Park to Park . . . to Park . . . to Pain

I'm starting to really feel like a multisporter.

On Saturday, I swam the Park-to-Park two miler.  It's a swimming race in the Hudson River from 125th Street to 165th Street.  The two mile swim was my longest open water swim ever, and probably longer than  most of my swim workouts in the pool, so I was pretty nervous about it.  Fortunately, I was able to talk Peter into doing it with me, which definitely calmed me down before the race.

Since it was so warm, I was thinking that I'd be the only person wearing a wetsuit, but a good number of people were swimming in them.  The water was 68 degrees, which is right at the cutoff for eligibility to win awards while in a wetsuit.  But I am more concerned about the buoyancy that the wetsuit adds rather than any warmth that it creates, so I was definitely wearing mine.

It was a treading-water start, which I hate since your arms and legs get all tired before the swim even begins.  But once I jumped into the water I could feel the effects of the wetsuit and the salt water keeping me afloat--I didn't have to work that hard to tread water.  This definitely helped to calm my nerves a bit, as I tried to convince myself that the wetsuit, the salt water, and the tidal assist would make the swim easier than swimming in the pool.

When they sounded the start horn, I had positioned myself towards the back of the swimmers to avoid getting trampled.  What I didn't think about was positioning myself away from the big buoy that marked the start.  Instead, I ended up having to swim around it, getting swept by the current and crashing into it, getting entangled with the rope that anchored it to the bottom of the river, and getting trampled by the few swimmers behind me.  Ugh, not a great way to start!

After that minor hiccup at the beginning, though, the rest of the swim pretty much occurred without incident.  I had made sure to listen to the pre-race announcements, when the race director said there would be eight buoys on the course; we were supposed to swim out to the first one, turn right, and then pass seven more buoys to the end of the course.

From that starting stretch out to the first buoy, I felt calm and collected.  I was able to focus on my stroke, my rotation and my glide.  Determined not to veer off course, I was sighting about every three or four strokes.  Every time I sighted, that first buoy was noticeably getting closer and closer.  I felt that I was making good progress, and I soon reached that buoy and made a right turn.

After that, things got slightly more difficult.  I have not mastered bilateral breathing, especially in the open water.  I find it MUCH easier to breathe on my right side.  But the sun was on my right side.  And even though I just bought some nice tinted goggles to protect my eyes from the sun, it still felt like every time I breathed I was starting directly at it.  Also, the buoys seemed a lot further apart than that first one was.  I was having a little bit of difficulty swimming in a straight line.  And when I tried to make an adjustment to the direction I was swimming in, I think I overcompensated and got way off course in the other direction.

But I just stuck with it.  It wasn't about the time, but about just finishing the longest open water swim of my life.  It felt very tranquil, actually.  After about the second buoy, the field was pretty thinned out, so I just concentrated on my form and swam. Slowly, the buoys came and went, and eventually I made it to the end.  When I got out of the water, I felt exhilarated.  Peter and Tom Malcolm were there, along with Steve from TNYA, cheering me on.  I was so excited that I didn't even realize that I hadn't crossed the timing mat yet--Peter had to shout out to me to keep running, haha.

My finishing time was 56:23.  This was way faster than my stated goal of 1:12:00.  However, I guess there was a really substantial tidal assist this year, and I didn't quite make my other goal of being in the top 70%  (I was 123 out of 150 finishers, so 83rd percentile).  Oh well, I least I know I can swim two miles now.  The Avon Ocean Mile Swim on July 11th should be a breeze.

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On Sunday, I did the NYRR Father's Day Race Against Prostate Cancer 5-miler.  Not much to say here except that it was hot, humid and miserable.  The air had that feeling where you knew it was going to rain any second because it was so saturated with humidity, and you wished that it would just break and start pouring so that at least the rain would cool you down.  But instead, it stayed hot and gross through the whole race.

I didn't really have any expectations going into this race.  I'm obviously not training, and I'm still nursing this butt issue, so I just set out to do the best I could without feeling any pain or messing up my butt.  I was lined up with the same group of blue corral Front Runners I always line up with, which probably wasn't a good idea since they've all been doing workouts and running a lot more than me.

I knew pretty immediately that I had started out too fast and there was no way I could maintain it.  My first mile was 7:02, and it was pretty much all uphill from the West 69th Street start until 86th Street.  I haven't run a sub 7:00 anything since last year, and definitely wasn't going to do it today.  And honestly, I wanted the race to be over because there was no way I could see myself doing four additional miles feeling as bad as I did.

