Yesterday, Thursday I met Clay at his clinic – AV Physical Therapy – for an early morning workout. My back was a little tight from Tuesday morning’s workout. Clay was sore from his Tuesday morning workout. I started up with 10 minutes on the exercise bike. I have found that if I grab a magazine I can do this warm up and not hardly notice the time go by. As my time was winding down Clay suggested that I do another 10 minutes, only harder. So I did. After 20 he asked if I wanted to try the stairclimber machine. I have only used this once or twice before and since climbing is not my specialty, I did not much care for it. Still, I figured maybe I could do it without putting much stress on the calf. i hung in there for 20 minutes. I started easy and every minute or two I increased the pace until I reached the machine’s maximum. I held the max for a minute and backed off just one level each minute. I was about halfway down the backside when I stopped due to exhaustion. After some stretches, I headed home.
Today, I was thinking maybe I should try to run again. I packed my running clothes to run with the kids at Hillview. I thought my shoes were still in the car after yesterday’s workout, but when I got to school I discovered that they were not there. So after school I headed out to be the coach once again. I sent the kids out on a warm up and jogged across the back of the school and noted that the calf felt really good. I also noted that I happened to be wearing a recently retired pair of Nike Air Structure Triax Shoes. So, when the kids returned and started their sweet 16 workout I joined in. The sweet 16 workout has lots of drills. I did some of the drills at an easy effort level and I jogged in lieu of some of them. Some of the drills were hampered by the fact that I was working out in skinny jeans….. Still I drilled or jogged up, back, up and back, 4 basketball courts for all 16 drills. As the workout progresses I allowed myself to go a little faster on the fast part of each drill.
I felt absolutely nothing from my calf the whole time. By the time I was wrapping up my glutes and hamstrings were starting to feel it just a tad, I suspect due to the stairmaster yesterday….
Clay is planning what looks to be a fun mountain trail run tomorrow…. I wonder if I should dare to join him…..
Great news! Be very careful if you decide to join Clay tomorrow.