Inspiration

Tags

injurie, running, shin, writing

In my world running and writing seem to be related. The more I run the more writing inspiration I have. Based on frequency of my recent posts you can get a clear picture of my running at the moment.
It all started sometime in December. I was working a lot on flexibility over the winter and seems like I overdid one exercise which caused some uncomfortable pain in groin area. I could still run but the pain influenced my stride which became very asymmetric. This probably caused some lower back pain afterwards. When I finally got rid of back pain I got back into full training too fast and had to deal with some pain in the shin. It didn’t seem too serious and the recovery week was in sight so I decided to ignore the pain for a couple of sessions. This proved to be a big mistake and now, 4 weeks later I’m still not back to running. Let’s hope this works other way around also. If I start writing more maybe I’ll be able to run more.

Winter’s here

Tags

bike, cold, ice, injury, media sensationalysm, run, swim, training, triathlon, winter, zagreb

homeless bear

After a couple years of absence winter is finally here and I certainly hope it’s not here to stay. Last couple of winters were very mild, almost nonexistent. Now, after two weeks of real winter with temperatures normal or slightly below average for this part of the world, media is full of big, sensationalistic headlines about cold, snow and ice. Sensationalism attracts audience so I can understand them, but it’s a bit frustrating when almost everything is presented to you in sensational matter. There were a couple of days with minimum temperatures below -10 C and one with -18 C. So, that is cold, but it’s nowhere near record low of -27 C for Zagreb (and I would like to remark that records were monitored for only last 150 years).
Last week I started swimming. First swim, on Monday was a bit painful. When I jumped in the water my first thought was that I wasted another 3 euros. Despite the initial pain I tried to swim, since I was hoping that a little time in the water will speed up my recovery. Fortunately, my assumption was correct and I felt better as the time passed. Initially I swam like a brick, only the bricks are probably a bit faster, but as the days passed I felt and swam a bit better.
Yesterday (Sunday) I was feeling good enough to give running a shot. It was a good technique workout as I was forced to run with short strides,high frequency and also land softly. Running technique is important but there are other methods to master it, you don’t have to get injured in the first place . Today’s run felt much better and now I’ll drift back to my swim-run focused schedule. Hopefully, by the end of the week my rehabilitation will be completed.

Recovery

Tags

cold weather, cycling, injury, ljubuski, oymyakon, recovery, running, swimming, triathlon, zagreb

Waterfall near Ljubuski

As you probably read I got hit by a car almost two weeks ago. At first it didn’t seem serious but the day after the accident I could barely get out of bed. Any kind of movement was painful (as well as smiling, sneezing…). Even thinking about moving was painful. Since then I’ve been feeling better and better every day.

I’ve spent Christmas holidays in my hometown, Ljubuski. It was challenging not to eat to much, as I wasn’t capable for any kind of physical activity. I must admit that I failed at that challenge. It’s hard not to eat when you have food everywhere and you have nothing else to do. Besides that I got used to eat a lot as I was in heavy training before the accident. A week after the accident I felt a lot better and hoped that I could start training again. I didn’t have my bike with me and Ljubuski doesn’t have swimming pool so only thing left was running. After 4 steps I stopped realizing it’s still to early.

Yesterday I came back to Zagreb. Only then I realized how great the climate in Ljubuski is. To bad it doesn’t have a swimming pool. My desire for training was stronger than cold and cloudy weather so I did a short bike ride. After 10 days of inactivity I was happy to find something that I could do without pain. Later that day I went to the pool. I was hoping that I could at least do a kick set, but after 200 m I had to give up. This was probably the most expensive swim of my life (3€ for only 200 m). Today, I planed a similar short ride like yesterday, but I didn’t feel any pain so I prolonged it to 2h.

Many of my friends avoid riding in cold weather. Last two days were pretty cold (-3 and -4C respectively) but I didn’t have any problems riding in that temperatures. Adaptation is the key (although in my case, increase in body fat level over the holidays also helped). People can adopt to any kind of weather. If you don’t believe me take a look at the video below. It’s about people in Oymyakon, the coldest town on earth (-71C).

Happy New Year everyone.