8 triathlon years before teamTBB, I can't remember a time when I couldn't at least train in one of the 3 sports when I was nursing an injury. That's how most people get into tris anyway, right? I personally came into it from having a running injury during college track, but I was able to bike without pain and joined the cycling team. Then there was that time in college I bruised my sternum at a party and had some other overuse injury running, but I could still bike. Or that other time I injured my hip flexor from trying out Powercranks, couldn't run or bike, but at least I could still swim!

Hello Kitty band-aids!

The caveat this time is that I've got open wounds stitched up and can't swim until they are completely healed. Oh sure I could, but I'm not about to get some nasty infection and prolong my recovery! The chin is all healed and I'm waiting on the elbow. I took the elbow stitches out myself (I'm an Asian girl MacGyver y'know) and have been cleared to swim starting Wednesday! I really can't wait to swim! Who'd ever thought I'd say that???

It is really frustrating to not have my normal steady flow of endorphins from training 25-30 hours per week. Right now my main limiter is the knee that was all banged up. The bruising and swelling is all gone but range of motion is limited, especially with weight bearing. So no running yet and no hard biking. I meant to post up this picture from a few days post-crash when I was using Mom's magic Chinese trick for getting rid of bruises with hard-boiled eggs. You peel it right away and put it in a thin handkerchief, rub the bruise until the egg gets smooshed, and then throw the egg away. You can't eat the egg unless you want all the evil spirits that the egg absorbed from the bruise to go back inside your body!

nasty bruises!

Obviously this worked because 2 weeks post-crash, I am completely bruise-free. I didn't take any new pictures because it's really not that exciting! My skin tone looks normal now!

I've been able to spin on White Tiger in the living room (we are also still waiting for new aerobar parts) and did my first little water run today. I've been able to do long walks ok but intensity-wise, everything is pretty low. The hilarious part of going to the pool today was that I was trying to decide which pool to run in, the warmer therapy pool or the colder competition pool. I asked the lifeguards how shallow each pool was, so I could make sure my elbow was out of the water. There was one lady who was doing water aerobics and she chimes in "if you are feeling apprehensive, you can put on a water belt!" hahaha! She thought I couldn't swim or something!

I'm really glad for the distraction of starting my new job, getting to know my new coworkers and the flow of things, and shaking the dust off my brain. Otherwise I'd just be sitting around sulking! Clearly the new job was just meant to be. I put in a request to register for IM Louisville at the end of August, but as Coach Beck said, we are just going to take it day by day. I don't want to rush the healing process and start racing again before my body is ready.