Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

Today is the last day of my summer fitness program, and my deadline to reach certain fitness goals.  Inconstant attention to diet and my ongoing Achilles tendon battles have derailed my achievement of my weight and running goals, at least temporarily.  But I did meet one goal: this morning I did a single set of 55 pushups, meaning I achieved my pushups goal for the summer on the last day of my program.  That’s also the greatest number of pushups I’ve ever done in my life in a single set.  I wasn’t really expecting to do it, since I did 53 two days ago and thought I’d still be a bit sore, but I got started and felt good enough to keep going.  Half way through my wife entered the bedroom with our dog, and she told him "Go say hi" with a laugh.  I was at about 30 pushups at that point, and, thinking I had a shot and not wanting it to get frustrated by a golden retriever licking me, I screamed back "No, get him away from me."  I think the wife was a bit taken back, but she did shoo him away.  So I kept going, and managed to get in the 55th pushup before collapsing.  So that’s something, at least.  Now it’s time to get my heel healed and get back on track with losing weight and running faster.

My Achilles tendon is still bothering me, just enough to prevent me from amping up the running, but not enough to keep me from working out altogether.  Two days ago I went to the gym and did some intervals on the stationary bike and treadmill.  My treadmill intervals were roughly at 6:00 to 6:40 pace and lasted two to three minutes.  No perceptible injury afterward, but in general the tendon is a bit sore, and I know if I push it I’ll injure it.  It’s hard to throttle back when I want to be running hard right now.  I’m still hoping to do a 5K or 10K on Labor Day, but we’ll see.

On a better note, I increased my pushup total to 53 yesterday, one more than the week before, though still two shy of my goal (the finish date of which, as I recall, is tomorrow, so I may extend my finish date a bit).  It’s interesting to see how a very simple and not especially rigorous (but consistent over several months) regime of pushups has measurably increased my strength (and to some degree, muscle mass) in my arms and chest more than some of my previous, seemingly more intense and much more time consuming, bouts of weight lifting in the gym.  Doing pushups on my bedroom floor seems to yield a lot more benefit for the time involved than going to the gym, and it’s a lot easier to do in tandem with lots of running.  Now if I can just get around to adding a pullup bar in my garage I’ll be able to work out most of my upper body without having to go to the gym.

According to some online information I’ve seen 53 pushups is above the 90th percentile for my age group, and something I saw said that 73 is the 99th percentile for my age group.  So 73 would be a good eventual goal — then I could say I am in the 99th percentile for my age group in pushups ability.  I would estimate my 5K ability at somewhere around 96-97 percentile for my age group, but that’s a guess.  It would be kind of cool to be at 99th percentile in my age group both in running and in a standard measure of upper body strength.  Of course, I have to heal.  First things first.

The good news is my Achilles tendon seems mostly to have healed in the last week, allowing me to run on Saturday for the first time in 18 days.  I ran pretty slowly, totaling 5 miles.  I plan to run again today.  We’ll see how that goes.  I’m not yet sure how much the layoff has affected my fitness.

One thing it has affected is my weight.  I’ve gone up to 174.8 as of today, although my BF hasn’t gone up much (it’s at 17.2%, according to scale, although the reading fluctuates every day).  The good thing is that with all the pushups and hard running I’ve done over the last three months a good portion of the gain seems to be muscle rather than fat, but the bad news is it’s going to be hard to get anywhere near my weight goal by Labor Day.  At this point my goal is to get solidly under 170 pounds by September.  I don’t want to be focusing on weight loss during my fall training.

The other goods news is I did a single set of 52 pushups on Sunday, the most, I think, that I’ve EVER done at any point in my life.  I may have done that many once a couple of years ago, but never more.  I’m within sight of my 55-pushup goal to be achieved by Labor Day.

My last race was a success, but it was followed three days later by a big setback.  The race was the 5K I ran on July 25.  I beat my previous PR by 8 seconds with a time of 19:22, not quite as fast as I’d hoped but still my best race yet.  I started fast, clocking 6:04 for the first mile, then I slowed to 6:16 for the second and about 6:22 for the third.  My overall pace was 6:14, so I was pleased.  At the time it seemed like my running was progressing really well and I was on track for that sub-40 minute 10K, my big goal for the year.

Alas, three days later, during my afternoon speed interval workout, my right foot started to hurt.  It wasn’t the same as the Achilles tendonitis I’d suffered two years ago; this was lower and nearer the heel.  I made it through three 600 meter intervals and an 800 meter interval with increasing discomfort, but had to give up during the second 800 meter segment.  I haven’t been able to run since then, and it’s been 9 days.  I’ve hit the gym three times and spent time on the stationary bike to try to maintain aerobic fitness, but there’s no way I can avoid setting my running back if this keeps up.

At first I thought it might be a stress fracture, but the doctor seems to think it’s an injury to the Achilles tendon where it connects to the heel.  I’m taking a painkiller and trying to rest it, and that’s about all I can do.  In the meantime I’m going to keep going to the gym to try aerobic exercises that don’t put pressure on my heel — especially the stationary bike, as it works my quads as well as the heart.

It’s quite frustrating, but if it heels within a week or two it won’t set me back too much and I should be able to still enter some races this fall.