Mile two, from 87th Street to the 102nd Street transverse was 7:08.  I had slowed down, but still not as much as I thought I needed to, and really didn't think I could maintain this either.  After a half mile, a spectator shouted, "You're halfway there!"  This didn't help.  I didn't want to know that I just had to repeat those brutal 2.5 miles again.

Mile three: 7:20.  Ugh, didn't mean to slow down that much.  This wasn't even a hilly part of the race, I think I just lost focus.  For mile four, I try to regroup myself.  I became intent on breaking out of the group I had settled into, and see another runner in the distance who had been about 50 yards ahead of me the entire race.  So I ratcheted it up a bit, and set off to catch up to him.  I mile later, I made it, in 7:07.  One mile to go.

That last mile was tough.  But all I wanted to do was just get the race over with so I could stop running.  One by one, I pick people off, until I finally see the finish line.  I made a final push to the end, which I didn't realize I had in me.  Final mile was 6:48 for a total of 35:25 (7:05 pace).

I was actually very pleased with this time.  I am just not a very strong runner in the heat and humidity.  But I was able to run a strong second half of the race, and pass a bunch of people at the end.

Here's a picture taken by Ted Paszek, our team photographer.  I love it because I think it captures the one second during that whole race that I did not feel completely miserable and dying.  I'm even smiling.  Thanks, Ted!

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OK, I saved the bad news for last.  Yesterday, I went to see Dr. Degis about the MRI results.  He told me pretty much what I expected, that the MRI didn't show anything wrong with my hamstring at the ischial tuberosity (pelvic bone).  He also told me that the MRI went all the way from the hamstring's insertion point in the ischial tuberosity to the middle (or "belly") of the hamstring, and that there was no evidence of any kind of tear or anything.  Nor was there any edema anywhere (edema I guess is swelling caused by excess fluid, which would be present if there was some sort of tear).  So he gave me the following three options;

1.  Do nothing and live with my pain.  Not recommended, and not likely to either end the pain or make me a happier person.

2.  Go to a physiatrist, which is a specialist in non-operative pain management, and see if I can get some sort of injection in my problem area anyway.  He did give me the numbers of two doctors at HSS who are apparently the most respected physiatrists in their field, Dr. Gregory Lutz, and Dr. Joseph Feinberg.  (I guess a number of physiatrists are quacks who deal mostly with no-fault insurance patients).  He said, however, that insurance may not cover an injection since there was no evidence of anything wrong in my MRI.  Also, any injection would just mean that the doctor would blindly poke around and shoot me somewhere hoping it's the right area.  I'm not sure how I feel about a doctor putting sh-t into me not knowing if it's even the right place where it should go.  

3.  Doing the one thing that I haven't tried yet.  Wayyyyy back in November/December, I took about a month off from running.  It didn't help.  Then I did several months worth of "passive" physical therapy, which included lots of stretching and ultrasound.  That didn't help.  Then I saw Dr. Degis and started doing lots of intensive "active" exercises to strengthen my butt muscles so that there would be less strain on my hamstring while running.  That didn't help either.  But, through all this time, I haven't combined complete rest with active physical therapy.  After Boston, I drastically cut my running down to 12-15 miles a week.  But he thinks that's still too much.  I really need to cut it down to zero, and do intensive exercises with him twice a week.  He thinks I should try this out for three weeks, and see if there's any improvement.  Oh, here's the kicker: he recommends also that I refrain from biking during this time.  One thing he said, though, was that I could wait until after the Metroman Triathlon (July 18th) before I embarked on this no-running-heavy-PT treatment.  However, obviously, the longer I wait, the longer it'll take to heal.

So I'm not really sure what to do now.  I'm starting to realize and accept that I will need to stop running at some point, and it will likely be much more than just three weeks.  I have so many races planned for this summer and the fall, and I'm feeling like they may all slip away.  I was excited to do my first Half Ironman in October.  I'm captaining a Reach the Beach Ultra team in September.  I already signed up for Metroman and another Tri in Asbury Park on August 7.  And Derek and I were talking about getting some people to do a 100-mile relay in his home town of Lockport, NY.  And am I going to have to skip what would be my fifth year doing the ING New York City Marathon?

This Saturday is the Front Runners New York Lesbian and Gay Pride Run.  The five-mile race is FRNY's biggest event of the year, with over 3600 runners last year.  There's no way I'm going to miss that.  But come Sunday, I will have to reassess my running for the summer and fall.  I'm trying to realize that although it sucks in the short term to have to take time off, this will ultimately make be a better, stronger, healthier runner.